New Publication and Random Thoughts

It's the 31st so I can finally post the cover art for Circlet Press's Like a Thorn anthology of BDSM fairy tales. This anthology includes my story "The Princess and Peony" and you can find it currently on sale and listed first in Circlet's catalog, or here (though not on sale) at Fictionwise. It should also be appearing at the Amazon Kindle store soon too.

In other updates I have six other stories out for submission, one the editor wants but we have to wait for the publisher's final cut. One of them I just sent out yesterday, not 1794, which I still need to finish, but one I did in the meantime. So at least I'm not a complete slacker, hehe.

In a kind of random thought, I was walking home from the store last week and had to wait for a train to pass. So I'm standing maybe fifteen feet from this train, thinking gee, they really don't move all that fast, it's like in the movies where you could just run alongside and grab a ladder and up you go. There are even little platforms to sit on and everything. And I'm standing there imagining hopping onto this train and just parking my butt on one of those little platforms and just watching the scenery go by. I'm imagining the surprised faces of the people in the cars next to me as they watch me pass in front of them, imagining the beautiful scenery, the trees and the fields, the solitude. I have my cell phone, it's charged, and I have at least four or five unemployed or stay-at-home friends who could come pick me up in the next town over when I got there. I'm even pretty sure I know which town it would be.

But I don't. The train rolls on by, and I walk up the hill to my house.

I have the brief thought of telling myself it's because I have frozen foods in my grocery bag, and they'll go bad. But that's not the real reason, and I know it. The truth is that I've never been the type of person to actually go on that adventure. I'm too scared. (I'd prefer to call it cautious, but I also prefer to call a spade a spade.)

I think that's part of why I write. When I write I can go on all sorts of adventures and not have to worry about scraped knees or torn clothes or having to explain why I need to get picked up from a town an hour south because I guessed wrong on where the train tracks go. I worry too much for adventuring. And maybe also part of why I married who I did, because he is adventurous and spontaneous, but very capable. And he always takes a map.