Austin Worley's Blog: Writing, Reading, and Living with Austin Worley, page 12

Fifty-four Poems Accepted for Organic Ink

May started off with this bit of good news, but it didn’t feel right to whip up an entire post until I had a bit more information to share. Now, I finally do!

Organic Ink: Volume 5 is set to release on June 30th, at which point I’ll officially be a published poet. Those of you who’ve kept up with me on DeviantArt or Wattpad may recognize some of these poems, but a bunch are new. Here’s the full list of my contributions:

AliveBeneath the MistsEarly SpringFour Sorts of LoveIn Praise of the Knight-SisterRepublic in AutumnRepublic Awaiting SpringSaint PatrickSpaceSpringThe TombThanksgivingWispy MemoriesThe SnowmanAfghanistanHoneybeeHummingbirdsYellow MumsHaiku XLIHaiku XLIIHaiku XLIIIHaiku XLIVConjunctionHaiku XLVIWinter WindTerra NovaTypical TuesdayThe Wagon TrainMondayLooking UpDiscordTrapsThe StormHomeworldThe ShrikeRedwood TreeMockingbirdHalloweenRemember ThemEasterIndependence Day

This list isn’t quite as impressive as it might look at first glance, as most of these poems are haiku, tanka, or senryu, but it still adds up to just over a thousand words of poetry. Some of them are really old, too. “The Tomb”, “Winter Wind”, and “Homeworld” date all the way back to my senior creative writing class. Seeing them in print is such a surreal idea!

My poetry will be joined by the work of Jonathan Pratt, Douglas Allen Gohl, J.E. Feldman, Rebecca A. Demarest, E.L. Summers, Jose Joel Robles, Dana Trick, Neethu Krishnan, Alize Atif, Stephen Schwei, Vanessa Bane, and Matthew Ivan Bennett.

The anthology covers a lot of ground thematically. My poems alone deal with everything from nature to holidays and history to religion. Some of them even have fantasy or science fiction themes. “In Praise of the Knight-Sister” is an in-universe poem about my heroic fantasy heroine Arlise Dun, for example.

If any of this strikes your fancy, you can pre-order the digital version of this anthology here

Update: May 2022

Summer is almost here, the school year is just about over, and I have a ton of news to share, so let’s get on with this month’s update!

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On the writing front, April and May proved way busier than expected.

My hopes of quickly finishing off the second commissioned story didn’t survive contact with reality. Have you ever worked on a project you suddenly lost all passion for? Well, that happened to me about a quarter of the way through. Every word became a slog. After reaching the midpoint, I decided to set this piece–entitled “The Beast of Saltern”–aside so I could work on “Rekindling”.

“Rekindling” is the sort-of-sequel to “Enough” that I mentioned last month and follows my heroic fantasy heroine Arlise Dun and her selkie lover Earc Mac Toghda as their relationship develops after the birth of their daughter. Intimacy–especially physical intimacy–is always tricky to write, but something about this piece just clicked. After a week of furious cramming, I finished the story with a day to spare for editing.

As it turns out, I didn’t need to cram quite so hard: the deadline was pushed back another two weeks. Oh, well! It’s always good to beat the final rush of submissions if you can. Combined with my themes of how parenthood and post-pregnancy body image issues change (and don’t change) things between Arlise and Earc, submitting early may help me stand out from the other submissions to this themed anthology.

Once “Rekindling” was off, I dove back into “The Beast of Saltern”. My mind kept latching onto ideas for anything else, so concentrating on the task at hand was a real struggle. Nevertheless, I finally managed to finish off the story this week. FoxFireFiction loved it, and I kinda do as well now that it’s done!

“The Beast of Saltern” follows Sir Owen Gibbs as he hunts a man-eating beast in the wake of a devastating war, and it draws heavy inspiration from Jim Corbett’s Man-Eaters of Kumaon. Much like the hunts Corbett led for man-eating tigers and leopards in British India, this is a very tense story focused on the cat-and-mouse game between two apex predators. A lot less action-heavy than most of my fantasy tales, but I think you’ll enjoy “The Beast of Saltern” all the same.

