When Words Collide is kinda my jam. Technically apparently it’s a ‘Festival for Readers and Writers’ but I just call it my favourite convention, and I go every year.
There is a ridiculous amount of programming at WWC. I’m not kidding. There are twelve separate programming tracks, and it’s not like there are three real program tracks and a whole bunch of filler. Nope. All of these tracks are packed full of awesomeness so I wanted a bit more time to take it all in. So this year my schedule is a bit more laid back than on previous years 🙂
Friday
1pm — Live Action Slush: Early Bird Edition (Fireside)
Bring the 1st page of your short fiction manuscript to be anonymously read aloud and
receive comments from our editors.
This was the first ever panel I was on (at WWC or any convention ever) and it was so much fun I ask to be put on it every year.
5pm — Blue Pencil Session (Heritage)
Bring the first page or two of your manuscript (max 1000 words, typed, double-spaced) for
1-on-1 feedback from an editor.
These are booked ahead of time and I’m fully booked already (though there is usually a wait ist you can get on in case someone cancels). If you are one of the people coming to see me it’s a really good idea to send your work ahead of time so we don’t spend all our time together with me reading.
Saturday
11am — Equus Book Social (Fireside)
Whether winged or at home in the water, mechanical or mythological, the equines that gallop through the pages of the Equus anthology span the fantasy spectrum. From steampunk-inspired stories and tales that brush up against horror to straight-up fantasy, one theme connects them all: freedom. Join several contributors (and a couple special guests)
as they read short excerpt from their stories.
This is going to be awesome. I’m just sayin’…
12pm — Tyche Books Presents (Fireside)
Tyche Books introduces new books for 2017. Join the editors and attending authors for teaser readings and Q&A.
Okay, so I’m not actually ON this panel, my book from Tyche is a 2018 title, however since this panel immediately follows the Equus panel I can’t see any reason why people shouldn’t just hang around and watch it too 😉
4pm — Edge Publishing Presents (Fireside)
I’ll be talking briefly about the upcoming Tesseracts anthology that Greg Bechtel and I just finished putting together. Mostly, however, there will be readings from Edge authors 🙂
8pm — Autographs
I will be taking part in the mass autograph signing as will many Equus and D is for Dinosaur contributors so if you have a copy of either anthology this is the best place to collect a whole bunch of signatures 🙂
Sunday
2pm — Featured Author (Edge Publishing booth in the Vendor Room)
I’ll be spending an hour hanging out at the Edge Publishing booth in the vendor room. Last time I was the Featured Author I managed to wrangle two other people (Cat McDonald and Sandra Wickham) into joining me so we had a trifecta of awesome featured authors, so who knows what this year will hold? Swing by to talk about, well, whatever you wanna talk about. It’ll be fun 🙂
4pm — Collaborative Publishing (Fairview)
How HAUNTED HOSPITALS was born, created and developed (inspiration, origin story, how we divided the book up, and tools we used). This workshop provides insights on how to successfully collaborate on a writing project.
Haunted Hospitals wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for When Words Collide. Mark and I talk about it specifically and also more generally about collaboration 🙂
If you’re going to be at When Words Collide I hope to see you there! And please don’t be shy, even if we’ve never met before if you see me, please come up and say hi 🙂
When Words Collide was last weekend and it was amazing (as always). I can’t begin to contain all the awesome things that happened in one blog post, but here’s a very brief snapshot of my weekend:
This was the view out my car window as we drove down to Calgary for the convention. One of my favourite things about Alberta is our amazing skies. I lived in Norwich, England for a brief time and complained (probably the whole time >_<) about the absence of sky — it all felt very claustrophobic. I don’t think my boyfriend at the time understood at all what I was talking about until he came to visit and saw where I’d come from. I know Montana branded itself ‘Big Sky Country’ but really, it doesn’t get an exclusive claim to that 😉
My first panel was the early bird live action slush, which I really enjoyed. As I promised last year, I put a page of my own into the pile this time… and was stinkin’ tense the whole time my fellow panelists were giving it feedback. It was fun, when it was my turn to speak, to say, “That one was mine. Thank you.” but I heard from one member of the audience that they could tell it was mine from the moment Edward Willett began to read because I was so tense looking. Good to know! LOL
The mythology panel I was on was fantastic (S.G. Wong is an amazeballs moderator) and one con highlight for me came immediately after it when Athen, of Athen’s Book Picks, asked me to sign his copy of Sirens. Athen has a great blog where he reviews children’s, MG and YA Books and I had a lovely (but short) chat with him about that. It makes my heart glad to see young people not just caring about books but caring passionately about them.
