News! And it's good!
It's National Short Story Day today, and the winter solstice too – what better day to celebrate short stories than the shortest day (or night, depending on where you are!) after all? Whilst most of these national-whatever-something-or-other-days usually pass me by, this one is special for me. The winter solstice is one of my favourite days anyway, but today I also have two exciting things to announce.
The first is that I recorded a short story to celebrate NSSD for the lovely Adam Christopher and you can listen to it over at his place. It's a spooky tale and perfect for the long winter night, called Nine Ladies Dancing. I love his writing and it was a joy to record, so do pop on over for a treat, it's a great story.
The second is a rather splendid announcement, something that I've been keeping under my hat for about two months now… I have a second publishing deal!
This is a different publisher and a different project to the 20 Years Later trilogy. The fantastic eMergent Publishing are going to publish a super-duper new edition of my short story anthology From Dark Places.
I quietly self-published From Dark Places early in the year, always with a plan to bring out a second e-book volume and then combine them for a print edition. I'm delighted to announce that eMergent are going to be doing that for me, releasing a new edition of the current e-book which will become "Volume 1″ along with a second e-book volume. Both will be combined into a beefy print edition to be released next year. Yay!
Jodi Cleghorn, the fabulous co-founder of eMergent, has been editing the stories with me over the last two months, and it is such an incredible experience working closely with an editor I trust. I've written short stories for the two eMergent Publishing Chinese Whisperings anthologies, so I know how good she is. It's a humbling experience too, and has really polished up my quirky tales. Funnily enough, she bought 'From Dark Places' when it was released, and said to me in a Skype chat (she lives in Australia) that she thought they were 98% of what they could be, but with good editing could be 110%. I understand exactly what she meant now.
It's been a strange couple of months keeping quiet about this. At the beginning of the project, before the final contract was sorted, I was desperate to shout it out from the rooftops. But then real life got far too hectic, and that little field mouse of mine got twitchy, until my confidence fell to an all time low about three weeks ago. It doesn't help that there have been some very stressful things happening away from my writing (isn't there always?) but I have even found it hard to think about this.
But it's National Short Story Day, and for heaven's sake, I should be able to announce this and be proud and excited about the fact that next year I will have a debut novel and a short story anthology in print and out there on the market.
Nothing in this world frightens me more.
That fear has been undermining my joy about this project and I'm hoping that making this announcement will put me back on track. And I know that many of you wanted a print edition of From Dark Places when I released it, so it's fantastic to be able to tell you that you'll be getting one that is so much better than one I could self-publish, and contains an extra bonus story that has never been released before. So, more happy dances and less waking in the middle of the night with the Fear, eh? Life is wonderful and scary, full and challenging, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
