Internet Science Fiction Database

This Sunday, I learned about the Internet Science Fiction Database (one of my publishers, Third Flatiron, mentioned it in their newsletter). It's a catalog of science fiction, fantasy, and horror works. The publisher mentioned that they make sure to add all of their authors and works, so naturally I had to search for myself. Sure enough, I was listed with three of my traditionally published short stories. (I have to admit I feel more "official" now after seeing the entry.) I was also surprised to see a separate listing for a forward I wrote for a friend's novel. (I was also excited for her to see her works included.) It might be worth trying to add my novels to the database at some point, but I'll need to create an account and see if it's OK to add self-published works. But in the meantime, back to writing.

Solarpunk Short Story Sale!

I posted about this on Facebook last week, but I sold a short story to the forthcoming Solarpunk Creatures anthology by Worldweaver Press. My short story is called "The Colorful Crow of Web-of-Life Park," and it's about an escaped parrot, the parrot's former owner, and the crow that freed the parrot. The anthology will be published sometime between November and next February. I'll share additional details as they become available.

IWSG: My First Book and My Writing Journey

Welcome to April, everyone! Hopefully for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, we'll start seeing more signs of spring soon. (We're getting snow as I write this.) 

If you're new to the Insecure Writer's Support Group, you can learn more about them on their website or Facebook page. 

Our hosts this month are Jemima Pett, Nancy Gideon, and Natalie Aguirre. 

 Our question for this month has multiple parts: Do you remember writing your first book? What were your thoughts on a career path on writing? Where are you now, and how is it working out for you? If you're at the start of the journey, what are your goals?

My first book was a fantasy novel called Let Silences Be Broken, which I wrote during an internship at the National Cancer Institute. It was about an albino woman who gained magic by refusing to speak. She goes on a journey to meet travelers from another country who don't speak her language (her people believe there's only one language, so this revelation is mind-blowing to them). I think it was told by the woman's traveling companion, but I don't remember exactly how it ended (other than with the woman finally speaking). I don't think I have a copy anymore, either in paper or some archaic electronic storage device, and honestly, I wouldn't want to read it. I'm pretty sure the writing would make me cringe, and who knows how bad the plotting would be.

Back in my mid-twenties, I wanted to write full-time as an alternative to the traditional day job. I turn fifty-three later this month, and at this point, I don't expect a writing career to ever happen. I have responsibilities to my family, and I have a steady day job with a variety of tasks and good benefits. I still hope to gain supplemental income from writing, and I'd love to have some fans and maybe even some recognition in the genres I write in. I consider myself lucky to be a hybrid author, able to write what inspires me while knowing I can publish it myself if necessary.

What has your writing journey been like? Feel free to share in the comments or post a link to your story.

 

Publishing Paperbacks with Draft2Digital

A couple of years ago, I put together a collection of my fantasy short stories. Part of the reason for this was to make these stories available in paper (some of them had appeared in paper anthologies, but others hadn't.) I tried formatting the paperback version myself through KDP, but I had trouble with the cover. (To be honest, I made the front cover for this collection myself with a purchased stock photo, but I don't have enough skill to make a complete paperback cover.) So I put that project on hold until recently, when Draft2Digital (D2D) opened up their print process for all authors.

If you have a manuscript and a cover, you can convert them into a paper book through a series of guided steps. You start by uploading the manuscript and entering basic details about the book (title, contributors, blurb, and others.) You also need to assign an ISBN at this stage. I used one of my own, but D2D provides free ones if you need them. 

The second step is editing the interior of your book. This includes selecting the paper color and size. D2D offers a variety of genre-themed templates and will allow you to edit page numbers, headers, and other elements. Unfortunately, the Table of Contents I had prepared didn't show up properly through the D2D editor. D2D can add a Table of Contents, but it appears as the first page of the book, which isn't traditional. I ultimately solved the problem by uploading a PDF file instead of a Word document. (I use a template I purchased from BookDesignTemplates for both eBooks and paperbacks; I wonder if that affects formatting D2D can do.)

