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Daniel Ausema
Daniel Ausema writes lyrical tales of other worlds, stories of strangeness and wonder.
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Daniel Ausema's fiction and poetry have appeared in many publications, including Strange Horizons, Daily Science Fiction, and Diabolical Plots. He is the creator of the steampunk-fantasy Spire City series, set in a city of chained singers and beetle-drawn carriages where the powerless fight back against those with wealth and influence. His latest novel is the first book of The Arcist Chronicles, The Silk Betrayal, published by Guardbridge Books--it is a story of magic and revolution in a caste-based society teetering on the edge of an industrial era. He lives in Colorado at the foot of the Rockies.
Fiction · Posts · Books
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Fiction Series: Ongoing 11 Chapters
Spire City: Occupied
Updated Aug 4, 2021 · 27,586 words (101 minutes) · 18 views
Fantasy Mad science new weird Airships beetles foreign occupation steampunk resistance serial
Standalone sequel! The death of Spire City's greatest inventor couldn't come at a worse time. The fabled city of beetle-drawn carriages is occupied by a foreign power, and that country is at war with another. Five people find their lives spiraling together in the aftermath of his death: Temli, an airship captain; XXXXX, an unnamed correspondent from the front lines; Keene, a grizzled beetle hunter; Jensha, a singer chained to a city spire; and Alless, apprentice to the late inventor.
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Fiction Series: Ongoing 13 Chapters
The Market of Magical Goods
Updated Jul 29, 2021 · 1,362 words (5 minutes) · 4 likes · 2888 views
Fantasy Drabble fabulist serial
Welcome to the Market of Magical Goods, a serial of brief, fabulist visions of wonder, each exactly 100 words long. A shopkeeper offers you a tincture to drip into your left eye. Will you take it?
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Fiction
Apprentice in the Steam Library
Published Jul 6, 2021 · 3,505 words (13 minutes) · 1 like · 96 views
Fantasy Science Fiction beetles
Jossian is an apprentice librarian, a public-facing human in a library staffed primarily by constructs. Still a child, she is the only one small enough to enter the library tunnels when one of those constructs gets stuck on its track. She learns that the tunnels hide more chaos than the masters of the library will admit.
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Fiction
To Hunt a Sky Eel
Published Jun 3, 2021 · 3,286 words (12 minutes) · 71 views
Science Fiction hunting space opera regret
Typenn is famous for the immersive recordings he makes of hunting creatures throughout the universe. His pursuit of the majestic sky eel does not go as he expected.
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Fiction
City of Games
Published Apr 28, 2021 · 990 words (4 minutes) · 92 views
Along the Yahm Railroad are many strange cities, including this city where truth is a game--and games are all true.
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Fiction
Seasons in a Moon Ocean
Published Apr 6, 2021 · 368 words (2 minutes) · 2 likes · 193 views
Rhysling-nominated poem about the scientists who study the seasonal patterns of a watery moon somewhere.
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Fiction
A Map is not the World
Published Mar 6, 2021 · 4,196 words (16 minutes) · 160 views
On a plain where war is sacred and eternal, the soldier Sai becomes high priest of a religion that worships war itself. Meanwhile four mapwalkers try to escape the unmapped region they've come to by mistake, reading their way out to places that are known and named.
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Fiction
The Square That Hides a Thousand Stories
Published Feb 7, 2021 · 2,774 words (11 minutes) · 211 views
Tsantau is sent to retrieve a relic said to continue its own story. To understand it, he must break the relic apart.
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Fiction
The Romantic and the Pragmatist, Biking
Published Jan 11, 2021 · 16 words (1 minute) · 214 views
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