We didn’t have placards for everyone so we improvised 🙂
Cat and Megan colouring. As you do.
Sandra WickHAM
Jo, Sandra and I
The autograph signing had a bit of confusion and a shortage of tables. If we hadn’t all wanted to sit together we totally could have found spots at various tables around the room but we DID want to sit together so Jo and Cat suggested we snag some of the refreshment tables and improvise. It turned out we were totally punk enough to do that, and we set up a super signing assembly line of awesome. And coloured* in between selling and signing books — as you do.
The hotel gave out a different style of mug for this year’s convention. Seen here with a copy of Sirens for scale.
<.<
What?
🙂
Sunday at noon I was the featured author at the EDGE booth in the dealers room. I ran into Cat on my way in and when she asked what I was doing I said I was being featured. “Oh, this I need to see,” said Cat, and came with me… and was promptly talked into being featured “like big shots” alongside me. Soon after that we also talked Sandra Wickham into being a big shot with us:
…which was even more fun than you can imagine and at one point involved squealing and happy jumping hugs. Because that’s how we roll.
After the EDGE booth party it was time for the Sirens launch. It was a lot of fun. We started off with Cat McDonald reading from “Notefisher” — her surreal story about getting stoned in the woods to forget that you want to kill yourself. Then it was V.F. LeSann’s turn to read from “Nautilus”. Megan Fennel and Leslie VanZwol are each one half of V.F. LeSann and they played rock, paper scissors to decide who was going to read. Leslie won/lost and gave a lovely reading.
Pat Flewwelling followed that up with a great reading of some of the darker parts of her story, “Moth to an Old Flame” and Sandra Wickham followed her with an engaging share of part of “Experience”. I felt a little bad for L.S. Johnson having to follow on Sandra’s heels… right up until L.S. knocked her reading of ‘We are Sirens’ out of the park and made me cry!
(Yes, I probably could have used the word ‘follow’ more in those last two paragraphs :-p)
The pitch sessions were a whirlwind of people telling me about their stories and blowing my mind, again and again, with creative ideas and plots. These pitches were five minutes each, and followed one right after the other. Many of the novels sound fantastic but the experience (it was my first time doing pitches) was rather dizzying and by the time it was over I was glad it had been my last session of the con because I really needed some quiet time to catch my breath LOL
And then it was time to go home. Have I mentioned how I feel about Alberta skies?
And then we were home!
Super big shout outs to Tyche Books for selling the Magical Menageries series at their table for me. Because of them we sold out of copies of Sirens and even sold a few of the older anthologies as well!
For me, the side effects of attending a convention include feeling recharged by seeing so many of my friends in the same place–many I don’t get to see in three dimensions anywhere else, inspired to get back to work by the conversation, panels and hearing people read… and a raging case of imposter syndrome. That last bit is compounded by a thing I’ve decided to call ‘Con Brain’. Are you nodding along already? Do you know what I’m about to say?
Con Brain.
Example #1: I was at a party and you looked over to see Sandra Wickham, Sandra Kasturi and S.G. Wong (whose name is also Sandra) all sitting together. I tapped tap S.G. Wong on the shoulder, fully intending to say, “Sandra, Sandra and Sandra! It’s the Sandra club!” (because they probably haven’t already all heard that five times already) but what happened is I said, “Sandra, Sandra and–” and I looked at S.G. Wong’s name tag and for some reason, for just a moment, I was like, “Wait! Stop! Don’t say Sandra! Her name is Susan! Quick! Change gears!” so I said, “Sandra, Sandra and Susan! It’s the S club!”
*facepalm*
Sandra was awesome about it. Because she’s awesome. But really? Really?