One you're done with the interior, it's time to work on the cover. Since I didn't have a full cover, D2D paired my eBook cover with a black back cover and spine. I was able to change the color (though it took several tries to match the front). I also had to change the text entered on the spine, but I was also able to upload my publishing logo. The text on the back was the hardest part. D2D automatically uploaded my blurb, author photo, and bio, but the text size for the blurb was too small to be legible. It took some experimentation to make it bigger. I had to shorten my biography to make it fit.

Once I finally finished formatting everything, I decided to order a physical proof to confirm the book looked the way I wanted it to. Ordering a physical proof is $30, but I figured it was worth it since this was the first time I'd used D2D for this. Perhaps when I'm more comfortable with it, I'll stick with free online proofs. I just received the proof (pictured above) on Monday, so I approved the book. Now I have to see how long it takes to be available online. I think the paperbacks will be available on Amazon as well as D2D's other sites, but it may take a few weeks before distribution is complete. I can order author copies in the meantime.

Publishing paper books is a tricky process, but it's worth it to have another, physical format for my works. Hopefully I'll publish The Season Between and Restaurants and Revenge later this year. I'll have full covers designed for them, which will make the publishing process simpler. In the meantime, please let me know if you have any questions about the process, and I'll answer them the best I can.
 

A Game of Chaos: Excerpt

 Happy Spring! Since Monday was the spring equinox, I thought I'd celebrate by posting an excerpt from a short story featuring Gwen, the Goddess of Spring's Avatar. I wrote this story for an anthology about games, but it was rejected. I'm debating whether or not to add it to my upcoming short story collection The Season Between. (This collection is meant to include one short story featuring each of the Season Avatars, and Gwen is already represented by another story.) Perhaps if I ever write for Substack or do more with my newsletter, I can save this story as a reward for certain subscribers. Anyway, here's the first scene:

Dame H’even, the One Oak’s head housekeeper, was never late for her morning meeting in Gwen’s study. Gwen had already refilled her fountain pens, reviewed the notes from yesterday’s healing session, and checked the wind-up clock on the mantel more times than she wanted to admit, all while keeping her queasy stomach from rebelling. To make matters worse, no one had brought up a breakfast tray for her. She couldn’t heal anyone without food to fuel her magic, especially in her condition. Gwen tugged the bellpull. The clock ticked off several minutes, but no one responded.

“By All Four Gods and Goddesses, something’s wrong,” she muttered. The servants at the One Oak took great pride in serving the Four’s Avatars. If none of them were available, some dire emergency must be threatening everyone. Gwen glanced around her study, wishing she had a fighting staff from the Temple to defend herself. She could use her magic to stun or injure an enemy, but she had to get close enough to touch them first.

Empty-handed, she ventured into the hallway. No one was visible in either direction, but her keen ears picked up voices from the servants’ quarters on the floor above. Although she seldom ventured to the third floor, she knew where the stairs were. They were plain and narrow, unlike the stairs in the rest of the house, and her steps echoed on the scuffed wood. As she reached the top, the voices became clearer. Several women, including the housekeeper and Daisy, Gwen’s personal maid.

“Freeze it, Dame H’even, why’d you take that card?”

“Language, Dama!”

“I have a quartet!”

Gwen raised her eyebrow. That didn’t sound like people in distress.

She knocked a couple times on the housekeeper’s door before swinging it open. Four women in the One Oak’s livery were crowded around a tiny table, each holding a fan of cards. They didn’t look up as Gwen entered the room but continued picking cards from each other’s hands.

“Dame H’even? We have things to discuss before I head into Midpoint this afternoon.”

The housekeeper laid a quartet of cards on the crowded table. Daisy stared at it. “Are you sure you’re not hiding the Chaos card, Dame H’even?”

