catherineldf | Entries tagged with writing

Well, I tried. Jana got to go out of town to visit friends and family and it was going to be my catch -up and deal with things week. So, of course, I socialized most of the weekend and got deathly ill with my first head cold in nearly two years on Tuesday. I'm still not recovered and have inevitably lost my voice. I am supposed to do a reading and interview on a Facebook group tomorrow so today is frantic throat-soothing things in hopes that I recover in time. I am wildly behind on everything I have due, but I have discovered "Murder, She Wrote," so there's that? I went through many years where I either did not have a TV or only had one that picked up PBS so there are many popular shows that I have never seen.

What else is going on?

I had a delightful time at Madame Askew and Her Temporal Entourage's "Queer Steampunk" chat last Friday. I drank a lot of tea and talked a bunch, often two of my favorite things.
I went to see "In the Heights' at the Riverview Theatre and enjoyed it quite a bit!
I went to an in person play! Mysterious Old Radio Listening Society continues to rock (I saw all of their online shows during shutdown).
I picked up another couple of events for July and August, plus one for tomorrow (assuming I can talk). These include a teaching gig at the Novel in Progress Book Camp in August (see pinned post for links, etc.).
I talked to a couple of recruiters and looked at some job sites.
I met with my small biz attorney, who said confidence-boosting things.
I saw a couple of friends outside, while taking lots of cold meds and using a bunch of hand sanitizer.
I coughed a lot and have had trouble sleeping. We are now taking the popular approach of "Catherine sleeps on the couch so she can cough a lot in peace without disturbing Jana AND entertain the cats who will spend the night leaping upon her drugged into oblivion except for waking up to cough body." Good times!
Finished developmental edits on one of our forthcoming books.
Worked on getting another one ready for ARC formatting (in progress).

And next week, we look for work of various kinds with more vigor. Stay tuned!

It has been a full and lively week! Again. In theory, I have a short term contract starting next week that is scheduled to go on for a few months; in practice, those of you in IT know that there are many hoops to jump through and the pandemic has not improved this so still wrangling the last few things.

I attended Capricon 41, where I was on a fair amount of programming and enjoyed myself. In retrospect, had I know I wasn't going to be able to fall asleep on Saturday night anyway, I should have gone to John Scalzi's D.J. Dance party. Hindsight and all that. Anyway, nice con, would attend again given the opportunity.
I submitted and sold a new story to Heather Rose Jones's LHMPodcast! "The Adventuress" is the latest installment of my stories about pirate Jacquotte Delahaye and her lover, French spy Celeste Girard, in the 17th Century Caribbean. This time around, they go to an English colony called "Willoughbyland" in what is now Surinam and meet up with English spy (and future playwright), Aphra Behn.There are now 4 of these stories and they may want to be a book of their own soon, with the intervals between adventures filled in with more adventures. Contemplating...
Found a stop gap short term insurance plan to get us through the next few months.
Had a nice chat with an engineer from a startup (a genuine venture capital unicorn) in the Bay about a potential gig they are still defining. This is likely to not amount to anything, but it was pleasant and nice to be on someone's radar.
Picked up a new event in May - I'll be on a panel on book and publishing coaching at the Professional Editor's Network meeting. You can hire me for this service, FYI. I'm most useful for explaining publicity, timelines, tech and the publishing process.
Turned in a new interview for Horror Tree's Women in Horror Month celebration and agreed to a new interview with an APA in April.
Worked on publicity for the Press and Blood Moon.
Read submissions and accepted 2 of them - more announcements coming soon!
Worked on taxes, reading next book to be blurbed, participated in an online reading of Aphra Behn's The Rover and did miscellaneous things.
Did enormous amount of paperwork and sundry tasks for ostensible new job.
Did not get to most of what I had hoped to do or planned for.
Did get in some Zoom and other calls with friends, so that was lovely.
Am teaching this Sunday, 2/14, at the Rambo Academy. Join me for In Flagrante Delicto: Writing Effective Sex Scenes! There are multiple classes about writing about sex and reproduction and romance this weekend so worth taking a look at the calendar.

Now to go see what else I get done while the lamb meatloaf cooks and I wait to talk to yet another entity about the job stuff for next week.Then may just crash and watch TV for a for bit.

Let's start with the good parts first, shall we?
Here's a list of my own 2020 publications:

"The Adventure of the Missing Fiancé." The Book of Extraordinary Sherlock Holmes Stories edited by Maxim Jakubowski. Mango Books, 2020. (Mystery).
"Cardinal's Gambit," LHMP Podcast, 2020 edited by Heather Rose Jones and narrated by Cherae Clark. (Historical F/F)
"The Rani's Dream," Sherlock Holmes and the Occult Detectives edited by John Linwood Grant. Belanger Books, 2020.(Mystery, with supernatural elements)
"Inheritance," March, 2020. Haunting Shadows: The Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Anthology edited by Matt McElroy. Onyx Path Publishing. (Media tie-in/Horror)
"Class Photo" - Letter to Yesterday Podcast, June, 2020. (Autobiographical essay).

