Cats!!!

My plan to finish the first draft of my feline hero story over the weekend did not come to fruition. I did accomplish a number of other things which were more time-critical, and confess I bumped doing laundry to the top of the list. I’m looking forward to getting back to this story soon, though! I love adding cats to my stories, which I’m sure is a sign that our household has been catless for far too long.

In celebration of cats and stories about cats, here’s a snippet from my story “Clyde and the Ghost Cat” from the anthology Ghost-Hunting Critters. Clyde, who is, of course, a cat, has recently moved to a new house.

On the sofa, in Clyde’s spot in the sun, lay a small calico cat.

Who was this? He was the cat of the house!

Clyde flattened his ears and arched his back, his fur bristling. He knew he looked fierce—he’d scared away birds and squirrels countless times through the window, and once had frightened a raccoon.

“Who are you?” he yowled. “This is my house, and that is my sun spot.” His tail moved back and forth. He hadn’t smelled another cat since they’d moved in. How could he have missed her?

The calico lifted her head and met his gaze. Her amber eyes were dark in the white and orange splotches on her face.

He could see the checked pattern of the sofa cushion through her fur.

Clyde jumped sideways, his legs stiff, and hissed. This wasn’t just a strange cat in his house!

It was a ghost!”

I’m sure Rosie and Jasper will love having cats…someday… 🙂

Home is where the dogs are

I had a fantastic time at the week-long writing workshop in Oregon, but I’m SO happy to be back home with Rosie and Jasper!

Hiking this morning did feel a bit strange at first after two weeks spent sitting 🙂 but the dogs herded me along nonetheless.

The workshop is WMG Publishing’s annual Business Master Class. I’ve wanted to attend this class for the past few years, and it was even better than I’d anticipated. I’m planning on going back in 2019 – the publishing industry is changing so fast that I’m sure there will be lots of new things to learn about in two years.

In addition to learning gobs of things, it was wonderful to catch up with so many of my author friends – and I made lots of new friends as well! I also learned that licorice ice cream not only exists, but some people actually like it. I am not one of those people, but I did quite enjoy the combination of chocolate peanut butter and vanilla ice cream – and my ice cream didn’t turn my lips black.

I now have so many things to research I’m not really sure where to start. 🙂 I did take notes, and after a while started jotting tasks down in a to do list as well, so I’ll be able to figure out a plan once I go through all of that. Relying on my memory would not be a good idea – after seven days, everything in my head is all a jumble!

One of the more important things that came out of this class is that I’ve decided to switch from doing short story bundles to structuring the collections more like a traditional anthology. I have zero interest in editing, so I’ll keep calling myself a curator instead of an editor, but instead of having a bunch of ebooks combined in one ginormous manuscript I’ll compile the ebook myself. The advantages of this are that the ebook will look more streamlined, since all of the stories will have the same formatting style, and I’ll also be able to make print versions available – which will be super cool. The disadvantage is that there will only be the one main cover instead of that plus one cover per story, but while having the different covers is fun they don’t outweigh the other advantages.

So many things to do… But the dogs will keep me company while I work on everything. 🙂

Sunshine on the Oregon coast!

I’m in Lincoln City, on the Oregon coast. And it’s actually sunny!

I realize the sun does shine up here, it’s just almost always rainy when I come to the coast. I’m here for WMG Publishing’s week-long Master Class. This is a business class, not a writing workshop, so it’s a full week of talks about marketing, branding, and other fun topics (or at least fun for me!). There are 60+ people in the class – I knew 20 or so people from previous workshops, and it’s been great to catch up with them and to meet so many new authors.

I came up a few days early, and spent the extra time working on the next collection as well as on writing. I have three stories due by December 1st, so I have quite a bit of writing to do. It’s become very clear that I’m not going to finish everything I’d hoped to accomplish on this trip 🙂 but I’m making good progress, and I’m really happy with how everything is shaking out.

The next collection, which is called Stars in the Darkness, has been a great learning experience. It would have been much more enjoyable to learn these things when I wasn’t traveling, in a class, and finishing up stories for other projects. 🙂 But it’s been extremely educational nonetheless, and I’ve ended up making some changes to my future projects because of it. I’m setting this collection up through BundleRabbit, just like the bundles I’ve organized previously, but the format and structure is different. I’ve invited the authors, reviewed the stories (but didn’t edit them), designed the cover, but unlike with a bundle I’m also formatting the ebook. This means there will be only one cover, instead of one overall cover and a cover for each story. This collection will also be available in print, which will be awesome.

I really like this model for the short story ‘bundles’ because this way the stories in the book are all formatted the same way, so there’s a consistent look and feel. With a novel bundle, having different styles and structures for each title in the bundle makes sense, but with a short story bundle the differences in how the different stories are organized can be a little distracting.

And now I’m off to take advantage of the internet before it goes out again…