Gwen’s stomach threatened to rebel. She forced the nausea down but felt so weak she had to lean against the doorway. “Daisy, why didn’t you come when I summoned you? And whatever happened to breakfast?”

The four women continued drawing cards. Even the maid facing the doorway seemed oblivious to Gwen’s presence. They couldn’t have gone deaf, as they were speaking to each other, but they acted as if nothing outside of the game mattered.

Sweet in Tooth and Claw

If you're interested in solarpunk or hopepunk, you might be interested in reading Kristin Ohlson's Sweet in Tooth and Claw: Stories of Generosity and Cooperation in the Natural World. We're so used to hearing Tennyson's line about Nature being read in tooth and claw that it's easy to forget how important cooperation is to life. After all, multicellular life wouldn't be possible without a permanent merger between archaea cells and primitive bacteria to form eukaryotic cells with mitochondria and chloroplasts. Ohlson describes this famous symbiosis, but she also describes other types of interactions.

Many stories of cooperation deal with cooperation between plants, such as trees in a forest sharing resources underground and sending out pest alerts when they're attacked. There are also plenty of other interactions between plants and animals, where birds or insects might pollinate plants in exchange for food. However, this cooperation extends into the microscopic world as well. For example, some of the bacteria that live in our bodies help prevent pathogenic bacteria from settling in. Bacteria help some plants fix nitrogen in the soil. Species can also interact by spreading nutrients throughout the ecosystem. When salmon swim upriver to spawn, many of them are eaten by carnivores that disperse the leftovers across the land, fertilizing it. 

Cooperation is also important in agriculture. Instead of planting monocultures of crops, planting various types of plants together can reduce pest naturally, keep the temperature of the soil lower by covering it from the sun, and increase the overall yield. This also improves biodiversity, which is important because species don't just interact in pairs, but as part of an entire symphony. 

Perhaps the greatest tale of cooperation would be for humans to simply provide more space for all the other species on this planet. This can be done by making our cities greener, which would provide more habitats for animals. While it might be disconcerting at first to see coyotes in your area (there are some in our neighborhood), they play a role in keeping other populations in check. Other creatures like beavers can actually do a better job of managing water runoff and pollution than we do. Humans have a need to be connected with nature. By acknowledging this, we can improve our physical and mental health while also making our planet more livable.

Dinner on Mars

If you're interested in worldbuilding for science fiction, then you know food is an important part of that. How a society produces and prepares food has a big impact on many other parts of their culture. And as Lenore Newman and Evan D.G. Fraser point out in their book Dinner on Mars: The Technologies That Will Feed the Red Planet and Transform Agriculture on Earth, thinking about food production in extreme environments can in turn change how we handle food on this planet.

This book was inspired by Zoom chats between the authors during the Covid lockdown, and they refer to that often in the text. However, the "meat" of the book is a thought experiment of how to feed the first colonists on Mars. The authors discuss what's possible--obtaining nutrients from the soil on Mars--and what isn't feasible--transporting animals or growing grains on the red planet. Given the challenges of living on a planet with little water, a thin atmosphere, and reduced sunlight intensity, future Martian colonists will have to be ingenious at maximizing their resources. They would have to rely on blue-green algae, yeast, and microbes to produce the building blocks of food, at least initially. Special arrangements would have to be made to grow plants on Mars (the plants would also produce oxygen and help us maintain a link with nature). The plants might have to be genetically engineered to be more efficient, and they could grown by robots that deliver the exact amount of fertilizer needed. Protein could be printed or grown in a lab, and cheese could be developed from yeast extracts. The authors optimistically end by imagining the types of meals Martian colonists would eat--protein bars for breakfast, salad and printed meat for lunch and dinner, with the occasional treat of something made from potatoes and maybe even a distilled beverage. They describe this as a much healthier diet than what we currently eat and point out that we need those technologies here and now to change our food supply. However, getting these technologies to the small farms around the world may be as challenging as developing them.