Just like with the last tie-in story, I don’t have a release date yet. There’ll be a blog post as soon as I do, though!

And speaking of “Seven Diamonds for Soqqith”, it’s been published! You can check out my last blog post for all the details, but here’s the elevator pitch:

Hawwa bint Huda el-Zaidi will do anything to bring back her children, even if it means delivering a strange jewel to a desert cult. But when she discovers what the jewel will unleash, Hawwa must decide whether saving her family is worth damning the world…

Seven Diamonds for Soqqith

Otherwise, May has been a month of really close rejections so far. Whetstone loved the action in “Warden of the Wex Wood”, but they ultimately decided the heavy use of magic leaned a bit more heroic fantasy than sword & sorcery. It’s not everyday editors send you a rejection full of comments and suggestions, though. This is maybe the second time for me? Thanks to them, I feel confident I’ll find a home for “Warden of the Wex Wood” sooner or later.

“Enough” also notched a personal rejection, with the editor saying it was her favorite of the stories she didn’t accept. Coming up just shy of an acceptance for the second or third time on this one is really tough, especially since there aren’t too many markets this story will fit, but I’m determined to keep looking.

On a brighter note, fifty-four of my poems have been accepted for publication in Organic Ink: Volume 5, a poetry anthology from Dragon Soul Press. Some of these are reprints of my poems on DeviantArt and Wattpad, but others are brand new and haven’t ever seen the light of day. Most are haiku, senryu, and tanka, so it’s not a ton of content, but I am very proud I’ll be able to call myself a published poet soon.

Look for about the anthology and pre-order details sometime this week!

For the rest of the month, I plan on recharging my creativity, brainstorming for Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill and a military sci-fi romance, and figuring out what lies ahead.

There’s not a ton of military sci-fi romance with the naval focus that’s firing my imagination, but I did enjoy Hope’s Folly by Linnea Sinclair. It’s got a lot more of a mystery than military feel, though.

I also started a re-read of On Basilisk Station, which got skipped during my pass through all the Honor Harrington books last year. It moves at a much faster clip than I remembered, and I love the small scope of the early books.

Red Storm Rising is another novel on my list of re-reads. Some of the parallels with the Russo-Ukrainian War are striking, as are the strengths of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact in comparison to the hollowed-out shell that is the Russian Federation.

On the leisure side of things, I’ve really enjoyed the new USFL so far. Most of the games are really competitive and go right down to the wire. My only complaint is the decision to play in one stadium instead of every team being based in their home city like in the 2020 XFL, but I understand why a startup league would want to cut down on expenses where they can.

The Breakers are my favorite team so far, but I home one of these spring leagues will eventually bring a team to Oklahoma like in the original USFL.

Now that I have a bit of a break from projects with deadlines, I plan on playing more of that solo Dungeon World campaign. I’ll also be slipping back behind the GM’s screen to run a one-shot dungeon from Perilous Deeps for my little brother. It should be fun!

All sorts of things are heating up, so stay safe out there and have a wonderful summer. I’ll see you in June with another monthly update, more info on Organic Ink: Volume 5, and hopefully some good news about a few other stories!

“Seven Diamonds for Soqqith” is Published!

A few months back, I was commissioned to write some stories for a startup tabletop-gaming company’s new setting. This is the first of them. Check it out while you can; it’ll be subscription-only content before long.

Seven Diamonds for Soqqith – foxfirefiction.com

Hawwa bint Huda el-Zaidi will do anything to bring back her children, even if it means delivering a strange jewel to a desert cult. But when she discovers what the jewel will unleash, Hawwa must decide whether saving her family is worth damning the world…

This is my first experience with tie-in fiction, and I couldn’t be more proud of the results!

Update: April 2022

Time for another monthly update! Spring has sprung, and Easter is almost upon us already. Can you believe it? So much happened last month, and April is shaping up to be even busier.

