Revenge is a dish best served cold...Sunday fiction flashback

Over at Death's Head Press, they've got a call for submissions for a new anthology with the theme of "Revenge.  They're not accepting reprints, but this is a story I would have written for them:

AULD LANG SYNE

I got a few quizzical looks when I signed in.  It’s possible some of the women working at the registration desk remembered me but I doubted it.  Back in high school I’d had lank brown hair, bad skin and had carried an extra 30 pounds.  I’d spent my four miserable years at Woodrow Wilson High School being invisible and dreaming of better times to come.  Better times had come.  I looked good for my age.

I spotted Alicia Cooper almost at once.  Alicia Womack, now.  Everyone had expected her to marry Tommy Womack ever since they’d been crowned king and queen at our senior prom.  I hadn’t gone to the prom.  I wasn’t asked.  I’d spent that night sobbing in my bedroom while my poor mother tried desperately to distract me with vanilla milkshakes.  I was inconsolable but I drank two of the milkshakes anyway.  I did things like that in those days. 

I never really thought I’d come to a reunion but as the years slipped by, the notion of making an appearance at my 50^th began to seem attractive.  I’d long ago lost touch with everybody, but the reunion committee had set up a group on Facebook, so I was able to get all the information I needed.  I sent in my reservation, made my travel plans, and bought a new dress. 

The banquet room at the Sheraton was decorated with huge black and white photographs blown up from our senior yearbook.  There wasn’t a picture of me.  I’d skipped school the day pictures were taken. 

I drifted around the ballroom to get my bearings.  A few people glanced my way and smiled, inviting me to join their conversations but I kept moving.    

I saw Diane Todd and her husband talking to Harvey and Henrietta Martorelli.  I’d liked Diane.  She’d been nice to me in a way that hadn’t felt like charity.  She’d aged gracefully and the way she and her husband stood shoulder to shoulder told me that she was loved.  I was glad. 

Harvey and Henrietta looked more like siblings now than spouses.  Both had evolved into sexless, blocky creatures with the same graying skin and thinning hair.  Henrietta had been in my honors history and English classes.  She’d been an earnest grade-grubber with a GPA and SAT scores that should have earned her admission to Yale like her brothers, but back then, Yale didn’t accept women, so she’d settled for Bryn Mawr instead. 

Twenty-nine authors in search of readers

Writer and friend to writers Damien Seaman has chronicled the adventures of the Rite to Reign boxed set authors as we negotiate the journey to publication and possible list-making glory!!  It's an interesting read, and you'll get to know some of my fellow writers, including E.B. Black, Candace Osmond, Alex Singh, Mirren Hogan, Stephanie Barr, and Scott Hungerford. You'll find the article
here.

Friday Freebie

I tend to be Amazon-centric in my posts because I own a Kindle and not an iDevice or Kobo. But I'm in this very cool FREEBIE collection of stories and you can pick it up on Apple Books, Kobo, or Google Books right now. (Amazon has been slow to price match.)

Think of this as an appetizer for the feast that is to come when #RitetoReign publishes later this year. Eleven authors who have stories in Rite to Reign have donated stories for First to Reign. My story, Vaikus, is the prequel to my Brotherhood of Stone series coming out next year.

I like the cover a lot. It was designed by Cyberwitch Press' Heather Marie Adkins (USA Today bestselling novelist), who also happens to be one of the authors in the collection and also in #RitetoReign.

Preorder Rite to Reign here to get all sorts of pre-order bonuses and freebies.

Cover stories...

It's no secret that I love book covers, or that I currently have more covers in stock than I have books. (I use them for writing prompts and for inspiration. Yes, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.) I buy a lot of premades, but even my go-to sites for premades are getting kind of pricey. I don't begrudge the designers their money--they have skills that are worth money and they have to eat--but sometimes covers I covet are just plain out of my reach.

