anthology – Among the Authors

Waiting on Wednesday: Toil & Trouble

Waiting on Wednesdays spotlights highly anticipated upcoming releases, and was originally hosted by Jill at Breaking the Spine. Since Jill is no longer hosting, I’m now joining up with Can’t Wait Wednesday at Wishful Endings. Check it out, and leave a link to your “can’t wait” book of the week!

This week for Waiting on Wednesday, I’m doing something I haven’t done before – I’m highlighting an anthology! Anthologies aren’t usually my go-to reading material because if I really enjoy a story, I want to live in it for so much longer than a short story. However, there are plenty of reasons to look forward to this exceptional young adult collection…

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RELEASE DATE: AUGUST 28, 2018

Summary (via Goodreads)

A young adult fiction anthology of 15 stories featuring contemporary, historical, and futuristic stories featuring witchy heroines who are diverse in race, class, sexuality, religion, geography, and era.

Are you a good witch or a bad witch?

Glinda the Good Witch. Elphaba the Wicked Witch. Willow. Sabrina. Gemma Doyle. The Mayfair Witches. Ursula the Sea Witch. Morgan le Fey. The three weird sisters from Macbeth.

History tells us women accused of witchcraft were often outsiders: educated, independent, unmarried, unwilling to fall in line with traditional societal expectations.

Bold. Powerful. Rebellious.

A bruja’s traditional love spell has unexpected results. A witch’s healing hands begin to take life instead of giving it when she ignores her attraction to a fellow witch. In a terrifying future, women are captured by a cabal of men crying witchcraft and the one true witch among them must fight to free them all. In a desolate past, three orphaned sisters prophesize for a murderous king. Somewhere in the present, a teen girl just wants to kiss a boy without causing a hurricane.

From good witches to bad witches, to witches who are a bit of both, this is an anthology of diverse witchy tales from a collection of diverse, feminist authors. The collective strength of women working together—magically or mundanely–has long frightened society, to the point that women’s rights are challenged, legislated against, and denied all over the world. Toil & Trouble delves deep into the truly diverse mythology of witchcraft from many cultures and feminist points of view, to create modern and unique tales of witchery that have yet to be explored.

Why I’m Waiting:

Like many other women, I really enjoy stories about witches. Whether it’s Hermione Granger or the Sanderson Sisters, I’m all about magical and mystical characters. From those just discovering their powers to those who wield power like a sword, these women are intriguing, complex, and they reject the ordinary. I can remember reading and rereading Roald Dahl’s The Witches as a child, and instead of rooting for the main character as he took on an entire gathering of witches, I just wanted to figure out how I too could become a witch and turn boys into mice.

Witches tend to be very strong, female characters, and an entire collection of diverse stories that delve into their myth and legend sounds right up my alley. Luckily, I was just granted an ARC copy from the publisher, so if you’re looking forward to this one as much as I am, go ahead and subscribe to Among the Authors (at the top of this page on the right) so that you’ll be updated when I post my review a little closer to publication time. I can’t wait to get started reading it!

Safe to Say

It’s safe to say that I’m perhaps the worst blogger in the history of blogging. It always seems to happen that I’ll think of something I should post about, and then life immediately gets in the way. What have I been up to lately?

1. I started grad school! – Huzzah! It’s well overdue, but I finally made the leap and started classes this fall. I’m almost to midterm now, and it’s certainly been an adjustment getting back into the swing of things. I’m taking all online classes through the University of Kentucky for my Master’s in Library and Information Science.

2. I bought a house! – What an adventure this has been… I’ve dreamed of owning my grandparents’ home since I was a child, and a few months ago I was finally presented with this chance. I jumped on it. It’s still a dream come true, but it is in need of so much TLC. Renters certainly have not been kind to it, so there are tons of repairs and remodeling, most of which we (my other half, Joffree, and me) are doing ourselves. It’s definitely an ongoing project.

3. Spellbound Scribblers – A short story blog maintained by myself and my two best buds and fellow librarians. Last month got a little hectic between house/grad school, but I’m looking forward to getting back to regular posting with these two talented writers. Check it out HERE.

4. Anthology #2 – The Wicked Wordsmiths of the West published our second anthology last month, Stories from the Stacks. All short stories are related to libraries in some way, and I have two stories published in this one – “Saturday Librarians” and “A Novel Change”. It’s available in Kindle and paperback HERE.

And so now we are here, the start of October, with November and NaNoWriMo looming just over the horizon. A little while back, I was browsing through some old files on my computer and located an outline for a book I’d always wanted to write. It was surprisingly good, and so it’s been sticking in the back of my head that maybe just maybe I could use it for NaNo. Sure, it’s probably insane to even be considering participating in NaNoWriMo this year between the house and grad school, but this will make my fourth year. I can’t break the chain now. This year I am fortunate enough to have a co-ML to help in the planning and implementing of write-ins, so I figure that’s a plus. And, if I don’t want to use the outline I’ve been dwelling on, I can always be a NaNo rebel and write a collection of short stories, which also sounds like something right up my alley. I can do it, right? Right?! Nothing seems to motivate me more than overwhelming amounts of pressure. *sigh* Here goes nothing…

Back in Action

Beginnings always seem to be the hardest, and here I am, ready to begin again. I’ve taken far too much time off from the things that I care about, including writing. Depression will do that to you. And it was refreshing to find out last week that my goddess, my spirit animal – Jenny Lawson, is devoting her new book to discussing her struggles with depression and anxiety. This woman can make even the most painful ordeals something hilarious. Quite often, I find myself binge-reading her blog just to cheer myself up, and I’m counting down the days until I can hold Furiously Happy: A Funny Book about Horrible Things in my hands and devour it joyously.