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First, I finished my commissioned story for FoxFireFiction. Tentatively entitled “Seven Diamonds for Soqqith”, this sword & sorcery adventure shows just how far one mother is willing to go for her children. Robert E. Howard’s Conan of Cimmeria stories–especially the desert adventures like “Black Colossus” and “Xuthal of the Dusk”–were big influences, although this piece has a lot more magic than most of Howard’s work does.

Staying under the max word count was a real struggle. In fact, I had to make some significant cuts to my outline to simplify the story enough. In the end, I’m glad I did. Everything came together wonderfully, and I can’t wait to share “Seven Diamonds for Soqqith” with you guys.

I don’t have a release date yet, but there will be a blog post about it as soon as I do!

FoxFireFiction loved the story and offered me the chance to write another, so that’s one of my main projects at the moment. The core concept of this one has taken a bit longer to flesh out and meld into their worldbuilding, but it’s off to a decent start. This one shouldn’t be as tough to keep under the upper limit. In fact, hitting the minimum might prove to be a bigger struggle. Time will tell. Hopefully I can write the bulk of the story this week and use the rest of my time under contract to polish it up before submitting the initial draft.

Speaking of submissions, I’ve sent out quite a few lately. First, I sent “Warden of the Wex Wood” off for consideration in the latest issue of Whetstone. This is the market I tailormade the story for, so my hopes are pretty high. Then I collected just about every poem I’ve ever written for Organic Ink: Volume 5, a poetry anthology from Dragon Soul Press. Folk of Rock and Water is under consideration at yet another publisher, and I think I’ve found the perfect market for Enough.

Perhaps the notable news about my submissions in the past month concerns “The Skull in the Tree”. After seeing an announcement from Worlds Enough that they’d sent out rejections or hold notices to everyone who submitted, I realized I hadn’t heard anything back and decided to follow up. It’s a good thing I did, as I turns out their spam folder appears to have eaten several submissions without a trace despite sending me a confirmation email. The editor for Fantastic Detectives was gracious enough to allow me to resubmit the story, and I just received word yesterday that “The Skull in the Tree” has made it to the final round of consideration!

So let this be a lesson to all you writers out there: always follow up on your submissions.

Aside from this second commission and revisions or edits on anything that gets accepted, I’m also working on a sequel of sorts to Enough that follows Earc, Arlise, and their relationship after the birth of their daughter. This one will probably be a grind, since intimacy is always tough to portray in prose. Still, I finished the first scene last week and feel like I’m in a pretty good position to beat the May 1st deadline for my target anthology if I can take care of the commissioned story soon.

As you can probably tell, outlined Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill is on the back burner at the moment. I plan on returning to that over the summer, when I expect to be through with new short stories for a while. Juggling multiple projects is gonna be a new experience.

Right now, I’m reading Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike, a delightful book set in a D&D-esque fantasy work whose economy is driven by professional adventuring and the looting of monster hoards.

I picked up a few more books around the same time. The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, so I’ll be fully caught up on the series, The Goblin Emperor, because I’ve heard such good things, and Scatter, because quality superhero romance always catches my attention. Hopefully I can start working through my backlog of reading material soon.

Last weekend, I started a solo campaign in Dungeon World, and it’s actually going pretty well. I might post serialized write-ups here and on DeviantArt, since it seems like a fun way to share some casual writing and engage with my audience. This series probably won’t start until I have enough material for a month or two of posts, but keep an eye out.

Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you again in May!

Update: February & March 2022

Hello, everybody! Sorry about the late update; late January and early February were pretty hectic, so I’m doing another double update.

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COVID-19 completely wrecked my plans to revise old stuff in January. Even though it was a very mild case, it was still about a week and a half before I felt up to writing again. By then, those projects just felt too small to justify working on when I could tackle one of my resolutions for this year: a novelization of “Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill”

Fitting I started planning a romantic suspense in February, with Valentine’s Day and all.

