My Stuff
Last post like this for a long while. Honest!
A writer can be writing on projects for a very long time, and they pile up and nothing happens. Then suddenly they cluster. That has happened to me this summer. Officially, the prequel to Crown Duel comes out 1 August, but when you release something in small press, and there is no launch party, no publicity, no book shelves in stores, well, when it's available, it's "out". Such is the case with A Stranger to Command
This isn't romantic fantasy like Crown Duel though it concerns many of the same characters. It intersects with my main storyline in what I guess could be called a bildungsroman or a kind of boarding school story: I knew a couple of the main events way back decades ago when I was writing the main storyline, but didn't get around to writing them down until some readers asked about them. I'd thought to write a short story, but it turned into white fire as the roots ramified out into the big events. Including historical ones. I think I wrote about 40k of it in two weeks, and then, while it was still a steaming pile of embers, put it up for Pixel-packin' Technopeasant Day* (concurrent with Shakespeare's birthday), because I didn't want to put up some old story out of print, but something real, and current. I left it up for a year before I took it down for the rewrite--by then I'd been able to blur the images enough to try to tackle a rewrite.
With small press, everything is an adventure, and you get a hand in creation of the entire product. I explained my cover idea to Vera of Norilana Books; she said to go for it; I asked my foreign exchange student to pose for me, since I'd noticed three years ago when he first came to stay with us, and I was writing the beginning, that he looked a lot like the main character. He was exactly the same age then, and when he posed, he was the same age as the main character at the end of the book. Anyway, we went outside on a blistering hot day, he courageously wearing one of my pirate shirts right there in public, my husband's super-expensive riding boots (made in 1965!) and carrying my father-in-law's sword from his career as a Navy captain (that sword was present when MacArthur met the Japanese government officials
after the horrible events at the end of the war...in fact, my father-in-law was first in to inspect one of the blasted cities.) Vera took my shots and worked through a night and day this spring to get a cover so she could make ARCS, do it all right. (I have no idea if it will actually get reviewed anywhere.) Anyway, Vera and I loved the cover, but a couple of men have spoken up and said it's got girl cooties, which were invisible to us. Well, we did our best!
Anyway, if you decide you want to read it, and if you like it, please consider passing the word. That's pretty much the only way small press gets publicity, is from lips to ears, real or metaphorical.
*I can never remember it right--the downside of having a memory made up of images, not words
A writer can be writing on projects for a very long time, and they pile up and nothing happens. Then suddenly they cluster. That has happened to me this summer. Officially, the prequel to Crown Duel comes out 1 August, but when you release something in small press, and there is no launch party, no publicity, no book shelves in stores, well, when it's available, it's "out". Such is the case with A Stranger to Command
This isn't romantic fantasy like Crown Duel though it concerns many of the same characters. It intersects with my main storyline in what I guess could be called a bildungsroman or a kind of boarding school story: I knew a couple of the main events way back decades ago when I was writing the main storyline, but didn't get around to writing them down until some readers asked about them. I'd thought to write a short story, but it turned into white fire as the roots ramified out into the big events. Including historical ones. I think I wrote about 40k of it in two weeks, and then, while it was still a steaming pile of embers, put it up for Pixel-packin' Technopeasant Day* (concurrent with Shakespeare's birthday), because I didn't want to put up some old story out of print, but something real, and current. I left it up for a year before I took it down for the rewrite--by then I'd been able to blur the images enough to try to tackle a rewrite.
With small press, everything is an adventure, and you get a hand in creation of the entire product. I explained my cover idea to Vera of Norilana Books; she said to go for it; I asked my foreign exchange student to pose for me, since I'd noticed three years ago when he first came to stay with us, and I was writing the beginning, that he looked a lot like the main character. He was exactly the same age then, and when he posed, he was the same age as the main character at the end of the book. Anyway, we went outside on a blistering hot day, he courageously wearing one of my pirate shirts right there in public, my husband's super-expensive riding boots (made in 1965!) and carrying my father-in-law's sword from his career as a Navy captain (that sword was present when MacArthur met the Japanese government officials
after the horrible events at the end of the war...in fact, my father-in-law was first in to inspect one of the blasted cities.) Vera took my shots and worked through a night and day this spring to get a cover so she could make ARCS, do it all right. (I have no idea if it will actually get reviewed anywhere.) Anyway, Vera and I loved the cover, but a couple of men have spoken up and said it's got girl cooties, which were invisible to us. Well, we did our best!
Anyway, if you decide you want to read it, and if you like it, please consider passing the word. That's pretty much the only way small press gets publicity, is from lips to ears, real or metaphorical.
*I can never remember it right--the downside of having a memory made up of images, not words