Another Haunt

Landed in the marketplace, I mean. Not, like...landed on a witch or something.

AT ANY RATE. The Agony House is here! And you can BUY IT! RIGHT NOW! Should you wish to order a copy, then I'd like to help - and if you (and/or your relevant young adult readers) liked I Am Princess X, I do dearly hope they'll be on board for this one, too.

[Just a friendly side-note about these things: if you would be so kind as to drop a review or two, when you're finished...well. I'd love you forever, pretty much. Reviews feed algorithms and word-of-mouth, two of the unpredictable, fiddly things which drive sales the most these days. Authors appreciate your help in this regard - more than you know!]

If you'd like a SIGNED and/or PERSONALIZED copy you can purchase The Agony House via the University of Washington Bookstore. Don't worry - it's not complicated!

Follow the directions here.

As you can see, you can order any other signed books [of mine] to be signed [by me] courtesy of that same set of instructions.

It might take an extra few days to ship, depending on my availability for darting over to the U-District to sign stock...but I've even included a handy-dandy phone number in the directions to magically grant you free media rate shipping [in the continental 48 states only, I'm so sorry]!

::throws confetti::

• The Agony House at Amazon.com (also for Kindle)
  
• The Agony House at Barnes & Noble (also for Nook)
  
• The Agony House at a local independent bookstore near you
  
• The Agony House at the University of Washington Bookstore
  
• The Agony House at Goodreads
  

Heads up all you Seattle-area folks: Next Friday, September 21, you can catch me at the University of Washington Bookstore with Shaun Hutchinson! We'll be reading and chatting and signing, starting at 7:00 p.m.

Come out and see us!

*Technically* The Agony House doesn't come out until September 25th, but I've been most heartily assured that there will absolutely be copies available. Breakin' street date, y'all. That's how we do it in the 206. [::busts into poorly executed and highly embarrassing dance moves::]

I don't have any other Seattle appearances /signings on deck (at this time) and there's no tour planned; so if you want to get the jump on all your friends and/or you have anything else you want signed...here's your chance :)

As usual, I'll be happy to sign other books - so if you have any copies of I Am Princess X or whatnot sitting sadly unsigned on your shelves...bring them in! I'll scrawl all over them, as you like.

P.S. For what it's worth - you can also pre-order this book (or any others of mine) via the University Book Store. Click right here for instructions and details. Don't worry! It's very easy, and it doesn't cost extra (except shipping - and there's free media rate shipping available for buyers in the continental US).

Anyway, thanks so much for reading...and I'll probably throw up more reminders as the event draws closer. I hope to see you there!

Here's recent progress on my comedic murder mystery about an inconsistently clairvoyant travel agent who prevents a Seattle detective from participating in a plane crash - and together, they fight crime! Now with Bonus karaoke parlor tricks, a snarky best friend in a cast, and a fish named Brutus:

Project: Far-Fetched
Deadline: September 15
New words written: 8163
Present total word count: 39,077



Things accomplished in real life: Walked the dogs; went to the grocery store; went to the mall; went to Target; a bunch of other stuff that frankly isn't springing to mind right this second, oh well. I'm tired.

Things accomplished in fiction: Tagged along for an informal interview with a person of interest from one cold case; did not freak out, high-fives to self!; went to the bar for some Klairvoyant Karaoke and found out that the bar's owner wants to change it to 'Psychic Psongstress' and had mixed feelings about it; reviewed and tidied the murderboard; got left out of an informal interview with a retired cop who'd worked on a different cold case which is sure to be related to the first one - but our heroine wouldn't have been much help, anyway.

Other: I wrote all of those words in two days - after taking a couple of days to sit down and plot my ass off. Man, it's almost like...when you work this stuff out ahead of time...you can write a lot faster. If this sounds obvious to you, I mean, that's fine. I'm usually a gardener,* but for a straight-up mystery like this I've learned that I need to have my ducks in a row a more than usual.

