Happy holidays! I hope you are having a peaceful season full of time with family, friends, self-care, and creative fulfillment. I am still waiting for feedback from my editor on my most recent draft, and I will let you know as soon as I receive it!
In the meantime, here’s what I’ve been working on!
On Halloween, Writing Bloc released its second annual short story anthology, Deception. I was the project manager for this anthology and my own story, "Rachel Rose, Semite" appears in it! Check it out and support cooperative indie publishing!
I am also excited to be a part of the latest issue of Inlandia: A Literary Journey. You can read my story, "Neighborhood Alert" here and my editor interview here.
Another project I helped edit, Jason Pomerance’s Celia at 39, was published yesterday! It’s Writing Bloc’s first standalone novel and I’m so happy to be a part of it!
November was National Novel Writing Month and I drafted a brand new novel in 30 days! Its working title is The Book of Great and Tiny Things and it follows two characters-- Avril, a West Virginia woman who in spite of being a happily married mother of two finds herself swept up in opioid usage and must turn to her dead granny witch grandmother to save her from addiction, and Jose, a Mexican drug lord who began his career at the age of 8 and is known for brutally murdering his challengers with the bone of the beloved dog that his mother forced him to kill. There’s lots of magic and some big feelings. I’m looking forward to editing it!
Finally, if you’re a local woman interested in a winter writing retreat, I’ll be a guest speaker at this one. It should be fun!
Thank you for your support!
Hi!
It’s been a while since I’ve updated so I hope all is well with everyone and that you had a nice Thanksgiving.
And now, just in time for the holidays, my novel novel, Celia At 39, has just published from indie Writing Bloc (some names in this fantastic organization you may recognize and why not follow Writing Bloc on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram? You’ll be happy you did).
Here’s the link to the book on Amazon (Kindle drops today; paperbacks shortly and Audible in works).
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07YSX5L8M/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1
I hope you will all check it out. Remember, books make great holiday gifts!!
Thank you for the support, people.
Happy Giving Thanks Day!
Dean Fearce is grateful and appreciative for many things not the least of which are you, my friends, family and supporters, who have gotten behind this project and have waited patiently for its fruition. Being Thanksgiving, it felt appropriate to provide an update on the status of the book:
https://www.inkshares.com/books/murder-happens
The latest manuscript was submitted to Inkshares this past summer. It went through a read by the editor. It came back with interesting comments and observations. The bottom line was that the plot was not working. Recommendations on books to read were made. Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice was one. I tried to read it but failed. Tried to watch the film and failed.
Moving on, I found a tattered copy of Gardner’s The Art of Fiction online. It’s on my bedside table held together with a rubber band. It was entertaining and informative with a side of anxious guilt that I hadn’t gotten a degree in literature and therefore knew not the high-browed references he made. But as I said it was informative. And entertaining. That was unexpected.
Read a few other books in that time that weren’t recommended by the editor. Breathless by Shane Lindemoen was good. It’s recommended reading. I originally backed the project on Inkshares but Shane chose to publish it elsewhere. He’s now started an independent publishing concern, which is intriguing.
Check it out here: https://www.amazon.com/Breathless-Shane-Lindemoen/dp/1949472620/
Bunches of authors like Mike Welch and Susan Hamilton, both met on Inkshares, are publishing themed short-stories. If you haven’t seen the Writing Bloc anthologies, you can find them on Facebook. The editor accepts submissions for projects well in advance of publication.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/383485668831888/
In regards to MINE, I took a break to absorb the feedback (it’s never easy to accept helpful criticism, but it’s always advisable) and do additional reading and watching to figure out how to plot the novel. I love good stories, so it’s not like work. Good news is I’ve arrived at a solution. Next steps are to read the manuscript through, then begin the re-write starting December 1st. Hopefully you will hear from me again next year with a loud and resounding cheer, something like Eureka!