Newman and Fraser write in an engaging style that make this book accessible to general readers. If I have to find a fault with their thought experiment, I think that they dismiss carbs too easily. Rice, corn, and pasta are staples in many cultures, and I doubt the first waves of colonists will want to do without them, even if these foods aren't optimally nutritious. If it's impractical to grow vast fields of wheat or rice paddies on Mars, then people will find other ways to create carbs. Perhaps yeasts will be used to churn out simple sugars that can be printed into starches and flours. Or perhaps plants with starchy roots can be modified to be more grain-like. I think the challenge of recreating specific dishes in space or another extreme environment might make for an interesting solarpunk story. 

If you were going to colonize another planet, what kind of food would you want to bring with you and why? Feel free to share in the comments.

IWSG: Author Envy

The year marches on to the month of March, so it's time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Learn more about the IWSG on their website or Facebook page.

Our hosts this month are Diedre Knight, Tonja Drecker, Bish Denham, Olga Godim, and J.Q. Rose. (Unfortunately, I don't have working links for Bish and Olga.)

Here's our question for March: Have you ever read a line in [a] novel or a clever plot twist that caused you to have writer envy?

It's hard for me to pick a specific example of something that caused me to have writer envy. The best thing I can come up with is Patricia McKillip's writing style, but that's the poetic nature of her prose and not limited to a single line. However, while I enjoy reading her work, her style is so different from mine that there's no point to envying it. It's something I can admire without being able to imitate. Even if I could write like her, her style might not fit the stories I want to tell.

In general, I think if you're struggling with your current work, it's easy to be envious of anything else you read because you see the finished work, not the other author's process in bringing the story to life. Comparing a draft to a finished work isn't fair, but we do it all the time. 

Do you have a particular author or story you're envious of? Feel free to share in the comments.

Writing Recap

It's hard to believe this is the last post for February 2023. The days may be long sometimes, but the years get shorter and shorter as one gets older. Since it's the end of the month, here's a quick recap on my writing projects.

I recently had rejections on two short stories. One I'm going to hold for possible inclusion in my The Season Between collection, which will be set in my fantasy Season Avatars universe. The other one has already been submitted to several markets (I haven't kept good records regarding its submission history), so I'll probably keep it on the back burner until I see another potential market for it. I still have two more stories out for consideration, but I don't like to say much about submitted stories for fear I'll jinx them.

Speaking of short stories, I'm working on another solarpunk story for an upcoming annual contest; the current working title is "Inside, Outside." I recently finished the first draft, which is about 4,700 words. I haven't been completely satisfied with previous submissions to this contest, so I've started working on it earlier, before the submission window opens. That gives me more time to revise it. (I'm not the kind of person who can bang out a short story every week; I need several drafts to make it worth reading.) 

I've also managed to resolve a subplot in Restaurants and Revenge, so hopefully after a few more tweaks, I'll be done with the major edits. Then I can work on line edits and maybe order the cover art.

Once I finish these current projects, I want to return to The Season Between collection and finish editing the stories (and deciding how many to include). I also need to go back to writing the first draft of Bubble Tea and a Body, the next book in my cozy mystery series.

An author's work is never done, so I guess it's time to get back to it. I'll be back next week with another IWSG post.

The Skeptics' Guide to the Future

I started listening to The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe podcast a few months ago. I'd read the book with the same name and thought it was quite useful. So when Dr. Steven Novella and the rest of the podcasters mentioned they'd written a second book called The Skeptics' Guide to the Future: What Yesterday's Science and Science Fiction Tell Us About the World of Tomorrow, I had to (literally) check it out. If you're interested in futurism--as science fiction writers are by definition--then you'll want to do the same.

