Tag: Musa Publishing

Phoenix Day

May 11, 2012 /

“Phoenix” is out today! I’m going to do a separate post about the story, but I wanted to run through a few quick notes first.

The design team at Musa did a beautiful job. Editors Kayla Watson and Kathy Teel were wonderful to work with. I truly appreciate the work everyone at Musa and Euterpe put in to get “Phoenix” to this point.

You can buy it through Musa and Amazon. Keep in mind that this is a novelette–essentially a long short story–so it’s the sort of thing you can read in one sitting. The links to where to buy it will be permanent fixtures on the blog, once I do a little more widget work.

How not to find your destination

May 9, 2012 /

I have a few days of driving back and forth to a neighboring state this week. Lots of time in the car, spent traveling to a place I don’t know well.

I don’t particularly like driving. I don’t like being lost at all. Just imagine how much I love driving around and around, with no idea where I am.

I had printed directions. I had GPS directions from my cell phone. Those worked great, right up until the point where the coverage vanished, and the phone decided I really wanted to go to a very small residential drive in roughly the middle of nowhere. Keep in mind that I pass much of my time in the middle of nowhere. It’s a place I’m pretty okay with, except when I’m supposed to be somewhere entirely different.

The written directions? Those would have worked great had the phone directions not brought me to exactly nowhere near the roads I needed to take.

Give me a map and compass and I’m happy as can be. Give me a car and multiple sets of non-functional directions and…well, less happy is the description I’ll choose for now.

Eventually I managed to backtrack to a road I knew. Even better, I managed to find an entire donut stand of people who truly wanted to help me find my way. They were spectacular. The kindness of strangers can be a wonderful thing.

So, me and technology? A little at odds at the moment. We’ll try to patch it up before “Phoenix” arrives in all its ebook glory on Friday. (I read the galley this weekend. The design people at Musa made it look beautiful.)

To the women at the house o’ gas and donuts on Rt. 101 today: You’re all fabulous. If you’re ever lost around here, I’ll be the first one out with directions for you.

Phoenix

February 9, 2012 /

Hope is a challenging concept when you’ve suffered from depression for well over half your life. I suspect there are some writers out there who cope by writing happy things. I write dark things with endings that feel optimistic to me.

“Phoenix” was born from a single line: The thing about stories is they’ve got to have hope. As a story, I’d say it’s less like my short stories and more like my novels (and comes in at novelette length). There’s a good reason for that. The details I used in writing it came from an older story about one of the characters in the novels.

That connection is one of the reasons that I’m excited to say that “Phoenix” has a home! It will be available as an ebook through Musa Publishing on May 11. I’ll have more to say about it when the date comes closer. For now, here’s to hope found in unlikely places!