A festival of faeries

The launch of The Faerie Summer bundle is only a few weeks away! I’ve got a few more things to do to get it ready to go, like writing the sales copy and tweaking the design of the ebook cover – but everything that’s left is straightforward and easy to do.

It’s been really fun to see this bundle come together. I sent out the first invitation last August, over eight months before the planned launch date. I wanted to launch the bundle on May 1st, also known as Beltane, or May Day. There are a number of ties between Beltane and fairies, as one might imagine from a holiday that plays such a strong part in Irish and Scottish mythology, and May Day celebrations go back thousands of years. Even the Romans had a similar holiday – Floralia, which was held at the end of April.

Working on my story for this bundle, “The Faery’s Choice,” has not only been fun, it’s gotten me thinking about the world I’m writing in. This story is set in the same world as my upcoming novel, my short story “The City Trees” which is in the Fantasy in the City bundle, and at least one other story that I’ve outlined. I don’t have time to work on anything else in this world right now, but I can think about it and make notes! 🙂

I do have quite a few things to work out before getting back to the series (I have about seven chapters of the first book written), so I’m taking advantage of having just immersed myself in my latest faery story and am letting my imagination play. Hopefully I’ll be able to figure out a few of the missing pieces before I get back to the series.

The Beneath the Waves bundle slithering along quite nicely. It still doesn’t have artwork, although I’ve looked at quite a few illustrations of tentacles. The theme is mythical water creatures, and we’ve got quite a variety of them! My story is told from the viewpoint of a watery monster from Greek mythology. My monster started off in human form, but – as was often the case with those impetuous Greek gods and their associates – she managed to get on someone’s bad side through no fault of her own, and was transformed from a lovely maiden to a hideous creature. After going through that type of experience, you really can’t blame her for plucking men off boats and devouring them. Who knew writing from a monster’s point of view would be so fun? 🙂

Dogs might be sleepier than they appear

The past week felt super busy. Yes, I did skip out on writing things and spent a few hours having brunch (and mimosas) with a few of my girlfriends, but otherwise it seemed like I was doing something writing-related most of the time I wasn’t at my day job. I fiddled with my latest cover, and declared it happy. I wrote a post for Blackbird Publishing about using Jutoh and Word to create ebooks, which took more time than I expected, but was also a good refresher. I committed to delivering a totally new short story. I did bundling things. And I dropped my iPhone in water (for the second, and much more disastrous, time) and lost two months of dog photos. (I do have a handful of them backed up, but this was by far the most significant event of my past week.)

I’ve also realized I need to rethink my newsletter strategy. I started sending out my newsletter last spring, with the idea that I’d sent it out on the solstices and equinoxes – as seems fitting for someone who likes to write stories about faeries. 🙂 This worked great until the vernal equinox, which was last Monday. I was so busy that I didn’t have time to write a newsletter, then decided I’d sent it out a day late. Then two days late…

Of course, knowing my jam-packed schedule, if I’d really wanted to send it on time, I would have written it earlier…which, when I actually thought about it, told me that perhaps I should revisit what I’m doing with my newsletter. I joke that I have border collies for a reason, but it’s only partly a joke. If I think something is important, I will do whatever it takes to achieve it. So when it seems like I’m dragging my feet, that tells me that there’s some reason why, even if it’s something only known to my subconscious. So I am giving what I want to do with my newsletter a lot of thought, and will send out the next one as soon as I feel that I’ve figured out what I really want to do with it.

In other news, the author list for the Faerie Summer bundle has been finalized. There were a few last minute changes – for example, one author accidentally wrote a novel instead of a short story, because that’s the length the story wanted to be – she is now working on a new story. 🙂 I’m SO excited about this collection, and can’t wait until May 1st when it launches!

I’m also very happy to be finishing up a story I wrote two years ago. I wasn’t as good at the craft of writing back then, and this was a first draft at the time, so it’s taken a LOT of work to whip it in shape. There are a lot of things I love about this story, so it’s totally worth the time investment – but it’s definitely harder to work on fixing up an older manuscript. It’s now at the point where it’s as if it was a first draft I wrote today, which is really great. I still love this story, and I love it even more now that I’ve improved it.

Rosie and Jasper, who are much sleepier than they appear.

It’s the first day of spring!

I’ve been working hard on finishing up the edits for a story that – assuming I don’t change the name again – is now called “The Faery’s Choice.” I love this story, but vastly underestimated the amount of editing it would need – and I thought it needed a fair amount. 🙂 My new rule: assume that any manuscript I wrote more than a year ago will need seven times as much work to finish as a more recent draft. Fortunately I don’t have many older manuscripts left!

In between bouts of editing, I managed to make a cover for the story. It needs a little more tweaking, but I think it turned out pretty well. It was challenging to find a stock image that would would. I’m going to experiment with variations of blurriness, and will likely move the text around mere pixels at a time for at least an hour before calling it complete. But it’s close enough that I no longer feel the sense of panic I briefly had yesterday morning when I was searching through thousands of images and not finding any that fit.

My other revelation, in addition to realizing (or, perhaps, admitting to myself) how much work my older manuscripts need, is that I need to start assuming I won’t get any writing or editing done during the work week. I will, of course, but week after week I start off thinking I’ll have gobs of time in the evenings, then a lot of that time disappears – sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for annoying ones. And for the time that remains, it’s often time where I get interrupted regularly. That’s fine for some types of work, but when you’re working on serious manuscript edits, frequent interruptions make it extremely difficult to make progress because you keep getting yanked out of the story. So I’m going to try to plan tasks that require less concentration for during the week, and if I end up with a chunk of time where I can get more writing done I’ll take advantage of it – but I will try to plan as if that won’t happen.

Most of the stories for the Faerie Summer bundle have been uploaded, and it’s so cool to see all of the covers together! I’m really excited about this bundle – I’ve always loved fairy stories. I’m looking forward to reading all the stories in this bundle! Once I wrap up my own story (“The Faery’s Choice” will be in this bundle) I’ll put together the final marketing images.

Next up is the Beneath the Waves bundle. I just created the bundle’s Facebook page so there’s not a lot there yet, but feel free to like it on Facebook if you’re interested. The theme is mythical water creatures, and the bundle will be available in mid-June.

Happy vernal equinox!!!