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!