Like usual, I started with character profiles. Planning for the novelette only had notes on four characters (Topsannah/Whippoorwill, Madi, Rosa/Kingfisher, and Ironsides), and some of those were outdated, so it was almost like starting from scratch. The new profiles for my core cast have way more depth, and way more secondary characters were needed to support the transition to a full-length novel. I’m pretty happy with the current cast, but it might be necessary to add a few more characters as my outline takes shape.

Speaking of the outline, I’ve plotted out the entire First Act. It mostly follows the novelette, just with a few new scenes to ensure proper pacing. The Second Act has given me some trouble, though. This is a romantic suspense, so I want to keep Madi an active participant in the external conflict, but that’s hard when her skills are centered on being a prosecutor and she’s in hiding from an assassin.

Right now, I’m gravitating toward a subplot where she’s trying to deal with the conflict of interest created by prosecuting the man who sicced an assassin on her.

While I try to untangle that knot, I’ve picked up a commission for a new tabletop roleplaying company. This will be a sword & sorcery piece in the vein of Dungeons & Dragons tie-in fiction. Just a short story, but the pay is solid, and the work is going smoothly. All that’s left to write is the climax!

Once that story is finished, I’ll be returning to the outline for LLW.

A few more rejections came in, and I’ve sent out even more submissions, but things are pretty quiet at the moment. Hopefully my next update will bring some good news!

Currently, I’m reading The Monster Baru Cormorant. About 3/4 of the way through. This one took me a while to get psyched up for, simply because The Traitor Baru Cormorant was so emotionally devastating. Monster is pretty gut-wrenching too, although it’s a very different book. Much less focused on economics and much more focused on Baru as a character. I look forward to seeing where the story leads.

Like I mentioned up top, COVID-19 ripped through the whole family back at the end of January. We got off pretty easy, all things considered. Nobody was seriously ill, and I never even had a fever. The vaccines definitely did their job.

The weather has been absolutely wild lately. Snow at the start of the month, mild weather, sleet and snow a week ago, and highs in the 70s this week. But there’s still a few patches of sleet!

On the homefront, I still spend my days helping with school. Things are pretty easy at the moment, but I’ll admit it’s hard to help when my brothers have to write stories and not accidentally go overboard!

Stay safe out there, and I’ll see y’all again in April!

Update: December 2021 & January 2022

Hello, everyone! This update is a big one because writing took so much of my time last month, so let’s dive right in!

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In December, I focused all my efforts on whipping up a story for the Fantastic Detectives anthology from Worlds Enough and Tannhauser Press. “Fantasy mystery” has been the bread and butter of my short stories starring Arlise Dun since I created her way back in 2015, so it wasn’t hard to settle on a protagonist. Deciding on the mystery was another story, though.

At first, I planned a very twisty plot which would take place while she was pregnant and on maternity leave following the events of “Enough”. Everything seemed to go well at first, but by the time I’d made it about 1000 words into the story without even making a dent in the first scene, it was obvious it wouldn’t work. Things just weren’t clicking, and it didn’t seem like it would fit within the required word count even if I could finish it on time, so I decided to go back to the drawing board.

It took me less than a day to come up with an outline and title for my latest short story: “The Skull in the Tree”. Things flowed so much better. Over the next two weeks, I averaged roughly 800 words a day. This allowed me to write a scene every two or three days. Probably my best pace since last spring, and pretty close to the pace I wrote The Silver Shrike at way back in 2018.

Like my original concept, “The Skull in the Tree” takes place after the events of “Enough”. This makes it the story furthest along the timeline. Arlise is off duty and traveling with her infant daughter when their host begs for help breaking an insidious curse on her family. Writing mystery short stories is always tricky, since fitting enough suspects to maintain the suspense into such a small package takes some finesse, but I think this novelette is pretty solid.

On a side note, the return of one particular character from another story in this world may surprise some of my more dedicated readers. I look forward to hearing your reactions!

“The Skull in the Tree” took me right down to the wire. Fantastic Detectives had a deadline of December 30th, according to the guidelines, and I finished the actual writing late in the evening on the 29th. Fortunately, I’ve always edited while I go, so there wasn’t much to do on the last day. Just a quick pass over the story using the Read Aloud function in Word and it was ready for submission about nine hours to spare!