The book is divided into five parts. The first one is an introduction to futurism, which is the art of predicting the future. It discusses how previous predictions about the future were right or not and looks at general trends. (We tend to overestimate short-term progress and underestimate long-term progress. We also assume the institutions and culture we have today will persist with little or no change.) The other four sections deal with various aspects of technology: current, future, space travel, and science fiction tech. Each part is broken into several chapters, with each chapter focused on a specific type of technology. The authors discuss what types of technology are possible (they cover everything from stem cells to light sabers) and when they might be developed or become feasible. (Some familiarity with the technology is assumed, as this is a general overview, but the authors provide some history and current status for each type of technology.) They also discuss ideas that might not work; unfortunately for my stories Lyon's Legacy and Twinned Universes, we are unlikely to be able to travel to alternate universes through wormholes. The first four parts end with snippets of future fiction set anywhere from a few decades to more than twenty thousand years in the future.

Not surprisingly, the overall message of the book is that technology will continue to become an important part of our culture and change it in ways we might not be able to foresee. The general assumption is that humanity will continue to exist in some form or another; the authors ignore most potential catastrophes with the exception of artificial intelligence turning against us. They do discuss the possibilities of humans using brain-machine interfaces, uploading our minds into computers, or colonizing space. 

This book is worth reading not just if you're interested in science or science fiction, but the future. After all, every new day brings us closer to it.

Writing on the Weekend

When you have a day job, it seems like the best time to write for extended periods of time would be on the weekend. However, that's not always the case. I typically spend a lot of time on the weekend catching up with chores and getting ready for the week ahead. There can also be special events that disrupt your routine. I try to compensate for this by setting aside blocks of time for writing. For example, I clean Saturday morning so I have time to write in the afternoon. I normally also like to write my weekly blog post on Sunday morning. However, there are days where even those blocks of time get usurped by other activities. Some days you just have to accept the fact that you won't be able to write much.

Are weekends typically good writing days for you, or are they taken up with other things? Feel free to discuss in the comments.

IWSG: Covering Covers

 

Is it just me, or did January seem to pass by pretty quickly? It hardly seems time for another Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Learn more about the IWSG on their website and Facebook page. 

Our hosts this month are Jacqui Murray, Ronel Janse van Vuuren, Pat Garcia, and Gwen Gardner. 

Our question this month is about covers: If you are an indie author, do you make your own covers or purchase them? If you publish trad, how much input do you have about what goes on your cover?

I'm technically a hybrid author, since I have a few stories published in anthologies. I don't have any input on those covers, so I'll focus on my indie covers. Most of those are purchased, since my photo editing skills are minimal. Here's one cover I created for a short story collection called Ordinary Wonders. About all I did to the photo was add the text.

For my fantasy Season Avatars series, I purchased covers from my friend Maria Zannini, also known as the Book Cover Diva. I think she did a great job with the entire series, but I'll just highlight two of them here: Fifth Season and Summon the Seasons. 

Since my Abigail Ritter series is a different genre (cozy mystery), I decided to go in a different direction and ordered the cover from 100 Covers. See below for Murder at Magic Lake. I've already pre-paid for the next two book covers in that series; I just need to finish the books!

I've been very happy with these cover artists, and they've done a great job of designing covers to meet my visions of the characters and setting.

How do you get your covers if you're indie? Do you have any favorite covers for your books? Feel free to share in the comments.

Book Review: Ways of Being

 If you're interested in solarpunk, you might be interested in reading Ways of Being Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence by James Bridle. The author just doesn't look at ways in which plants and animals exhibit intelligence, but how technology can be used to help us understand them so we can meet their needs and sustain the biodiversity we need to survive.

The book starts and ends in Greece, where the author first visits an island where the ecosystem is under threat due to a search for fossil fuels, but later visits a farm where plants purify metals from the soil. In between, we look at the different ways animals perceive the world, how plants communicate with each other and even learn in response to their environment, non-neural computers, the importance of randomness, and inter-species communication. All of this is to remind us that we are connected to the rest of the planet and that there are other ways of knowing besides ours. The last chapter in the book is called "The Internet of Animals," where Bridle discusses how by tracking animals, we gain a better understanding of their needs and how they travel. For example, by pinpointing the exact spots where wildlife cross highways during migration, we can build wildlife bridges that prevent collisions. 