Queen of Swords Press published the fabulousness that is The Voyages of CInrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater and Wireless and More Steam-Powered Adventures by Alex Acks made the finalist list for the Midwest Book Awards.I am so proud of both of these books! And A.J. and Alex both worked their butts off this year, as did I. Here's a list of some of the events and places that one, two or all of us appeared in 2020:

CoNZealand
RainbowSpaceMagic (online LGBTQ convention)
Fights of Foundry
SFWA Nebula Conference
WORD Christchurch
Super Relaxed Fantasy Club (U.K. YouTube reading series)
Hannah's Bookshelf (Radio show in Manchester, England)
Verb Wellington (NZ Writer's Conference)
MileHiCon
Madame Askew's Temporal Entourage Book Club
LHMPodcast
DreamHaven Books
Cream & Amber's Fall Mini-festival
MultiverseCon
13 Gears Steampunk
Twin Cities Pride
Glitchy Pancakes Podcast
The Not So Silent Planet Reading Series
St. Cloud Pride
Duluth-Superior Pride
Columbia Height Pride
WomenVenture's Women Mean Business
Quorum's Coming Out Day Luncheon
WisCon
Twin Cities Book Festival
CONvergence
C'monffluence
Geek Girl Con
Pueblo PrideFest
Outwrite DC

In addition, A.J. did blogs and interviews at Mary Robinette Kowal's My Favorite Bit, Cat Rambo's Kittywumpus blog, John Scalzi's Whatever, Helen Lowe's blog, LGBTQ Reads and several newspapers and podcasts in New Zealand. I taught 7 workshops for Cat Rambo and 1 for Broad Universe and had 2 other classes that didn't carry elsewhere. I also resurrected a novel in progress from a few years back and started working on it for my Patreon. It has been a LOT. Oh, hey, and I finished my Silver Moon sequel, Blood Moon, that I've been working on forever. Stay tuned for cover reveal and preorder links tomorrow!

Personal stuff goes in the next post. HUGE thank you to everyone who hosted us, bought books, reviewed our books, recommended them, supported the Patreon and in any other way helped us get the word out about our work! You are much appreciated! Next year will be better, dammit! Hugs all around!

Didn't realize that I hadn't updated at all last week, but it's been busy. The last couple of weeks have been all about studying and prepping for my CPPM Exam at St. Thomas. This was a 10 week series of classes (last class is tonight!) on the basics of project management, followed by a long, complex certification exam, done in teams. Between studying and homework and team meetings and classes and the actual exam, it's been a bit hard to keep up with other stuff. But I just got my exam results and I aced it! 90 out of 100! The rest of my team passed too (and did yeoman's work! We didn't have a slacker in the bunch!), which is awesome because it would have been much harder without them being as engaged as they were.

So what's next? Good question! Well, in order to actually become a professional project manager, I would need to be able to get a healthy amount of on the job training. My current employer neither respects me nor appreciates any of my current skills really, so they're not going to let me grow into anything else so that experience is not likely to happen there. I can apply what I've learned to other things, however. What that currently looks like is me using some of my new training for Queen of Swords Press and looking forward to getting to some training in SEO optimization and copywriting so that's what I'll move toward next. Day job gonna do what day job gonna do, which means more toxicity until either I get heaved overboard or jump. But if I let them be a psychological millstone around my neck, then I just wasted 10 weeks and a lot of work and I, at least, know my own worth. So onward to building a new path. Which might mean being without consistent employment for a bit so brace yourself for a barrage of stuff of varying kinds. I will try not to be annoying about it.

Speaking of which, our sales have been pretty flat for the last few months and the last few events that Jana and I have done have not been stellar (by which I mean: no sales or very few), so we're trying something new. If you live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul metro area within 10 miles of Bancroft Elementary in South Minneapolis and buy a print title from Queen of Swords Press or a handmade journal or box from Western Slope Press through 12/20, we will refund any shipping charges and deliver it to your home for free. Contactless porch pickup is also an option! Shop local, shop locally made and all that good stuff.

Otherwise, I'm back to working on submissions, writing a story that's due in January and prepping for upcoming classes and workshops. Stay tuned for a Queen of Swords Press Kickstarter to fund some new books and a new workshop that I'll be teaching at Springboard for the Arts. Edits for Blood Moon are chugging along and there'll be preorders and ARCS soon. If you're feeling adventurous and want to support a small press and like my writing, you can read my current novel in progress pretty much as I write it out on my Patreon. And so we go, and to quote my friend Cindy Potts, "onward and upward." Hope everyone stays healthy and has a pleasant holiday season!