A couple rejections did come in last month, but nothing I was really holding out hope for. Folk of Rock and Water is still under consideration at Neon Hemlock, “Enough” is still under review at The Wild Rose Press, and I have a couple other stories out and about. Hopefully I hear some good news from at least one of them.

In January, I plan on touching up some old unfinished pieces while brainstorming and outlining for a novelization of “Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill”. I may mix in some poetry too, since there’s a poetry anthology at Dragon Soul Press that caught my eye. The main pieces I’m looking at are a rewrite of one of my earliest short stories (a military sci-fi piece for my creative writing class), a story chronicling how Arlise joined the Order of Watchers, the horror story from last October, and an epic poem that’s pretty fragmentary at the moment.

When it comes to the novelization of LLW, I think I’ll be able to reuse most of the novelette’s prose, but there needs to be way more connective tissue between those big scenes to help develop the characters and romance. This is, after all, going to be a superhero/romantic suspense novel centered on the second-chance romance trope.

Right now, I’m reading the omnibus collection of Mercedes Lackey’s “Vows and Honor” series, which stars the sword & sorcery duo of Tarma and Kethry. A pretty good read so far. I only have a couple more chapters left in The Oathbound.

Funny story: this book caught my eye thanks to the song “Threes”, which forms the basis of the shorty story “Turnabout” and part of The Oathbound. It’s such an excellent ballad I just had to check out the books tied to it! Not to mention the idea of flipping an ambush on its head gave me the seed of “Warden of the Wex Wood”.

Christmas brought me a copy of Comanche Dictionary and Grammar, Second Edition, which is going to be a huge help when it comes to novelizing “Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill”. Language and the way it communicates ideas plays such a massive role in how different cultures see the world, and one thing I’ve wanted to ensure from the beginning is that her culture plays a major role in who Topsannah Price/Whippoorwill is as a person.

Additionally, I want to be absolutely certain any bits of Comanche language used in the story are correct and that I’m not mispronouncing the names of any characters in my head. This dictionary will be worth its weight in gold!

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On the homefront side of things, we just got power back. Apparently a squirrel electrocuted itself, which shorted out something. PSO fixed everything pretty quickly, but it’s still not the way anyone wants to start the second semester.

Speaking of the second semester, it’s back to virtual school today! Writing around playing teacher again will be a challenge, but none of the projects I have planned for this month have a deadline any time soon, so at least I can work at my own pace. Still, I really wish we had another week of winter break!

Stay safe out there, and I’ll see you all again in February!

Update: November 2021

Hopefully everyone had a good Thanksgiving! This month has been pretty good for me, so let’s get right to the update.

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After Halloween, I decided to set the horror story mentioned in last month’s post aside. I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. My target market doesn’t have a deadline, so turning my attention to some projects that do seemed like a wise decisions.

For most of November, I’ve been focused on revising “Enough”. First, I posted it on a workshop forum and got some feedback that was both positive and helpful. My subsequent revisions bumped the word count over 5000 and more heavily emphasized the “Happy For Now” ending, which should open up a few more publishers.

I sent a query letter to the best of those new publishers, and they’ve responded very positively so far. In fact, a full manuscript request came in over the weekend! Things look really good at the moment, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up.

Otherwise, this month has been spent working on all the supplemental materials I need to send The Silver Shrike out to agents. My query and synopsis should be ready to go by #PitMad next week, so I plan on pitching this novel again. Hopefully an agent bites!

I also submitted a few older stories. “A Helping Hand” is under consideration for the first issue of a magazine, while “The Death of Liberty” went to an anthology dedicated to hard-to-place stories. “Decisions” is also out at a couple places as a reprint submission. Fingers crossed at least one of them brings an acceptance.

Right now, I’m debating whether my next project should be a fantasy mystery story for an anthology with an end of the year deadline or if I should just start outlining the novelization of “Law, Love, and the Whippoorwill”.

