It won’t be long now before this anthology is on it’s way to Amazon for all of you to snap up and enjoy!
We’re just finishing up the final little things and then we’ll be off and running. There are twelve stories for you to enjoy. But for right now, I have the cover to share with you, isn’t it gorgeous!?
I think it’s gorgeous!
Stay tuned for purchase links!
I woke up this morning to an email from my publisher with a sneak peek at the cover for the anthology I’ve been working on. I’m excited to get to share this with all of you! Twelve stories from eleven different Creativia authors.
All twelve stories stem from a single prompt, and that is the only thing that ties them together. They cover a number of genres, everything from inspirational tales to horror, from sword & sorcery style fantasy to paranormal fantasy, from steampunk to science fiction.
I’d like to thank my fellow authors for taking this journey with me. You can find out more about them at the links below.
Richard Ankers
Susan-Alia Terry
Leo Kane
J.W. Goodwin
Mari Collier
Chris Tetreault-Blay
Amber Gulley
Eve Gaal
Melanie Mole
Michelle Lynn
I hope to have an ARC soon, if you are a review who would like to get an early peek, let me know and I’ll get it to you as soon as I can.
If you’re an author looking for an editor, I have decided to offer editing services beyond just the small group of friends that I have edited for in the past. You can find it all about it on my page: Editing Services.
On that note, I should get this day started. I wish you all a wonderful Friday and a glorious weekend!
There is a stillness in the woods. It isn’t something you can find in the hustle-bustle of a city. It is something unique to the woods. Step off the paved road and onto a carpet of grass, fallen leaves, pine needles, step between the trees. You don’t have to go far to feel it. Just enough that you can’t see the road, can’t hear the cars.
The hush settles over you and that stillness sinks deep into you. Here, you are connected to the earth beneath your feet, to the years stretching back into the ancient past and forward into the unknown future.
This is one of the places I am home. All of the anxiety flushes away. All the worries and needs and concerns drift off and I am at peace.
I took the picture above on my mini vacation earlier this month. It’s the type of place I imagine Mason feeling quite at home. I imagine I would live quite happily in some little cabin out there, surrounded by trees older than our country and that stillness.
Of course, only if I had a good internet connection! I may love that stillness, but I was raised on modern conveniences and I love my internet.
It was something like this I had in mind as I settled Mason Jerah into his childhood home…a place where magic doesn’t seem so much of a stretch, where life teems and the very air seems to vibrate with a feeling of home.
It’s nice this morning, with another busy day stretched out ahead of me, to take a moment and close my eyes to try to recapture that peace, that stillness…before deadlines and emails and to-do lists fill up my attention.
Have a great Tuesday, Readers!
I am very excited this morning, Readers! I have just sent book 2 in the Shades and Shadows series to my editor! I am excited to introduce you to some new characters as well as to continue telling the story of Alaric and Mason.
In Gathering Shade picks up right where Through Shade and Shadow left off, with Mason and Alaric prisoners of the 8th Battalion and thrusts you immediately into a world that is tipping off it’s axis and into war.
We follow Shades and Shifters, Shadows and Sages through the growing minefield of fear and deception as they struggle to find a way to survive in a world that wants to destroy them.
In the coming weeks, here on this blog, I will introduce you to the new characters, as well as give you previews of things to come.
I hope you’re as excited as I am!
I have a form of agoraphobia. I’ve stopped saying “mild agoraphobia” because then it gets dismissed as not a problem and then people don’t understand why I have days like today.
Today, I woke up feeling anxious. My heart was beating fast, and when I thought about leaving the house, the beat picked up momentum. I did a few grounding exercises and managed to get up and into the shower. I knew I had to get to the office. The office isn’t *safe* like my home is, however it is a familiar place with plenty of open space and familiar faces so it is infinitely safer than *out there* is.
I have routines that help me on days like today. I have a couple of grounding exercises, I have a set pattern that is my “getting out the door” signal to my brain and body that we are leaving the house. I have my headphones and music that help keep me inside myself as I walk to the train.
This isn’t just social anxiety. This isn’t just me being introverted. I’m an introverted extrovert most of the time. I wish I had the words to paint you a picture of what is going on inside my head when I have to force myself to leave the house.
Every human interaction is work. Interaction that requires conversation is more work. Each additional person involved in that conversation increases that work exponentially and eventually I will need to tap out. Today that limit is two. Any more than two people attempting to interact with me at a time and I can’t. Some days it gets as low as one. Somedays, I can’t even handle one. Those are the days that plans get changed and I stay home, locked inside the safety of my domain.
Today was one of those mornings where everyone at the train station wanted to talk. By the time I got on the train, I was shaking. By the time I got to the office I was exhausted. By the time this day is over, I’ll be a wrung out mess.
The frustrating part of all of this is that I love people. I love meeting new people. I love observing people just going about their daily lives. On days like today, when the agoraphobic anxiety is high and the desire to hide in the private sanctuary that is my own home, I just can’t people. It is all I can do to get through the day if I have to be away from my sanctuary.
If I didn’t have to keep a roof over my head, I might have called today a mental health day and stayed in the quiet cocoon of home. But, my boss doesn’t understand the condition and he would be annoyed if I tried to explain to him that I couldn’t people today.
So, I’ll power through. I’ll put in my earphones and play some Flogging Molly or Dropkick Murphys loudly to create a sonic bubble around me and hope that my coworkers take the hint.
Image by PETEWILL VIA GETTY IMAGES
Today, as I was walking to work I was noticing that there were a larger number of homeless than I am accustomed to seeing. All of the “regulars” were around, and I checked in with those I’ve been friendly with, at least by eye contact, as I generally do.