Had a fine and tasty Thanksgiving that featured dinner with our Pod Friend and a video call with other friends. I haven't made the big meal in several years because we generally dine with friends, but this time around, I tackled a big turkey breast with a maple-butter glaze, fresh cranberries and a pumpkin pie. Jana made mashed potatoes and her mom's yam and apple casserole. And there were leftovers for everyone, so that's always good. The video call highlighted how much we missed being with our people this year and we ended up chatting for almost 3 hours.

I'm currently listening to a talk at the De Morgan Foundation in the U.K. about "Myth and Magic: Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale and Evelyn De Morgan." They are two of my favorite later generation PreRaphaelite painters so I'm enjoying it quite a bit. And there's tea from Bingley's Teas and an excellent scone from the May Day Cafe.

There is also a ton of homework for my project management class and another 150 pages to go on Blood Moon revisions so I have my work cut out for me for the next couple of weeks, not to mention days.

The usual obligatory Queen of Swords sales weekend note: you can find our print titles at our affiliate store at Bookstore.org, which is offering free shipping and gift wrapping this weekend, and we have an ebook bundle on sale at DriveThruFiction. More bulletins coming soon!

I had a great time getting interviewed about some of the early history of LGBTQ science fiction, fantasy and horror on the Glitchy Pancakes Podcast on Sunday night and it just got posted today! Be sure and check out the notes, which have links and such for additional information. We're already talking about doing a followup episode, time frame TBD.

Queen of Swords Press is still participating in St. Cloud Pride this week so the coupon code StCloudPride for buying books from our website is good through 9/20. I think I'll just do an October sale rather than event coupons because I have back to back events pretty much the whole month and they don't seem to work very well for me.

Apart from that, I'm back to taking classes at the Cassandra School (movement and isolation) and am looking at a big life change. I just got offered a discount for signing up for a certification program in project management from the top IT school in the area so I'm thinking I'm going to make the leap. I'm just not enjoying QA work any more and current job is trying very hard to make sure that I'm utterly miserable for the next year and change (until my current position ends anyway) so I think it's time for a change. It's the kind of training that would be helpful in the long run for running Queen of Swords Press as well. So we'll see what happens next. Will be an interesting couple of months, in any case. The main problem is, of course, money, as usual.

Novel progress: Blood Moon is moving along at a reasonable clip. I hope to have this draft wrapped in the next couple of weeks. I'm also working on some new short stories and more chapters for my WIP for my Patreon. This is kind of a fun novel to write and I'm glad I'm getting back into it.

More bulletins as events warrant!

My particular version of it has included the insistence on the part of the higher ups that we all must be in the office all the time (office in question is a sealed room with 20 people in it. We've been passing the flu around for weeks and then someone went on a cruise. Wacky hijinx ensued.). So I was already very stressed, mostly from other people understandably freaking out, went into work with a migraine on Wednesday, had a crazy day, went to drive myself home and promptly drove my car into a very solid concrete parking ramp pillar. In my defense, the whole pale gray on pale gray thing made visibility rather poor. At any rate, I got banged up and my car is not driveable. I go to hang out in the parking ramp waiting for a tow truck and eating dinner from Afro Deli (the Somali Sweet Spiced Tea will make you sit up and take notice of just about everything in the vicinity). Eventually, got towed to the wilds of St. Paul and rescued by my wife. Then, after dragging my butt into work for a couple of days, the Governor declared a state of emergency so now it looks like we will indeed be working from home, possibly with staggered work days in the office. Good times!

At any rate, home recovering. Mom's nursing home has asked us not to visit and all of my events for the next week have been rescheduled. Looks like I'll have time to organize the Pride Month StoryBundle for this year and finish a novel or two. I did manage to catch "Portrait of a Lady on Fire" before things went south - it is lovely, queer and definitely worth seeing. Hoping to catch "Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears" tomorrow night at The Alamo Drafthouse in Woodbury (still open at the moment). Other than that, trying to support some of the organizations which are being forced to cancel events and performances. Gonna be a rough couple of weeks.

In the meantime, check out a new podcast interview with Publishing Me on Heather Rose Jone's podcast. And more online stuff coming soon. Sending good thoughts to you all.

