Week In Review: August 5th, 2023

In Case You Missed it, here’s the round-up of all of my latest content, plus updates from old guests! Read on if you want to know more. If not? See you next week with more writing tips and writerly musings.

Coming up this week:

On Youtube/Twitch:

Morgan’s Lazy Sunday Afternoon “Productivity” Stream: – 4:30pm EST. Come, hang out, eat snacks, and maybe even get some productivity done yourself.

Content Around The Web:

On Youtube:

Amazon Algorithms and Branding – Marketing is a huge part of being published — even for traditionally published authors. So, what are things to avoid, and what are things to lean into?
Shorts (also on TikTok)
- Space Fantasy Update: 7/31/23 #update #spacefantasy
- Space Fantasy Update: 8/1/23 #update #writer

On Season 7 of the Podcast “Writing Tips and Writerly Musings”:

Querying Versus Submitting: What’s the Difference? – If you’re trying to get an agent or publisher, you’ve probably heard these terms. While even many industry professionals can be found using the terms interchangeably, they do actually have different meanings!

On The Blog (In Case You Missed It):

Amazon Algorithms and Branding – Marketing is a huge part of being published — even for traditionally published authors. So, what are things to avoid, and what are things to lean into?
Author Spotlight Guest: Ken Lange – A teller of tales, a guy who keeps trying to make Mythic SF happen, and the most inept self-promoting author you’ll ever meet! He’s sharing writing tips and writerly musings with us.

Upcoming Events:

Capclave 2023 – Sept 29 – October 1, 2023 – Rockville, Md

What I’ve Been Reading:

A contemporary romance series from Lili Valente:

The Hunter Brothers (#1-4)

Some men are troublemakers or dealmakers. The men in my family? We’re baby makers.

For six generations, the women of wine country have had a saying: don’t bang a Hunter man unless you want a bun in your oven. Yeah, well. I’ve got a saying, too: no thanks. The last thing I need is baby makes three. My business is expanding, and the only thing I’m interested in getting knocked up is my bottom line. But then one night Emma Haverford makes me an offer I can’t refuse—she backs away from the land I have my eye on in exchange for a favor…

A big, fat, baby-making favor…

* * *

When I hear women have gotten pregnant shaking hands with Hunter men, I know I need Dylan Hunter’s…ahem, special skills…way more than I need to expand my vineyard. I’m ready to give my heart to a child, and I’m tired of waiting for my late-to-the-party Prince Charming to make my dreams come true. So I promise Dylan: three months of hot, heavy, baby-making s-e-x, and then I’m out of his hair forever.

But what if when it comes time to say goodbye, all I want to do is keep bottling up more memories with this big-hearted man?

New Works By Previous Guests:

A whole lineup this week! New from Abigail Manning, in her The Ruby Realm series:

Insomniac’s Curse (#4)

A girl with insomnia, cursed with a dragon’s heart every time she sleeps…

Kaliope never had the best relationship with sleep. Since her infancy, her three aunts have struggled with her insomnia, and even more whenever she finally closed her eyes. Dark circles and yawning weren’t too terrible to handle as Kaliope grew, until one day, she begins to do more than simply sleepwalk. When word of nightly attacks spreads throughout their village, Kaliope realizes she’s the culprit when waking up near the carnage.

The Isleen soldier, Daniel, has gained a great deal of respect from the grand duke after his involvement with the deathly events in Shainee, granting him an interesting new mission. The grand duke has received reports of mysterious attacks, all coming from a quiet village. The residents fear the infamous terrorists, the dragons, are to blame, and the grand duke believes they might be right. After his daughter was cursed, he hid her away to protect her from further harm from the dragons, but had they finally found her? The grand duke gives Daniel two tasks: protect his daughter, and destroy whatever is causing the attacks.

Kaliope and her aunts must keep her curse a secret and their location hidden. Otherwise, the golden king who placed the curse may come to finish whatever he had planned for her… With a soldier both hunting her down and trying to protect her, it’s only a matter of time before her nightmares become a reality.

New from DB Rook, a short story:

The Price of Piety

Not afraid to get their hands dirty, a crew of miscreant thieves go after the font of all wealth, buried somewhere deep in the guts of the revered Collegiate.

Powerful sorcery, guardians in the dark, and latrine duty stand against the dysfunctional gang.
Only a vague sense of camaraderie, loosely bound with spit, laziness and greed, holds them together as they plot their descension. With one eye firmly fixed on how to spend their haul, the other on their wayward brothers, can they infiltrate the esteemed facility and escape rich and ready for their next heist?

New from Charles E. Gannon‘s Caine Riordan series:

Endangered Species (#6)

Caine Riordan has faced many crises in his unintended career as diplomat, soldier, and first-contact specialist, but none more challenging than the one he faces now.

He and twelve of his crew are adrift in uncharted space, so far beyond Earth that the starfield is unrecognizable. And with the controls and computer destroyed, they have no way to calculate their position or call for rescue. Instead, trapped on a derelict alien ship, they have only forty-eight hours before its decaying orbit causes it to burn up in the atmosphere of the strange planet beneath them. It’s a silent and forbidding world of bleak deserts and turbulent seas, without any sign of life and dominated by violent storms.

But since the ship’s lander is also useless, they’ve got only one way to reach the surface: flimsy, foam-inflating cargo drop pods never intended for human use, let alone an emergency planet-fall. And even if they live through the fiery plummet from low orbit, they have almost no portable gear with which to survive in an arid alien wilderness.

However, those who make it to the surface discover that the dangers they couldn’t see from space are by far the most deadly. A variety of bizarre, carnivorous species roam the barren wastes, desperate for food. Their primary competition? Deeply devolved transgen humans that are as uncommunicative as they are primitive and ferocious. Even more ominous, the world’s blasted cities have telltale signs which indicate its original masters were none other than humanity’s most dangerous foe: the Ktor.

And worst of all, they may still be here.

And, new from Peter Sevidio:

The Price of Life

Lenard Childs is a young man who has slowly seen the world fall apart. The storms that used to be mild have intensified with each passing year. But it wasn’t until the earthquakes and tsunamis hit that people started to panic. Clearly, the world was changing, and not for the better.

As natural disasters increased in frequency, Lenard knew that the apocalypse was imminent. A quarter of the world’s population was wiped out, and those who remained struggled to survive in a rapidly deteriorating world.

Despite all this, Lenard refused to give up hope. During times of crisis, he had seen the best of humanity and believed that the world could still come together and rebuild. He was willing to pay the price to ensure that future generations would have a chance at life.

Overall, this story is about the resilience of humanity in the face of disaster and the power of hope to inspire change. Despite the odds stacked against them, Lenard and his team manage to rebuild a better world, proving that anything is possible if people come together and work towards a common goal.

Personal Project Status Updates:

For accountability, (and so you can tell I haven’t just been editing the same manuscript for a decade), I’m going to talk about my projects.

For 2023 here’s where I’m at:

My Novel-length Works In Progress:

My Short-Story Length Works-In-Progress:

My Poetry

Picture(s) of the Week:

I was flirting with the moon again this week. She’s gorgeous.