Circuits & Slippers is Published! (updated with an interview)

Twenty authors, twenty fairy tales retold with a sci-fi twist...

Circuits & Slippers is now available in paperback and ebook!

*biggest. grin. ever.*

I AM A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!

　

I'm trying to put into words how this feels, and I'm failing.

This stupid little hobby that has dominated my life. These silly little stories that I spend so much time and energy on. They're about to put my name into the world. And yes, it's an anthology being sold online and my story is undoubtedly the shortest and I'm not going to get famous from it. But there will be a book in someone's home that has my name on the back cover. And my words on pages 221 through 229 (At least, that's where they are in the advanced copy). And when I say that means everything to me, it is not hyperbole.

I will be forever thankful to our editor Jaylee James for taking a chance with me, and to all the other authors who are making this a fun and stress-free first experience.

　

The other 19 authors are:

Allan Davis Jr., James Wood, Leandra Wallace, Mandy Nachampassack-Maloney, M. Z. Medina, Marie Piper, Nitai R. Poddar, Sara Daniele Rivera, Caitlin Nicoll, Shannon McDermott, Christopher Walker, Claudie Arseneault, Diane Dubas, Eben Mishkin, Elizabeth Hopkinson, C.M. Lloyd, L.G. Keltner, Lizz Donnelly, and Lea Anne Guettler.

Remember their names. Read their stuff. They're amazing writers and they've made this whole process all the more fun. I was kind of apprehensive about being on Twitter, but this bunch of amazing people make it so fun and a lot of us share a sense of humor (which is based mostly around bad puns).

One of our authors, Leandra Wallace, has a celebration post on her blog.

And (I don't know how I forgot to link to this!) I did an interview with The Handy Uncapped Pen blog for disabled and neurodivergent writers.
　
And now on to the obligatory "hey, buy our book!" part.


For some reason, Amazon has the physical and ebook copies in two separate listings. Jaylee has emailed Amazon about it, but for now, the links are:
　
Paperback
Kindle

And our Goodreads page

Both of which I'm contractually required to tell you to share with everyone you have ever met (Okay, not really. :D But our editor did ask us to spread the word. And if you enjoy it, the best way to show it is by leaving a review!)

　
I'm going to go collapse from excitement now.

　

More Editing Notes

I found more notes I wrote myself while editing FreakShow (which is currently in the inbox of several agents-AAAH!).

　

You prove to me that robot mosquitoes can survive the possibly lightyears of space travel to get back to Vespi and arrive unharmed, and I will give you a dollar. (not a binding contract)

Sometimes I hit Tab instead of Q and it looks like I'm redacting parts of the story.

What, pray tell, is a "watchment route"? Did you mean "surveillance"? Because I think you meant "surveillance."

I don't know if that's how gravity works, but to be fair neither does Jack. (my go-to excuse for when I get facts wrong)

Did we forget that your ship also has wings?

Before you even think about letting another person read this, you make damn sure every time you mean to say "peering," it doesn't say "peeing." Why does everyone peer so much, anyway?

Solidified air. It's a thing. Deal with it.

I have no idea how big buildings should be. Four hundred floors? Sure!

If this ever becomes a movie, I get to play "scared girl at keyboard."

It's commentary on the value we place on women's appeeeeeeeaaaarances!

Vespi is both a city and a planet. Like Hollywood.

*just barely refrains from launching into a song from The Land Before Time IV*

I can see it now: "The book most influential to my writing career is definitely the Final Fantasy VII strategy guide."

It's hard to describe things. Can the last chapters just be a picture book? Or my phone number and a promise that if you call, I'll explain how it ends?

Running, as described by someone perplexed as to how people walk without falling.

Oh my god; it's a boss battle. You dork.

My Review of Circuits & Slippers

It's slowly dawning on me that I'm really going to be a published author.

I've received an advanced reader copy of Circuits & Slippers!

*happy dance*

I'll write up a full review for Goodreads once I get the chance to read all of the stories, but here's my impression of the book based on what I've read so far.

　

Twenty authors, twenty sci-fi retellings of your favorite fairy tales, one really awesome book.

Editor Jaylee James has assembled an amazing collection of stories here. From the first tale, Slumbering Hill by Diana Dubas, I felt transported to exciting new worlds full of "star stories".

The stories play with the narrative of the classic tales in imaginative new ways: Marie Piper's take on Red Riding Hood's "What big eyes you have" scene was brilliant, and Prina and the Pea by Leandra Wallace put an interesting twist on why there were so many mattresses on that bed.

Jaylee put a lot of work into this book, (as evidenced by the awesome detail where the scene breaks look like bits of circuitry!) and while I'm so incredibly honored to be part of it, I'm pretty sure I would be in love with this book even if I wasn't in it.