One month after being laid off, I have:

Set up new events (see pinned post) for 12/1,12/7 and 12/8, as well as set up a January birthday party for Queen of Swords Press's 3rd birthday at the Irreverent Bookworm on 1/25/20. I also applied for and got Patrick Marsh and Queen of Swords accepted as vendors for 13 Gears Steampunk Fest in February.
Finished reading an author manuscript and am now evaluating.
Did a round of developmental and line edits on The Voyages of Cinrak the Dapper by A.J. Fitzwater. A.J. is a dream to work with and this book is so good! Check out this great new article on current New Zealand queer spec fic and queer spec fic authors which includes quotes from A.J. and from Queen of Swords Press's webmaster, Andi Buchanan.
Did a small editing/mentoring project with a local writer.
Had a new class accepted and scheduled at the Rambo Academy. "Book Promotion on a Budget" will walk you through setting up and budgeting for different levels of promo for your books. Online, January 18th!
Submitted two reprints (one rejected, one under consideration) and drafted most of an article that will go out this week.
Had several informational interviews and will be doing a second interview for one of those jobs after Thanksgiving.
Checked out the African American Heritage Museum and the Hennepin County History Museum.
Saw "Terminator: Dark Fate" (excellent), "Harriet" (good, worth seeing) and "Charlie's Angels (well, win some, lose some).
Started deep cleaning the house, room by room.
Did a crapton of administrativa.
Wrote several thousand words on Blood Moon and another few thousand on other projects.
Slept. A lot. Because apparently I needed to.
Went to Teslacon and gave a talk in Madison and discussed some new projects, about which I will I say more when I can.

So less vegging out and less writing than I originally planned, with the result that this week will be all about those two things. I'm hoping to get the Blood Moon draft done by the end of the year. More bulletins coming soon!

It has been two weeks since I got laid off. During that time, I have talked to a couple of people about jobs and have a preliminary interview next week, right before I go out of town to Madison to do a talk on small press publishing at A Room of One's Own. I've also done some writing, submitted a reprint and submitted a new writing workshop proposal (it's already been accepted - more info coming soon). I added a new page for workshops and presentations on my website, if you are interested in what I do in this arena and/or would like to sign up for a class, invite me to teach, etc. I also wrote an article draft, followed up on a bunch of events and did some house stuff. Tonight, I'll be speaking to the Ampersand Club at DreamHaven Books about running a small press and what goes on in contemporary book publishing. Should be fun!

Also, socializing! So far, I've seen Terminator: Dark Fate and Harriet and liked both of them quite a bit; if you're looking for complex female characters in your movies, these are good choices. The bad reviews are mostly pretty questionable. We also had some friends over for tea so I could try out my new teapot: it is splendid, in case you were wondering. I've also been to dinner with people I haven't seen for a while, attended a culinary benefit for the American Indian College Fund as my friend's guest (the food was all indigenous to Minnesota and was amazing!), went to the Twin Cities Horror Festival and attended a MN Publisher's Roundtable luncheon (I'm a member but their events are always during the day). Friday night, I'll be going to the Gothic Novels event at the Ramsey House, Saturday to the Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery and Sunday to the MIA for "Strong Women, Full of Love," a photo show on lesbian and queer women in the women's land movement. Then a Midwest Independent Publisher's Association meeting on Tuesday, maybe the CD release party for Bad September at the Amsterdam and then on to Madison for the aforementioned talk, followed by TeslaCon.

So do I actually need help? Well, some of this stuff was already in the pipeline and paid for, some of it friends are treating me to, some of it is free and some of it is that my ex-day job is still paying me. That will end within a few weeks, at which point I'll have to contemplate how to pay for our insurance, etc. Queen of Swords had a slow couple of months back in July-August (which is the money that is coming in now) so that requires subsidies, which come from my savings. In addition, I dropped $20k on a new furnace and central air, in July/August, both of which were much needed, but timing was not great in Layoff Landia. Are things dire? No, not yet. Are things stressful? Not too bad, yet. This is me trying to plan to ensure that we're not doing a fundraiser for dental work or something a few months down the road. Is that likely? I genuinely don't know - I've never been an unemployed middle-aged out queer woman whose primary gig is IT before. As with most things, some support before it's an emergency can help it avoid becoming an emergency.

That said, if you are so inclined and can do so, here are a few ways that you can support my wife and I as we deal with this new fun-filled development in our lives. Signal boosts on any/all of these are also much appreciated! New classes coming soon too.

Queen of Swords Press - buy some books! The Press is inching slowly toward being self-sustaining, but if I don't have to pump money into it for a few months, it would be a huge load off my mind (and bank account), not to mention helping it move forward. Our books are available all over the place as well as direct from the website. You can ask your local library to order them in too! Or buy them direct from us at events!
I also have a Patreon that supports the Press (Get novels in progress! Have fun guessing how it is that I do what I do! Win free books!) and there is QoSP Ko-fi if you don't want to commit to pledging, but want to kick in.
My wife, Jana, makes handmade books and boxes and she has an Etsy. She also teaches at MN Center for Book Arts, Carlton College and miscellaneous art centers. Take a class or buy a pretty box! They make great gifts.
Hire us! I write, edit and teach and am both knowledgeable and reasonably entertaining (other people think this too!) on a number of topics. Jana makes custom boxes like portfolios, wedding albums, storage boxes for old books, does repair and offers private tutorials if you want to learn more about bookbinding, box making book repair.
Finally, my bookseller pal, Dave Christenson, is experiencing some hellish health problems. He's been helping me sell off some of my mother's books that made it out here when we moved her out from NYC and we're down to the last book. If you know any Charles Lindbergh fans who might be interested, please point them Dave's way. We'd really like to get this to a new home soon

I’ll be giving a talk at DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis from 6:30-7:45 about small press publishing (also of interest to indie book folks).