Currently, I’m reading A Cold Dark Place by Toni Anderson. It’s an excellent romantic suspense, although its subject matter is heavy. You ever have those moments when you’re reading a book and it’s so good you have to set it aside for a bit? That’s how I feel about this title.

I also started The Stormlight Archive at long last. Almost two years ago, I picked up the first three books on sale as a sort of Christmas present for myself, but other stuff kept jumping over them on my reading list. So far I’m only on Chapter 6 of The Way of Kings, but I’m thoroughly enjoying the series.

Life has treated me well enough this month. The soreness from my booster shot has just about faded, we had an excellent Thanksgiving (even if I did get destroyed in our evening game of Monopoly), and Oklahoma State is headed to the Big XII Championship Game for the first time ever. Now, if the Cowboys can just win Bedlam, this month will end on a fantastic note.

Here’s hoping everybody had a wonderful holiday season! I’ll see you all again in December.

Update: October 2021

It’s the spookiest month of the year, and that means it’s time for another monthly update!

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First, I finished off my sword & sorcery story at the very end of last month and decided to send it off to Heroic Fantasy Quarterly. The next submission period at Whetstone probably won’t roll around for a few more month, so I figured I’d see whether any of the higher paying markets in this subgenre might be interested. HFQ is one of my “white whales”, so I’d be ecstatic if they reply with an acceptance. If not, there are quite a few other fish in the sea. The Swords and Sorceries anthology series and Savage Realms have also caught my eye. We’ll see what the future holds for what I’ve now entitled “Warden of the Wex Wood”!

I’ve also resumed submissions on Folk of Rock and Water, since a couple more novella markets opened up in October. They probably represent my best shot at an acceptance, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up just in case more of the same unfolds.

So far this month, I’ve focused on writing a horror story that serves as a very distant sequel to “Hooves and Tobacco on a Sunday Morning”, my very first published story. Deer Woman is a really interesting figure, and I’m eager to utilize her again. My writing has come so far since those days! Right now, writing itself is going pretty smoothly. If my current pace holds, I should be able to finish it by the end of the month. Hopefully Fifty Shades of Dead likes it, because I’m not sure there’s any other market interested in this kind of story.

Once that’s done, I plan on sending out queries for The Silver Shrike to a small list of agents I gathered last week. Scouting is a little tricky, since there aren’t a ton of agents explicitly looking for a blend of superhero prose and post-apocalyptic fantasy. Still, I’ve found eleven that might be interested. Wish me luck!

When it comes to reading, I finally managed to start Uncompromising Honor and it proved itself to be almost everything I’d hoped for. Weber managed to make the battles compelling despite Manticore’s overwhelming tech advantage over the Solarian League, and there are some really poignant moments. Especially with the ending. My only complaint is that there’s still no resolution when it comes to the Mesan Alignment, which I guess will have to wait until we get the sequel series starring Honor’s children.

Otherwise, I’ve been reading a lot of Robert E. Howard. I picked up The Bloody Crown of Conan on sale and read “The Hour of the Dragon” and “A Witch Shall Be Born”, while also returning to The Horror Stories of Robert E. Howard. It seemed appropriate, given the time of year. Despite its title, “Pigeons from Hell” is easily one of the creepiest horror stories I’ve ever read!

Life could’ve been a lot kinder to us this month, though it also could’ve been much crueler. We got struck by lightning last Sunday, and almost exactly four years to the day from when we got struck the first time! Fortunately, we suffered much less damage than back in 2017. The biggest issue was our water heater, which got zapped, so we didn’t have hot water this week. At least it wasn’t a total loss, as we installed a replacement part and got it working again yesterday morning.

Compared to some of the other people whose homes were struck by lightning last weekend, we got off really easy.

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Here’s hoping everybody has a Happy Halloween! I’ll see you again in November.

Update: September 2021

So much has happened since my last update, so let’s dive right in!

