B is for Broken is coming soon and there are two great ways you can make sure you’re among the first people to get a copy of it.
Are you feeling lucky? Then perhaps you want to enter our Goodreads Giveaway for a chance to take home a signed ARC copy –> Enter to Win. The giveaway ends on May 13th.
Or, if you’re more interested in sure things and polished copies (or if you’re reading this after the giveaway has ended), B is for Broken is also available for pre-order now from both Kobo Books and Smashwords.
Whatever you do, be sure and mark May 26th on your calendar and consider joining us at the B is for Broken Facebook Launch Party. It’ll be a good time, you won’t want to miss it 🙂
Broken people, broken promises, broken dreams and broken objects are just some of the ways these 26 fantastic stories interpret the theme of ‘Broken’. From science fiction to fantasy, horror to superheroes the stories within these pages cover a vast swath of the genres under the speculative fiction umbrella.
Featuring original fiction by:
~ Brittany Warman ~ Milo James Fowler ~ C.S. MacCath ~ Sara Cleto ~ Samantha Kymmell-Harvey ~ Megan Arkenberg ~ Gary B. Phillips ~ Alexandra Seidel ~ Jonathan C. Parrish ~ Simon Kewin ~ Beth Cato ~ Cory Cone ~ Cindy James ~ Alexis A. Hunter ~ Michael M. Jones ~ Steve Bornstein ~ BD Wilson ~ Michael Kellar ~ Damien Angelica Walters ~ Marge Simon ~ Michael Fosburg ~ Suzanne van Rooyen ~ L.S. Johnson ~ Pete Aldin ~ Gabrielle Harbowy ~ Lilah Wild ~ KV Taylor ~
Lookee what I have!
You might not be able to tell, because they’ve got their backs turned to you, but those are ARCs for B is for Broken. Whoot!
We’ll be revealing the cover and opening up a giveaway for one of these little suckers on April 22nd, so if you haven’t already, please consider signing up to help signal boost 🙂
It’s a very distorted version of the cover for B is for Broken 🙂
I’m going to reveal the real, un-distorted cover here on my blog on April 22nd and I’d like your help.
We we launched A is for Apocalypse I asked people to sign up to host a cover reveal post on their blog, but this time I want to do things a little differently. I’ll host the official reveal on this blog, but I’d like your help ensuring sure as many people as possible see it. If you’d be willing to help, in whatever way you can (sharing the link on social media, writing a blog post* that links back to our official reveal post, telling a friend, whatever) please sign up with the form below. Then, as soon as the cover reveal post goes live on the 22nd I will email the direct link to you so we can start spreading it around.
Every little bit counts and I really appreciate your help with this. Thank you!
***The form used to be here, but sign-ups are closed and spam robots keep filling the form out and filling up my inbox so I’ve removed it***
*I’m totally happy to provide guest blogs, do interviews, etc. if you want additional content to go along with that. We may even have some Broken Stories to share by then. Just leave a comment in the form above and I’ll get back to you right away. I can provide bloggers the cover reveal URL before it goes live so they can schedule posts ahead of time but you’ll still receive an email when the link actually becomes functional 🙂
The release date for B is for Broken is inching steadily nearer which means it’s time for me to start thinking of something fun to do to celebrate that launch. Obviously, I wanted to stick with the theme of ‘broken’ and I thought, you know what could be fun? Broken stories.
Have you heard of exquisite corpses? I bet you have, though possibly not by that name. It’s the game where people take turn writing parts of a story without knowing all of what came before. The resulting stories tend to be surreal and disjointed…broken, one might say 😉
I want to write some broken stories, but I’ll need your help.
My plan is simple:
Gather participants (that’s what this blog post is for)
If there are more than a handful, divide them into groups of approximately equal size
Send the first person in each group a short opening paragraph
Give that participant 3 days to write their contribution to the story (one short paragraph of no more than seven sentences) and send it back to me
Send the next person on the list the paragraph the person before them wrote and nothing more of the story. They will only know the paragraph immediately before their own.
Repeat steps 4 & 5 until we’ve reached the end of the list.
Compile each ‘broken’ story and share them (giving full credit to each participant) as a part of the launch celebrations for B is for Broken
Want to join in? Just sign up using the contact form below. I will keep sign-ups open until about the 25th, but may actually begin the writing process before then, because why not? 🙂
Keep in mind — this is just for fun. No one is going to judge you, we’re just looking to have a good time. No matter your skill level or genre of writing you can join in, and if you really want you can participate anonymously. Because fun!
I can’t do this without you, so to thank you for considering joining in the game I’ve even offered a sneak peek at some of the interior art for B is for Broken by Tory Hoke (above) 🙂
I don’t really make New Year’s Resolutions, because I’m crap at keeping them, but I do enjoy setting goals for the coming year each January. I find them super helpful staying focused and find the accountability which comes from sharing them publicly really helps as well. This year I’m a wee bit late on getting this blog post done, so it may be slightly less chatty than in years past, but without further ado, here are some of my work-related goals for the coming year (and health counts because you can’t work if you’re not at least a certain degree of healthy).
Health
Weigh less at the end of the year than I do at the start
Run 5k
No working on weekends and minimal working on evenings.