And then there's Glass Crocodile Covers' A.S. Oren, who runs INSANELY affordable sales for CUSTOM covers. I bought a Glass Crocodile premade for a novelette I have in mind but when the offer of a custom cover for $35 came up, I jumped on it like a duck on a Junebug. A hundred and five dollars and less than a week later, I had a new set of covers for an upcoming trilogy.

The books are going to be urban fantasy and I'm going with something different--a "mature" leading lady. My heroine is pushing fifty and rocking it, and I am hoping readers will embrace the idea of a heroine who is no longer 18.  We'll see. But in the meantime, look at this gorgeous cover for the first book!!

Everyone needs a crown--#ritetoreign

I'm not really much of a royal watcher but even I couldn't escape the pictures of yesterday's nuptials. And I zeroed in on that emerald and diamond tiara, which I thought was stunning. And very Russian-looking, I thought. (I've been thinking about Russian jewelry because Catherine the Great--my heroine in Secret Hexe--loved jewelry and a lot of her baubles ended up in the vaults of other European royals. If you didn't see it, here's a link to a story about the tiara and a great picture of it. (Getty images snapped up most of the pictures.)  I have no doubt that in short order you'll be able to buy a copy on Etsy, which already has numerous replicas of her distinctive engagement ring.

But I thought--who wouldn't like a tiara/crown of her/his own? And because great minds think alike, Anna Santos (another author in the Rite to Reign boxed set) has set up a giveaway in the Rite to Reign party room.  Drop by the party to comment on the crowns (number one and number five are my favorites) for a chance to win one of them. The party's going on all the way to our release date in December, so PARTY WITH US and win cool stuff and meet great people.

Who wants Freebies? #ritetoreign

Obviously, that was a trick question.
The answer is EVERYBODY wants freebies.
Well, you're in luck!!  If you pre-order our amazing boxed set here, you will get all kinds of goodness--exclusive content and more.  Follow the other writers for even more chances to win prizes and get advanced notice of good things to come. The party is in progress all weekend.

Interview with writer Alex H. Singh

In your bio you say you’ve been writing since you were 18. Were you encouraged to write as a kid? Did either of your parents write?

Encouragement would have been wonderful as a pre-teen sadly that did not occur. Neither of my parents wrote. In fact I was discouraged by the both of them stating writing can be done by anyone with a paper and a pen. What made me so special? Those words alone were wood added to the fire within.  I made sure to focus and encourage myself until I managed to finish my FIRST official novel myself. 

Did you start with short fiction or did you dive right into novels?

My first book which I hand wrote with a paper and pen was 6 pages and 17 Chapters long.  Obviously, once I got a computer I re wrote that story which then become over 200 pages with 19 Chapters. I went big or what was the point of being an Author. 

Do you remember the first time you were paid for a piece of writing? What was it?

My first novel was picked up by a publisher which I was surprised and excited at that time.  They helped me self publish my novel and 3 months after I was given a cheque for $300.00.  It was for a novel which is now discontinued but it was called “Secrets of My Past”. 

Do you follow a set schedule for writing, have a process, and have a certain word count you want to hit each day?

Every day, no matter what I come home, in order to de-istress from the day, I sit down and depending on my mood I will work on Character or Chapter Outlines for books pending or work on an existing novel which means I would write about 3-7K words.

Do you outline?                                                                                

Yes, of course without that I would be lost.

What part of writing do you enjoy the most? The least?

-Dreaming of my Characters, what chaos I can ensue upon them and how they will get out of it…alive.   I guess it’s the aspect of creating this new world in my mind then transcribing it on paper.

My least favorite thing is when I find it hard to shut my thoughts off and I have more than 1,2,3,4…and growing ideas for different stories or sequels. I find it hard to focus on the ones I have outstanding with new ideas popping up inside my thoughts. 

Do you reward yourself/celebrate when you finish a book? If so, how?

I originally gave myself a goal that if I finished 10 novels I would buy myself a new laptop which I did. My new goal was if I did more than the last time I would buy myself an IPAD PRO which I am getting this holiday season as I did manage to surpass my goal. 

To me having my book in my hand is exciting enough. No need to celebrate every novel, at least for myself.