quartz

New Release: Quartz

A fugitive diplomat. A mysterious free agent. And the race to claim their sunless world’s greatest resource.

It’s now available on Amazon for a limited-time price of $0.99. Kindle Unlimited subscribers also have the option of borrowing it.

I’m thrilled to finally release this book. You might enjoy it if…

… you like weird worlds

If you thought the space dragon skeleton in Rainbird was cool or you loved the Deep Night of Highwind, give the sunless world of Quartz a try!

… you like heroes with a can-do attitude

Rafe’s game for anything when it comes to protecting his people’s interests–even hiding out in dumpsters and dancing with fire.

… you like competent heroines with a touch of mystery

“I am my dark side” Isabella has her own agenda–and plenty of secrets.

… and you like your fantasy with plenty of adventure, twists, and, of course, magic!

Check Quartz out.

My newsletter subscribers also receive Daze, a bonus prequel short story in which Rafe takes on a drug-smuggling operation. Sign up for my mailing list, if you haven’t already.

writing & publishing update

It’s been a while since I did one of these.

It may not look it from my blog posts of late, but I have been a busy worker bee behind the scenes.

I just finished the final copyedits on Quartz, Book One of the The Sunless World (yes, the series finally has a title!). Copyediting requires a different kind of mindset from writing/revising, and honestly, I spent way too long dithering over things like when to capitalize a person’s title (in this case, Ambassador) and how I really, really felt about the Oxford comma.

Not to mention having to continually resist the desire to rearrange sentences and add new little details.

I was able to break out of the endless tinkering mode last night and email the manuscript to my Most Excellent Spouse, aka the Formatting and Layout Guy. In July, I’ll be working with a cover designer for the book.

I haven’t decided when I will publish. Usually, I upload as soon as a book is done, but I’ve heard summer tends to be sluggish in terms of sales. I’m thinking of utilizing my pre-order options (and, yes, part of me wants to do it just because :D) and spending some time getting the word out before publishing early fall.

Any opinions on this would be gratefully considered.

On the writing side of things, I’m working on The Sunless World 1.5, a novella set in the gap year between when Quartz ends and its sequel, Flare, begins. The novella is set in another part of Rafe’s world, which I’m thrilled to play in, and told from the POV of a character who, sadly, isn’t slated to get much (if any) scene time in Flare.

I’ve also written some shorter stories. I’m still plugging away at the Planets Project: I just finished the Uranus fic. Two more–Neptune and Mercury–to go!

I’ve decided to make Friday Fiction a regular feature of this blog. On the second Friday of every month, I will post a for-fun flashfic. These days, I’m breaking classic children’s picture books (revenge for all those times I read them out loud over and over and OVER again? Hmmm!). The first two are The Feline in the Fedora and Goodnight, Celestial Object. Should be obvious from the titles which stories I’m alluding to!

How about you? What are you writing these days? Published anything recently?

news, news

Wow.

It’s been over an entire year since I last blogged.

I won’t go into the details (they aren’t juicy, anyhow) but Life Happened, and blogging (and writing) fell by the wayside.

But things haven’t been completely dead, hence this post.

Entangled did come out, and you can find it on Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords.

My short story, “Trading Gifts”, was published in Sword & Sorceress 28. This was a milestone for me! I have fond memories of devouring these anthologies as a teen.

Also, my short story, “The Village of No Women” recently came out in Phantazein, an anthology of fables, fairy tales, and folklore with a twist, edited by Tehani Wessely of FableCroft Publishing. Look at that absolutely gorgeous cover!

Quartz is still being serialized. The eighty third episode went live today. We have 4 more episodes to go before the end, all of which are scheduled! If this is the first you’re hearing about this project, check out its page. You can catch up on all the episodes there.

I hope–crosses fingers–to be more active on the blog from here on out!

a month of quartz episodes

Episode Eleven of Quartz (in which Rafe has his first–and only–firedancing performance) went out to Inboxes and RSS feed readers all over the world today. This marks the end of the first month of running the serial (-ish, I’m too lazy to look up the exact date I started).

So, how’s it going?

The most awesome news is that I have subscribers and readers! Many have tweeted about the serial (many thanks for that!). Generous donors have covered episodes every Saturday so far (this upcoming Saturday is the first one with no episode scheduled).

The only wrinkle is that there’s little reader engagement in the comments section. Yes–even though it’s hard to tell, every episode *is* open to comments, and I am happy to receive any thoughts or feedback.

To those of you following the story, I hope you continue to enjoy it. There’s a lot of fun stuff coming your way, including more backstory on how Rafe’s weird sunless world got to be the way it is, the discovery of a resource that could change the political landscape, and a hint of what Isabella’s real agenda is.

Happy reading!