Editing / Publishing
Publish the final three issues of Niteblade and then close down that aspect of the magazine
Complete Corvidae and market it to the best of my ability
Complete Scarecrow and market it to the best of my ability
Publish B is for Broken and market it to the best of my ability
Write and submit at least one new short story a month*
The ‘submit’ part of this is important. I can’t just write a first draft and leave it to moulder indefinitely. The story needs to be ready for submission and, in fact, submitted, within the month to count.
Begin querying agents about Hollow
Self-publish at least one collection of reprints
Complete work on collaborative project with Marge
Successfully participate in April Poem-A-Day
This means actually writing a poem a day or at least having thirty poems written by the end of the month
Participate in NaNoWriMo*
Either complete the first draft of a new novel, or revise one of the novel first drafts I’ve already written (this can be completed in conjunction with NaNoWriMo or separate from it)
Reading
Read at least 50 books
Slush doesn’t count, nor do books by friends I read to critique.
When someone visits this blog and leaves a comment — reciprocate.
Kobo
As of New Year’s Eve of 2014 I’d sold a total of one book via Kobo**. One. For a whopping $0.45 in royalties. One of my goals in 2015 is to improve that. I don’t have a super firm goal in mind but it shouldn’t be too difficult to top one sale and less than fifty cents in royalties, right?
I’ll probably tweak this list as the year goes on, but for now I think it’s a very good jumping-off point 🙂
*under this name or as a pen name project. Either counts.
**this doesn’t count books I didn’t self-publish like Fae, Metastasis etc.
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 🙂
There’s probably a much better way of doing this, but I don’t know, because I’ve never done it before :-p
I need art for B is for Broken.
Usually when I need art for a project I either buy it from a stock photography website, shoot a message to one of my artist friends or I surf art websites until I find a style I like then contact the artist to ask about commissions. None of those strategies will work in this case. They won’t work because I have no freaking idea what to put on the cover (or in the interior) of B is for Broken. I’ve had a few ideas, broken glass, broken dolls, broken dolls as seen through broken glass that sort of thing, but nothing has solidified in my mind as being precisely what I’m looking for.
If you’re an artist, that’s where you come in.
I’m looking for proposals for the artwork for B is for Broken. If you’re interested in the job, I need to know four things:
If I were to hire you what would you do for the cover?
What about the interior art?
How much would you charge for that?
How long would it take you to produce?
Also? If you send me a proposal please include a link to your online portfolio or somewhere I can see samples of your work.
Things You Need To Know:
The cover for B is for Broken will follow a similar design as A is for Apocalypse, meaning it will have an overlay with all the contributor’s names and the letter will be added in much the same way as was done on A is for Apocalypse (though we can obviously make it darker rather than lighter if we need).
The art will be edge to edge as in A is for Apocalypse (not put in a frame or anything like that), so there needs to be a suitable location for the title to be placed.
Cover art is full-color
Interior art is black and white, and will be placed inside letters to create title images for each story (examples below) so it needs to be readable even when cropped into odd shapes.
I would like for the color scheme for the cover art to be different than what we used for A is for Apocalypse.
My email address is rhonda@jofigure.com and I’ll be accepting proposals until September 30th.
Please use a subject line that clearly identifies why you are contacting me or your letter could get lost in my jungle-like inbox.
I don’t need exclusive access to your art, you’ll be welcome to sell it elsewhere also.
Just because we used a digitally altered photograph for A doesn’t mean that’s the only medium I’ll consider for B. In fact, I’m pretty sure that C’s cover art is going to be a scanned multi-media mosaic so don’t feel limited.
If you have any questions or concerns please let me know and I’ll address them as best I can.
This image was cropped and the skull was placed inside the outline of a letter to create title images for each story
This is an example of one of the letter title images for the stories in A is for Apocalypse
ETA: I was asked about file size and resolution. Our final cover needs to be 6″ x 9″ at 300 DPI.
It is my pleasure to announce the next title in the series of anthologies which begins with A is for Apocalypse.
B is for Broken
Featuring original fiction by:
~ Beth Cato ~ Cory Cone ~ Alexandra Seidel ~ Suzanne van Rooyen ~ Marge Simon and Michael Fosburg ~ C.S. MacCath ~ Michael Kellar ~ Alexis A. Hunter ~ Sara Cleto ~ Pete Aldin ~ Milo James Fowler ~ Gary Phillips ~ Lilah Wild ~ Jonathan Parrish ~ BD Wilson ~ KV Taylor ~ Simon Kewin ~ Gabrielle Harbowy ~ Steve Bornstein ~ Brittany Warman ~ Cindy James ~ Brenda Stokes Barron ~ Samantha Kymmell-Harvey ~ Damien Angelica Walters ~ L.S. Johnson ~ Megan Arkenberg ~
While I got to pick the theme I have no control over how the contributors handle it, so as you can imagine I’m as excited as you to see the results! Nothing is set in stone just yet, but I’m aiming for a Spring 2015 release 🙂
I wanted to thank you all for helping me figure out the theme for the next book in the alphabet anthology series. It turns out that:
B is for Broken
I’ve sent invitations out to those people who participated in the A is for Apocalypse anthology (coming later this year) and I look forward to announcing our line-up in the near(ish) future.
If you are one of those authors and you didn’t receive your invitation let me know and I’ll correct that. If you are not one of those authors but you’d like to be added to the waiting list for any open spots, also let me know (rhonda@jofigure.com).
If you are a reader, get ready for a hell of a ride 🙂
