Jamie Ferguson

My first non-fiction book will be available this Thursday! More about it then, but I’m super excited! This book is about creating and promoting story and book collections, so it’s obviously targeted toward authors and publishers, not the casual reader. 🙂

I’ve started working on a second non-fiction book, which was not on the list at all until about two weeks ago. My goal is to hand it off to my editor by June 1st, so it feels like I have a lot of time…but having just finished one book, I’ve learned there’s a lot more work involved than it appears! The good thing is that this gives me a lot more prep time than I had for the 1st book, plus this also provides a good amount of time for my editor to do her part and for the two of us to iterate on the manuscript.

Here’s an update on new things I’ve learned and experienced in the past week!

Learnings

I learned that cooked tomatillos can be tasty!

Since I have two large and ridiculously prolific tomatillo plants, I’ve been struggling to figure out what to do with the tomatillos. I never even ate a tomatillo (knowingly) until a few years ago, when my parents forced me to take a bunch home from their garden. After making tomatillo salsa I was sold, and have grown a few plants every year. The plants I have this year are many, many times larger than any of my tomatillo plants ever got in the past. I’m sure part of this is because I now have a raised bed with a sprinkler system, plus the variety I grew this year is supposed to get large (although not this large!).

Last night I roasted a bunch of tomatillos and poblano peppers (also from my garden), and made a stew with them and a few other things. I was really surprised at how tasty the roasted tomatillos are.

Unfortunately this didn’t even make a dent in the number of tomatillos still out in my garden, but it was a fun and tasty experiment nonetheless.

Experiencings

The one thing that stands out from the past week is that I got annoyed by world events, and after talking with a few author friends, I decided to start publishing two volumes/year instead of one in the justice anthology series. (All of the proceeds from this series go to charity.) The first volume is Stars in the Darkness, which contains stories about why being just matters, and what the ramifications are for individuals, groups, towns, countries, or even worlds if justice is not expected, encouraged, or enforced. The second volume, The Golden Door, is in progress. I gave the authors who participated in the first volume the opportunity to submit stories by October 1st, and just opened the anthology up for general submissions.

This series still doesn’t have a name, but there are several strong contenders. In fact, it’s kind of hard to settle on the name because the options on the list are all really good. Hopefully one of the names will start to stand out!

I’ve been working super hard on my non-fiction book for the past week. I expected it to be done by now, but I keep thinking about even more things to add to the manuscript, so it’s starting to feel like the never-ending book. My friend DeAnna Knippling made a comment that ended up with me adding an entirely new section over the weekend. That section wasn’t part of the plan at all—but I’m really glad I’ve added it!

This book is about creating and participating in story bundles and multi-author collections. This includes anthologies, ebook bundles, box sets, magazines—anything where there’s more than one story and more than one author. A lot of the information can apply to single author projects, like if one author puts together a collection of their own short stories or novels, as well as to co-writing projects where two or more authors collaborate to write a book together. But the general focus is multi-author collections.

I’ve got a little more editing work do do, and will hopefully not think of any more new things to add to the book!

Over the weekend some of my thoughts, and a comment from DeAnna (that troublemaker!), coalesced, and I realized there’s another non-fiction book I’m interested in writing. I’m trying not to think about it right now, but I really like the idea. I’ll ponder that while I get the next four anthologies out the door, start reviewing submissions for the next few collections, design a few book covers, and write the seven short stories I have due before the end of the year. My plan is to get back to editing my current novel in December, since I’ll have some big chunks of time and will be able to really focus on it. So if I do decide to write this other non-fiction book, I won’t start on it until next year. Although it wouldn’t take up too much time to start writing up notes, so that’s okay…right? 🙂

Here’s an update on new things I’ve learned and experienced in the past week!

Learnings

I’ve learned that I don’t know what else to do with tomatillos other than make salsa. This has never been a problem in the past, partly because I’d never even eaten a tomatillo until a few years ago when my parents foisted a bunch from their garden on me, and also because the plants I’d since grown in my own garden didn’t produce a crazy amount of tomatillos. This year is an entirely different situation!

I don’t know how many tomatillos are lurking in my garden, but I do know there are a lot of them.

As much as I love salsa, there’s a limit to how much of it I’m willing to eat. I’ve started researching non-salsa tomatillo recipes, and will begin experimenting this week. I’ve got a few pepper plants that are bravely growing in spite of the fact that the tomatillo plants have taken over most of the raised bed, so I may involve them in some of these experiments as well.

Experiencings

By far the most interesting experience of my week was seeing a bear on the hiking trail. I hike this trail with the dogs three or four times every week. We usually hike up the ridge, and have been hiking back down the same way for the past few months because there are trees and therefore shade for the dogs. Saturday morning was cool and comfortable, and the valley trail was partially shaded, so I decided to take the dogs down that way for a change. While we were walking back down I realized there was a bear coming down the hillside from the trail we had just been on to the trail we were on. Ack!!!!!

This does, of course, make you think: where was the bear when we were on the ridge trail? Did we walk right by the bear without noticing it?!?

The bear went back up and down the hill for a little while. I felt it wanted to cross the trail we were on and go back to its home in the foothills, but there were people on both trails, which must have been confusing. At one point it went back up the hill and the dogs and I, and an older couple we had joined up with, walked very quickly down the trail together. I did have to make myself walk a little more slowly than I wanted to, but I didn’t want to leave the couple alone to fend for themselves.

We all made it past the bear, and the last I saw the bear it looked like it was making it across the trail, so everything ended well. Now I just have to get ready to hike on that same trail tomorrow morning. 🙂