So I sold a short story last week.
It’s a mermaid story. Or, more to the point, a lake mermaid story. Where the mermaid eats children.
I had actually written this particular story several years ago while waiting for my son’s Science Fair project to be judged (parents weren’t allowed in and it took several hours.) So I cranked this little nugget out and subbed it to an anthology, where it made it to the top 20 out of 500 or so entries…and then was rejected.
Alas.
So I tried off and on again over the last few years, but as is my usual problem, it doesn’t really fit a specific genre. It takes place in the modern world, but it’s not an Urban Fantasy. It definitely isn’t a romance. It’s a bit dark for fantasy maybe, but not dark enough for your usual horror. I don’t know what you’d call it. Melancholy fantasy?
And of course the rejections were usually really nice – love the writing, can’t have a protag that eats babies.
Mmph. Maybe I was just subbing to the wrong places.
Anyway, I tucked it away for a rainy day and then saw Crystal Lake Publishing was doing another Tales From the Lake anthology and was looking for subs, so figured what the hell. And of course, the submission requirements specifically asked for NON-LAKE based stories, but this one was already written and you know. Irony.
But hey – it made it through 2 rounds of short lists and woo! Accepted. So, hopefully some time next year (maybe September?) you’ll get to read my lake mermaid story. Obviously I’ll post more details as I know them. (The working title is A Dream Most Ancient and Alone, but that may change. Or not.)
In other news, and non-genre related, if you read Magpie’s Song you may have noticed a release date for Magpie’s Fall as December 2017. Which I’m not going to be able to do. Not for lack of trying, mind – but between my need to rewrite a significant chunk of the book and some other issues that are completely beyond my control, it’s not done.
The cover is done – and it looks fabulous! But as of this point, I’m actually awaiting a second round of edits from my editor and until I have them, I can’t really go any farther. As far as when I can release it, I think I can safely point at March 2018, though if I can get it out earlier than that, I will.
Not that I don’t want to hurry things along, but I also want to make sure I make the best book I can and that sort of thing does take time – edits, cold reads, more edits, line edits, formatting. Lots of places to make adjustments.
In the meantime, I’m thick into the first draft of Magpie’s Flight, the third book in the series – I’m not going to make any release date promises, but I think it would not be unreasonable to have it out by September 2018, so bear with me on that.
Oh, and if you do read Fox & Willow, you’ll have noticed we’ve been on a bit of a hiatus – it is my hope to start putting the new chapter of that out within the next week or so – holidays being what they are, plus both Aimo and I have had a number of health issues that ranged anywhere from strep throat to wisdom tooth extraction to having a basal cell carcinoma removed, and well. Life gets in the way sometimes, I guess.