…have I mentioned that my mother’s name was Sandra? If I was gonna mess up a name…
Example #2: This one is funnier. At the Sirens launch I was like, “The publisher for this book is When Words Collide and…” eventually the audience (and Sirens) stopped laughing long enough to remind me that the convention is When Words Collide and my publisher is World Weaver Press. WWC / WWP. My defense is that they are only one letter apart.
Sheesh!
I’m calling this ‘Con Brain’ because it seemed to get worse as the con went on. And I don’t think it was so much a case of just normal slips of the tongue so much as my brain saying, “Dude! We’re doing so much more adulting and peopling than we usually do! I’m burning out so I’m just gonna flip this switch for a while. You don’t need to word, right? Right? Good…”
Still, you can bet that I’ll be doing it all again next year because so far no one has held my oopses against me and man, I loves me some When Words Collide!
Do you see this guy? He’s a crow who is a scarecrow. Dude. It was so perfect I just had to have him, but I couldn’t figure out a way to justify it. We aren’t really the kind of family who uses seasonal decorations in their house, he’s not really outside-friendly and I’m trying to purge as much stuff from our house as possible. Still, despite all that I really wanted to bring him home. Then I hit on an idea–pure gold. I could bring him with me to my vendor table at Pure Spec and he could hang out there as sort of a mascot for Corvidae and Scarecrow. What’s more, I could hold a contest for people to help me name him. So that’s what I’m doing.
I have a vendor table at Pure Spec this year. If you’ll be attending you ought to stop by, not only to check out all the amazing titles I will be selling but also to suggest a name for my friend here. Every person who suggests a name gets $1 off any of my books.
When Words Collide is this weekend and in addition to launching Scarecrow and Corvidae there, I’m participating in some programming as well. This is where you can find me:
I’m super stoked about the launch, of course, but also about the fact I’m doing three Live Action Slush sections. That was my favourite panel last year so I’m excited to do it again. Times three 🙂
I will have several titles available in the Merchant’s Corner:
So this is it. The time of year where I look back at the goals I set for 2014 and find out how well I did at reaching them. What’s usually most interesting about this time for me is seeing how my priorities have shifted over the course of the year, the number of things which were really important to me at the beginning of 2014 which I was happy to back burner (which is totally a verb) but the end.
Also, I have a rule. I may explain failures, but not excuse them. Who wants to read a whole blog post of self-justifications and excuses? Not me LoL
So. 2014 goals. How’d I do?
bold = success
tl;dr — Overall, it was a pretty freaking awesome year 🙂
~*~
Health
No drinking pop. Period.
Lose 20 lbs
Lower blood pressure (bonus points if I get to reduce my medication)
Run 5k
Didn’t do so awesomely here. Or well at all, really. I’m still drinking a lot of pop (diet pop, for better or for worse) and my weight has remained steady. Much, much too high, but steady. I *was* making (very slow) progress on that 5k run thing before plantar fasciitis reared its ugly head but once it did I was less than enthusiastic about actively stretching to relieve it or exercising in a way which didn’t aggravate it so… pretty sure that counts as an excuse, not an explanation. The only thing I did manage here was to lower my blood pressure. Alas, I did not get to reduce my medication in the process so no bonus points for me. *pout*
~*~
School
This degree is taking a ridonkulously long time. I need to finish another course toward completing it this year. Bonus points if I manage two, but it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that this is honestly more of a hobby than anything and it must not negatively effect my work.
I didn’t find the time to finish even one course toward this degree. In fact as of last month I became inactive in my program, which is kinda crappy but I felt like my writing and editing took off to such an extent that it would be a bad choice for me to prioritize school over them at this point in time. So what I’m saying is, I’m okay with having failed to meet this goal. I think it was the right decision.
I am really, really, really enjoying editing anthologies right now and I’d like to have at least one more under contract with a publisher by the end of 2014.
I need to come up with a way to set actual concrete goals for promotion. Not only for Fae and Metastasis, but everything I edit and/or publish. Oh hey!
Figure out a way to set concrete goals for promotion. Set concrete goals for promotion.
Solicit writers for B is for (haha not telling yet!) and begin that process
Continue to edit and publish Niteblade, keeping it something I can be very proud of.
