Gearing Up for Round Two

Getting Gaslight Carnival published on Amazon has been super cool.  I can check writing and publishing a book off the bucket list.  Sure, I’ve written 50k blobs for NaNoWriMo, which are longer than my tidy 30k words, but it has a real beginning, middle, and end that my previous attempts never fully achieved.

As I mentioned in my last post, the worst thing that can happen is not that someone reads your book and says that it is bad.  Actually, the worst outcome is that no one reads it.  While I was cognizant of this before writing and publishing, experiencing it on the other side is a new challenge to over come.  So…

Gift Copy for an Honest Review

My book is now live on Amazon, please go check it out if you have a hankering for steampunk!

If you would like to receive a gift copy of Gaslight Carnival in exchange for an honest review on Amazon and Goodreads, please leave me a comment below or on my about page.  Or you can email me at “first initial last name at the Gmail address thingy.”

Also, I have met a lot more really cool people since having published my first book.  No, I don’t traditional publishers or Hollywood have been calling (although, if you guys do want to contact me, please see above).  I’ve met some awesome and generous readers and writers and other book-loving’ types here on WordPress and on KBoards.  Just in case I haven’t told everyone thank you personally, let me at least tell everyone else how much you guys rock!

Next on My List

I’ve been taking the month of August to work on some short story projects.  I belong to a critique group that focuses on shorter works, so I wanted to take a break to rev up my creative energies.  Stories I have either outlined or written zero drafts on so far this month include:

1. Weird west story including a clockwork horse and a duel with a demon
2. Fantasy story about a hippocampus who becomes a boy
3. Steampunk musketeer story ending with a duel with swords
4. Greek mythology story about a warrior princess who saves her floating city (maybe I can make Greek-punk a thing xD)

And in other short story news, my story Under the Hallowed Tree is still under consideration by a SFF magazine.  I’m wildly seesawing between “they’re gonna take it” and “my rejection letter is lost in the mail.”  Hopefully I’ll have more news soon!

Updates to the Website

by Rebeca Saray

You might have noticed that some things have changed around here.  I finally said goodbye to my blog post that was Freshly Pressed after three years on the front page.  This Story Needs Your Help kicked off my Life of a Foundry Moth story, and it was a great learning experience… and I failed in so many ways.  I missed deadlines and didn’t complete my story, and just crawled under a rock for a while.  When I decided to keep writing and try the indie author route, this is one of those experiences I decided never to repeat.  I don’t regret trying new things though.  Anything that you do perfectly right the first time rarely constitutes a true learning experience.

Same with my website, I need to make it a bit more pro and less like a cluster of sporadic ramblings.  I’ll probably keep moving things around as I learn what works, what doesn’t, and what is boring.  Just hang in there with me, or drop me a line if you have a great idea to take it to the next level!

Gearing up for My Next Novella

After Dragon*Con, I’ll be back writing my next novella fulltime (well, full-writing-time, I still have the job to pay the mortgage and stuff).  I have the week to decide, but I’m still on the fence about which project to tackle.  I was planning to work on Galvanic Swans, a story about an augmented singer caught in a plot to blow up a theater.

But I have also been toying with the idea of a total reboot of Life of a Foundry Moth.  I never really completed it for readers, and when I was skimming over the posts, I kept getting ideas how to fix it.  I have never been happy with how the project ended, so maybe I need to resolve things with Tesla, Edgar, and Merrick for good.

Anyways, summer’s nearly gone, and it’s time for the hard work to continue.