Other things going on at the moment or, where I’ve been lately:

New stories drafted for one end of month deadline
Other new story in progress for, you guessed it, other end of month deadline
Article done and submitted
Two story/article pitches sent in, one accepted so far
Got Wireless by Alex Acks up for preorder. Ebook up now, print up by this weekend.
Did a ton of pre-release publicity for the book.
More words on Blood Moon
Occasional collapse
Blurbing people’s books, reading and plotting for my birthday next week.
Day job
Spring walks!

More soon...

Queen of Swords Press' newest title, Wireless and More Steam-Powered Adventures by Alex Acks, is up for preorder now at the Evil Empire, other platforms to follow soon! Print will be up for preorder in the next week or so too. The pretty, pretty cover is by Nathalie Grey of KaNaXa.

Home with a splitting headache and working like a mad thing. Good times! But on the progress front, finished two very short story drafts and starting on a longer one, all due this month, have a new article mostly drafted and making progress on sundry things.

I've also been using my "snowed-in" time to shop for my birthday at the end of the month. It's pretty lowkey, but I've found an infrared massager that's supposed to be good for knees, shoulders and elbows (fingers crossed that this works! I'll link if it does), copies of Peking Opera Blues (Brigitte Lin in a tuxedo - do you really need to know more?) and Sword of Destiny (Crouching Tiger 2, pretty much just about Michelle Yeoh) and literary chocolate from Open Book Chocolates. Normally, there would be books too, but we're tackling the Great Cleanout in prep for the Great Furnace Replacement so we're getting rid of a lot more than we're buying.

Starting with State of the Catherine: I'm stressed out and rather anxious, but other than that, mostly okay. In between my day job, and Jana's teaching load and my Queen of Swords Press work and writing, we squeezed in a trip to the Minneapolis Institute of Art's Egypt's Sunken Cities show on Friday night. This was quite impressive and has some lovely pieces in it, as well as a lot interesting information about the Egyptian pantheon, crossovers with the Greek pantheon and related info. Saturday was a whirlwind of errands and sundry Queen of Swords Press tasks, followed by going to Theatre Unbound's annual 24 hour play festival, the X-Treme Smackdown. TU is our local women's theater and the smackdown features plays written, rehearsed and staged in 24 hours; it's generally a lot of fun and this was no exception. It was also rather poignant in that I brought a good friend who has been diagnosed with ALS and who generally goes to a lot of theater with me. It's not clear how much longer we'll be able to do that, but I'm hoping the day that ends is a long way off. Also, ALS sucks sharp rocks.

Also last night, my friend, playwright Anne Bertram, Theatre Unbound's Artistic Director, has decided to retire from that role after 19 seasons. I'm hoping that gives her more time to write some more amazing plays like "The Good Fight," "Murderess" and "Frankenstein Incarnate." But I will miss her smiling face at the box office.

Friday's other big event was a visit from a representative from the company we will be hiring to replace our furnace later on this year. In our 100 year old house, this will involve ripping out the ancient octopus furnace, including asbestos abatement and building the new furnace inside our basement. We will also need new piping run up through the bathroom (losing our bathroom storage cabinet in the process) in order to heat the attic. The attic will then require some swift contracting work on the insulation and the windows before winter. In return for the mayhem this will cause (we were Marie Kondoing our possessions before everyone else got on the bandwagon, the basement is Jana's studio, the cats and I may have to go hotel it for a few days, etc.), we get a much more energy-efficient furnace that will also replace our window unit air conditioner. And we'll have better control over the humidity in the house. And we can stop living in fear that our ancient furnace will conk out in the middle of Minnesota winter. The price ticket? Adding in the additional attic insulation work, which we don't have a firm estimate on yet, this will run around $25k. Which is so many zeros. And which we would need by April or so. Hence what follows. We've got a start on saving toward this rather vast amount of money, but I want to make sure that we're not in desperate Go Fund Me territory or huge amounts of debt at the end of this so expect more marketing-related posts and blasts for my writing, Queen of Swords Press, Jana's work, our classes and so forth. I'll try not to be super obnoxious about it.

Queen of Swords Press - if I could get the press to the point where I was selling an average of 40 books a week, it would be much less of a drain on the exchequer and would be pretty close to self-sustaining. I've got to come close to this goal this year or changes will have to be made, just saying. Boosts are appreciated too! Our books are available:

Direct from the Press website
Smashwords/B&N/Amazon, etc. here and here and here
Bella Books
Indiebound - your local independent bookstore can order our books in!
Libraries - ebooks available via Overdrive, print directly from Queen of Swords or via Ingram Spark. Most public libraries will order our books in if you request them, just saying.
Various international outlets too!

