300,000 words, and a free short story!

Yesterday I wrote my 300,000th word since I started tracking my word count almost 12 years ago!!!

In the big scheme of things, this isn’t really all that much. I know a number of authors who have written 300,000 words in 2016 alone. 🙂 Maybe I’ll get to that point someday when I don’t also have a day job, but for now I’m thrilled to have reached this goal. Hooray!!!

And as for the free story…

Buy a Bundle, get a free short story!!!

If you purchase the Fantasy in the City Bundle through BundleRabbit any time before midnight Pacific on Sunday, July 10th, send a copy of your email receipt to bundle AT jamieferguson.com.

Yes, this offer applies if you purchased the bundle in the past few weeks. The only restriction is the end date/time.

I’m putting together the cover for this short story right now, and I’m having a lot of fun with it! This story is about a witch and a love spell. Which does seem to be a bit of a theme for me right now… My novella Bewitchery, which is targeted for release in September/October, is about a witch who wakes up one day to find herself in love with a guy she can’t stand…except of course that now she thinks he’s the bee’s knees. And I have another story in my backlog of projects about a witch who casts a love spell on one guy, then realizes she’s made a mistake – but she doesn’t know how to remove the spell…

And now I’m off to finish editing chapter 15 of Entangled by Midsummer. 🙂

2016-06-30 Dakota Ridge

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

It’s been busy here on the home front!

I received my first ever personalized rejection letter! They really liked my story, but wanted something longer (they were looking for 3,000+ words and my story is about 2,400). They also suggested that it could be a good starting point for a novel. Yay!!!

I realize getting rejected sounds like a bad thing, but I’m super happy about this. I think this particular story – a western entitled “Solitude” – is one of the best stories I’ve ever written. So to get a personalized rejection letter, with information about what they liked, meant a lot to me.

I’m sure they sent plenty of other personalized letters 🙂 but I’m still happy!

And more excitement… I was interviewed!

AmyBeth Inverness regularly interviews local authors on her blog The Inverness Press. She’s also a writer, and among other things, releases a new story in her series The Cities of Luna every time there’s a full moon. Since I’m sending out my newsletter on the solstices and equinoxes, I naturally think it’s super cool to release stories based on the cycles of the moon.

And of course the Fantasy in the City bundle is live for two more weeks!

Fantasy in the City image

Every day I’m posting a profile of one of the authors in the bundle.

Since so many people have asked me to explain what a bundle is, here’s a short explanation:

A bundle is a collection of ebooks, which may include short stories, novellas/novels, or non-fiction books. These books can be downloaded to your eReader (Kindle, Kobo, iBooks, etc.) just like any other ebook purchase.

Bundles are available for a limited time, and are offered in a format like “buy A books for $X, or A+B books for $Y.” The price for the bundle is usually significantly less than the cost of purchasing all of the ebooks individually.

Bundles often allow you to donate a percentage of the purchase price to a charity, and you can pick your own price – so you can choose to pay more if you’d like.

The Fantasy in the City bundle is available through BundleRabbit through July 10th. You can buy 8 books for $2.99, or get all 20 for $3.99. If you purchased all 20 stories for list price you’d pay $43, so this is a savings of over 90%. You have the option to choose to donate 10% of what you pay to one of two charities: The Humane Society of the United States or Doctors Without Borders.

Bundles have themes: with the Fantasy in the City bundle, the theme is hidden magic in everyday life.

In non-bundle news, I’m editing chapter thirteen of Entangled by Midsummer. It’s going very well, I just wish I had more time because I’m starting to get excited about working on my next few projects. 🙂

After I hand the novel over to my editor, I need to wrap up my novella, Bewitchery, and get that shipped off for editing. By the time I’ve sent out the novella, the novel will probably be back to me for another pass…and so on. My guess right now is that the novel will come out in September and the novella in October – or perhaps vice versa, depending on how much work each needs.

Once I wrap all that up, I’ll zip off to a workshop called How to Write Historical, Time Travel, and Alternate History stories in all forms, taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I’m SO excited about this workshop! I’ve had a western series in mind for a while now, and the main reason I’m taking this class is to learn things that will help my series become even better than what I’m currently envisioning.

The only downside of this class – which is also an upside – is that we have a lot of reading to do. A LOT. I’m going to put off starting reading in earnest for another week or two in the hope that I can wrap up the novel, but I can sense the reading list hanging over my head already…

2016-06-26 Dakota Ridge

The Fantasy in the City Bundle!

The Fantasy in the City bundle has launched!

Fantasy in the City image

I’m so excited! Not only is the first bundle I’ve ever been in, I’m the curator (organizer) for this bundle, and I’ve worked really, really hard to put all the pieces together. It’s SO awesome to see it all come together and go live!

This bundle contains twenty different short stories, each with its own variant of magic. It will be available on BundleRabbit through July 10th, 2016.

Here’s the cute little BundleRabbit bunny!

Bunny!

Each of the other authors entrusted me with one of their stories, and I took that responsibility seriously. That occasionally meant I did things like spend hours going through stock images, more hours narrowing down what I’d selected, and then even more hours wondering if I’d picked the right image and looking through them all again. 🙂 But it was all fun, and I learned a lot about what images do/don’t work for this type of thing. For example, a super busy image might look great on the website, but get lost in the smaller marketing images.

I love seeing all the covers together! And yes, it is neat to see my own cover in there – but mostly seeing all of this makes me happy because I helped create something bigger than just me and my own story.

The Fantasy in the City covers

I’ve learned a zillion things from putting this together. Once the bundle is over I’ll put together a full write-up, and will include things like what marketing images I generated, how I determined the price and time period, and what two typos I totally missed in the sales copy. (At least my spelling/grammar checker missed them too, but I’m still horrified.)

And don’t think Rosie and Jasper were neglected while I was hard at work on the bundle!

Yarn made from Jasper!
Yarn made from Jasper!

Yes, that is a tiny skein of yarn made from Jasper’s fur. How cool is that? Even if you think it’s a little…odd…you know it’s still pretty darn cool! 🙂 My new work friend, Kathryn, spun yarn from both Jasper and Rosie’s fur – and she wrote a blog post about it! If this intrigues you, rest assured that you will get an update at some point. And no, I am not going to knit Jasper a sweater out of it. Besides, I only have eight feet of yarn. So far…

2016-06-19 Dakota Ridge