"Two wrongs may not make a right but a thousand wrongs make a writer.”

Showing posts with label Spring Fevers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Spring Fevers. Show all posts

Sunday, December 30, 2012

A Freebie and a Cure

To celebrate the end of 2012, Ploughshares is giving away one of their solos  Escape and Reverse . Solos are longer individual stories. You have until tomorrow, December 31st, to download it. If you don't own a Kindle, you can read the story on your computer or through a Kindle app on your smartphone.


There is also a new anthology out from Elephant's Bookshelf Press titled The Fall.


These are the same people who brought us Spring Fevers, which you can also now download for free. The Fall is a collection of tales from the apocalypse, but so much more than zombies. The cover alone draws you in, zombies or not. Review forthcoming from this blogger in 2013.

Do you have a favorite read from 2012? In the running for me is Sixteen Pleasures. A fascinating novel by Robert Hellenga.




I wanted to draw attention to all these and more as 2012 draws to a close, but time is short and we bloggers have short attention spans because we're doing other things, like feeling guilty because we haven't done enough.  So, just one final note and I'll let you go. I promised you three cures in 2012. One involved beets which I told you about three posts ago but still I've fallen short. Here is a second:

My grandpa used to smoke a pipe. He smoked it so much, he got cancer in his lower lip where the pipe would always rest. An aunt who lived in Detroit knew a doctor in Canada who made house calls, and Grandpa went to stay with her for three weeks. The doctor came to the house every few days and applied a poultice to his lip. Mother says it was extremely painful at the time. After three weeks, the cancerous tumor was drawn out, and they placed it in a jar. She remembers seeing that jar on the kitchen windowsill. After that, Grandpa took to smoking cigars. He never gave up the smoking habit, but he never had a reoccurrence of the cancer.

Happy New Year! May 2013 be prosperous and may we each find a poultice for what ails us.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Breakthrough Novel Award Contest

I made the first cut in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest in the General Fiction category. It was a shot of adreneline to find my name on the list. There were ten thousand entries so I guess that's pretty cool. If nothing else, I know my query is effective. I have the folks at Agent Query and She Writes to thank, as well as the amazing Mindy McGinnis at Writer Writer Pants On Fire, who also just so happens to have a short story in SPRING FEVERS. Her debut novel NOT A DROP TO DRINK is coming out in 2013 but you can add it to your Goodreads shelf if you have one. While you're there, you might as well add SPRING FEVERS too.

I've decided that Twitter might be a cool way to connect with people. If the creator of Spring Fevers can find time to Twitter, than I can too. One can only buck the current for so long. So if you see me out there floundering in a headwind, please offer me shelter on a branch.

I hear sleet against the window. Dare I wish for an "ice day". A free day to sit at my computer and make up stories? Delve deep into my imagination and bank of memory? This brings up an interesting discussion I started with Tricia over at Talespinning.

Do you think memory can be imagined? The mind is a fascinating thing. Dark and beautiful and mysterious. How do you know you don't know something and how do you know that that embellished memory is authentic? We all embellish memory, tweek it and edit it. Then there's memory loss. How much of your self do you retain if you lose your memory?

Keep a diary. It's the only sure way to remember the past with accuracy. That or sit down with an older family member or an old friend who can set you straight. But you might not like what they tell you.

Off to imagine some stories. Come on sleet. Come on.


P.S. I posted this accidently before all my links were in place. Sorry Mindy. Corrections have been made. And, no, I didn't get that free day.

Monday, February 27, 2012

SPRING FEVERS - It's Contagious!

Just in time for spring,
is hot off the press!

Hot in more ways than one, the anthology is a collection of tales that explore relationships in all their forms. Created by Cat Woods and Matt Sinclair, SPRING FEVERS is the debut publication of Elephant's Bookshelf Press. The ten writers featured are: MarcyKate Connolly, S.Q. Eries, Robb Grindstaff, J. Lea Lopez, Mindy McGinnis, R.S. Mellette, Matt Sinclair, A.M. Supinger, Cat Woods and myself. Yes, I am very proud to have two of my short stories included with such a fine group of writers.

The cover design was done by Calista Taylor. Isn't it pretty?
She just launched a new site for her ebook covers. If you need a cover, check out her gallery here.

SPRING FEVERS is available at Amazon or at Smashwords.

Catch a fever!