“I think everyone can relate to the fact that a ton of bullshit happens every single day and the only way we can battle that bullshit is choose to be furiously happy whenever we have the opportunity.”

So lately, I’ve been choosing to be furiously happy instead. I’m pushing myself back into art, writing, and time with the people that I care about, and I’ve discovered just how much I missed myself.

There are a couple of new writing projects on the horizon:

1) A new W3 anthology – Wicked Wordsmiths are all currently hard at work writing new short stories that are themed around libraries for this anthology. I’ve got one story down, heavily in need of some painful editing and at least one more brewing in my brain currently.

2) “Captive” – It’s a working title. I wrote a piece of flash fiction recently that really started to eat away at my thoughts. It begged for something more to be written. So, in my free time, I’ve been adding bits and pieces and watching a story develop. It will likely end up a much longer piece, ideally novel length. Without giving too much away, the story revolves around a kidnapping victim and the nightmares she encounters as her captor creates a sinister choice for her. The theme of captivity seems to be popping up a lot in the pieces I’ve been writing recently, so I’m just going to roll with it and see where this goes.

As the weather gets warmer, I become more active, and thankfully, that is making my brain be more active as well. Just have to keep the motivation and keep choosing to be furiously happy. I can do this, and so can you.

A Wicked Signing

I’m a bit behind in making this post, but it has taken me quite awhile to put into words how I feel about the signing. In short, I am still in awe. On October 14th, the Wicked Wordsmiths had their first ever book signing for Wicked Words. A local bookstore hosted the event, and it was a success, to say the least.

I won’t lie, in the days leading up to the signing, I started having my doubts about how many people would show up. It was entirely possible that it could only be our mothers, fathers, and significant others. We’re just a small, local writing group… we shouldn’t expect a crowd, should we? As it turns out, the supporters showed up in droves. For an hour and a half, there was a constant line of readers making their way along the table to visit with each author. Of course, the mothers, fathers, and significant others were there. In fact, my father was the first person in line (adorable). But on top of that, there were people that showed up that didn’t have any prior connections to any of the W3 group, and THAT was what truly shocked us. It’s amazing to know that we managed to write this anthology, jumped headfirst into publishing it despite our nervousness, and that there are people out there that want to share in what we created. AMAZING. We can’t thank everyone enough for their support.

I am beyond proud of this group. Wicked Words was definitely a learning experience for us all, and I think it has given us the drive to continue doing bigger and better things, including our own individual WIPs and more anthologies for the group. I know that personally, I now want to strive even harder to finish the book that’s been running wild in my mind and bring it to fruition by seeking publication. Publishing the anthology has done wonders for proving to me that I CAN do this, and I certainly won’t be losing that motivation any time soon. Especially not since we continue to receive promotion from the press. There have been several local news articles published regarding the anthology, and next week, a few of us will also be interviewed on a cable access show that reaches about 37,000 homes daily. Pretty sweet stuff, if you ask me.

We’ve also been invited back for another signing in participation with Small Business Saturday, which is extremely exciting, especially when you factor in that some big names like Craig Johnson and Marie Manilla are also in talks of attending. With November less than a week away, we Wicked Wordsmiths have had to shift our focus to our participation in NaNoWriMo, but we will continue to be grateful for all the opportunities and learning experiences that Wicked Words has given to us. This also certainly won’t be our last anthology.

Oh, and for anyone wondering, why yes… I did end up signing my own book. Sometimes, you just need to give yourself a reminder.

Wicked Words – OUT NOW!

I’m a little late to the party, but WICKED WORDS is finally out! Actually, to be honest, we were able to release the anthology a few days before our official release date of October 1^st, but the insanity that followed kept me from posting the update here. Pretty exciting though, yes?

I had ordered my copy the moment it was available, then sat in agony at work the next day after receiving the text alert that my book was at my local postal carrier, but wouldn’t be delivered for another 24 hours. If there’s one thing I have zero patience for, it’s waiting. On my lunch, I drove to the post office and begged and pleaded until the exceptionally kind postal worker searched through the packages in back just to find mine. There was a long period of time where I just sat in the car holding the unopened package, nervous to look inside. Finally, shaking all over, I held in my hands my very first venture into publishing.

Sure, I’m still critical of my own work…there’s a giant glaring grammatical error in my story, but DAGNABBIT! It’s PUBLISHED! It happened! I can search my name on Amazon, and something I’ve written comes up! It’s real, and there are actually people out there in the world buying our book. That’s an amazing feeling to me, something I don’t have adequate words to describe, but that I won’t soon forget.

Want to get your own copy of this spooky collaborative effort from Wicked Wordsmiths of the West? You can buy the paperback copy HERE and the Kindle edition HERE.

I can’t express just how grateful we are to all of our readers! Thank you all so, so very much.