Guess we’re all official now, so I can announce this! We are doing a charity auction sort of thing – limited quantities available! – from May 31 to June 1! R. Cooper and Geneva Vand are marvelous humans and I am happy to be involved!
My little contribution will have six things – a couple of flash fics, a poem, a preview of the first 7k of the next Magician-related novel (it’s a Jer/Talis sequel!), a bonus story for Sam and Leo from Character Bleed, and…well, it’s a story you will never ever see anywhere else, which is seventeen years old now, from back when I wanted to write Humorous Fantasy (I was reading a lot of Terry Pratchett and Peter David), and I should probably warn you in advance about the terrible jokes*….but, hey, it’s in a good cause! Enjoy my embarrassment!
*among other lines, there’s the truly dreadful song pun, for which I might owe John Cougar Mellencamp an apology…
Oops, it’s been a little while, hasn’t it? It’s the end of the semester, so everything’s hectic! But I do have news! In fact I’ve got several bits of news…
First, something brand-new – out May 24! It’s called “In Perfect Time,” and it’s around 12k as far as length, and it’s got…
~a *very* loose modern-day Cinderella retelling
~baking as stress relief
~a truly terrible fancy party
~a gorgeous stranger, lonely on a balcony
~a one-night stand (might be the best thing that’s ever happened to either of them)
This one was very fun, because it’s a story I’d had bits and pieces of done for years, at various points…I’d write a scene, and pause, and then poke at it again…and it finally came together!
Second, “Portraits” – the little Gareth/Lorre short story I did for the JMS Books Love Is Free charity anthology – is getting an individual release in June! It will be slightly longer (about 500 extra words) and will get its own shiny cover. Links soon!…and speaking of…
Third, the story for the JMS anniversary call-for-stories will also be a Gareth/Lorre story! Which surprised me too; I thought we’d left them in a very good place. But the theme involved established couples, and I’d been thinking about them for “Portraits,” and suddenly I had an idea…so that’ll be out in July! *throws confetti* (…and after that we’ve really got to get back to either the Talis/Jer sequel story or the one about Lorre’s daughter…)
Fourth, there is a Secret Charity Project in progress with me and R. Cooper and Geneva Vand – I know, I know, what absolutely brilliant company!! It will be auction-style, where we offer up Things; more details shortly, but my contribution will probably involve a couple of stories, one new and one very old, which has never been seen by anyone before, in fact: that time I attempted to write comedy-fantasy, complete with bad puns…so you can all be amused by younger!me as a writer, but well, it’s in a good cause…
I think that’s it for now! I’ve been rereading Diane Duane‘s Young Wizards novels, if you’d like a book rec (and now is a good time to support her, given her recent loss) – if you like the words I write, you’ve probably heard me talk about Diane as an influence! My favorite books of hers, in terms of lush and compassionate queer fantasy, are The Door into Fire and its sequels, but I’d not read the Young Wizards (and Feline Wizards) series in literal decades, so I’m doing that. (Also evidently I’d missed at least one novella / bonus story, so that’ll be new!)