Bonus Other: Well, I'm trying a spiffy new word meter because my trusty stand-by of oh-so-many-years (via Writertopia) seems to be...not so much working, all of a sudden. Also, I adjusted my goal deadline by a week. Even at this pace, I don't think I could make 9/8.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 63,912

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* "Gardener" = someone who writes by figuring it out as she goes, and tends to the plot/characters more like a garden to be grown than a puzzle to be solved. GRRM said years ago (in an interview in the Sydney Morning Herald) that writers tended to be gardeners, or architects. The architects are the folks with all the outlines and index cards; they like to know where everything is going before they get started.

Here's recent progress on my comedic murder mystery about an inconsistently clairvoyant travel agent who prevents a Seattle detective from participating in a plane crash - and together, they fight crime! Now with Bonus karaoke parlor tricks, a snarky best friend in a cast, and a fish named Brutus:

Project: Far-Fetched
Deadline: September 8
New words written: 6729
Present total word count: 25,047




Things accomplished in real life: Walked the dogs; talked the vet out of some med refills; went to grocery store; went to liquor store; hung with and/or played tour guide for my brother - who came into town for a few days; cleaned whole house; did a bunch of laundry after brother left.

Things accomplished in fiction: was semi-useful at cold case crime scene, at least until the good-bye handshake - when our heroine had a psychic flash that [gasp!] suggested the Nice Cop Dude was somehow connected to the murder of her fiance 4 years earlier; cop went home and tried to unpack events, was counseled by teenage daughter of dubious helpfulness; heroine went home and cried on the phone to her best friend.

Other: Not a terrible multi-day total, but I didn't get any work done while my brother was visiting. Still averaged *almost* a thousand words a day, so I can't complain. I'm almost caught up! Sort of. And hey, I cracked 25k, so that's nice. Almost a third of the way through the draft, huzzah!

Number of fiction words so far this year: 49,952

Here's today's progress on my comedic murder mystery about an inconsistently clairvoyant travel agent who prevents a Seattle detective from participating in a plane crash - and together, they fight crime! Now with Bonus karaoke parlor tricks, a snarky best friend in a cast, and a fish named Brutus:

Project: Far-Fetched
Deadline: September 8
New words written: 2625
Present total word count: 15,801




Things accomplished in real life: Walked the dogs; cleaned the whole house; did several loads of laundry; picked up my contacts; went to the post office; lunch with a friend; started playing We Happy Few with my husband and it's buggy/glitchy as hell sometimes - but overall a fun game so far.

Things accomplished in fiction: Klairvoyant Karaoke!...wherein our heroine takes requests for personal objects, and chooses/sings a song for their owners based on whatever her feeble clairsentience tells her when she handles them. Practice makes perfect, and her skills are gradually improving.

Other: That's not a multi-day total, but I flaked out yesterday and didn't get any writing done. I'm trying to average at least a thousand words a day, but I really need to work faster if I want to finish this early in September. Eh, I can do it. I just have to buckle down and make it happen. If the rest of my life would quit getting in the way, that would be awesome.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 40,709

Hey there! I know it's been a minute, but you know how it goes, eh? So much has happened since last I posted ... that I'll never pull off a decent recap now, but there are a few highlights I need to hit - for the sake of my sanity, and also because, shoot. I don't know. Maybe some of you want to hear about it.

First up - as you know, The Agony House is coming soon from Scholastic! By soon, I mean NEXT FREAKING MONTH which is both exciting and a little alarming, but here goes nothing, eh? Trade reviews have been rolling in, and here are a couple of the highlights thus far:

• Via Booklist - a starred review! They called it, a "sharp, satisfying, and engrossingly spooky story."
  
• Via Kirkus - The reviewer really dug it, noting that the "Conflicts, ectoplasmic and otherwise, [are] laid to rest in a deliciously creepy setting."
  