I'll be teaching classes online in March and April through the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers.
Miscellaneous other stuff: I have a Ko_fi account and a Curious Fictions account. You can pledge or do one-time donations.

Jana:

Has an Etsy shop
Regularly teaches classes at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts
Will be teaching at the Grand Marais Art Colony this summer (July)
Will be teaching at the Arrowmount School and Crafts in Tennessee this summer (June/July)
Is available for custom work and repair

Your support and enthusiasm for our various projects, all of which are done alongside our regular jobs, is much appreciated!

This will be a grab bag post of updatey things. I've got going on right now, even by my standards.

First up, author Jason Sanford interviewed me about Queen of Swords Press on his Patreon market report.
It's Queen of Swords Press newsletter sign up time again! Sign up on our website by 10/15 to be entered in the quarterly ebook drawing!
Twin Cities Book Festival! This Saturday, 10/13 10-5 at the Fairgrounds. Queen of Swords Press will have a table and author Michael Merriam will be our guest.
Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space), my new pirate anthology, will be going up for preorder by next week. Early reviews are quite glowing! ARCs will be available - it releases 12/1 from Queen of Swords Press

In other news, my day job layoff, originally scheduled for the end of this year, has been cancelled, so no frantic job hunting on top of everything else. The world is a shitshow, but I've seen some great local theater, am checking out new events and going to benefits. Getting offline helps a bit, just saying.

Hang in there, folks.

Not for me or my household, but for a good friend who just got a diagnosis for a nasty, unforgiving and almost certain to be fatal far too soon illness. This added to the several other less close friends diagnosed with a range of unpleasant, ghastly and or just plain unpleasant sicknesses and other fun in the last year and change. Add to that my mother is beginning to forget us. I had so hoped that she would be gone before that began to happen.

So between all of that and the national and international news, I'm feeling...less than cheerful.

So I'm doing what I always do and working and trying to deal with things. I went to see "The Little Stranger" yesterday with friends and found it okay, but not great. I've drafted an introduction for Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space) and am about to embark on writing some article proposals. I've written 500 words of new fiction today and am hoping to break 1000. My day job layoff that I've been expecting for the last three years just got cancelled so I'm trying to wrap my brain around that (and the fact that I do not have time off to look forward to. My vacation time exists, but it's rolled up with my sick time, so I burned through most of my existing accumulation last winter and spring). It's good to have one less thing to stress about though. And the cats are snuggling with me a lot because it's a bit cooler (and maybe they know I'm upset).

In other news, I'm off to St. Cloud on Friday to give a reading and a talk at the Great River Regional Library and table at St. Cloud Pride. Both should be pretty interesting. Fingers crossed that it doesn't rain on Saturday. A friend loaned me a craft tent, but I'm not sure that we can set up easily. After that, it's off to Cape Code and Edward Gorey and pirates, so I'm trying to focus on that as much as I can. Now to go do some stuff so i can be more available to my friend when she needs me.

I'm releasing the preliminary TOC for my new pirate anthology, Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space), due out from Queen of Swords Press in December, 2018. I am really excited about this anthology. I ended up with contributors from 8 different countries (including the U.S.), including award-winning authors and first sale authors, and settings that range from the Trojan War to outer space. And there are gay, lesbian, bisexual, genderqueer and straight pirate protagonists. The cover artist will be Stephanie Johnson, who also did the logo for Queen of Swords and the covers of several anthos that I have stories in. More news coming soon!

Ginn Hale - “Treasured Island”
Joyce Chng - “Saints and Bodhisattvas”
Geonn Cannon - “Rib of Man”
Elliott Dunstan - "Andromache's War
Soumya Mukherjee - “The Dead Pirate’s Cave”
A.J. Fitzwater - “Search for the Heart of Ocean”
Ashley Deng - “The Seafarer”
Michael Merriam - “Tenari”
Ed Grabianowski - “The Doomed Amulet of Erum Vahl”
Megan Arkenberg - “Between the Devil and Deep Blue Sea”
Peter Golubock - “After the Deluge”
Caroline Sciriha - “A Crooked Road Home”
Su Haddrell - “A Smuggler's Pact”
Mharie West - “The Serpent's Tail”
Matisse Mozer - “Rosa, the Dimension Pirate”

On the writing front, I've had a personal essay accepted for the forthcoming Queer Voices anthology to be released by the MN Historical Society Press in the nearish future. More news as I have it. This essay is "Strange, But Not a Stranger" and I originally wrote it for the late, great Cheryl B. for an antho that never got published. It is the piece I read at AWP Minneapolis at the bi writer's reading, the one about community and identity, if you were at that.

