I’m out of this world!

My short story “The Cat’s Meow” is in the Out of This World bundle!

Out of This World image

Here’s the description:

Explore the future and the universe with this exciting bundle of science fiction & fantasy short stories, novellas, and novels. Discover how people will survive, and thrive, as they encounter challenges in outer space or deal with struggles here on Earth.

Mystery and adventure, drama and fear, technology and magic, all have their place in these exciting speculative stories.

Blast away with these fantastical tales to parts unknown and out of this world!

This bundle is curated by Rebecca Senese, a very talented writer who is also participating in the Fantasy in the City bundle.

And here’s The Out of This World bundle’s page on Facebook. Rebecca has posted a great overview of what’s in the bundle, and she’ll be putting up author spotlights so that you can learn more about the authors and their stories.

I’m super excited to be a part of this bundle!!!

In other news, I just sent the manuscript for Bewitchery to my editor, Dayle Dermatis. This story turned out to be a novelette, not a novella (it’s about 12,000 words). It was really fun to write, and I’m looking forward to working with Dayle on this project. Bewitchery will be out in September or October. I’ll finalize the date once I find out how much work the manuscript needs.

Edits for Entangled by Midsummer were briefly on hold while I wrapped up Bewitchery, so now I will be able to focus on finishing it.

And last: The Witches’ Brew bundle, a collection of 20 short stories about – surprise! – witches, will launch on October 1st. I have a story ready to go for this one, but am considering writing a new one that would tie in with a few other stories. I haven’t put together the images yet, but the bundle does have a Facebook page. 🙂

2016-08-09 Dakota Ridge

Spacecats

My short story “The Cat’s Meow” will be out soon in a brand new story bundle!

The Out of This World bundle is a collection of science fiction novels, novellas, and short stories curated by the very talented Rebecca Senese. I’ll post more details once the bundle is available, but for now here’s a peek at the cover I designed for my story.

"The Cat's Meow" cover

I had SO much fun putting that together! I combined two images, the night sky image and the image of the two cats (and yes, there are two cats in the story). That awesome font is called “Space Patrol.” My story is light-hearted, so I wanted the cover to have a fun, semi-retro feel. I looked at a lot of fonts before settling on this one, and I just love it. Now I want to write another science fiction story so I can use this font again. 🙂

The Fantasy in the City bundle is still available, at least for a little while longer. Right now we’re in a promotion on Kobo’s website. If you’re not familiar with Kobo, they’re a Canadian-based company that sells ebooks around the world. It’s super cool to see the Fantasy in the City cover on their website. Check out this screenshot!

2016-08-07 Fantasy in the City bundle - Kobo promotion

Hooray!!!!!

In addition to being available on Kobo, the bundle is also available on Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble. There’s also a Goodreads page for the bundle.

This bundle will only be active through October 9th, but never fear! I’m curating a witch-themed bundle that will launch in October. 🙂 Now that I know what’s involved in organizing a bundle, it’s a lot easier because I know what to plan for. For example, with the first bundle I didn’t realize I needed to create marketing images, and it didn’t even occur to me to create a Fantasy in the City Facebook page until the bundle had been out for a week and a half. This all seems so obvious now, but it definitely was not when I started. So now I know to schedule a good chunk of time to work on the images, and I’ll plan the marketing stuff ahead of time. I’m sure I’ll learn new things with the witch bundle, of course. That’s part of the fun! I feel so fortunate to have such a wonderful group of authors to work with.

And speaking of some of the awesome authors I know, my friend and critique partner Grayson Towler‘s very first book is out!

The Dragon Waking cover

This is a fantastic middle grade story that includes both dragons and dinosaurs. I read two earlier versions of the manuscript, and every time I saw a revised copy I thought: how on earth does he manage to make a story this fun and well-written even better! This is a wonderful book, and I highly recommend it for both children and adults. I’m certainly looking forward to book #2! 🙂

Rosie with the pine cone she stole from Jasper.
Rosie with the pine cone she stole from Jasper.

The end of the novel is nigh!

This morning I sent the manuscript for Entangled by Midsummer to the editor!!!

I’m not really done yet. I’m sure DeAnna, the editor for this story, will find plenty of things for me to fix. I changed a few things as I made progress on the manuscript, and while I’d like to think I found and updated them all, I’m sure I missed something here or there. I also made really big changes to three or so chapters over the weekend based on feedback from my critique group. Since no one else has looked at the new versions, it seems likely that something won’t be quite right. And I realized last night that there are a few phrases that I overuse. They’re easily fixable, but because I was making such big changes to some key sections, I didn’t have the time to correct all of the overused phrases.

But now it’s in DeAnna’s hands, so I’m sure she’ll point out the obvious things (how many times can a character wrinkle their nose in a novel? apparently quite a few), as well as other things. And the end result will be wonderful!

Of course, one side effect of all of this work was that I was so wound up last night I’m not sure I even got four hours of sleep. I started my workday off with a double espresso and a very strong chai. 🙂

Now that I’m temporarily free from the novel, I’m focusing on the short story that I’ll have out soon in a science fiction bundle curated by Rebecca Senese. I have a first draft that’s about 4,500 words, so after edits it will probably come out to be around 6,000 words. I’ll send that to another one of my lovely editors, Julie, for copy editing, and by this Saturday that story will be done, it will have a cover (which I have yet to design), I’ll compile it into epub/mobi formats, and upload it to BundleRabbit. And I’ll submit the first part of the novella I’m working on to my writing group this Thursday.

Needless to say, I am very ready for a happy hour!

In other news, the witch short story bundle I’m just beginning to organize now has 18 authors signed up. Hooray! I’m talking with two more, and will hopefully have the list finalized by the end of the week.

And now I’m off to do my homework assignment…it’s due at midnight tonight. 🙂

2016-07-26 Dakota Ridge