Complete the edits on Grammy’s book
Wow. What a year it’s been under Editing / Publishing. Going to tackle all these one at a time…
Audience at Fae Launch at WWC
First, I did finish FAE and I promoted it to the best of my ability. That included getting over my anxiety about holding a physical launch party, and making sure I always had copies of the book on hand at every convention I went to (and I went to three) to sell. Some of these efforts were successful (the party at When Words Collide, for example) and some, like the postcards with discount codes I printed up for World Fantasy were abject failures. Live and learn, right?
I was also successful in pursuing other anthology ideas. My goal had been to have at least one more under contract with a publisher by the end of the year, but I smashed that to bits. I have two anthologies with signed contracts which I’m even now finalizing the tables of contents for and which will be published this year. They are SCARECROW and CORVIDAE. I also have a verbal agreement to begin reading submissions for a fourth anthology for World Weaver Press (tentatively entitled SIRENS: Sea and Sky) this year and publishing it next year.
I did not find any awesome ways to increase promotion efforts for METASTASIS, but even so it earned out all its production costs and began sending small (but emotionally meaningful) donations to support cancer research.
C.S. MacCath reading her A is for Apocalypse story at WFC 2014
I also didn’t come up with a way to set concrete goals for promotion, but I did get far better at tracking the results of promotions, so I’m going to call that a step in the right direction.
We held another successful fundraiser for Niteblade in 2014, raising $510 and (even better for my ego) collecting a whole lot of really nice things Niteblade authors had to say about it.
I didn’t produce a NaNoLJers anthology last year, but that is because there wasn’t much in the way of interest.
A IS FOR APOCALYPSE is awesome. I did, in fact, publish it and promoted it as well as I could. I think in some ways it suffered for being launched so close to FAE but despite that sales exceeded my expectations and it has been very well-received including having stories from it on people’s top five lists,end of the year reading recommendations and getting a handful of nice reviews here, there and everywhere.
Not only did I solicit writers for B IS FOR BROKEN I’m nearly finished editing those stories and I’ve settled on the themes for the next two alphabet anthologies and let the authors know about them so they can decide to sign up, or not, in a leisurely fashion.
Niteblade had a fantastic year with me at the helm and though I’m partly saddened that 2015 will be its last year, mostly it feels like the right thing to do. End on a high note and go out in style 🙂
I completed the edits on Grammy’s book. Added the whole new section she wanted appended to the back, got it formatted, published and shipped to her in time for her to give out copies at Christmas. So, basically, I rocked it 🙂
~*~
Writing
2014 is the year of the novel. It is because I say it is, damn it!
Complete the novel currently known as ‘Hollow’
By ‘complete’ I mean have that sucker ready to start querying agents about
Complete the first draft of at least two other novels
One of these may be one of my pen name projects
Self-publish the zombie poetry book and complete my other plans for it
Write 350 words a day, five days a week. So 1,750 words a week.
Yes. A week. It’s not huge, but I’ve got a lot of other stuff on this list, damn it! :-p
Bundle up and self-publish more of my reprints
Complete sekkrit collaborative project
Participate in NovPAD and/or April PAD
Anything with the word ‘NaNo’ in the title is optional
…except NaNoLJers. Set up prompts for odd-numbered Mondays
Well, despite my intentions 2014 turned into the year of the anthology, not the novel. Hollow is done. Mostly. I had to do a whole extra draft I hadn’t counted on, but now it only needs a final spit polish and it will be ready to start querying. It’s finding the time to do that polish that is turning into a tricky thing.
I also sold my Aphanasian novel, SHADOWS, to World Weaver Press. That required a lot of re-writing and I anticipate at least one, possibly two more passes before it’s ready for release. It’s scheduled to be released some time this year though, so we’ll have to wait and see when that comes to pass 🙂
I did self-publish my zombie poetry book, and a collection of funny zombie reprints. I didn’t find time to ‘complete my other plans’ for the zombie poetry book, but who knows, perhaps a miracle will happen and I’ll find a way to do that this year LOL Could happen…
Still not finished my sekkrit collaborative project with Marge Simon, but working on it. Still working on it. Kind of like the tortoise in that story…
I participated in NovPAD and April PAD. I was not super successful at either but… I got a few poems out of them. I also participated in NaNoWriMo, however in recognition of how busy I was I re-named it MicroWriMo and aimed for 10k words. I wrote just under 8k. Meh.