If you'd like to pre-order a copy, then I'd like to help. Pre-orders are crucial in publishing, and the more I can drum up, the merrier. If you (and/or your relevant young adult readers) liked I Am Princess X, I do dearly hope they'll be on board for this one, too:

• The Agony House at Amazon.com (also for Kindle)
  
• The Agony House at Barnes & Noble (also for Nook)
  
• The Agony House at a local independent bookstore near you
  

And to this, I must add another link or two. If you'd like a SIGNED copy, you can pre-order The Agony House via the University of Washington Bookstore. I do not live terribly far away from this bookstore, and it's my shop of choice for this kind of thing. Don't worry - it's not complicated! Follow the directions here.

As you can see, you can order any other signed books [of mine] to be signed [by me] courtesy of that same set of instructions. It might take an extra few days to ship, depending on my availability for darting over to the U-District to sign stock...but I've even included a handy-dandy phone number in the directions to magically grant you free media rate shipping! ::throws confetti::

* * *

In other news, let's see. In the last few months I cleaned up Cinderwich and got it rejected from a couple of places, oh well, no biggie. I only wrote it for funsies. Anyway, I've shelved it for the moment, though I'll very likely haul it back out again this winter. I think it needs to be a full-length project after all. (To make a long story short.)

In other long stories made short, I had a piece come out in Apex Magazine in May, and you can read it for free right here: Mother Jones and the Nasty Eclipse. It's um...kind of different, for me. Broadly speaking, its reception fell into two camps: (1). OMG this SPEAKS to me, and (2). Seriously, WTF?

Perhaps tellingly, those reactions largely break down along gender lines. Make of that what you will.

I'm pretty proud of it, anyway.

* * *

In other news, I've started a new project for adults.* It's one I've been talking about for years, but it only really gelled a few weeks ago - so here goes nothing. I'm really excited about it; it's lighter and more fun than [the bulk of] what I've worked on for the last few years. Lately I've felt like maybe the world was dark enough already, you know?

Yeah, you do. I know you do.

So here's recent progress on my comedic murder mystery about an inconsistently clairvoyant travel agent who prevents a Seattle detective from participating in a plane crash - and together, they fight crime! Now with Bonus karaoke parlor tricks, a snarky best friend in a cast, and a fish named Brutus:

Project: Far-Fetched
Deadline: We shall see.
New words written: 11,007
Present total word count: 11,007




Things accomplished in real life: Walked the dogs every morning; handed in rewrites for The Toll; had a couple of rounds of house guests; went to NOLA for a YA writers shindig; started taking day-job contract work again; finally got my car's blown headlight fixed and now they're hilariously uneven like a bad boob job, but I give up.

Things accomplished in fiction: Kept a cop from getting on a doomed plane, against his wishes; cop figures out that his travel agent is Special; cop looks up travel agent because he wants some discreet assistance on a cold case, and he's desperate enough to take it from her; travel agent is dubious but kind of game, as long as she can bring her best friend along for the ride.

Other: This project was inspired by something that actually happened to me a few years ago, and I'm glad my husband was looped in on the text messages and travel updates as they occurred - otherwise no one would ever believe me. If Far-Fetched ever gets published, I'll go on tour and tell you all about it.

Number of fiction words so far this year: 35,915

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* As opposed to "young adults." It's not, like, porny or anything.

Here's today's progress on my modern gothic about two lady academics investigating the case of a mystery woman who was murdered and stuffed in a tree forty years ago - with Bonus! lovely ghosts, sinister messages from beyond, creepy small town shenanigans, and a New Southern Weird vibe (as inspired by a true story that happened way the hell elsewhere):

Project: Cinderwich
Deadline: April 30
New words written: 1973
Present total word count: 40,373




Things accomplished in real life: Took the dogs on their morning jaunt around the neighborhood; went to grocery store (yet again, but it's just around the corner); went through and responded to all necessary queries in the pass proofs for The Agony House; received/read through/rejoiced re: the last round of edits for The Toll [or so it is to be hoped].

Things accomplished in fiction: Went looking for an unmarked grave in an abandoned cemetery. Get your stamping pens ready, because that one's on your Gothic Cliche Bingo Card.