Some parts of the book are easier to follow than others. For me, I found the chapter on non-binary machines the most difficult to digest. Other readers may balk at acknowledging the legal rights of animals and rivers, even though there is legal precedent. But if you want a book quote that encapsulates the ideals of solarpunk, I suggest this one: "The enemy is not technology itself, but rather inequality and centralization of power and knowledge, and that the answer to these threats are education, diversity, and justice." I recommend checking it out.

Book Clubs

I don't think I've mentioned on here that I joined a local book club last fall. We had our first meeting in November, when we discussed The One. We'll be meeting in a couple of weeks to talk about Mad Honey, and our tentative choice for February is Kindred. While it's a good excuse to socialize with other people, this book club forces me to read genres that I normally don't consider. I admit I didn't care much for our first book, and it didn't seem like most of the other members didn't think too highly of it either. It'll be interesting to see what we discuss about our next two books and what else we read this year.

Have you been in a book club before? If so, did you enjoy the experience? Which books did you read for it? Feel free to share in the comments.

2023 Writing Projects

There are three main projects I'd like to complete and publish in 2023: The Season Between, a short story collection set in my Season Avatars universe after Summon the Seasons (it's meant to transition into a sequel or spinoff series, though right now it focuses more on what other issues the Season Avatars face); and the next two books in my Abigail Ritter cozy mystery series: Restaurants and Revenge and Bubble Tea and a Body. Here's a summary of where I'm at with each project.

The Season Between: I want to have at least one short story featuring each of my four Avatars. I have rough drafts for Gwen, Ysabel, and Kay, but Jenna's story has been giving me issues. I originally wanted to show her on a trip to a different country, but the story spiraled out of control, with no good way to resolve the conflict. So I've shifted the conflict back to Challen and made the problem about more than magic. Hopefully this will allow me to finish the rough draft of this story this month. I can then revise the other stories and decide if I want to add any others.

Restaurants and Revenge: This is the second book in my cozy mystery series. The first draft is complete, and it's been revised. However, I've been trying to work in a subplot that will allow me to add more touches of Filipino culture to the book, and it's hard to add something when the story is complete as it is. I think I've figured out where to add a couple of scenes; the problem is finding the time to work on this project. Revising can be harder (and take longer) than drafting.

Bubble Tea and a Body: This is the third book in the cozy mystery series. I'm about 30,000 words into the first draft. I have a sense of where I'm going with it (at least in the short term), and want to return to it when I'm done drafting Jenna's story.

Part of the reason it's taken me so long to finish these projects is because I've been distracted by writing short stories. I currently have three out for consideration, though at least two of those stories face long odds. I might work on another solarpunk story for another contest (or solarpunk magazine), but hopefully I'll finish what I'm working on before I take on too many other projects.

What are you planning to work on this year, writing or otherwise? Feel free to share in the comments.

IWSG: Word of the Year

 

 

 Happy 2023! May we all have a better and kinder year in the next twelve months. Since this is also the first post of the month, that means it's time for the Insecure Writer's Support Group post. Learn more about the IWSG on their website and Facebook. 

Our hosts this month are Jemima Pett, Debs Carey, Kim Lajevardi, Sarah Foster, Natalie Aguirre, and T. Powell Coltrin. 

Here's our question for January (I'm just quoting the first two lines): Do you have a word of the year? Is there a word that sums up what you need to work on or change in the coming year? 

One of the suggestions that was listed with the question was FINISH. That works for me, as I still have several writing and craft projects that I'd like to finish. One of the reasons I have trouble completing         everything is that I keep picking up new projects. Perhaps I should make a list of everything I want to         finish this year to keep me focused.

    What's your word for 2023? Feel free to share in the comments.

