Published!
Exciting news! In February, I was published in Eat, Drink, and Be Wary: Satisfying Stories with a Delicious Twist, an anthology edited by the awesome Lisa Mangum. I'm honored to be in the same company as one of my mentors, Kevin J. Anderson, as well as several Writers of the Future Contest winners. Hello imposter syndrome, my old friend.
Reviewed
Midnight Agency, Season Two received its first review on Goodreads and Amazon, all positive. Yay! Until then, I'd heard a few "good jobs" and "attaboys" from friends, so I had a sense that people enjoyed the sequel, but this was a true relief.
Also, someone I don't know actually bought a shirt from my website, which gave me a warm 'n fuzzy feeling.
Fun fact: Back in my bookstore days, the first night I stocked Midnight Agency, Season One on the shelf, a person brought the book up to purchase it. This was minutes after I had lovingly shelved it, face-out, and I was so shocked that I didn't tell him I was the author. I still feel this way when someone gives my work some love.
What I'm Writing
My current work-in-progress (WIP), an epic/dark fantasy novel, passed the 46K mark as of this morning, which means that I wrote ~20K words in February. I'm a slow writer, so this is a tremendous amount for me. I wrote faithfully on the weekends. On work days, I woke up early, gulped coffee, and wrote whatever I could manage before work -- a sentence, a paragraph, half a page -- and after work, if I had time and brain power, I wrote for less than an hour. For the most part, I was successful in shutting off the inner editor and letting the words flow, which meant giving myself permission to write badly. If I can duplicate this over the next few months, I'll finish the draft in May, and then I can start the arduous task of editing. I love this book, and I'm super excited about the way this is turning out.
In addition, my short fiction has been rejected four times so far. I currently have four stories on the market, and two are waiting for magazines to open. One story has been sitting with a magazine for over 107 days (vs. their average response time of ~40 days). If I'm lucky, slush readers have pushed it up the ladder. I'm extremely proud of this one, so I'm getting anxious.
What I Finished Reading
(There were others I did not finish, and so they will remain unnamed.)
Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
A vampire novel like no other, this is set in an alternate version of Mexico City, and features a street kid and an Aztecan vampire who is on the run from vampires, cops, and criminals.
The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers and Rogues by George Choundas
During several scenes of my #WIP, I needed to refer to The Pirate Primer, which is an incredible book to help you navigate the language of pirates.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game: Bestiary 5 by Jason Bulmahn
It's been awhile since I've read something like this, but I needed inspiration in creating monsters. This beautifully illustrated guide did not disappoint.
Yup. I'm a book nerd.
If you are, too, please follow me on Goodreads for more!
And if you enjoyed either of my Midnight Agency books, I'd appreciate a kind rating on Goodreads, Amazon, and/or B&N.
Stay tuned. Later in March, I'll post about what inspired the place names in The Soul-Stealers.