It's the kind of book I wish I had as a teenager, when I didn't realize it was okay to tell amazingly bizarre stories about sci-fi princesses.
(Circuits & Slippers will be available in paperback and electronic on September 29. Add it to your To Read list on Goodreads!)

Circuits & Slippers Interview

Just a small announcement. Leandra Wallace, one of the authors in the Circuits & Slippers fairy tale anthology is putting interviews with the other authors on her blog, and Christopher Walker and I are the first two!

http://leandrajwallace.blogspot.com/2016/09/circuits-slippers-meet-authors-1.html

 

(I'd like to thank my aunt for taking a photo of me where I actually look halfway decent. And for not caring that I cropped her out of the picture.)

 

 

In other news, I got an advanced copy of the anthology and it's so good you guys! And my name is spelled right! (I always manage to leave off an N or an S, no matter how many times I check it, and I was terrified I'd misspelled it in my own bio.)

 

T minus three weeks!

ISWG - A Little Late

On the first Wednesday of every month, the Insecure Writer’s Support Group encourages writers to talk about their insecurities. Except I totally forgot this month, even though I had the post written and everything. So here we go.

 

So I haven't done one of these posts in a while, because I haven't been insecure at all!

(yeah... I wouldn't believe that, either. In reality, I've been busy and didn't have any insecurities that I wanted to take the time to whine write about. :D Although Circuits & Slippers is being published on September 29, so I am really happy.)

Insecurity #1

I've finished editing my first real novel, and I'm going to be doing #PitMad tomorrow, which is where authors tweet about their novels and agents and publishers can "like" them to request more information. Need I say more?

(update: I got 2 likes!)


Insecurity #2

My brain is so exhausted and I don't feel like I'll ever write anything good again. I know I will, because I've had this feeling before, but somehow that doesn't help.

Insecurity #3

People I know are reading my work.

This is a big one for me, and the reason why I almost used a pseudonym. For the most part, no one I know has read my work since I was 14 and my stories were about a talking mouse that went on adventures. Now my stories are complicated. Dark sometimes.

One character is kind of suicidal. Others are (spoiler alert for my aunt if you're still reading FreakShow:) having affairs. A lot of them swear way more than I do.

Obviously, the characters are not me, but there's just enough of me in these characters that even I wonder how much of them is a conscious decision and how much is just my mind going "hey, look - a chance to work out our feelings about our father!"

If I wonder that, what will other people think? Will they believe me when I say I was never as depressed as Petra? That I don't actually have as dirty a mind as Lily and that her promiscuity was a surprise to me?

I send warnings along with my stories sometimes. Simple as "there's violence in this chapter" to long explanations about the origin of the characters so they understand my intentions. I think I do this because the people I'm sending it to - aunts, grandparents, friends of the family - have known me all my life. I don't want to worry them about my mental health or when they see how seriously messed up my characters are, or think I'm hiding things from them in any way.

I feel like this post should end with a moral like "talk to your family about these icky feelings" or something.

Instead, here's a picture I found on my computer but don't remember drawing! It appears to be a cat gazing out at a universe for some reason.

 

 

(obligatory ad for Circuits & Slippers: Like sci-fi? Like fairy tale retellings? You can sign up for an electronic advance reader copy of Circuits & Slippers here!)

More Editing Notes

I'm going to be a published author in less than a month with the publication of Circuits & Slippers (!!!!!). To celebrate, here are some more notes I made while editing my novel.



"Because she was my daughter? Because they were in danger?" Oh, ambiguous pronouns, you amuse me so.

If Parthen was pregnant that would complicate things immensely. Especially because both potential fathers are in the same body right now (oh hey, conjoined twins) and so Theon could argue that they're both eating for two, and what if the baby had powers? It's zombie fetus all over again. (I just want to point out that there is no indication Parthen is pregnant in the book, nor is that anything I even considered, so I don't know why my brain is pointing out all that the problems that would cause. And "zombie fetus all over again" is a misleading Walking Dead reference. There was never a zombie fetus in the book. Or in The Walking Dead, for that matter.)

And now I'm misreading "boots" as "boobs." I'm think I need to use a different font.

Why do you talk about pronouns so freaking much?

It's the midpoint reversal where everything changes!

Is "hove" a word? (yes, but not the way I wanted to use it).

I seriously have to come up with some excuse for all the talk about pronouns in this book. I mean, is it an allegory for the inherent human need to label? Sure. I'mma go with that. (None of my characters use nonbinary gender pronouns or anything as logical as that. They just talk about grammar a lot for some reason.)