Also, I had prompts set up and scheduled for odd-number Mondays for NaNoLJers and then I did something very stupid and deleted them all. So, that was a big fail right there.
~*~
Reading
Read at least 50 books.
Have 25% be non-fiction
According to Goodreads I read 63 books (I really ought to keep track of how many stories I read in slush LOL) 11 of which were non-fiction. So, I surpassed the main goal but fell short on the mini one. Of those books my favourites, in no particular order, were:
So… the good news about all the things I missed on this list is that they are all still on my radar, and aside from A Month of Letters I can do them anytime. I’m surprised I missed A Month of Letters this year, so surprised I had to go and check my blog archives to make sure I really had. Weird. I do write snail mail sporadically over the course of the year anyway but historically I’ve really gotten a lot out of A Month of Letters so I’ll have to work pretty hard at re-adding that next year.
Also, I went to three conventions. When Words Collide is my new all-time favourite convention ever. Plus I also attended my second World Fantasy and went to Pure Spec here in Edmonton. The highlight of Pure Spec, for me, was the Character Death Matches (I participated and got my butt kicked. Fun!)
~*~
And there you have it. My year in review or, more specifically, a look at the goals I set last year with an eye to seeing how successful I was.
On paper I wasn’t super successful, but as I mentioned at the start of this (very long) entry, it’s always interesting to see how my priorities shift and change over the year. While my health-based priorities remain the same and I really need to devote more time, energy and effort to them I’m perfectly good with the progress I made on my other goals. Writing a lot of novels got pushed back a bit in favour of editing a lot of anthologies, for example. I’m good with that, and very proud of the results.
I know a great number of my friends struggled through 2014 in ways that meant getting dressed each morning was a victory, but overall, 2014 was a very good year for me. How did it treat you? Did you accomplish most of the things you set out to do? Are you happy with what you managed?
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to see what 2015 has to offer. I’ll be making a new set of goals for myself and sharing them here in the near future. If you do the same please let me know, I like seeing the goals other people set for themselves, sometimes they help inspire mine 🙂
We held the Canadian launch of Fae this past weekend at When Words Collide in Calgary.
I was so nervous. SO nervous. I’d never hosted a book launch before, hell, I’d never even spoken at a convention before*. So. Freaking. Nervous.
I shouldn’t have been, it was amazing.
To start I said a (very) few words, then turned the floor over to Laura VanArendonk Baugh. Laura had come all the way from Indianapolis to attend the launch (and the convention) and it was fantastic to get to meet her and hang out. Laura read some of her amazing Fae story, And Only The Eyes of Children and definitely left the audience wanting more.
Oh! The audience. Did I mention the audience?
When Laura said she would be coming to the convention I said something like, “That would be great, but I’ve never done one of these so I don’t know how many people to expect. It could just be me, you and Adria playing pinochle.” She came anyway, and dudes? It wasn’t just the three of us. We had a full room:
That’s not actually everyone but it gives you an idea. Definitely not just us playing cards 🙂
One of the biggest reasons we had a great turnout is because of Adria Laycraft, here she is reading from her Fae story, Water Sense:
Adria was a juggernaut when it came to inviting people to the launch (both this physical one in Calgary and our online one at Facebook where she won a prize for being the person to invite the most people).
Anywho… Adria read from her story, Water Sense. She was a strong and engaging reader and though I’d (obviously) read her story several times before it was great to hear it come alive in her voice.
Adria recently co-edited an anthology called Urban Green Man with Janice Blaine, and thinking that green men and fairies go together incredibly well, I’d invited her to have some of the contributors to that anthology read as well. Thus, we were lucky enough to hear some work from it too including a poem by Peter Storey and stories from Randy McCharles and Billie Milholland.
We sold a couple copies of Fae at the launch on Friday afternoon but we also had copies available downstairs at the shared author’s table (which I understand is run by IFWA). On Saturday afternoon I got a Facebook message from Adria which said, essentially, “Rhonda, the dealer’s room is sold out of copies of Fae, do you have any more?”
