Announcement: So Long, Bobby

I hope everyone had a fantastic Spooky Season/Blessed Samhain/Happy Halloween! As we venture on into the end-of-year holidays, I have an exciting announcement to share with you all!

Those of you who follow my work may remember that I’ve been working on a work of historical fiction, inspired by Bobby Kennedy, the tumultuous late 1960s and the grungy 1990s, for a few years now. You may also remember that it was picked up by City Limits Publishing and set for an August 2021 release last year.

Then, things went awry. I won’t detail everything that happened here, because other people have already done so better than me (for more info, see this in-depth write-up on the excellent blog Writer’s Beware here, and my friend, Peter Fenton, who was both an employee and author with CLP, detail his account here). Unfortunately, it is a reality that in the world of publishing, whether you’re with a smaller, indie press or one of the Big 6, companies fold, deals go awry and there are always those in the industry set to take advantage. It’s just the nature of the business. So in June of this year, rights to So Long, Bobby reverted back to me and shortly thereafter City Limits Publishing dissolved completely.

I immediately went back on query, because that’s how important this book is to me! I was lucky enough to find a home with the excellent Sword & Silk Publishing and I am incredibly excited to announce that they will be publishing my novel in the Winter of 2023! I am very excited to be working with the Sword & Silk team and can’t wait to see what amazing things they have in store for my pride and joy.

I really do love this book, so much. And I can’t wait to share it with you all. In the meantime, here’s the official announcement! Stay tuned for a guest post on the Sword & Silk blog in the coming weeks, and be sure to check out both my Media and Shop pages for the latest doings of mine!

Arrivederci, friends!

O.T., Walt, and some Butterflies

Pfew.

It has been a month, or thereabouts, since I’ve posted any content on this blog. I feel bad about that, but I did warn you all…

I haven’t really been in the spirit of self-promotion or blogging lately, and haven’t written much, to be honest. I did manage to win NaNoWriMo this year, rounding out at 50k words somewhere around the 18th of November. And I’ve been steadily plugging along on the novel, doing a tad of editing and revising here and a good bit of writing there. I’m nowhere near done. I’ve written 103 pages and I’m halfway through the novel (and that’s being generous). I do this. I know I shouldn’t, but I do it anyway. I am much too wordy, I write far too much, and then when it’s time to cut, I scream and rail against it.

Well, I earned it, so I may as well show it, eh?

I do very much enjoy what I’ve got so far, though. It’s drastically different than anything I’ve ever written, so much more so that it makes me incredibly nervous, far more nervous than I was while writing Aroha – which is weird, because that was a work from my heart that was ten years in the making, and due to the subject matter, really should have given me fits. It did, but not like this novel does. I want so desperately to get this one right, to really say something with it. I suppose I want it to mean something. I feel a tad overwhelmed, and out of my element.

My beloved David Bowie, who I will quote every time when given half a chance, always said that when you’re just out of your depth, that’s when you produce your best work. I hope that applies when it comes to me. I’m treading water in the deep end right now, and those words are my floaties.

For the past couple of days I’ve been trying to think of what to write, what sort of post I could do that is relevant to what’s going on in the world right now, how I’m feeling about things, the holidays, etc. But I’ve come up blank. All I’m working on creatively is this, and I’m not much in the headspace to write thinkpieces right now. We’re all just so tired, aren’t we? So I decided instead, as my little holiday gift to you all, to post a tiny snippet from the prologue of my novel. This is likely the only excerpt I will post, as I’m holding this one a lot closer to my chest than my other writing. It is still becoming.

I give you O.T. and Walt, twin brothers from Five Forks, my brain babies, for whom I have very high hopes. And I would love to hear your feedback.

“Daughter of Farmer who will be Resettled – Wolf Creek, GA 1935” by Arthur Rothstein. I snapped this photo out of an Erskine Caldwell book because I fell head over heels in love with her (it was mainly because of the shoes, but also – her expression slays me).