When I heard yelling across the street, I looked up, slowed my steps. I wasn’t alone in wanting to know what was causing the ruckus, several other pedestrians slowed their steps or stopped, necks craning to try to see around the large truck blocking the view.
The truck had a sign on the side that said something like “The Clean Team” and there were about ten men (I couldn’t tell their ages from my vantage point) who seemed to be trying to roust a homeless couple who had been sleeping in a store doorway. The woman was very upset and yelling. The men made fun of her, and she got angrier (obviously).
I watched for a long few minutes, phone in hand, prepared to call for help if things got physical, which seemed likely when the male half of the couple stood up and tried to intervene. I couldn’t tell for sure, but it seemed as if he calmed her enough and convinced her that they should just gather their belongings and move on.
A few blocks up the road, one of the regular street cleaner guys was using a far gentler approach with one of the regulars that I’ve offered coffee and breakfast to on occasion. Down every side street and alley, in doorways and on the curbs, homeless people were being forced to get up and move, as if there was anywhere else for them to go.
It made me wonder when we turned our street cleaning people away from picking up trash and cleaning graffiti and started tasking them with homeless duty…when did we decide that our homeless were little more than garbage, with no more value than a cigarette butt or empty food container?
I felt a little hopeless as I climbed the hill toward my office, a little stifled under the privilege of who I am.
As with all things, the whole scene is already percolating in the back of my brain, trying to decide where it fits in current writing projects, or how it might inspire a new one to come.
Until then, remember that Forever is only 99 cents on Kindle, through July 16th.
(image via http://streamline.filmstruck.com/)
I will admit that I have had a lifelong fascination/obsession with vampires. It started young. I remember watching Salem’s Lot when I was just a wee eleven years old. I’m not cognizant of any significant vampire related moments prior to that, but I have very vivid memories of watching it on TV in the apartment where we lived in Hilton, NY. Of course, some of that is to do with my age, and some with the fact that my younger brother had snuck down the stairs to watch for at least parts of it and was haunted for MONTHS after by the scene in the image above.
So, it would be safe to say the Stephen King introduced me to vampires. He was by no means the last to walk me into the dark, of course. I read the book the movie was based on that same year, and after that I dug into other books and movies and TV shows, too many to count and name, for certain.
By the time I was 20 I had read Dracula enough times to know entire passages by heart. I wasn’t content to stop there either, I dug into vampire lore, exploring the different ways they were presented in different cultures…the similarities, the differences. I was fascinated by the concept of immortality, drawn in by not only the idea of being witness to history, but the mundanity of living a daily existence where every night bleeds into the next.
I was, as a pubescent teenager is like to, pulled to the erotic notion of the biting, of taking life from the very essence that keeps us all alive, the intimate nature of that exchange, while also at the same time, being a practical child, by the idea that not every meal could be an erotic buffet of hot neck biting and licking that led to what my teenage hormones could only imagine. I found myself thinking about other ways a vampire might get what she needed, without the entanglement of the humanity that comes with drinking from a human chalice.
By the time I was sixteen, I had a pretty good idea what my vampires would be like, if I were to write about vampires…and from that idea, Amara was born.
It is safe to say that Amara comes from those first vampires I experienced, and is influenced by those that came after.
And you can experience Amara and all her nuance right now for 99 cents! Forever is available right now for Kindle at the low price of 99 cents. Grab your copy today…and leave a review if you would! Reviews make writers happy!
My coffee cup seems to be empty, I best go fill it up. Happy Wednesday, Readers!
Here we are again, another Monday, another day in the office. We’re into the middle of July already, which seems ludicrous, really. Before you know it, the holiday season will be upon us!
I have something to celebrate, however, and we don’t have to wait for Christmas! My first book with Creativia Publishing is on promo this week, today through the 16th and you can get a Kindle copy for only $.99! Yes! That’s right, just ninety-nine cents for Forever!
I spent a bunch of time over the weekend working on a short story anthology that I hope to have ready for the publisher by next Monday, and part of that was working on a story of my own that I hope to include. It’s a short piece in the world of a novel I hope to write next year, when I’ve finished with Shades and Shadows. It’s going to be a sci-fi novel and I’m excited to get into it, even if only in a small way.
I suppose I should go pour that cup of coffee and get my day started. So much to do and all that. Have a great Monday, Readers!
Ah, that feeling of a well deserved and well executed vacation. Is there anything better?
My mother and I took advantage of the long holiday weekend to visit north of the Bay Area, traipsing through the Avenue of the Giants, up to Eureka, over to a Pioneer Cemetery in Ferndale, CA, down to the Humboldt Bay Wildlife Refuge and out to the Lost Coast.
It was four days of history, nature and photography. I would have like to have included more hiking, but these days, my mother isn’t up to two mile round trips anymore.
Everywhere we went though, particularly in the forest, I would imagine my characters there, among the trees. I could see Mason hiking through on a mission, or Sahara hunting in the underbrush. It was truly inspiring.
I took a lot of pictures, as expected. I’m still sorting through them all.
But now, it’s back to work! I’m in the office today and the weekend will see me compiling the anthology of short stories I’m working through and hopefully getting some edit time in on my own next book.
Hope you all have a great weekend!
Wow, it’s been a while. Sorry about that! It turns out that working a full time job, working a consulting gig for Pride, editing an anthology and writing a book all at the same time can keep a person ridiculously busy.
Who knew?
It also makes a person forgetful.
But, Pride weekend is upon us and soon my life will go back to it’s normal breakneck speed, at least until the following weekend when I will be utilizing the long holiday weekend to escape the heat of the East Bay and head up into redwood country with my mother on a photography trip.
There will also be a fair amount of people watching and character collecting. I look forward to the smell of nature and the cool shelter of the trees.
But when I come back I’ll have story ideas and pictures to share!