My Year in Books

 Although there are still a few days left in 2022, it's time to look back at what I've read this year. I set a fairly modest (for me) reading goal: 150 books. As of Monday, 12/26/22 (which is when I'm writing this post), I've read 187 books. (The link is to my Goodreads challenge.) I'll probably add another book or two before midnight on New Year's Eve. That's well over 45,000 pages. How do I read so much? I read a lot on my phone using my Kindle and Hoopla apps, I multitask and read (within limits), and I try to prioritize reading over games, TV, or other entertainment. I'm also a quick reader; I can easily finish a cozy mystery in a day or two. When I discover a series I really like, I chain-read it as fast as I can download the books.

Below is my breakdown by genre:

Science Fiction: 7

Fantasy: 32

Mystery: 108 (many of the cozy mysteries I read have fantasy elements, but I count them as mysteries)

Other Fiction: 8

Non-Fiction: 32

Here are some of my recommended books for the year:

Asian American Histories of the United States

A Sorrow Named Joy

The Library: A Fragile History

A Spindle Splintered

Plagues Upon the Earth

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity

Meet Me in Another Life

For series, I particularly enjoyed Maria Grace's Jane Austen's Dragons and Gloria Oliver's Daiyu Wu Mysteries.

For 2023, I'll probably set a reading goal of 175 books. I'll continue to challenge myself to read at least one Diversity Book (written by someone of a different race, religion, or sexual orientation from me) each month. I recently joined a local book club, which is already challenging me to read books outside my usual genres. Hopefully I can also knock a few more books off my to-read lists.

What books did you read in 2022 that you would recommend? Feel free to list them in the comments.

Holiday Trees

 One of our family holiday traditions is seeing the decorated Christmas trees at the Museum of Science and Industry. If you're not familiar with them, each tree is decorated with motifs from a different country. (MSI also has displays honoring other holidays.) We went on Sunday, and my husband gave me permission to share some of his pictures of ornaments. (He's running a contest on his personal Facebook page to see who can correctly identify the most countries pictured here, so I'm not going to identify them in this post. (If I remember, I'll come back later to comment.)

No matter what holiday you celebrate, I hope you have a good one! I'll be back next week to summarize my reading for 2022.

Sale on Smashwords!

 Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords earlier this year, but they just recently made it possible for their authors to distribute their books to that site. If you're familiar with Smashwords, you may know that they also hold sales twice a year around the solstices. From tomorrow (December 15th) through January 1, 2023, my books will be available for free on Smashwords. (Please note that ebooks are available on Smashwords only in the EPUB format.) You can find a list of my titles on Smashwords through my author page. Enjoy!

IWSG: Holiday Writing

Here we are at December's post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group. Learn more about them on their website and Facebook group.

Our hosts this month are Joylene Nowell Butler,  Chemist Ken, Natalie Aguirre, Nancy Gideon, and Cathrina Constantine.

Our question for this month asks how the holidays affect our writing. Specifically, It's holiday time! Are the holidays a time to catch up or fall behind on writer goals?

The holidays are festive, but it takes a lot of work to make them that way. For example, my husband and I have a tradition of sending treats to our friends every year. We've made over twenty different types of cookies, fudge, and other treats already and plan to send them out this week. I made the dough for some of my cookies ahead of time and froze it until I was ready to bake them, but there's still a lot of work involved, such as choosing recipes, shopping for ingredients, doing lots of dishes, and packing everything for shipment. Plus, there's also decorating the house, buying and wrapping gifts, extra social gatherings and traditional family activities, and preparing holiday meals. Although I will be using up some of my remaining vacation time to get these things done, I have less time to write during the holidays. (For example, between my company holiday party Saturday evening and doing lots of cooking and baking on Saturday and Sunday, I didn't have much writing time this last weekend.) Fortunately, I'm not facing any submission deadlines for short stories, so I can focus on the first draft of Bubble Tea and a Body for now. If I do end up with some free time after the holidays, hopefully I can finish revising Restaurants and Revenge.

No matter how you spend your holidays, I hope they're happy for you! We'll see the IWSG again in 2023.