I also have at least one piece accepted for the Outwrite DC benefit anthology, but I'm not sure which one they're accepting. I subbed two and they seem to like both? Awaiting confirmation.

Taking a couple of days off this week to work on a game proposal or two and get some traction on other projects. I'm editing the pirate antho as well as working on my own stuff so it'll be full steam ahead for a bit.

I just learned that I have had a personal essay accepted (contingent on an edit) for the MN Historical Society Press's Queer Voices anthology. More news as I have it!

In Queen of Swords Press News, the Smashwords July sale is still in progress. You can get our entire ebook catalogue for the cost of a not very spendy dinner out (and it helps the Press grow! Which greatly improves our longterm prospects!). If Smashwords is not your thing, we now have direct sales off the website (Kindle/standard ebook only for now) - Paypal or Square, take your pick. This month's newsletter also included the table of contents for the pirate anthology I'm editing, Scourge of the Seas of Time (and Space). That will be going up on the Queen of Swords Press site soon, then trickle out from there. Cover art coming soon!

Had a good weekend, with a MN Lynx game on Friday night with friends, then blueberry picking at Rush River Produce in Wisconsin on Saturday, followed by lunch at the Smiling Pelican Bakeshop and shopping at Cultural Cloth, Secret Heart Gallery and Limbo Records in Maiden Rock. After that, we drove down to Alma, Wisconsin, to see the Castlerock Museum of Arms and Armor and have coffee at the gay-owned Fire & Ice Coffee and Ice Cream Shop. Both are must-sees! The ice cream shop is part of a hotel (same owner) and has a glorious garden courtyard. The decor is eclectic and quite cool and we are now eyeing a trip down to stay at the hotel. After that, we drove back up to Stockholm, WI for a trip to The Palette (a kitchen store with useful things) and the bookstore whose name I always forget. The bookstore owner fired up his Wimhurst Machine and proudly showed off his Tesla coil and we bought a book on Tesla, all of which was quite fun.

Sunday was a work and Mom visit day. There was also bonus fun when I stumbled off a step ladder while trying to cut back the neighbor's tree from the power line. So now I have a sprained ankle and the neighbor is supposed to get their landlord to cut it back before I call the utility company. Sigh. Just a general nuisance, though it will be worse than that if it damages the power line.

On tap for this week, more work, healing my ankle, actual writing, Killjoys (Season 3), a reading at Quatrefoil Library and a play.

I went and volunteered at a work thing on Thursday, helping recycle a bunch of day job office supplies with a group of students from one of the international high schools. It was okay (the schools that send students get a bunch of office supplies), if a tad disorganized. I gather it was a first run on this. I do have to agree with my colleague who completely freaked at the number of hanging and regular folders we were putting in recycling - it does seem like a missed opportunity for reuse. But we did pull out a bunch of stuff; the teachers took some, I grabbed a couple of usable books to donate/give to various places (my mother's nursing home was pleased at getting a couple of medical dictionaries that staff could use for studying for certificates and such, for example), the schools got a bunch of stuff. And it didn't go to the landfill, so that was good. But yeah. So many file folders....

Thursday evening, I went to a PFund Foundation reception for the grantees that we selected for awards back in February and March. I've been on the Community Review Board for the last couple of years. It's a fascinating process: the applications for trans and genderqueer folks who are people of color and/or immigrants get special attention because of the various social obstacles and lack of support they often face. Then there's criteria for community leadership, contributions to their communities, what their plans are, whether they are in North or South Dakota (because there's not a lot of support there) and some other criteria. After we do our review, which includes an online review process, online evaluations, then several hours in which we thoroughly discuss our favs at a meeting at the Foundation, the Board adds some additional folks based on targeted funds. All told, 32 people got funding this year for a bunch of amazing work, everything from researching femme-centered spaces, to traveling to international conferences to going back to school to organizing events for LGBTQ+ POC folks in different areas. So good stuff all around and I'm happy that I bumped my twice a year donation to a monthly sustainer schedule. And it's great to work on something that is majority-run by POC folks and mostly funds POC and immigrant queer folks.

Friday was the new Print Matters show, formerly known as the Twin Cities Antiquarian Book Fair. It takes place at the MN Fairgrounds in an building without air conditioning during what is often one of the hottest weeks in summer and I think they're going to have to evaluate that. But we went, we bought a few books and I bought a signed Edward Gorey poster from a delightful older gay couple who were celebrating their 46th anniversary. We also walked a lot on concrete, which becomes pertinent shortly.