Hugs and kisses,
Dean Fearce
Thanksgiving Day, 2019
Hey there,
It’s been a while, hasn’t it? The reason I’ve been quiet is because I didn’t have much to say and I didn’t want to bother you. That being said, it doesn’t mean I haven’t been busy. Aside from life doing it’s thing and my full time job, I have been doing some significant amount of writing, which is what I suspect you really want to know about.
Let’s get to it.
(A God in the Shed: Part II)
The bulk of my time has been taken up by work on the sequel to A God in the Shed, titled : Song of the Sandman.
Writing, editing and rewriting this sequel has been one of the most depressing and difficult creative journey of my life. I very nearly quit writing entirely at one point, and writing is one of those things that brings me the most joy in life.
But the storm has been weathered. The book is on the verge of completion. We have a date to go to copy editing, which means a solid release date isn’t far behind. While I apologize for the delays in getting this book to you, I hope the wait will have been worth it.
I do have a little something to help tide you over until Song of the Sandman hits shelves.
Achewillow is a side project I’ve been working on with my friend Amy Frost (winner of the first season of America’s Next Top Podcaster). It’s a ‘cozy’ horror story that isn’t as intense as A God in the Shed, but has a much weirder background setting. I wrote the story, so you can expect some strange characters, old gods and bizarre magics. It’s also codeveloped with Amy who brings a layer of cooking and coffee to the story. Also, she narrates it, which really elevates whatever I put on the page.
Achewillow takes the shape of a storytelling podcast, the first season of which spans 15 half-hour episode. It’s essentially a free audiobook. It tells the story of Miriam DuFour, a young adult who’s life is spiralling into the gutter until she receives a strange envelope. In it, Miriam discovers that she’s inherited a coffee shop from a relative she didn’t know she had in a town she didn’t know existed: Achewillow. From there, she is drawn into a world of subtle magic, baking, demons, coffee and the occasional raccoon.
I’m really proud of Achewillow and I hope you listen and enjoy it. This is the first of a few projects I have in mind to make sure you and I, dear reader, don’t lose touch for so long again. Of course, the more successful Achewillow is, the easier it becomes for me to put things like this together. So, if you do like our little podcast, consider rating it on iTunes, or leaving a review. I can’t overstate how much impact this has on the success of such a project.
The last time I put Arch-Android, the sequel to The Life Engineered, back on the shelf, I was done with a second, mostly satisfying draft. Once Song of the Sandman is out of my hands, I’ll be doing a third draft which will be sent to beta readers. From that point on, we’ll be in good shape to get this book into your hands.
The Life Engineered has always had a special place in my heart and I’m very eager to bring you the next chapter in that story.
That’s it for now. I apologize again for the long silence. I didn’t feel like had much to say that was worth your time, but that’s about to change.
Cheers and much gratitude,
J-F.
Greetings Followers of the Space Sloth,
Greetings fantastic followers,
Hope everyone had a fun Halloween. You know what else happened on Halloween? Deception, the Writing Bloc anthology that features my short story "New Suit" was released on Amazon in digital format!!
That’s right! It’s a collection of deception themed stories ranging from Sci-Fi thrillers to supernatural spookiness from a collection of amazing authors!
New Suit is about Ward, a formal police detective trying to put his life back together after his fall from the force when his brother is accused of stealing an antique coin from the museum he works security at. The evidence is solid but his brother insists he doesn’t remember anything from the day of the crime. Ward sets out to find the coin to lessen his brothers sentence and stumbles upon something sinister.
Sounds exciting right. The whole collection in digital format is only $2.99! What a deal. Click the link and check it out
Also, just a reminder for those of you whole love audiobooks, Beyond the Code has been made into a wonderful one, narrated by the amazingly talented Lisa Beacom. Check out the link below.
https://www.amazon.com/Beyond-the-Code/dp/B07XVMQVJ6/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Thank you all for continuing to follow my journey as an author.
Kelsey Rae Barthel
