Cover Reveal Dark Dream

This is the cover for the first book in my new series The Dreamer's Daughters, which will publish this fall. It focuses on a trio of sisters, all who have the ability to work dream magic because I've been fascinated by dreams my whole life. Mostly because I rarely remember mine. I do dream in color, and I did once have that anxiety dream about being in college and having an exam in a class you never attended. (For me, the class was advanced calculus and even in my dream I knew it was a dream because I am math-challeged.)

The designer is Veronica R of IndieElaborates and I purchased it from The Book Cover Designer.

Once Upon a Curse--17 Fairy Tale Retellings

I just bought Once Upon a Curse (it's a boxed set selling for 99 cents on Amazon) that's chock full of fairy tale retellings. The only story I've read before is Christine Pope's "The Queen of Frost and Darkness," a Snow Queen retelling that originally ran in Dark Valentine Magazine. 

It's a fantastic collection. Here's the review I just posted on Amazon:

 Witches and warriors, demons and darkness, brave women and true love, and a vampiric take on a classic fairy tale—it’s all here in this boxed set, and more besides. Because many of the stories have layers to them that remind us of other stories and folk tales and ballads, like the silver dagger Yarrow carries in the collection’s opening story, “Yarrow Sturdy and Bright,” by Devon Monk. This is a fierce, feminist take on “The Pied Piper,” and it sets the tone for the stories that follow.

The stories run the gamut from reimagined Celtic folklore like Anthea Sharp’s “Fae Horse,” a wild ride on a NightMare to Christine Pope’s lyrical Russian take on “The Snow Queen.” C. Gockel’s urban fantastic version of Cinderella features a wildly sympathetic stepmother, a “stepsister” who’s a 15-year-old gay kid exploring his own fabulosity, and a whiny “princess” whose diva antics are consistently amusing.

The teaser trailer for Beauty and the Beast

Disney has just released the teaser trailer for their live-action Beauty and the Beast. And it looks lush.

Bite-sized Beauty and the Beast

My retelling of Beauty and the Beast, The Summer Garden, is free this week on Amazon. Because we all need a free fairy tale every once in a while.

Summer of Shakespeare #3

Yes, it's that time of year again--Summer of Shakespeare time. This will be SoS number three, and there will be Shakespeare geekery coming out your ears by August 31. The festivities begin June 1, so "brush up your Shakespeare" as Cole Porter urged you to in his musical Kiss Me Kate, based on his play The Taming of the Shrew (one of my least favorites).

Freebie Fairytale Fiction

A Dream of Sun and Roses is still free on Amazon, so if you're looking for a short, futuristic fairy tale (based on Sleeping Beauty) you can get it here.  I like rewriting fairy tales, not so much because I don't have ideas of my own, but because I like telling the stories in my own way. But at a certain point I realized that everyone picks the same five fairy tales--Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, and maybe...Red Riding Hood.  When I started my "Modern Magic Series," I knew I wanted ten stories in all, so I had to go beyond the obvious. (Plus, outside of doing a werewolf take on Red Riding Hood, I didn't really see much I could do with the story)

Here's what I came up with:

Fashionista (Cinderella)
While My City Dreams (Rapunzel)
Hunter's Kiss (Snow White)
Hero's Kiss (Beauty and the Beast)
Beauty Sleep (Sleeping Beauty)
Unknown Road (East of the Sun, West of the Moon)
Hideous (Ugly Duckling)
Midnight's Daughter (The Twelve Dancing Princesses)
Lady in the Water (The Little Mermaid)
Soul Kiss (The Snow Queen)

I have covers for almost all of the stories--some women buy shoes, I buy covers. The amazing Joy Sillesen of Indie Author Services created some, and I bought the others as premades from various sources. Hunter's Kiss was created by Ravven, whose work is exquisite. I bought two of her premades last year as a Christmas present to me. I also picked up a couple on The Book Cover Designer. I know people can be sniffy about pre-mades, but there's some gorgeous work there.

The Time Traveler's Almanac

I am a fan of short stories. I'm a fan of time travel stories. So this collection of short stories (edited by Ann VanderMeer and Jeff VanderMeer) sounds like it's right up my alley. And I would never have known about it if I hadn't stumbled across the cover in a review. I love this cover. I love that the butterfly is a call out to one of my all-time favorite short stories, Ray Bradbury's "A Sound of Thunder." I remember reading that story for the first time and just being stunned by it. It was my introduction to Ray Bradbury and, most likely, the beginning of my life-long love of the short story form.

This is not the first cover this book has. When I went searching for it on Amazon--because to see it is to buy it--an older cover came up. And for me, the older cover was not as inviting. Maybe it's the background color. I used to work in print magazines and one of the things we were always doing is gathering data on which covers sold the best. (Covers with white backgrounds were not that popular.) For me this alternate cover looks like it might be a work of popular history or popular science. It doesn't say "fiction" to me the way the butterfly cover does. But either way, this book is on its way to me and I can't wait.