Happy December!

National Novel Writing Month has come to an end, and so has the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle…which means my book Bundle Up: Creating and Promoting Story and Book Collections is now available for sale on its own!

It hadn’t been published before the bundle, since of course I was writing it until the day before the deadline to get it submitted. 🙂 I kept it exclusive to the NaNoWriMo bundle, but now it’s up on Amazon and friends. Hooray!

I’ve already started on my next non-fiction book, which I didn’t intend to write until I was in the middle of writing the first one. 🙂

Dawn of the Monsters, the first volume in the brand new series Amazing Monster Tales I’m co-editing with DeAnna Knippling, will be out in the next few days. We had a very fun final review session yesterday, and are making the last few tweaks to the sales copy and categories and things today. You can keep on the series and this issue on Facebook and our website. I’m so excited about this project!

Learnings

I’ve learned to not release four books in a roughly two-week span. 🙂 This was totally unplanned, which is amusing because I knew the dates for everything, but somehow didn’t put it all together in my head until I was in the middle of it all. I have a spreadsheet to track my writing deadlines, but usually publish books one at a time, so I haven’t been paying as much attention to the dates. Everything worked out, but I’ve been a mite busier than normal…

Experiencings

Putting together the monster short story collection with DeAnna has been really, really fun. We’re doing all the things I’ve done on my own for other collections, but it’s totally different doing them with someone. Finding and correcting the last few things felt like fun, not work, especially because we were chatting on our Slack channel. I’m looking forward to many more collaborations with Deanna!

Readings

I completely forgot to read the book for my work book club. I noticed the monthly book club lunch on my calendar a few days beforehand, and there was no way I was going to be able to read the book (The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas) by then. I would like to read this, but instead am going to start reading next month’s book, Stardust by Neil Gaiman.

A new anthology! And a few monsters on the way…

I’ve published a new anthology! Doorway into Faerie is the third volume in the anthology series A Procession of Faeries. The theme is faery paths, portals and passageways. This collection contains my new short story “And Then There Are Cats,” which includes a naughty cat, and was very fun to write.

Volume #4, Water Faeries, will be out in a few months. I’ve received all of the stories, and will get back to editing them in another few weeks, once I wrap up my current projects. I haven’t put out the call for submissions for volume #5 yet, but the theme is the Wild Hunt. I have absolutely no idea what I’m going to write for that one, but I’m sure it will be fun!

The next collection coming out is Dawn of the Monsters, the very first volume in the brand new series Amazing Monster Tales, which I’m co-editing with DeAnna Knippling. We’ll start posting on our Facebook page and website soon, so keep an eye out!

My non-fiction book Bundle Up! is in the NaNoWriMo Writing Tools bundle for a few more days! This bundle ends November 30th. I’ve interviewed most of the other authors in the bundle, if you’re interested in learning more about them and their books: Andrea Pearson, Craig Martelle, Scott King, Kevin McLaughlin, Blaze Ward, Simon Haynes, and Dean Wesley Smith.

Learnings

I’ve learned a lot about colors and Photoshop over the past few days. The biggest thing I learned was that I need to learn more. 🙂 As much as I love the cover for Doorway into Faerie, it’s pretty dark and is a little hard to read in a thumbnail. It’s even darker on Amazon and friends, and while I think I understand why now, I still am not completely sure how to fix this. I have some ideas, but I spent hours and hours and hours adjusting the colors, and finally decided the image was good enough for the time being. I will give it another go at some point. This experience reinforced a lesson I previously learned, but apparently needed to have reinforced a third time: don’t use really dark backgrounds on a book cover if you want people to be able to see the imagery clearly.

Experiencings

This week’s experience is that I released an anthology for the first time in about eight months! There are a lot of reasons for this big gap. It’s actually kind of funny that I’m thinking of this as a gap at all, since three years ago I would have considered the very concept of putting together an anthology a bit overwhelming. But I’ve now released nine collections, the tenth should be out in a week or so, and the eleventh and twelfth will follow shortly afterward. 🙂

Readings

A few days ago I finished reading Death by Polka, a cozy written by Robert Jeschonek. I met Bob at a writing workshop in Oregon a few years ago, and overheard someone at that workshop talking about this book. It sounded like fun—how could a cozy involving polka and murder not be fun? 🙂

I’m now reading Dragonfly in Amber by Diana Gabaldon. I started reading this years ago, but at the time my day job took a ton of time and mental energy, and I found it hard to read much fiction. It’s been fun to get back to this book! I couldn’t remember exactly where I’d left off, so I picked a spot and am re-reading a few chapters I read a few years ago. But that’s actually good because it’s getting me back in the story and the characters.

Jasper and Rosie playing!

My first goal for 2019 has been set!