At the same time I feel bad for the people who wanted to get a copy but couldn’t. If you still need to pick up a copy, follow this link. That will take you to World Weaver Press’s Fae page. From there you can order copies directly from them or you can pick up a copy from your favourite retailer using WWP’s direct links to places it is available.
-or-
Ask your local bookstore or library to order it in.
In the meantime, I’m totally calling our launch of Fae at WWC a success. And who knows, maybe that’s where we’ll launch Corvidae and Scarecrow next year. You just never know 😉
Some more pictures from our launch, I apologise for the quality of these pictures but I had to choose between bringing my good camera and fewer books or my crappy camera and more books. I went with the crappy camera and more books… which we sold out, so I think I made the right choice 🙂
Laura VanArendonk Baugh and Adria Laycraft
Fae Launch
Adria Laycraft
Peter Storey
Audience at Fae Launch at WWC
Billie Milholland
Randy McCharles
*I don’t usually get nervous speaking in public, but there’s something about talking about any of my books that is a big exception to that LOL
I love writing conventions. I’ve only been to a few, but every time I leave feeling exhausted, but also invigorated, inspired and motivated.
During his pre-convention marketing workshop Mark Leslie spoke about serendipity and creating the opportunity to make connections by attending things like conventions and festivals. The whole time he was talking about it I was just nodding along with him. Every time I’ve attended a convention-type-thing I’ve met new people and made new friends and connections. Attending When Words Collide last weekend was no exception.
I met Laura VanArendonk Baugh and Adria Laycraft who have stories in Fae, Leslie and Megan who I’ve connected with online for what feels like forever but is actually closer to a few months, people I share tables of contents with, publishers who’ve believed in my work enough to include it in their titles, local writers who I somehow hadn’t managed to connect with before and lots of other new people (readers, writers, editors, marketers… the list goes on and on…).
And I got to re-connect with people who I only get to see at events like this.
Also? I got to have conversations like these (vagueified–which should totally be a word–anonymized and paraphrased):
~*~
Him: Can I see your tattoo?
Me: Blah blah blah… as you can see I like corvidae. In fact, I’m editing an anthology called Corvidae, and a companion anthology entitled Scarecrow.
Him: I have a scarecrow story, how would I send that to you?
~*~
Me: I’ve always wanted to write a book about THIS THING which totally falls into the same category as a lot of your work but I lack the expertise and there never seems to be enough time in the day.
Him: Do you want to write it together?
Me: Uh, lemmethinkaboutthat–YES^
~*~
Friend: Oh my god! After that panel where part of my story was read I was approached by a publisher and asked to submit!
(Note: When awesome things like this happen to your friends, it’s almost as cool as when they happen to you. It’s amazing to be there in person to help them celebrate.)
~*~
Me: I can’t wait to read your book, when does it come out?
Her: *tells me*
Me: I don’t know if I can wait that long. Do you need blurbs? If I like it as much as I think I will…
Her: Oh, that would be great. I hate asking people for blurbs!
~*~
Awesomesauce Editor, after reading & marking up the opening to Hollow^: I like this. I really like this. Close your eyes and listen to this *reads my (edited) story back to me*
Me: Wow. I didn’t know I could write that well!
~*~
Post on Facebook: Rhonda! The dealer’s room is sold out of copies of Fae, do you have any more?^
~*~
A couple different people (!!): Rhonda Parrish? I’ve heard of you… (and they didn’t mean in a bad way LoL)
~*~
Me, right before my first panel ever in life: Dude, I’m really, really, really nervous.
Fellow Panelist, who is awesome #1: Come sit over here beside me.
Me, after being on my first panel ever in life: Oh man! I made it through and I’m pretty sure I didn’t even say anything stupid! (my goal for every panel was just not to say something stupid. I think I only failed once LoL)
Fellow Panelist, who is awesome #2: You were great. Hugs!
~*~
My point? Conventions rock. I’ve never regretted attending one, and I had an especially awesome time at When Words Collide. Such a good time, in fact, that I’m already registered to attend it again next year. Maybe I’ll see you there?
