Recent News as of June 2014

What I am currently working on:

• Beasts of Tabat, the first in the fantasy trilogy I have been working on for a while now is with my agent, in preparation for what I hope is the final rewrite. So I’m wrangling the synopses for the two books that follow.
• “Haunted” is a collaboration with Bud Sparhawk that started as a short story and has swelled to novella length. It is far future SF.
• A military fantasy story, featuring the same landscape as Beasts of Tabat.
• People who sponsored me in the Clarion West Writeathon (it’s not too late!) will be receiving a packet of writing produced during the last six weeks that includes several short stories, a novel excerpt, and several pieces of flash. So I’m putting that together and finishing up rewrites of a couple stories that will be included.
• Prepping for a couple of the new classes, including a shortened version of the editing class, a workshop on character building, and a session on turning an idea into a finished piece.
• Expanding an partially drafted literary horror piece, Queen of the Fireflies, which I’m planning on taking with me to a writing retreat in September (Clarion West sponsors will be receiving the first 50 pages).
• A couple of other collaborative pieces still very much in the works.
• Turning the notes from my building an online presence for writers class into an e-book.
• Working with Folly Blaine on doing the same with notes from our podcasting class.
• Continuing to do interviews, such as my recent one with Don Sakers. Upcoming ones include Django Wexler and Bud Webster.
• Preparing for various con appearances, including WorldCon, KillerCon, GirlGeekCon, the Baltimore Book Festival, the Northwest Book Festival, SteamCon, and Orycon. If you are interested in voting to determine my hair color for WorldCon, click here.

Yesterday I blogged about some of the things coming in 2011, and I’d like to raise the question to the readers of this blog – what would you like to see more of in 2011 (on this blog, although in the world in general might be entertaining too.)

Today also marks my first review for a new site, Rise Reviews. The site’s devoted to reviewing small press books, and my first pick was an anthology edited by Joselle Vanderhoof, Steam-Powered: Lesbian Steampunk Stories from Torquere Press. I hope you’ll check out my review of Steam-Powered, and perhaps the anthology as well (alas, I could not find it on Amazon).