I have a surprising number of stories coming out soon. 🙂

“Magic and Machinery,” which was originally published last February in the anthology Once Upon a Quest, has been reprinted in the very first edition of Vagabond magazine!

This is a brand new speculative fiction magazine created by Chuck Anderson and Jim LeMay, of Mad Cow Press. I’m excited to be in their inaugural issue, and not just because it’s going to release on my birthday. 🙂 I’ve worked with Chuck and Jim on several other collections, and I really enjoy working with them. I have yet to meet them in person, mostly because of my schedule, but this is officially one of my 2019 goals.

Next up is Urban Western, issue #17 in the Uncollected Anthology. I had a doozy of a time thinking up a story for this one. I write westerns, and I write fantasy, but until now I’d never tried to combine the two. I also was stymied by the “urban” part. I tried to come up with something set in a more contemporary time, thinking that would fit more with the urban fantasy genre, but I couldn’t settle on an idea that I liked. I kept finding myself picturing a scene at a ball or an opera house in the late 1800s which, while set in a city and therefore technically “urban,” didn’t at first seem to fit. Finally I accepted my fate and began writing. I had so much fun with this story! There were a few more surprises. Like in the second or third sentence of the first draft I realized that Diamond Betty, who was supposed to be a side character, was actually a very important character—so important, in fact, that the title of my story is “Diamond Betty.”

I also have stories coming out in two anthologies I’m organizing. Doorway into Faerie is the third volume in the anthology series A Procession of Faeries. I have a few small tasks to do before this is released—I’m shooting for a release date of December 1st, although things get hectic at the various sales channels around this time of year, so I’m not yet sure if that will be the exact date. Things are also very close with Dawn of the Monsters, the first issue in Amazing Monster Tales, a project I’m putting together with DeAnna Knippling. We just need to finalize a few tiny things, and then shazam! Monsters for everyone!

In addition to all that excitement, Stars in the Darkness, the justice-themed anthology I edited last year, is a “friend” of Colorado #ResistanceReads. This is a brand-new group of Colorado authors that “engage with themes relevant to today’s tumultuous political climate, including climate change, the free press, LGBTQ+ rights, #metoo, the refugee crisis, authoritarianism and more. Rather than presenting any one point of view or political persuasion, these books encourage thought and conversation about current events through the medium of story.” (That’s in quotes because it’s taken directly from the group’s website, but it’s so well-put that I wanted to leave the text as-is.) Colorado #ResistanceReads is doing an active fundraiser. From Black Friday through Colorado Gives Day (December 4th), 50% of the profits from sales of each book go to a charity of the author’s choice. Stars in the Darkness is a “friend” and not a participant because the proceeds from that anthology are designated to go to national groups (the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Human Rights Campaign), not Colorado-specific charities. I’m very excited about the project, and look forward to supporting Colorado #ResistanceReads in future endeavors.

Learnings

I’ve learned lots of things in the past week, most of them related to the historical fantasy story I just wrapped up for Urban Western. For example, I now know way more than I ever thought I would about gas lamps, and I’m very happy that the lights in my house use electricity instead. 🙂 I also may have acquired more new books on Colorado history than perhaps I need. But “need” is a relative term, isn’t it? And this ties in with the next section…

Experiencings

…in my quest to donate books, and therefore reach the point where I can actually see and access the books I own, I’ve created a giant pile of books to give away. Or maybe I should say: books to “give away.” 🙂

I’ve reached a point in my life where my emotional attachment to any book I own and don’t hate (it’s always been easy to give away hated books…) has been outweighed by my desire to actually be able to see and reach books I might actually want to read. I now have a ginormous pile that includes books I read years ago and know I’ll never read again, books I’ve never read and know I never will, and books that belong to my husband which I may or may not be interested in reading. (He’s volunteered to give away all of his books, and even offered to donate space in his office to house my books, but that approach seems a bit risky so I politely declined.) But…then there are the books that I might read someday, maybe, if only I had more free time. And books that I read long ago, and probably won’t re-read, but maybe I would if the stars aligned. And books I haven’t read, but feel that I should read, even though I’m not super excited about doing so.

Of course, every single book falls into the category of “ever since I was little, I dreamed of owning a gazillion books, and of having a giant library.”

My interim solution is an easy one. Since I don’t currently possess boxes to put the books in, I’m unable to take them away to be donated. This means I’m temporarily stuck with a huge pile of what’s probably a few hundred books. 🙂

Readings

I have not yet finished reading Sing, Unburied, Sing, by Jesmyn Ward, but I did go to my work book club meeting and participated in the discussion about this book. The consensus was that it’s a very good book, but between it and the next book on the list, we all agreed that it would be nice to insert a happy, uplifting book in January. 🙂

I’ve otherwise been too busy to do any reading other than story research, but since I’m walking by a huge pile of books in my house several times each day, reading is very much on my mind…