What I did over the last part of the summer, and other updates
July and August wound up being pretty busy for me. I moved from part-time work to full-time at the end of June, and that took a bit of adjustment to get my rhythm back as far as reshuffling my free time for writing.
In August, I got a chance to see a short story of mine adapted into graphic novel format. "The Wishing Tree," the story of a raccoon who plays a trick on two hunting hounds--and winds up getting a surprise himself--was first published in New Fables: Summer 2008. Earlier this year, artist Jennifer Fromm ("Nimrais") put out a call for possible stories to adapt for her final project for college (a short graphic novel), and I was honored when she chose "The Wishing Tree." It was only printed in a limited hardcover run, but you can see a few sample pages from it on her sketch blog.
August also kept me busy with Camp NaNoWriMo, where I cranked out 50K words in 26 days on a work in progress called The Second Life of Bartholomew T. Lion, a novel taking place in a world populated entirely by cast-off toys. The draft isn't quite complete yet, since I'm letting it sit for a while as I figure out what's supposed to happen. (The draft I wound up with was much rougher than I'm used to, but there was a nice freedom in that.) Bartholomew is going to take a lot of rewriting and refining before I even get to the beta-reading stage, but I'm excited about its potential. It feels like the sort of story that only I could write, and that makes it a lot of fun, even knowing all the work that's still to come.
September brings an announcement I've waited several months to make: my first novel, By Sword and Star, is slated for release late this year by Anthropomorphic Dreams Publishing. It's a medieval fantasy with a bit of a twist, in that all the characters are anthropomorphic animals. (Think Redwall, but written with more of an adult audience in mind.) Anthro Dreams is noted for their fiction podcast and also for anthologies like Different Worlds, Different Skins: Humanity's Encounters with Other Races. They've published a number of my short stories in one format or another, and I'm pleased to have them putting out my first novel-length work.
And in other news, I have tickets to see Stephen King accept the Mason Award next Friday night, as part of this year's Fall for the Book festival. Better yet, I wound up getting one of the randomly awarded "golden tickets" for his book signing, so I'm pretty excited about that. :D
Next month, I'll start planning for NaNoWriMo in November. I'd like to get another book's first draft knocked out before I close out the year and go back to short stories/novellas for a while. I'm also planning to get another Smashwords release out in the next several months, but we'll see how it goes. There's always something to work on, at least. I never have to worry about running out of ideas. :)
In August, I got a chance to see a short story of mine adapted into graphic novel format. "The Wishing Tree," the story of a raccoon who plays a trick on two hunting hounds--and winds up getting a surprise himself--was first published in New Fables: Summer 2008. Earlier this year, artist Jennifer Fromm ("Nimrais") put out a call for possible stories to adapt for her final project for college (a short graphic novel), and I was honored when she chose "The Wishing Tree." It was only printed in a limited hardcover run, but you can see a few sample pages from it on her sketch blog.
August also kept me busy with Camp NaNoWriMo, where I cranked out 50K words in 26 days on a work in progress called The Second Life of Bartholomew T. Lion, a novel taking place in a world populated entirely by cast-off toys. The draft isn't quite complete yet, since I'm letting it sit for a while as I figure out what's supposed to happen. (The draft I wound up with was much rougher than I'm used to, but there was a nice freedom in that.) Bartholomew is going to take a lot of rewriting and refining before I even get to the beta-reading stage, but I'm excited about its potential. It feels like the sort of story that only I could write, and that makes it a lot of fun, even knowing all the work that's still to come.
September brings an announcement I've waited several months to make: my first novel, By Sword and Star, is slated for release late this year by Anthropomorphic Dreams Publishing. It's a medieval fantasy with a bit of a twist, in that all the characters are anthropomorphic animals. (Think Redwall, but written with more of an adult audience in mind.) Anthro Dreams is noted for their fiction podcast and also for anthologies like Different Worlds, Different Skins: Humanity's Encounters with Other Races. They've published a number of my short stories in one format or another, and I'm pleased to have them putting out my first novel-length work.
And in other news, I have tickets to see Stephen King accept the Mason Award next Friday night, as part of this year's Fall for the Book festival. Better yet, I wound up getting one of the randomly awarded "golden tickets" for his book signing, so I'm pretty excited about that. :D
Next month, I'll start planning for NaNoWriMo in November. I'd like to get another book's first draft knocked out before I close out the year and go back to short stories/novellas for a while. I'm also planning to get another Smashwords release out in the next several months, but we'll see how it goes. There's always something to work on, at least. I never have to worry about running out of ideas. :)
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