Other: Over the weekend, the weather was nice so I got started on a little bit of spring yard work. At least the patio area now looks like civilized people are taking care of it, as opposed to a couple of slackers who just let everything die and then get dug up by a pair of dogs. Ahem. Next weekend [maybe]...the back yard, which will be quite the undertaking. It's actually pretty big, and it's a wreck. [We don't have a front yard, per se.]

Number of fiction words so far this year: 10,973

I know I have entirely too many blog posts that begin with some variation of, "Gosh it's been awhile, lol..." but here we are again, oh well. Look, it's been a busy year. Since 2018 rolled over I've wrapped up the following: the final round of rewrites/production on The Agony House; a major round of rewrites on The Toll for Tor; final production on one Wild Cards project; rewrites/production on a second Wild Cards project; a full rewrite of TWO young adult novels that may or may not find homes, but they were both requested by editors so we'll see; and wrote one short story for Apex Magazine (coming in May).

As a side/bonus note, I've also been volunteering for a political campaign via Get Her Elected - a very fine group that aims to help progressive women get into office around the country. On a lark, I threw my hat in the ring to help out with certified awesome badass Dr. Linda Jack and her efforts toward joining the Florida House of Representatives. I lived in her district for years and am acutely aware of the uphill battle she faces, and I'm happy to be even a small part of The Good Fight - even at a distance.

[If you're interested in participating in the blue wave, I strongly recommend signing up for Get Her Elected. They're always looking for a broad assortment of volunteers for a vast number of tasks. As for me, I help with Dr. Jack's website and its content, do a little research here and there, and pull together articles/press releases/whatever she needs that the DNC does not provide for her. It's not much of a time commitment at all, and the GHE folks let you tailor your commitment levels and all that jazz. Check them out!]

I mean...yeah. I've been eyeballs deep these last three months, so my apologies for all the silence. I haven't been very silent over on Twitter, if that matters to anybody - but it's almost entirely pet pictures.

Right. So.
What's next?
I haven't decided yet.

To make a long story short, I made a deal with my husband when we decided to move back to Seattle. The deal was simple: I'd agree to pack up our lovely Victorian and move...if I could have a year to Get My Shit Together while not worrying about keeping up my end of the household income with new sales/day job/contract work. I've been hamster-wheeling it for the better part of a decade and I needed some time to tie off loose ends (see first paragraph) and start developing new things to write and (hopefully) sell.

So 2018 is that year. Just yesterday I handed in the last thing on my catching up list (one of those YA projects) and now I'm...not exactly free and clear? The house is a wreck, the yard is a wreck (and here comes spring!), and my health has not been great. I've developed a weird allergy problem unrelated to the regular spring mayhem, but I'll spare you the details; and I really need to go to the dentist.

And since people have already started asking, I've also strongly curbed my travel this year. I'm not even doing DragonCon, though it's kind of been my Home Event for the last twenty years. I will probably do a little bit of gallivanting around re: The Agony House, including the Children's Institute event in NOLA (middle of June) - and I always do ConFusion in Michigan, but that'll be January of next year. I'm trying to give myself all the downtime I can, that's all.

Anyway. This is me, coming up for air. I will try to be better about routine updates henceforth, and once I get started on my next project (or once I pick a project to finish drafting) I'll let you know. Over and out for now.

::salutes::

Here's recent progress on my modern gothic about two lady academics investigating the case of a mystery woman who was murdered and stuffed in a tree forty years ago - with Bonus! lovely ghosts, sinister messages from beyond, creepy small town shenanigans, and a New Southern Weird* vibe (as inspired by a true story):

Project: Cinderwich
Deadline: None! Mwoohahahahaha etc.
New words written: 6955
Present total word count: 27,479



Things Accomplished in Fiction: Discovered that a fire road is not made of fire and doesn't lead to fire, either; found an old tree where a body once was stashed; sat for a spot of tea with a lovely woman who told them stories about finding that body, back when she was a little girl.

