Are you that woman...?

So, in my small town last week our local newspaper ran a really wonderful feature with color pictures about my publishing company, Kitsune Books, which has meant that suddenly my invisibility cloak has been yanked off. A cashier in the Winn-Dixie says, "hey, you're that woman in the paper" or our waiter at a local seafood restaurant hands my husband the check and says, "Aren't you...we were just reading about you in the paper up at the front desk." The hubs has had quite a few people accost him and say, "Was that your wife we read about?" All well and good. The publicity from the article is great - couldn't buy that kind of coverage - but it has lead to some odd moments as well.

I've gotten a number of calls from people looking for the Kitsune bookstore so they could get the latest Pat Conroy thriller. Sorry, we're not a bookstore and we don't publish him. For those who figure out that I also write books as well as publish them, the question then comes, "Wow, what do you write?" and I say, "Horror." Then comes the awkward moment where they look at me like I might have said I strangle puppies for a living. It doesn't compute.

So then I'm required to explain myself. Really, I'm not a deranged person, I just have a taste for the literary darkside. The real test then comes in trying to differentiate between the kind of horror I like to write and something like Saw IV which is what leaps to the minds of many people when you say the word "horror." I write literary horror (yeah, there's even a Goodreads group for that). I particularly love the kind of terror that's psychological, where frights are implied but not always graphically described, where the reader's mind is forced to conjure up what frightens him or her most rather than making them wade through literal buckets of blood to get to the inevitable conclusion of the book or story.

Case in point. Recently a flash fiction story of mine called "The Real Deal" was accepted for publication in a new horror anthology. Although it's about a serial killer whose karma catches up with him, not a drop of blood was spilled onstage, so to speak. Yet it was deemed spooky enough (and well written, according to the anthology editor) to be chosen for a collection of horrific tales.

So anyway, yeah, I am that woman. Happy to meet you!  ;D

P.S.  Here's a link to the feature that sparked this blog entry: http://www.kitsunebooks.com/WakullaNewsFeature.html

 

Basking in the glow

Christmas came a little early this December, with two glowing reviews for Shaman's Blood. It's always gratifying when a reader totally gets what you were trying to do.  Give these great reviews a read if you're so inclined:

Goodreads review from Julie Witt: REVIEW

The Big Thrill, December issue from ITW:  REVIEW

Thanksgiving Day 2011

So here I sit on Thanksgiving Day, not at a table laden with more food than could feed an army of starving velociraptors, but at my computer.

I have a lot to be thankful for, more than I can enumerate. I'm especially thankful for my lifetime companion of 40+ years, safe and comfortable surroundings with an adorable office cat, my daughter safely launched in the career she was meant to be in, more intellectual pursuits than I can handle (and the health and wits to pursue them), a house with no mortgage amid beautiful woodlands in a time/space location relatively safe from fires, floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, tornadoes, and so far, even hurricanes. 

Even with its occasional setbacks, life really is good. Now if I could just find a hubcap for my bitchin' red Camaro that would stay on...

The power of publicity

Check out this very cool banner ad my publisher has posted on the Hellnotes review site!

FPA Book Awards

Hearty congratulations to all the Kitsune Books winners from this week's Florida Publishers Association Book Awards!

• Mary Jane Ryals (Gold, Cookie & Me)
• Christopher McIlroy (Silver, Here I Am a Writer)
• K.E.M. Johnston (Silver, Big Boys Don't Spy)
• Jeannine Hall Gailey (Silver, She Returns to the Floating World)
• Gianna Russo (Silver, Moonflower)

A small demise

I was reading recently about the demise of punctuation, and in particular, the apostrophe. Who needs 'em anyway, when the written context lets (let's?) you know what is meant, and verbally, of course, it doesn't exist. I mean, you can't hear its use or misuse...you can only see it.

I concede that in these days of careless texting and Internet posting, a phrase like "the bicyclists fault" is clearly understood, no matter its lack of correctness...or even cases where the apostrophe is used but not needed, as in "how many turkey's do we need" and so on. It's in signage, marketing materials, newspapers and magazines, and ubiquitous across the Internet: the death of the apostrophe.

For a prescriptive grammarian (and aren't we all), this is a migraine of Olympian proportions. I would hope professional writers and editors will at least hold this creeping death at bay in our published books. I, for one,  intend to go to my grave clutching all the little apostrophes (apostrophe's?) I can carry!

Hell and High Water launches!

It's here! Book 1 of the North Florida Trilogy: http://tinyurl.com/5uuk78j

This is the first volume of a threesome of novels I and my writing partner P. V. LeForge have been working on (and off) for too many years to mention, but now it's done!

Don't have a Kindle? No problem - download Amazon's free app Kindle for PC and read it right on your computer!

The book is located on Smashwords.com as well as on Amazon. Download the Kindle, Nook, Sony, iPad, Kobo, and whatever format you want from Smashwords. And yes, you can read it on your PC in several different formats: Kindle, ePub, PDF, HTML and more.

By mid-November 2011, it will be available in trade paperback on Amazon (Black Bay Books, ISBN: 978-0-9624878-6-6).  

What's in the works?

As much as my company, Kitsune Books, would like to take over my life completely and suck up every available moment for its own dark purposes, I have recently been diligent about setting time aside for my own writing. That means I have some projects underway and a few completed.

I've just completed a short story titled "The Real Deal," for a horror fiction anthology I was invited to submit to. Hope they'll like it. Involves a visit to an S&M parlour with unexpected consequences.

A bigger project is a new novel, The Cornerstone, which has been simmering for several years and is now at the bubbling-over stage, where it's writing itself in my head no matter what else I'm doing. Time to get serious about it and bring it to life.  Basic premise: what happens when you try to catch a banshee? The results aren't pretty... maybe even a little messy, and highly unpredictable!

 I've also been hatching another long-term project with my writing partner of many years, P. V. LeForge. Watch for the emergence of Hell and High Water, Book 1 of our North Florida Trilogy series. What genre is it? Who the hell knows...we'll let readers decide, if it matters at all. More on this soon! 

And the winner is...

Congratulations to Kat Whittaker, winner of the Earth's Book Nook giveaway contest!

Kat wins Books 1 and 2 of my dark urban fantasy novel series (Thin Line Between and Shaman's Blood).

Thanks to everyone who participated in the contest! 

Preparing a ms. for submission

Excellent advice from JournalStone Acquisitions Editor Joel Kirkpatrick on preparing your ms. for submission. This particular essay focuses on the value of careful in-depth editing (not the same as proofing or copyediting): Read more...