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First, I finished off my latest draft of The Silver Shrike at the end of August and whipped up a query letter at the start of September for this quarter’s #PitMad event. No agent or editor likes, but the response from general users was very positive. Especially since I was also pitching Folk of Rock and Water, so my focus was split. Next time, I think I’ll concentrate on one manuscript to maximize my chances.

Regardless, I’m thrilled to say The Silver Shrike is ready for the next stage in the life of a novel: querying. I confronting that hurdle once I’m finished with my current project.

Currently, I’m working on the sword & sorcery/heroic fantasy tale starring Arlise Dun I mentioned in last month’s update. Life got in the way, so I wasn’t able to finish before Whetstone Issue #4’s deadline, but last week saw me push all the way up to the climactic fight scene, so I’m pretty sure I’ll finish “War in the Wex Wood” sometime this week. It seems likely to end up somewhere between 2000 and 2500 words, so I may simply hold onto this story until Whetstone’s next submission period.

A couple close rejections for “Enough” came in at the end of August. My story just barely missed the final cut on one of them. Those kind of rejections are simultaneously encouraging and painful. Encouraging because the editors outright said the story was good, and this was my first story in this genre. Painful because a rejection is still a rejection. Plus there don’t seem to be too many publishers seeking fantasy/erotic romance at this length. Once “War in the Wex Wood” is finished, I may workshop this story and see if I can find a way to bump it over 5000 words, which would open up quite a few other markets.

September wasn’t all rejection, though. “Decisions”–my very first published story about Arlise Dun–has been accepted for a reprint in Flights of Fantasy, an anthology of fantasy flash fiction exactly 500 words long from Iron Faerie Publishing. Hopefully I’ll have more details soon!

On the reading front, I’ve continued my journey through the Honor Harrington series with Shadow of Victory. My feelings about this book are probably the most mixed of any book in any of the spinoffs, since a lot of it is spent filling in backstory. I feel like a lot of these chapters could’ve been included in previous books, but there is some excellent stuff in here. I’m really looking forward to starting Uncompromising Honor and To End in Fire once the latter is released.

I also picked up The Conquering Sword of Conan, which features the only original Robert E. Howard story the character that I haven’t read: The Black Stranger. It looks like an anthology well worth the money.

Virtual school has proven easier to handle than last year, since I only have one little brother here to help and he works pretty well on his own. The other has been dealing with quite a bit of homework lately, but that still leaves me a big window during the day to concentrate on writing.

Personally, I’m pretty happy to see the return of college football. Oklahoma State looks really rough, possibly the worst 3-0 team in the country, but undefeated is still undefeated. They really should’ve lost last night’s game against Boise State, though. A few questionable officiating calls bailed them out. I hope they hold up better against Kansas State.

Meanwhile, Tulsa might be the best 0-3 team in the country. I never expected them to hang with Ohio State (in Columbus, no less) until the last few minutes of the 4th Quarter, but they did.

Oklahoma looks really inconsistent. Nebraska played them down to the wire, and they might’ve won if not for a couple plays like this insane one-handed interception.

In much less pleasant news, we lost my grandmother last week. She hadn’t been doing well for a while, so I think we all had time to come to terms with it before it happened, but it still stings. Especially since she was my last living grandparent. At least her suffering is at an end.

Times like this always remind me of the final verse of the old hymn “Will the Circle be Unbroken?”:

“One by one their seats were emptied.

One by one they went away.

Now the family is parted.

Will it be complete one day?”

Stay safe out there, everybody. I’ll see you all again in October.

My Very First Article!

In my August post, I mentioned being invited to write an article for the Authors’ Lounge over at Readers Magnet focused on “An Oath to the Sun”. Well, I whipped it up at the end of last week, and it’s now live! You can check it out here.

[image error]The cover of Murder & Mayhem, which includes “An Oath to the Sun”

In this article, I talk a little bit about the world behind the story, my inspirations for both this specific tale and Whippoorwill as a character, some of the other stories in the anthology, and my plans for the future.

It’s pretty surreal to see my name on the byline of an article. Hopefully, it’ll be the first of many!