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!

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…