I’m making the only two Christmas stories I’ve ever written (“Cold Christmas” and “Have a Good Day”)available on the Kindle and Nook. Because why not.
Good Literature Should Taste Good, Too
Apparently First Reader is not the only resident who gets to have a say in regards to The War God’s Son. Sheffield the Cat had some incisive (incisors?) commentary on the lead to Chapter 4. You can see his commentary expressed with his usual directness. The green marks are from First Reader. There’s precedent, of course. The late great Early the Cat used to sit in my manuscript boxes, back when hardcopy was everything and I always printed out the day’s progress. I imagine to this day in some of my papers there are manuscripts with calico cat hair between the pages….
Oh right. Present day, if not present tense. As is pretty typical at this stage of the process, for my own part I have an alternating love/hate relationship with the text. Sometimes I just zip through revisions, and at others I can’t stand to look at it. Sometimes I think it’s among the best things I’ve ever done, at others, not so much. As I said, typical. The jury’s still out with First Reader, though she is quick to point out that my punctuation is atrocious (her word, not mine). I beg to differ. My punctuation is not atrocious. It’s commas, mostly. I think commas should do what I want them to do, and I put them where I darn well want. She says commas do what they are grammatically required to do, belong only where they are required to belong. I think this is a philosophical divide that we may never manage to bridge.
As for Sheffield, he pronounces Chapter 4 “chewy.” Something he can really get his teeth into.
New Story Time
The new Story Time (see link on the right) is “How Konti Scrounged the World,” which first appeared in Realms of Fantasy back in February, 2000, and reprinted in THE OGRE’S WIFE in 2002. I’m including the story note I wrote for the ebook edition of the collection, with the understanding that the note was written long after the fact, and might have no more to do with the story than something anyone else might say about it. Continue reading
The Heavenly Fox – Discarnate Edition
Okay, one more and I promise I’m done, at least for a little bit. To our left is a picture of the ebook edition of The Heavenly Fox, my PS Publishing novella that was a finalist for the Mythopoeic Award in 2012. The unsigned edition is still available from PS, though the signed edition has long since sold out. Regardless, for anyone who’d like a reading copy but don’t want to lay out limited edition hardcover prices, this is the way to go. The Kindle edition is already up. I should have the Nook/Kobo version ready in a few days.
Here’s the synopsis from the hc edition:
“A fox who reaches the age of fifty gains the ability to transform into a human woman. A fox who reaches the age of one hundred can transform into either a beautiful young girl or a handsome young man at will and can sense the world around them to a distance of over four hundred leagues. A fox who reaches the age of one thousand years, however, becomes a Heavenly Fox, an Immortal of great power, able to commune with the gods themselves.”
—From the Hsuan-Chang-Chi of Kuo P’u
The fox vixen Springshadow has reached the age of nine-hundred and ninety-nine by taking the form of a beautiful girl and stealing the chi, the life force, of mortal men. She prides herself on having done so without permanently harming any of them, but when, just before her one-thousandth birthday, her mortal lover, Zou Xiaofan, inadvertently forces her to choose between his life or her immortality, she chooses immortality without a moment’s hesitation. As a fox, and thus completely devoid of a conscience, for Springshadow this was no choice at all.
Or so she thought. Springshadow soon discovers what a trap immortality can be. Even more serious—and very annoying—is her discovery that her new state of being includes a new emotion, one that feels very much like regret. She knows from there it is only one small step to developing an actual conscience. Intolerable! Yet what can she do to prevent this? When the Goddess of Mercy, Guan Shi Yin, brings her a message from the shade of her former lover, Springshadow believes she’s found her answer. Accompanied by a reprobate Daoist immortal named Wildeye, the Heavenly Fox undertakes a quest through the courts of Heaven and the terrors of Hell to redeem the soul of Zou Xiaofan. Maybe then she can get on with the rest of eternity without regret. Or that pesky conscience thing.
All the Gates of Hell – Incarnate Edition
To our left is a picture of the printed proof copy of All the Gates of Hell that arrived on my doorstep day before yesterday. The picture isn’t that great (cameraphone), but the book itself turned out pretty good, in my own opinion. So for anyone not yet ready to embrace the ebook revolution, there is now an actual, real book that you can hold in your hands and, you know, read. You can order from Amazon at the link above or directly from your favorite bookseller.
ISBN-10: 1492993263
ISBN-13: 978-1492993261
300 pages, $11.99
“Legal Assistant Jin Lee Hannigan thought she had problems enough as a single woman in rundown Medias, Mississippi. That was before Jin meets a homeless man on Pepper Street who just happens to be the King of Hell, and learns that she’s really the mortal incarnation of Guan Shi Yin, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, charged with the rescue of unfortunates trapped in the various — and nasty — hells scattered around the cosmos. That doesn’t even turn out to be her biggest problem. It seems that the Goddess of Mercy is on the run and in hiding, which is why she incarnated as a human in the first place. Hiding from what?
Love.
But why would anyone fear love? Jin already knows that love is powerful, but what she has to learn, and fast, is that the wrong kind of love is also potentially the most destructive force in all the universe and–even more important–how to stop it.”
