A bit behind on my reviewing or hey anthologies!

Okay I have an excuse.  A new book release means I do have to spend a lot of time marketing that book.  Not that marketing has done me much good so far but it is the attempt correct? 

Between blasting the web with notices of my new and amazing new read....(okay sorry but here!)

New book release!  Face:  A uniquely oriental belief concerning honor, respect and responsibility.  Many will give everything, including their lives, for this concept.

Destiny is a young woman of two clans.  She has willingly joined the ranks of the Firm to  protect a younger brother who has a great destiny.  But it is her role that is the question.  Was she simply born to protect her younger brother or is her role in the universe a greater one?

When the unimaginable happens friends join ranks to fight monsters born out of the mind of men but also those from outside our realm.  The question is, will they Save Face or Family? http://tinyurl.com/m2wc2q2

(back to our regularily scheduled blog =P)

Yeah I know but I need to plug my book right?

Okay this weekend when I was sitting back and relaxing I decided to read up some of the anthologies I have on my ebook reader.  Now anyone who follows my babbling knows I have been a fan of anthologies for a long time.  These collections of many authors tales are a great place to learn if you like an authors style or not.  Short stories are not simply snippets from longer stories, they are an art form in their own right.  Yes I write many, many, many of them, I admit it.  But long before I started writing them I had been reading them.

Back in the 80s I discovered the anthologies of stories set all in the same world.  From Thieve's World to Merovingen Nights to the Darkover anthologies I had many hours of reading pleasure.  Into the 90s I kept buying any that tempted my eye in the book story.  This weekend I sat back and read through the anthologies that Mercedes Lackey put together in her Valdamar series.  Again I found short stories that are like a gateway drug into authors I haven't read.

I admit that my favorite this weekend was from Under the Vale.  The story Simple Gifts had a lighter feel than many of the stories and it was well worth reading.  Now a lot of people read these anthologies and then go on to review the stories like they are incomplete novels.  To me it seems like they just want to complain.  If they wanted a novel then they should go ahead and BUY A NOVEL.  These are short stories, they are not easy to write and write well.  They are complete stories in their own right and are but a moment in time for that world.  Expecting lots of character development or deep meaning is like expecting a youtube video to have the same impact as a full movie.  Really folks, sit back, relax and enjoy these tales.

whoa looks like I am getting a bit preachy but it could be because I am tired of people reviewing one artform as if it was another.  We all have different tastes but then that is what makes us human right?

Writing and music

As I sit here with my earbuds in listening to Annie's song from John Denver I realize that I write more to music than I do without.  While my songs are not the songs of the characters they do set me in the mood to work.  There are a lot of distractions in a simple day even for a stay at home mom, wife and writer.

As my other blogs have shown there are a lot of things i work on during the day.  From crocheting blankets, to painting to making little plastic models of robots, I can get myself distracted.  I bake a lot, cook a lot and try to do many things each day.

This is both a good and a bad thing.  As a writer I should be sitting my butt down and typing up a storm every single chance I have.  And to be honest I do do a lot of writing.  In the past year I have written 41 separate tales that have been published and I have 15 more that are finished and either submitted to anthologies or pages or are waiting for covers to be released by me.  That is all since the first of the year.  A lot of work done yes.

Now though I want to complete the novel I started last year.  I have spent two days editing and now I need to settle down and write and write and write.  This tale is a good one i think with a touch of romance, magic and of course conflict.  There are good guys, bad guys and everything a tale needs but can I finish it this time?  Who knows but I plan on it.  So off to work I go.

Working in short story series

Anybody who reads my work knows that most of what I do is short.  Short stories, short poems just plan short.  It isn't that I don't have a lot of words, it is that I don't believe it wasting them.  A short story is a snap shot of time, a scene to an act in the life of your characters.  Sometimes that snapshot will complete itself in just two pages and sometimes it is more like thirty of them.

Most of my tales average out around ten pages.  Now since I write in what I like to call series I bet you are thinking why dont I just hold off and put them into one book?  You see I take a common thread and write a lot of different tales under that thread.

In my Death Walks Through series the common thread is Death.  He is not the main character of each tale but he is there, in the background most times.  Those stories are ghost stories, not the scary, creepy ghost stories that are so popular on tv and in movies but little tales of souls searching for the end to their tales.  So far I have written ten of these little tales.  They truly are little tales because these ten little stories all total up to 25K so far. 

My next series of tales, Guardians of the Gate City, just got combined into a collection and published.  Six tales that come up over the 50K limit for a novel.  These stories are more interconnected than the Death stories because they focus on the main character, Harry Lionsey.  I have worked through a couple years worth of his life and introduced side characters that will be getting their own series.  The first Guardians of the Gate city side stories will be out next month.  That series will focus on characters like Sheldon, the dragon information broker.

Thirdly I have the Echoes of Elder Times series.  Now the tales in this series might not seem to be connected but they all have the feel of the ancient world to them.  Modern tales with ancient themes is what I planned when I started putting the tales out.

Next we have the Worlds Apart series.  These tales are of course about different worlds than our own.  They are written as science fiction or fantasy but the idea is the worlds are separate from our own but hold theme and characters that could have been our own.

Then I have Beyond Realities.  Like the series above it is our world but not our world.  Stories of just a step to the side of our own world.

My newest story series is going to be Myths of Love.  I have had The Knight Protector up for ages now but I had a handful of stories in the works that were more romance than the rest of my tales.  I recently added the series title to Knight Protector.  I have one more that will be going up next month and two more right now in the works.  They will be odd fantasy romances they may or may not have a happily ever after.

Of course I have collections out.  Two complete erotic collections in fact.  One with interconnected stories and one that is just a mix of a lot of erotic tales I wrote.  Two other series are of different kinds of erotic tales that I will some day compile into separate books, but not for a long while yet.

Then there is Gates.  This was the book that kicked me into self publishing.  The six tales in the Gates book all have some type of gate in the tale and if the publisher had done more than take my rough files and publish them I think it would have gone further.  For now it is a nice little collection and the first book I have in my hands of my own work.

Of course i have been found in a lot of anthologies over the past year.  Between my poetry and short stories I have added up a nice little set of anthology entries.  And speaking of my poetry I now have three collections of my poetry and photography up for sale.

I have rambled a lot here but that is the point.  There are a lot of ways to do your writing and writing short stories is one very fine way of doing it.

writting really is a full time job

Yup I keep forgetting this little blog...what with four over on wordpress and doing my writing I get behind.  So I am just a little too busy right?

I have a lot of new releases to talk about here though.  What with the Writer's Stuff anthology going live I am really happy

The Writers stuff anthology

The story I have in here is one of my Death Walks Through short stories and speaking of those i have another one that I put up for people to enjoy.

Under the Black Bridge This short story is set back home in Nashua...a fun little read.

I'm working hard on the new series, Myths of Love.  I decided that Knight Protector would be the first of those tales

The Knight Protector these are my more romantic fantasy tales.  I have another finished and ready for release next month and I am working on two more as you read this.  One is titled Now and Forever, a sad tale and the other is Singer of the Blood song.  My romances dont always have the happily ever after but there is love and romance and occasionally a bit of sex.

So with everything else i will try to remember to post over here too