I received some advance reading copies of my book!
I’m going to be giving a few copies away for free at the International Asexuality Conference later this month. They’re uncorrected proofs, so they’re not the final.
But it’s cool to be able to see it in hard copy for the first time. 😀
My coming-of-age fantasy short story “Her Mother’s Child,” written in October 2013, was just accepted for publication by Kaleidotrope. It’s a mother/daughter tale set in a secondary world, with interwoven themes of growing up, parent/child relationships, goddess culture, elemental magic, and ladies who love ladies.
I’m told it will not be published until 2015, but I’m patient! Hope you are too, lovely readers.
In late March I completed a new short story and titled it “Hope Came Out.” I submitted it to a magazine and eventually the editor got back to me with good news: She liked it a lot, but she wanted me to revise a particular twenty percent of the story that made the story more meta than she generally likes her published stories to be.
I took her revision advice, submitted a new version of it that reconceived the “meta” section and added about 400 words, and retitled it “Your Terms” because the old title makes a lot less sense in the new version.
Happily, the revision was accepted. I will make a post about it here when it’s available to read.
[Update: You can read it in Timeless Tales Issue 2.]Most of my videos so far have been about publishing and approaching agents and stuff, but I haven’t done much with actual writing technique and the earlier stages of drafting your book. Since I have done a lot of beta reading for authors, I thought I’d share some advice that I’ve found myself repeating for the authors I help on nearly every book.
This video addresses common pitfalls and teaches certain techniques for authors to use in polishing their novels, with particular attention paid to how to begin your novel. It also includes tips on characterization, dialogue, providing background information, pacing, story elements, and even punctuation. Enjoy!
The second book in the Bad Fairy series is now in progress!
It feels very good to jump in again, picking up with my now-teenage protagonist. I started writing it on Sunday, the 4th, and have completed chapters 1 and 2, totaling about 6,000 words. Hopefully I’ll have time to write like the wind and bust this whole thing out reasonably fast, and then I’ll be taking test readers. . . .
I appeared at the University of Virginia on Thursday, April 10, to talk about asexual relationships as part of the university’s Pride week.
My presentation in the University Chapel went well, including a slide presentation and an interactive talk. I got some really nice questions and got to hear from asexual students who attended my presentation. It was a positive experience all around!
You can see a recording of the presentation on my asexuality channel.
On Saturday, March 29, I appeared on an author panel with Ron Riekki and Ryan Meany. We each read from our own work and answered questions. I read the prologue of my book, Bad Fairy. This is the video:
If you watch the video on YouTube, you can look in the video description and use the time codes there to skip around to anybody’s reading selection, as well as browse the questions we answered and when in the video we answered them.
My latest short story, written in response to a submissions call I saw online, is a Pandora’s Box-inspired story called “Hope Came Out.” It’s about a young woman with agoraphobia.
It took about 45 minutes to write 1,600 words. It was nice to write some new fiction spontaneously!
I have a new video in which I read my first draft of Page One on the next book I’ll be writing: Bad Fairy Book 2. It doesn’t contain spoilers for Book 1. Feel free to tell me if you have opinions.
Looks like my book has been assigned a cover!
This may not be the final design, actually, but for now it’s representing the book on Amazon and Goodreads and other book-selling sites, and if it changes I’ll give you that news too! For right now it’s what my distributor will see at a conference, I’m told, so we’ll see if they have input and if they do it might get a different design.