The Ones Who Gave Up: Great Cautionary Tales

The Tides of BaraAt last, the much-anticipated next installment in the Sorcerous Moons series, THE TIDES OF BÁRA is out! About and Buy Links at the bottom of the page.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is “My favorite great cautionary tale in the writing world.”

I could cite a lot of Great Cautionary Tales, but with NaNoWriMo (National Novel-Writing Month) on the horizon, I’m going to pick this one: Don’t Give Up.

Or, put positively, KEEP GOING!

Come on over to the SFF Seven to read more. 

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A Narrow Escape 

With her secrets uncovered and her power-mad brother bent on her execution, Princess Oria has no sanctuary left. Her bid to make herself and her new barbarian husband rulers of walled Bára has failed. She and Lonen have no choice but to flee through the leagues of brutal desert between her home and his—certain death for a sorceress, and only a bit slower than the blade.

A Race Against Time 

At the mercy of a husband barely more than a stranger, Oria must war with her fears and her desires. Wild desert magic buffets her; her husband’s touch allures and burns. Lonen is pushed to the brink, sure he’s doomed his proud bride and all too aware of the restless, ruthless pursuit that follows…

A Danger Beyond Death… 

Can Oria trust a savage warrior, now that her strength has vanished? Can Lonen choose her against the future of his people? Alone together in the wastes, Lonen and Oria must forge a bond based on more than lust and power, or neither will survive the test…

Buy the Book

The Transition that Became a Book

The Tides of BaraAt last – it’s release day for THE TIDES OF BARA! The next installment in Lonen and Oria’s epic tale is here! 

I have a somewhat sheepish confession to make. You can gaze on this gorgeous cover by Louisa Gallie to salve your soul while you brace yourself. I’ll wait.

Ready?

(It really is a pretty cover, isn’t it?)

Okay, okay – head on over to Here Be Magic to read the rest.

More Important than Money

p1013076Caught this gorgeous full moon setting in the warm sunrise colors on my run this morning. Glad I took my camera along. Although it annoyed me bouncing around, so I had to tuck it inside my zippered hoodie – which made me look pregnant, though unnaturally so.

Unnatural camera baby, ftw.

This week at the SFF Seven – whether by deliberate ploy or mental lapse (there’s some debate on the topic – our calendar guru KAK missed giving us a topic. Therefore this week is an open “on-my-mind” theme.

What’s on my mind? I hate to tell you guys, but it’s marketing. And the love of money.

But THEY Said that Genre Is Dead!

screenshot-2016-10-08-08-13-04Our new creepy collection of toothy tales, TEETH, LONG AND SHARP, is out! And so gratifying to see it as an Amazon Best Seller. Many thanks to catnip author Ilona Andrews for giving it a shout out that helped push it there.

This week’s topic at the SFF Seven is all about “dead genres.” Come on over to find out what’s real and what isn’t

TEETH, LONG AND SHARP Is Out!

screenshot-2016-10-07-09-22-42

TEETH, LONG AND SHARP is out and doing quite well! So fun for me to see my pic next to my darling friend, Grace Draven, along with those lovely rankings. (The other authors are working on getting their pics up, too.)

Thanks to everyone for buying this collection! I hope it tickles your short hairs in just the right way. I haven’t read the other stories yet, but plan to spend some delicious time doing so this weekend. If you’d like to do the same, the buy links are here!

Amazon/Kindle

iBooks

Nook

Kobo

Wherever you are, I hope you’re safe and warm and have what you need. Duck those hurricanes!

A Taoist’s Guide to Staying Sane in the Writing Business

Feel like one more workshop on promo might send you over the edge?

Anne Lamott famously noted that while writing, as difficult as the process may be, delivers gifts publication makes people crazy. Many writers get into the business first out of love, however, love doesn’t pay the bills and it can take a while for writing to pay a living wage. The writer who has no other financial support often has no choice but to work one or more “day jobs” to keep the money coming in. The dream, of course, is quitting that day job to make a living entirely as a writer. What can happen, however, is that intense focus on bringing in money from writing – from scrutinizing the marketplace, to constantly checking Amazon rankings, to jealous obsession with other writers’ sales figures – can suck all the joy out of what was once a dream, and even reduce the art of writing into an algorithm. The Taoists believe that focusing on monetary gain instead of on their concept of virtue “maddens the mind.” Jeffe Kennedy, a comparative religious studies major who did her honors thesis on the Tao Te Ching, and a practicing Taoist for most of her life, will discuss these concepts and encourage round table discussion of people’s experiences. It’s not that money is the root of all evil, but that the love of money is. There’s nothing wrong with plying our art to gain wealth, but there are ways to refocus our attention on the core values that truly matter, such as telling a memorable story while navigating the tumultuous publishing world.

Lessons from the Spreadsheet Queen

Fondly known as “The Spreadsheet Queen,” Jeffe Kennedy has long discussed in various venues her extensive Excel spreadsheets for tracking writing progress. She tracks word count by day, week, month, and year, along with writing goals and Gantt charts for planning workload and release schedules. While she freely shares a blank template of her “Progress Count” workbooks, multiple people have requested a tutorial in using them. In this workshop, Jeffe will walk people through her worksheets, where to find the embedded formulae and conditional formatting to highlight goals reached. She’ll explain how to adapt the spreadsheets for personal use and give suggestions for building in additional features. Every attendee will receive a blank template workbook to adapt, along with an annotated reference guide to Jeffe’s version, complete with examples. The discussion will also include how to set personal writing goals, what to take into consideration and how to train the writing muscle for greater endurance, much like training the body for a marathon. In addition, the general Three-Act story structure will be introduced, as the spreadsheets calculate progress toward climaxes, which allows even far-end pantsers like Jeffe to predict beats and overall novel length.