My short story “The Next Dance” is in Fiction River: Tavern Tales!

Fiction River is an anthology series published by WMG Publishing, which also hosts the anthology workshop I went to in Oregon last February – and they purchased my short story at that workshop.

I’m very excited to have a story in Fiction River, and not just because my story is the only Western in this issue. (I was shocked to discover that in spite of the title “Tavern Tales,” I submitted the only Western!) 🙂 Just look at the list of authors: Stefon Mears, Michèle Laframboise, Ron Collins, Dayle A. Dermatis, David H. Hendrickson, Lisa Silverthorne, Diana Benedict, Anthea Sharp, Kim May, M. L. Buchman, Eric Kent Edstrom, Brenda Carre, Dory Crowe, Brigid Collins, Chuck Heintzelman, and Annie Reed. They’re all fabulous writers, and it’s super awesome to see my story alongside theirs.

Not only did Fiction River: Tavern Tales come out this week, the Haunted bundle launched as well. In fact, it launched on the first day of the Superstars Writing Conference in Colorado Springs. And on top of all of that, I started drafting posts for Blackbird Publishing’s blog. Needless to say, it was a busy week. 🙂

The Haunted bundle is the third one that I’ve curated (aka organized). It’s available on BundleRabbit for a limited time, just like all the other bundles have been, but it’s also available on Kobo, Amazon, iBooks, and Barnes & Noble.

In the past, bundles would be available on BundleRabbit and nowhere else for a few weeks, then they’d be available on the other sites but not on BundleRabbit. I really like this change because it allows people who want to donate a percentage of the purchase price to charity to do so by buying on BundleRabbit, but it also makes the collection available on more familiar sites for those people who would otherwise have to wait a few weeks to purchase it.

Superstars was a lot of fun. This conference focuses more on the business end of writing, but this year they added an additional day for craft-related topics, which was very cool. I learned new things, caught up with some author friends, and met a ton of new, wonderful people. There was quite a bit of variance in the authors who attended. Some hadn’t published anything; some have lots of books out. Some are indie published, some traditional, and some hybrid. But regardless of where people were in their careers, everyone was friendly, helpful, supportive, and happy. My absolute favorite part was James A. Owen’s talk on drawing out the dragons. It was a powerful, positive, beautiful talk which he regularly gives to children. I went up to thank James afterward, but it was a little challenging to speak because I kept crying 🙂 so I gave him a hug instead and thanked him verbally the next day.

And now…it’s back to normal life for a while. I’ve got stories to finish, author profiles to write, posts to draft for Blackbird Publishing, and dogs to cuddle with and coo at.