Things Accomplished in Real Life: Neighborhood jaunts with the dogs; an epic amount of laundry; hosted a friend for a couple of days; cleaned the whole house; filled the car up with gas and cleaned it out; went grocery shopping; went to the liquor store; did some Christmas shopping; wrapped some presents.

Other: I know it's not the world's most lightning-quick progress, but I'm getting a bit written every day - a habit I need to nurture and restore. I've let things slide too much, too far this year. I really need to get my shit together.

Pet Other: We have a new chair in the living room. It is cat-approved.



Number of fiction words so far this year: Let's say 91,479. That's about right.

The great Settling In continues, and goes mostly well. There's still a lot we'd like to do to the new house, but we're out of money for the time being - and here comes Christmas, so...yeah. Presents only for immediate family this year, and no holiday cards. I simply will not have my shit together in time - but such is life.

Next year, eh?

So this year...from a professional standpoint, I haven't had much going on. Brimstone came out from Roc early on, and then [group project] Indigo landed in June. I had one short story published, "Good Night Prison Kings" in Dark Cities, and in a couple of weeks [December 5] a new Wild Cards project - Mississippi Roll - drops, including a piece by yours truly. I guess when I put it like that, it doesn't sound like such a slow year; but it sure feels like a slow year. I've been in 5th gear for ages. Third gear feels like park.

I took a feeble stab at playing with a project for funsies, to line up with Nanowrimo...but didn't get very far. Still, if I finish November with 30k words on my oddball feminist modern gothic inspired by a true crime story from the 1940s...I'll still chalk it up as a "win."

Otherwise, for 2018 I still have The Agony House forthcoming (YA from Scholastic, pub date TBD) - and it's officially out of my hands, and into the hands of an artist;* also The Toll (horror from Tor, pub date TBD) is likewise still grinding along. No short stories in the queue, I don't think. A lot less travel, too.

On a less business-y note, the last few months have been very sociable - and it's been great finding a groove back in the PNW again. Old friends and new are making the process easier. I should probably post a bunch of pictures here to prove that I have left the house, but you can find those on Instagram if that's your jam. Also a zillion pics of the cats and dogs. And the fish.

Oh yeah, we added a fish. His name is "Fancy" because the lid of his tub ID'd him as a "Fancy Half-Moon Betta" and I short-handed it...then made a dumb joke on Twitter about naming him after a character I like on Killjoys. Then the actor who plays the character saw it, gave it his thumbs up, and that's why I have a fish named Fancy. He's a lovely little fellow, in a lovely 5-gallon tank with a heater, some moss balls, real and fake plants, and a little filter to keep the whole set-up clean and fresh. I mix up the furnishings every few weeks, because I read an article about how fish can get depressed just like people - and now I'm freaked out about the prospect of having a sad fish.

I mean, I freak out if I think any of the other household pets are unhappy, too - don't get me wrong. I will never understand people who have animal companions, and just...don't give a damn if they're happy. I want mine to be happy. Even the damp ones.

Speaking of, the ElderCat continues to rule the roost, despite her advanced age. I do not know how much longer she will be with us; she's in renal failure, on fluids twice a week, and is roughly old enough to drink. But as long as she's her usual self - we've got her back. Likewise, the House Leopard is doing well. Her persistent diarrhea issues have cleared up, and she's thrilled by the fish tank - though it has a tempered glass lid and strong plastic clippies to keep her out.** And of course, Greyson and Lucy remain ridiculous. They are learning their way around the new neighborhood, and making friends left and right - as they always do, everywhere we go. Every walk is basically Dog Cuddle Patrol.

At any rate, apart from holiday shopping and a last push for Nanowrimo, there's not much to report. I just realized I hadn't updated here in awhile, and also, I am keen to procrastinate while simultaneously appearing somewhat productive.

Thanks for reading, as always - and happy holidays, whichever ones you celebrate, or don't.

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* Like I Am Princess X, there is a comic book element threaded through the story.
** Once, I sat and watched her try to get inside the tank for about twenty minutes. She failed at every turn, and has since given up. But she does love to watch it.