The stories of Bryan Young

So, I missed my post last week and I considered skipping a post this week. Why? We have a brand new baby in the house. Her name is Valkyrie and she's great. Naming tiny humans is a much harder thing to do than naming characters, and I find naming characters to be one of the hardest parts of a story for me. But I know that if I'm at any point dissatisfied with a name, I can find+replace the old name and insert a new one. With a kid, it's fairly permanent. Valkyrie was on a long list of names and it's the one that seemed to match what we wanted the most and came out on top of the compromise. That's the other thing about naming characters versus children. Unless you're collaborating with someone, you have the final say in what your character's names are. While I'm taking some time off from other forms of work because of the new baby, I'm not taking time off from writing and I've been chugging along on a new novel and short story, as well...

 "Monsters" is the new fiction anthology from Silence in the Library and I have a story in the main book, as well as the companion, "Soothe the Savage Beast." "Monsters" was edited by Kelly Swails, I edited "Soothe the Savage Beast."  I'd highly recommend you check it out. The stories in these books are cool, the artwork in both books is great. You're going to want them both. There are stories by Michael Stackpole, Timothy Zahn, Aaron Allston, and dozens of other writers you like, even if you haven't yet heard of them yet. You can click over to the kickstarter here directly. $7 will get you an eBook and your name in the back, $10 gets you the eBook of both books. It's an offer you can't refuse. This collection began as the convention exclusive from Origins Game Fair last year and so I was able to reconnect with a lot of the authors whose work stands next to mine in the collection. It's quite an august group and ...

I'm heading off to Origins Game Fair tomorrow ( you can see my panel schedule here ) and will be there until Sunday. My panels are all focused on writing and they're always highly informative and a lot of fun. I find conferences and conventions an invaluable source of inspiration and contacts for freelancers across the board. In fact, most writing gigs I've landed have been a direct result of meeting and interacting with editors and fellow writers at conventions. Origins, San Diego Comic-Con, Star Wars Celebration, Salt Lake Comic Con, those and many more have been a great place to network. They're great not just for networking, though, they're great for learning, too. Getting different perspectives, and meeting people that you wouldn't ordinarily come in contact with, and talking to people is a great thing. And it'll expose you to all kinds of writing you might not otherwise pick up. It was after two different conventions of meeting Patrick Rothfuss tha...

Signing: So, the first and biggest thing I'd like to tell you about is the signing for Apollo's Daughters that is happening in Salt Lake City this weekend. If you're anywhere nearby, I'd love to see you come out for it. Here is the Facebook event invite , but here are the most important details: Apollo's Daughters, and it's companion anthology Athena's Daughters, strives to highlight the female protagonist in a collection of short speculative fiction, Apollo's Daughters being written by male authors.    Signing and meet and greet begins at 6pm, with readings from Bryan and Jason Young beginning at 6:30pm. Both authors and artists will be available until 8:00pm.   You may purchase Apollo's Daughters at Eborn Books day of or snag it on Amazon now. Eborn Books 254 South Main Street, Salt Lake City, UT 84101 Friday, May 29, 2015 6:00pm - 8:00pm   It's incredibly important that you come out to readings and signings that authors d...

Last week, I offered my schedule for CONduit ( which is this weekend, come see me! ) as well as a self-imposed deadline to finish the latest rewrite of The Aeronaut , which is–hopefully–my next book to see release. Well, I'm happy to report that I finished it that night. I powered through the last few thousand words that needed to be written and revised everything that else that needed changing. I drastically re-wrote the ending, which was incredibly difficult for me to do. The ending that was written originally was a series of scenes that I had been dreaming of years before I ever even began to write the book. In fact, I wrote the first pieces of the book as I'd originally imagined it back in 2008 after percolating the story for a while even then. It's something that's been very close to me. It's a personal story and it's important to me that I get it right. But the ending wasn't working. My original idea wasn't what the story morphed into. It's...

I will be appearing at the CONduit Science Fiction Convention  held in Salt Lake City on from May 22-24. It's at the Hilton DoubleTree by the Salt Lake City Airport and I'll be there on panels all three days. Here's my schedule: FRIDAY: 4:00 (Zion Room) The Greatest Films Most Fans Have Never Seen  SATURDAY: 12:00 (Arches Room) What We Know About Star Wars: The Force Awakens  SUNDAY: 10:00 (Arches Room) Geek Journalism 12:00  (Arches Room) Star Wars: Canon Wars I've been working on quite a bit this week, too. I had a new column come out for Salt Lake City Weekly. It was about the charm of a single-topic convention, using Star Wars: Celebration as an example. The headline was "Out in Force." I also had a new piece come out for the official Star Wars website, this time I examined the cinema influences Ben Hur had on Star Wars. You can read it here. The most exciting release this week comes in the form of a short story I wrote ages ago called ...

Call me crazy, but I don't go back and revise a book manuscript until I've written an entirely new book. Revision is the hardest part of the process for me, mainly, I think, because I get so married to what I've written. I find I can't really come back to a manuscript and give it the treatment it deserves until I've almost completely purged the thought process that brought it to me from my head. For me, that entails writing a new book. For me, it's so much easier to approach an older manuscript with fresh eyes if your memory of it is fuzzy. You're able to look at it and find the things you wrote that took you by surprise. You can detach yourself and your ego from the piece and really see the problems, but also really see what works. Besides that, the only thing that makes you a better writer is more writing and more reading. So if you go back and revise a previous book after you've written a new one and read a dozen more, you'll be much more a...