2016 Round-Up

2016 in review is a work related round-up, because it’s been an absolutely awful year personally. The other day somebody sent around a “some good things must have happened at least on a personal level in 2016, please post them!” and I honestly couldn’t think of anything actively good enough to stand out. So, this year in publication review: startingly good, actually. I had 5 books come out, including the graphic novel of TAKE A CHANCE, which we’ve all been waiting for forever. :) To wit: MAGIC & MANNERS An…

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Slaying the Dragon: A Walker Papers short story

Once in a while I manage to have my act together enough to present a holiday short story to my readers. This year’s story was inspired by visiting North Carolina for the first time, and driving some of those twisty twisty roads that Joanne is so fond of. Slaying the Dragon is set five years after the end of SHAMAN RISES, and as such, contains, if not outright spoilers, certainly spoilers by association. :) Slaying the Dragon (pdf) (turns out wordpress won’t let me upload epub or mobi files, sorry.…

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Shaman Rises cover

a Walker Papers 2016 election prediction

I *do* have a throw-away comment about the 2016 election in one of my #WalkerPapers short stories. I thought I did. The protagonist is Ashley, the little girl from #ThunderbirdFalls, 20 years later: “I had a grenade launcher. I wasn’t supposed to, of course. Nobody was, especially since the country-wide crackdown after the election riots when I was seventeen.” The story was written in 2012 and was a deliberate (given the Walker Papers timeline) reference to the 2016 elections, and I kept the line even though it made my editor…

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Magic and Manners cover

many edits. such revision.

I’m trying to keep my nose to the grindstone while also being caught in this frustrating window of hurry up and wait. I put in an order for a proof for MAGIC & MANNERS on the 6th and it still hasn’t arrived, so I went and looked up why and the damned thing says it’s still ‘pending’. I don’t understand why, unless I’m supposed to tell the system that it’s print-approved, except as far as I can tell that will propagate it into the publication system and I don’t want…

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Writing Wednesday: I finished a book!

It always strikes me, when I use that phrase, “I finished a book,” that I usually mean something different than 99% of other people do when they say it. Possibly 99.7%. I, of course, generally mean I finished writing a book, as opposed to reading one. (Although let me tell you, there are times anymore when finishing reading one seems like as much of a triumph…) Anyway, so on Monday I finished the (oh my god so very) rough draft of REDEEMER, which has been hanging over me for what…

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