Saturday, I was really hoping to go to the Save Our Future (No Baby Jails) March, so inevitably, I woke up with a migraine and my bad leg acting up (every now and again it has enough of my shenanigans, which in this case was all the Thursday and Friday running around) so we had to cancel. Instead, it was a day of slow moving productivity and redecorating the bedroom (around the new Gorey). The bedroom looks much better, and other than having to take a hot bath to be functional at all, I was doing somewhat better at the end of the day. And there was news! I am applying to do a gaming-related thing and have moved up in the process! Next up, actual proposals. More on that when/if there's more on that. Did a few other Press-related things, did some writing, did some reading. Progress!

Book sale! Lest I forget, all Queen of Swords Press titles are on sale at Smashwords for July! Smashwords pays a higher percentage of royalties than Amazon does and well, they're not Amazon, so you should go check them out and pick up a few ebooks, preferably including ours.

Other Me (Emily L. Byrne) has her first novel out! Medusa's Touch is a fast-paced sexy lesbian science fiction romance and you can read more about it here. Emily has had a very good week, seeing as it also included the acceptance of her story "Rainbow's End" to Best Lesbian Erotica of the Year Vol. 3, the acceptance of "Nights in Red Satin" to Rose Caraway's anthology The Dirty Librarian's Dirty Thirty Vol. 3 and the reprint of her story "Phone, Sex, Chocolate" in Rachel Kramer Bussel's reissue of Candy Lovers.

In short, Emily is currently having a better writing year than Catherine, but we're working on. Catherine is finishing off pirate submissions and sending out a bunch of rejections (sorry!), but will be moving on to acceptances soon. SOON. I promise.

Otherwise, I'm off to WisCon tomorrow. If you'll be there, please one and hear me on the Beyond Batty Old Ladies panel and come to the Murder on the Titania party on Sunday night. It will be fun!

I'll also be adding a new event in June - updates coming soon.

A large market listing helpfully listed the call for my pirate anthology...one week before it closed. So I got swamped with last minute subs. I was on the ball and reading and sorting the subs I had (yeses, noes and maybes) but have to scramble to get caught up. Le sigh. On the bright side, I got submissions from the U.S., the U.K., Canada, Singapore, India, Malta, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Denmark, Argentina and The Netherlands. And there's been quite a few good stories. It will be a fine, fun anthology when it's done given the quality of storytelling that I'm seeing. I'll be sending out the first round of rejections this weekend, acceptances later on in the week, depending on how things go.

This weekend will be the mad scramble to get things sorted for WisCon and the Sunday night party. I'm also planning events, figuring out my tiny ad budget and other fun itsy-bitsy publisher stuff. Murder on the Titania is getting some great reviews, which is lovely, though sales have not yet caught up to critical enthusiasm. Medusa's Touch by Emily L. Byrne lands next week, thus marking the publication of my second novel. This puts me up to nearly a half a million words published, which is kind of cool as milestones go.

Blood Moon, the sequel to Silver Moon, is inching along, as is a novella project that I've been poking at for awhile and hoping to get done soon. I'm also working on a new Patreon post on the history of LGBTQ comics and I need to get moving on some proposals. Meanwhile, the basement is torn up for sink and drain work, I have to get back to someone about garage repair and someone else about starting on the long-delayed attic renovation. Still no word on whether my current job will still be around after November or so. And I need to do some serious exercising and drop some weight to calm my GP down. Because no stress at all. Back to the grindstone, one foot in front of the other...

It's been a full week! Lots of writing, recording of a podcast and looking at plans for the year ahead.
So far, I've confirmed ClexaCon in Vegas, have in proposals and such for WisCon in Madison, confirmed OutWrite in D.C. and confirmed the St. Cloud Public Library for out of town events. Currently talking to folks about perhaps collaborating on several winter events, including Geek Girl Con in Seattle in October. Stay tuned!

This weekend is the annual (and fabulous), Women's Prison Book Project Breakfast on Saturday and the Cedar Commissions Concerts both Friday and Saturday. I won tickets from KFAI to both nights so I'm looking forward to bringing friends along to hear some new local musicians that we haven't heard before. I'm particularly excited to hear Julia Hobart's feminist response to murder ballads. Should be interesting!

Next week's adventures include a production of Pirates of Penzance at Park Square Theater for Valentine's Day, plus more writing - I've got deadlines and new projects and a novel to finish and more stuff. I have also started applying for internal postings at my day job so we'll see how that goes.

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Dwelling in Probabilities

Catherine Lundoff's blog

Entries tagged with writing

Not so weekly accountability post

Weekly Accountability Post, Part the 4th

2020 in review - Writing, Publishing and Teaching

Updates, so many updates!

Wrapping up November

New podcast interview and misc.

Recovering from one helluva a week...

Catching up, again. Sort of.

Catching up...

Tonight!

Preorder and updates

What I'm up to, the new furnace and related topics

Events and news

Working through bad news...

The TOC for SCOURGE and other fun things

New acceptance and miscellaneous fun, signal boosting and such

Update and book sale

All the things!

Catching up, sort of...