News from the Front Lines, or Where Have I Been the Past Month?

How is it that a month has passed since my last blog! Well, I’ve been busy putting A Wizard’s Forge in book shows, picking up an award medal, and doing a partial preview release of A Wizard’s Sacrifice on RoyalRoad. Take a walk backward through my calendar of the past several weeks.

Gettysburg

I just got back from chaperoning my daughter’s fifth grade senior trip to Gettysburg, PA, site of the largest battle in the U.S. Civil War. The kids had the time of their lives (my daughter reports it was “one of” the highlights of her life). Not only did the kids enjoy staying overnight in a hotel (four to a room–one great big slumber party and one stalwart vice principal who roamed the hallways all night to put the kibosh on noisy horseplay), we slipped some educational activities in too, at the exhibits at the National Military Park Visitor Center, a guided battlefield tour where I peppered the guide with questions about artillery (a fascination of mine), a walk through the National Cemetery where Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address, a visit to Dwight and Mamie Eisenhowers’ farm, and my favorite, the Seminary Ridge Museum, complete with life-size dioramas depicting field amputations (I love a good gory wax museum, don’t you?). The kids in our group received battlefield training from both the docents at the Seminary Ridge and our battlefield tourguide.

I gleaned some background knowledge that will come in handy for my work on A Wizard’s Sacrifice, which contains some massive battles. Knownearth artillery is medieval–catapults, trebuchets, and ballistae–but it’s still good to learn how the tools of death were employed in real-life battles.

BookExpo

The New York BookExpo and BookCon runs for 4 days and is the largest book fair in the U.S. A Wizard’s Forge appeared on the BookLife shelf through the Combined Book Exhibit. I put Forge in the show hoping it’d catch some attention (especially with it’s shiny Finalist sticker–see below!), although I had some concerns it’d be lost in the sea of books. It almost certainly was, especially since the Combined Book Exhibit organizers put it on a low shelf (authors have no say in books’ placement). Still, I had a good time touring the exhibit hall, chatting with folks from Ingram Spark (my ebook distributor), networking at a publicity firm, and listening to some of the presentations, including a great one sponsored by Tor focusing on women science fiction authors. I also saw this awesome display for an upcoming Spinal Tap book (which I have already preordered for my husband–shhhhh, it’s a surprise!)

Next Generation Indie Book Awards Ceremony

The first week in May I received an exciting email: A Wizard’s Forge had been chosen as a finalist in the 2017 NGIBAs! I entered it into the fantasy and science fiction categories, and it made the cut in the science fiction group–I love it when Forge is recognized for its science fiction elements.

A listing for Forge also appeared in Locus magazine, the editors of which correctly identified its genre as science fantasy. This tiny little blurb was almost as exciting as the award, since Locus is the bible of speculative fiction. Fingers are crossed that somebody sees it and thinks, hey, that sounds cool. Maybe I’ll order some copies for my bookstore!

Work on A Wizard’s Sacrifice

Several author friends in the Science Fantasy society are regular users of RoyalRoad, a free-read website authors use to build fanbases. In order to motivate myself to finish A Wizard’s Sacrifice, the sequel to A Wizard’s Forge, I decided to put the draft version of the book up on RoyalRoad and to treat readers’ reactions as a kind of virtual focus group/collective beta read (and frankly I’m hoping some RR readers will be motivated to buy a copy of Forge). You can find the first fourteen chapters there now, with more to come. I hope you’ll stop by and tell me what you think (I really want to know!).

The Other Stuff Keeping Me Busy

In the midst of all these goings-on, I had a birthday, saw Wonder Woman and loved it (check out Locus Mag’s review), went on a stargazing weekend with my husband and tried out our new Schmidt Cassagrain telescope, found out my award-winning short story has been up on the Writers Digest website since March(!), and started an exciting, high-profile/high-pressure day job assignment.

Coming up I have my daughter’s birthday party, my husband’s birthday, other family events, and…well, there’s a lot more work in the trenches.