Dribs & Drabs ...

I am very pleased to announce that a short story of mine, "Trials of Spring", was selected to be in the anthology From the Ground Up, published by Pete's Press and edited by Annabel Townsend!

I have already received my complimentary two free copies, and had my youngest sit down and read my story. She is usually my most critical of my offspring where my work is concerned, so I waited with bated breath to see what her reaction would be. Sadly, she didn't smile or chuckle while she read it (which my editor assured me she had done when first reading it!), but did comment that it was "a cute story". From her this is high praise indeed! Of my three children, she was less interested in hearing my storytelling attemps in the car to and from dance class, whether it was one of my own stories or an abbreviated version of a book I had read that I particularly liked. Of my other two, the eldest loved every storytelling minute, became a voracious reader on her own, and as an adult a writer as well. She has published two novels through the small press imprint that she created, and where I had hoped she'd take Best Laid Plots and put it through the formatting process and publish it as well, she has since become a school teacher and no longer has the time :( And the middle child, while less obvious about enjoying my storytelling, she is currently at University across the country, finishing off her degree in English, and Biology, with the intent to teach high school when she'd done. I will be honest, and say that her AP English teacher might have had something to do with her love of English as a subject, but I'm sure I laid the groundwork!

Have I already told you that Best Laid Plots, Book the First, is currently with my local writers guild being evaluated? I'm sure I must have ... but if not, I have now! The Evaluator should be finishing up soon - they say to allow 6-8 weeks and they've had it since Sept 16th, so it's a bit overdue. I will follow up on that next week if I haven't heard anything by then. And if the verdict is that it needs more editing, then I have a few contacts that I met at When Words Collide 2024 that I will contact about taking a stab at that. I met them at a Writer/Editor Speed Mingle session, and in the brief time I had to sit with each of them I showed them the cover art, talked about the back blurb and a bit about the story. Each of them seemed interested and enthusiastic, so that's pretty cool!

Want to hear more about the back blurb, or even the awesome cover? Send me an email and ask!

Until next time,

Ciao!