News and Updates
It very rarely occurs to me to write a “news” letter to you all. I know! I know! It’s the basic Marketing 101 cornerstone of Author pages. You can imagine how many times I get the glaring remark of “What do you mean you don’t DO a newsletter?” passed down noses and in no small measure of disgust.
Listen…truth is, I rarely read newsletters. They fill up my in box, I feel like I should read them, but life is busy and its low priority. I don’t want to be some unopened email in your box, taking up space and upticking your stress. Plus, I very rarely have much to say about the goings-on of my life, writerly or otherwise. I write. I edit. I’m working on projects, but I’m not going to tell you about them unless it looks like they might actually make it into the world. The rest of my life is pretty non-invasive and I absolutely abhor bragging, especially the “humble” kind.
It isn’t that I’m not proud when something good happens. Of course I am, it’s justification right? That what we do is seen and appreciated? There’s nothing wrong with that. But I don’t want to fall into the trap of resting on my laurels because something I once scribbled down was appreciated enough to earn a sticker for the cover. I’m a writer, whether I get noticed or not. That being said (in an unnecessarily lengthy way) here’s the latest stuff and what I have coming up.
You might recall a few months ago I was nominated for the Colorado Book Awards.
It was an incredible honor and I’ve been submitting to that award for years. Well, the announcement was last Friday night and….I didn’t win, but it’s ok. It was a great evening and I was honored to be amongst so many talented writers and supportive people in the humanities.
So it looks like the next thing I have to do is…keep writing.
On that note, I’ve sent out my first LGBTQ+ romance (Male-Male) to my beta/sensitivity readers and am anxiously waiting for their feedback. That story (if it’s not completely rejected) will start airing in Vella at the start of October. Super excited about it, I love the characters and the storyline. In more Westbury news, I will be publishing Westbury Falls in a book format, hopefully by September of this year. The rest of the summer will be dedicated to trying to get that ready. I’ll even have some sneak peeks of cover design and art out in the coming weeks.
In July, I’m helping my Youth with their first anthology (in the dark depths of formatting currently) and that should be out mid-month. We hope to release it on the eve of the Writing Heights Writers Association Conference (register here), at a special ceremony celebrating our young writers. If you want to attend let me know or register on the site. It will be a wonderful and informative conference.
Lastly, I’m preparing to teach four separate workshops at the 2025 Colorado Writers Gold Conference hosted by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers in late September (check it out here). I’m a little nervous as this is the biggest conference I’ve attended and taught at, but I think it’s going to be a fantastic adventure. Classes I’ll be teaching: The Year of 100 Rejections, Beyond Romance: Crafting Character Relationships, Creativity and The Writer’s Mind, and How to Write like a Martial Artist (including self-defense basics). So if you’re interested in coming to watch me squirm in a dress…there you go.
What else? Um…I’m researching for a new play (comedy, absurdest, derivative) and I’m shopping my literary fiction around in hopes I can have it published/contracted by the end of the year. I’m also working on booking the Fall retreat for WHWA and I’ll send along that information soon.
Now you know way more about my writing/editing. I hope you have a good summer and that this blog announcement isn’t just sitting in your inbox to be deleted, unread, at a later day. But you know what, from one newsletter avoider to another, I’m cool with that. Take care!