^more on this later or much later as is appropriate given the subject
Uh, so first of all, I’m using an image that isn’t the cover of Fae exclusively because the front page of my blog is beginning to look far too homogenous for my comfort LOL Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely ADORE the cover of Fae, but I need to change things up a bit now and then LOL
There are a couple of upcoming Fae-related events I want to make sure everyone knows about. Firstly tomorrow (Tuesday) we are going to have a Fae-centric #SFFLunch chat on Twitter:
Our next #SFFlunch twitter chat is Aug 5, Noon-2pm EDT, w a special faery theme! #FaeAnthology
Secondly, we’re holding our Canadian launch at When Words Collide on Friday at 3pm. You do not need a ticket to the convention to attend our book launch so if you’re in the neighbourhood please pop by. We’ll be having brownies (heh!), coffee, giveaways and readings with plenty of time to hang out and socialise. Adria Laycraft and Laura VanArendonk Baugh will be there to sign and read, plus we’ll be joined by several of the people behind Urban Green Man: An Archetype of Renewal.
I think it will be a lot of fun and I hope to see you there 🙂
“The Fae prove treacherous allies and noble foes in this wide-ranging anthology from Rhonda Parrish that stretches boundaries of folk tale and legend. These fairy stories are fully enmeshed in the struggles of today, with dangerous beings from under the hills taking stances against the exploitation of children and the oppression of women, yet offering bargains in exchange for their aid that those in desperate need had best think twice about accepting. There’s no Disney-esque flutter and glitter to be found here — but there are chills and thrills aplenty.”
-Mike Allen, author of Unseaming and editor of Clockwork Phoenix
It’s out! Fae is out in the world, and so far, the world seems to like it as much as I do.
I’d meant to make this blog post last week, but honestly I think all the blogging I did leading up to Fae’s release burned me out, and also I’m in this weird space where my husband and daughter are on summer vacation but I’m not. Which means I’m working, but only sorta. So… the blog post is a bit late, but it’s all good, dudes. The post is all good, and so far the reviews are too 🙂
I’m obsessively checking our reviews on Goodreads and also our rank on the Books about Faery Listopia list (#51 as of this posting LoL). I pop by our listing on Amazon at least once a day to see if there are any reviews up there yet… It’s probably not super healthy behavior, but it’s fun LOL
Our FAEcebook launch party was loads of fun. If you couldn’t make it but you’re curious to see what we chatted about you can always check out the posts, and jump in to tell us about your FAEvourite fairy creature, book suggestions, fairy music and so much more. Better late than never right? (Like this blog post LOL)
Also, a couple of the posts from our Facebook party were detailed and awesome enough that they became blog posts of their own on the World Weaver Press blog. Learn about The Fairy Queen and How Fairies Got Their Wings.
Wow. That’s a lot of links, isn’t it? Uh… sorry about that. I usually try not to overload my posts with too many links, but this is what comes of posting a blog a week late >_< I was going to end this with a collection of links for you to pick up your copy of Fae if you haven’t already, but instead I’m just going to share this one:
Not only can you pick up a copy of the book directly from WWP via that link, but they also have links to all the other usual suspects in case you prefer to buy your books from them. Or, ask your local library to order it in. Whatever works for you. And however you manage to read it, I’d really love to hear what you think. Here, Goodreads, Amazon, Twitter… where ever 🙂
Fae is being released tomorrow (cue freak out!) and as a part of that we’re holding a launch party on Facebook (From 5-8pm MST but even if you can’t make it at our most active time, pop by, the posts will still be there!) Several of our authors will be there, as well as myself and our amazing publisher. We’ll be hanging out, chatting about fairy stuff, holding giveaways and hopefully just having a good time. You can get to the event page (where the party will be taking place) by clicking here, on the picture or the above link text. I’m all about making it easy for you to show up 🙂
Also, credit for the joke I made in the subject line of this blog goes to Kenneth Schneyer.
When Words Collide is kinda my jam. Technically apparently it’s a ‘Festival for Readers and Writers’ but I just call it my favourite convention, and I go every year.
also sold out)
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at least once a day to see if there are any reviews up there yet… It’s probably not super healthy behavior, but it’s fun LOL
