Thursday, July 10, 2014

Poet is Up With New Cover

The new version of The Once and Future Poet: Essays on 25 Years of Poetry is now available. You can buy it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Smashwords, and Kobo.

As I mentioned in my last post, this is just an update to the cover and a few minor corrections to the text. It's not a new edition with new material. But I did want to add in a couple author names for books I mentioned in the essays as long as I was redoing the cover. (Which came out pretty nice if I do say so myself.)

Ever wanted to see how a writer develops her skills over time? Curious as to where those favorite themes come from? Look no further. You can also read excerpts from the book here on the blog: one poem and essay about mirrors, and one about death.

Saturday, July 5, 2014

The Stuff of Memory

Hi gang! Nope, I'm not dead (yet). Been off the grid for a while, getting health issues sorted and whatnot. I'm working on some longer pieces but I don't know when I'll have something new to publish.

However, I am in the process of updating The Once and Future Poet. Why? Because the cover sucked, frankly. So I'm making a new cover for it, which means I'm redoing all the ebooks. And as long as I'm redoing the ebooks, I figured I'd make another pass through for typos and the like. (I'll post once I have the new versions available.)

As I was doing that, I saw in the essay on my poem "The Wild Stallion" that I'd mentioned a book called If Wishes Were Horses. This is a sadly common title, as I discovered a few weeks ago when I (rather randomly) went looking for it on Amazon.

I read that book in the fourth grade, and at one point we had to make a picture for a book we had read (I don't recall if it was supposed to be cover art or whether that's just how I did mine), and I had chosen that book. And I kept that picture because it had the author's name on it. Perhaps even in fourth grade, I knew my memory sucked. Well, is off, maybe, because I remembered that I still had it when I did that fruitless Amazon search. I even knew where it was. I was just too lazy to go dig it out.

But today I decided it was important to me to include the author's name in that essay. And so I delved into the Memory Box.

When I was a kid, I used to make memory boxes for all sorts of things. I had memory boxes from theater and summer camp, for example. But the big one, the overarching one, was a red cube box from Prange's.


Eventually all other memory boxes were broken up (except the one for The Husband), and anything worth keeping was consolidated into the Prange's box. A leaflet from when we went to see President Obama when he was on his first campaign is in there, and probably one or two other things from after I graduated high school. But mostly, stuff from childhood.

It was interesting to delve into the box. It's been a really long time. (I add things to the box more often than I actually look at anything in it.) Even this time, I didn't go through everything, just enough to find the picture I was looking for.


There is a lot of stuff there. The big orange pumpkin in the back is the picture I was actually looking for. (The author's name is Keith Robertson.) To get to it, I had to go through all the awards ribbons and medals I'd pretty much ever received (mostly solo & ensemble competitions and forensics), old bank account passbooks, a library card and student ID, a note from my sister saying she was out at our clubhouse, the 3D glasses I got when we went to see Freddy's Dead: the Final Nightmare, jelly bracelets and my charm necklace (very big in the 80s, you know what audience Pandora is targeting with their expensive charms), a Girl Scout figurine, a "book" of horse drawings I made, My Little Pony memorabilia, a Book It button, smushed pennies from our class trip to New York (including a World Trade Center one which is now somewhat disturbing), a pamphlet from the Wisconsin DOT for their "Zero Drinkage 4 Pre-19" campaign (hilarious), and, quite serendipitously, the original copy of "The Wild Stallion."





And lo, something I had forgotten, which (rightly) never made it into the Black Book of Poetry: the poem ended differently at one point. It's hard to make out, but you can see a couple lines at the bottom that were erased. I believe it says "The wind is the lock, and he is the key." Which does not add to the poem at all. Good call, younger me.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

December's New Release: Christmas Presents

"Christmas Presents" is a heart-warming tale of Christmas military gay romance now available as an ebook single.

December, 1998. Robbie Barnes loves being a soldier, but the Army is a jealous mistress. Living with the fear of being outed as gay has put Robbie’s love life on the shelf. But when fellow soldier and best buddy Chi invites Robbie to come stay with him in Hawaii over Christmas, Robbie discovers he and Chi have more in common than Robbie realized. Contains explicit sex.

Originally published in Duty and Desire: Military Erotic Romance, ed. Kristina Wright. Berkeley, CA: Cleis Press, 2012.

For those of you who have read Scent and Shadow and wondered what Amanda's brother was up to that Christmas he didn't come home, read this and find out.

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.


A Year of Life Rolls

It's been a tough year for me, but I wanted to make sure to go out with a new single-shot story for your holiday enjoyment. I'm back from my sanity-check break, I'm writing every day, and looking forward to having more new fiction for you all in 2014!


Currently Writing:

I'm just over halfway through the novel Empire's Shadow, which is a prequel to Scent and Shadow. It's about how Isolde met Paul and Gabriel in Roman Britain, and the events that led up to her becoming a vampire. Also, I have a short story with a new type of monster coming soon.

Thursday, August 1, 2013

In Honor of August Derleth, August is Weird Fiction Month!

August's New Release: The Broadcast Out of Time
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A live Christmas old-time radio broadcast is interrupted when the studio is invaded by a weird green mist.

This story was inspired by an actual live broadcast I went to last year. Of course, the results were quite different... This is what happens when an author's mind starts to wander.

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Bonus release! Dreams of the Mythos: Five Lovecraftian Tales
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Want to get "The Broadcast Out of Time" plus four of my other Lovecraftian short stories? Pick up Dreams of the Mythos and save a couple bucks!

These five tales of Lovecraftian weird fiction might keep you up past your bedtime. Includes "Succor the Child," "The Thing in the Water,""The Boogeyman" (exclusively available in Dreams of the Mythos), "The Granary Angel" and "The Broadcast Out of Time."

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.



Lookin' Ahead
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We just adopted a new puppy, so life's been a little crazy. I have no idea what I'm publishing next month, but I'm guessing it'll be a new "Grimm as it Should've Been." If you aren't familiar, check out the first one, "The Twelve Huntsmen."

Thursday, July 4, 2013

New Titles for July



July's New Release: The Skinned Man

Eddie Mixon isn’t your average private investigator. He’s also an aethermancer, able to manipulate the semi-physical substance that carries magical energy. A mysterious woman hires Eddie to retrieve a magical item from the aether, but in order to get it he’ll need the help of his old flame, Joe Conrad. The darkest secrets from Eddie’s past are coming back to haunt him—literally. Contains explicit sex.

Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.



Bonus release! Other Men: Five Tales of Erotic Gay Urban Fantasy
Skinshifters, doppelgangers, gargoyles, vampires, mages, aethermancers…these men are definitely other. Four short stories and one novella explore what happens when other men love other men. Contains explicit sex. Includes "Cry Wolf," "The House That Pip Built," "Set in Stone," "Disobedience," and The Skinned Man.



Available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords.

Lookin' Ahead

August should see the release of a new Lovecraftian weird tale, "The Broadcast Out of Time," and possibly a weird fiction anthology. I know, I'm on an anthology roll!