Come away, O reader!

The summer sun bathes the earth in warmth and light,
Faeries dance under the moon at night.
Cross through the portal into a land ancient, beautiful, and wild.
See the wonders that enticed the stolen child.
Come away, O reader! To the Realm of Faerie.
But if you want to make it back home, you had better be wary…

Only one week left until The Faerie Summer bundle launches!!!!!

I am so excited about this bundle! I’ve loved stories about fairies since I was a kid. And I know you’re thinking: what’s the difference between fairies and faeries? 🙂 It’s mostly a stylistic thing. “Faery” is a more archaic version of the word, whereas “fairy” is more commonly used today. Sometimes people will use “faerie” to denote the land or realm of Faerie, and “fairy” to denote the inhabitants.

The story I wrote, “The Faery’s Choice,” is set in a world where I chose to use “e” instead of “a” because it felt like it fit the world. I would use a different spelling in other stories – for example, Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s beautiful “Flower Fairies,” which made me all teary-eyed by the end, uses the “i” version, and that feels totally correct to me.

I found the artwork for the cover months ago. I think it’s perfect for this bundle. I wanted an image that would convey the feeling of summer, while adding a magical touch. I could have fiddled with the cover forever, but I finally made myself stop doing things like moving the text around a few pixels at a time, or adjusting the shade of the text color so slightly no one else would even notice. 🙂 I’m really happy with the result.

The bundle has a Facebook page – I’ll start posting information about the stories and authors there after launch. We also have a Goodreads page. And just look at the covers!

In other news, my wonderful editor, DeAnna (who has a story in The Faerie Summer bundle, because she’s also a fabulous writer) gave me great feedback on “Clyde and the Ghost Cat.” Annoyingly, her main comment was that I needed to write something that I knew I should write, but I couldn’t figure out how to pull it off. So now I have to do it. 🙂 I have less than a week to come up with something, write it, and submit the story.

As soon as I get Clyde straightened out (which you’d think would be easy, but he is a cat, and has a mind of his own) I’ve got to wrap up some edits on one story, then write another that I only have vague idea about at the moment. And then I need to find an interesting piece of artwork that involves tentacles for the cover of the Beneath the Waves bundle, which launches in mid-June. And after that… It’s a long list. 🙂

More monsters!

I’ve now sent two stories off to the fabulous DeAnna Knippling for editing, and submitted one to an anthology. Hooray!!!

Lest you think I’m now out of work, I need to wrap up one more in progress story by May 1st, have to write a completely new story by mid-May, need to finalize the sales copy, cover, and review the final ebooks for the Faerie Summer bundle and, if I have any extra time left, write two more short stories by the end of the month. The latter seems unlikely, I know, but as a Pollyanna I like to think I can accomplish an unending number of things. 🙂

The latest two stories were really fun to write.

“Clyde and the Ghost Cat” is about a cat who moves to a new house only to find it’s haunted by a ghost cat – and the ghost likes to lie in Clyde’s sun spot on the sofa. I realized a year or so ago that I often put cats in my stories – although up until Clyde, they’ve always been side characters. Not only are cats fun to write about, this story made me really, really wish I had cats. It’s been a long seven years. I have a deal with my husband (re-confirmed last night, with his mom as a witness) that we can get cats once we finish the remodeling project that will add a utility room (and therefore a place for a litter box) to the house. And yes, I said cats, plural. 🙂

“The Late Bloomer is my first ever attempt at a Lovecraftian story. I was nervous about this at first, but once I came up with the idea, this story was super easy to write. I’m clearly going to have to write more monster stories – although whether or not something is a monster is relative…

The next story on the list is “To Be a Monster,” which will be released in June in the Beneath the Waves bundle. The protagonist is Scylla, a monster from Greek mythology – but Scylla didn’t start off as a monster. She was a nice young maiden who was minding her own business until Glaucus, a fisherman-turned-sea-god, fell in love with her. Scylla fled from him, but he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and he asked the witch Circe for a love potion. Circe fell in love with Glaucus herself, clearly oblivious to the fact that he was a jerk, but he only had eyes for Scylla. So the witch turned Scylla into a monster.

This sort of thing happened quite a lot in Greek mythology. Not only would these poor young girls get turned into monsters, no one stood up for them after the fact. You’d think someone would have tried to convince the witch to undo her spell, or ask some random god for help – but no. Once an innocent person had been transformed into a hideous creature, everyone apparently accepted the new situation and went on about their lives. Everyone except the newly made monster, that is.

Expect more monster stories… 🙂

Heedless optimism!

I’m super excited to report that I’ve committed to two brand-new projects that I’m going to work on with two of my very favorite authors! 🙂

One might argue that this is a bad idea since I already have a zillion things on my list, but as a determined and unrepentant optimist, I wouldn’t listen if one did! I did recently make a schedule listing all the deadlines I’ve committed to for the next few years (yes, years), and it is a long list. But I’m also finally done with the ridiculously manual website and email migration I chose to do instead of picking or one of the many easy solutions, so I’m enjoying the heady – and probably false – sense of being on top of things. In keeping with my Pollyanna-like nature, I’m choosing to believe I’m just about to get ahead on everything.

One of my recent accomplishments was to send a story I’ve been fretting over to my editor. I love this story, but no longer feel I can objectively identify everything that is or isn’t working, so it’s time to get another opinion. I’m almost done finishing another story, and have two more in the pipeline. If all goes well – and as an optimist, I’m sure it will! – I’ll have all four stories wrapped up within a week, if not sooner.

I’m wrapping up the last few things for the Faerie Summer bundle, which launches on May 1st. I’m organizing two more bundles this year, and have at least three scheduled for 2018.

Next on my list is a crime story. I’ve never written a crime story before, so this will be a fun challenge. I have the basic idea for a story, and in a dream last night I figured out all the details. I wrote them down in my dream, which seemed helpful at the time, but is a little less helpful now that I’m awake. Hopefully my subconscious will remember the important parts…