The stories of Bryan Young

For any of you who are aware of Reddit, it's a massive community and every year they have the world's largest Secret Santa gift exchange. More than 50,000 people are participating. I'm participating this year and it's a lot of fun. One of the ways the full time staff makes its money is through the RedditGifts Marketplace, which is new this year. They're curating a collection of merchants and artists to sell items through their Marketplace to help support the exchange and artists like myself. I'm the first author they've added to the market place. I'm sure more will come, but right now mine are the only books available through Reddit. You can buy my books at a slight discount, all signed, through their portal here . I'll be handling the shipping and handling just as if you'd be buying it through me, but it'll be supporting this great team of people at the same time. If you want the bundles I've put on sale for the holidays stil...

In the spirit of the holidays, I'm going to be putting signed, print copies of my books on sale between now and the end of the holiday season. If you've wanted to grab copies for yourself or as a gift for friends, they will never be cheaper. The sales are as follows: Novel bundle: Lost at the Con and Operation: Montauk - both of my published novels will be available for the low price of $20 + S&H. That's $10 off the suggested retail for the both of them. They'll be signed and personalized. Shorts bundle: Man Against the Future and God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut - Both of my collections of short stories and essays will be available for the low price of $15+S&H, which is $5 off their suggested retail price. They too will be signed and personalized. The whole shebang: Lost at the Con, Operation: Montauk, Man Against the Future, God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut, and The Colossus: All of the printed work above, plus my convention special steamp...

In the next few days I'll be submitting my third short story in as many weeks for an anthology. This one, though, might be the one I'm most proud of. Not the story, per se, though I do think it's really good stuff, but it's the most important anthology. Put together by my friend and author R.T. Kaelin , Triumph Over Tragedy is an anthology that includes more than 40 authors and every cent of the proceeds are going to the Red Cross and relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Sandy. I won't say I was the first author to sign up when the redoubtable Mr. Kaelin cooked up the idea, but I was pretty darn close, and I'm very glad to be involved. For a donation of at least $7 , you can get some very, very cool stories. Here's the full list of authors involved so you can know why $7 for stories by all of them would be a steal: • Robert Silverberg (Hugo and Nebular Award winner) • Marion Zimmer Bradley (Locus Award winner) (donated by the MZB Literary Trus...

A young fan of Operation: Montauk read the book and liked it enough to do a book report/movie poster. It's one of the coolest things I've seen and made me very, very happy. If you, too, want to experience this "Awesome Fantasy," you can grab it in the store.   It's also available digitally ( links here ). 

I've been busy working on my new book as part of NaNoWriMo , but that doesn't mean I want to leave you guys entirely out in the cold.  For those new around these parts, a brief explanation is in order. A long time ago I posted a list of rules and guidelines I've been collecting in my notebook over the years as a writer. I put together the list on the blog and it was fairly popular. (You can read the whole thing here) But there's only so much that comes across in a simple bullet point list. I wanted to expand on it and we've been doing it two or three at a time ever since. If you want to catch up on the series: You can read Part 1 here ,  Part 2 here ,  Part 3 here ,  Part 4 here , Part 5 here,  and Part 6 here . 23)   Avoid cliches. Avoid them in characters, action, dialogue, story, plot, and anything else that risks being cliched. If you must use a cliche, add uniqueness and freshness to it. Cliches tend to be the first thing our mind thinks about w...

It's been a while since I revisited my "writing advice" sorts of columns since I've been so busy with conventions (like the incredible and excellent Geek Media Expo ) and my new book, but I know a lot of people have been consuming every writing tip they can as they work on their NaNoWriMo novels and I wanted to bring these back for you guys. If you want to catch up on the series: You can read Part 1 here ,  Part 2 here ,  Part 3 here ,  Part 4 here , and   Part 5 here. Now that that's all out of the way, we can get down to business: 20) Read other peoples books and screenplays that you admire and are better than your skill level. You don't necessarily need to switch to their style, but adapts their strengths into your style and learn from their mistakes.  I think this rule is very important and it seems very obvious. Too often I hear people who want to be writers complain that they don't read, that they don't have time, that it's boring, or ...