Hello from snowy Boston!

The clock is really ticking down...

Believe it or not, my funding window is down to hours and not weeks -- Feb. 15 is the last day. I’m happy to report a few more orders have come in, but I still need a little over 30 more orders to hit my mid-range goal of 300 pre-orders (and of course, hitting the full 750 would be amazing!).

So, if you’re still thinking about ordering but haven’t yet, now is the time (and you get the discounted pre-order price)! I have to say, getting those orders would be one AWESOME Valentine’s Day gift!

You can order on my Inkshares page: www.inkshares.com/books/shadow-king

As always, thanks so much for your support and interest--I’ll send another update once the funding window closes and let you know where everything stands.

Best,

Susan

Hi Everyone!

It’s February 13, so happy birthday to me!  The universe gave me a birthday gift in the form of at least 2 feet of snow on the ground and a snow day at the University.  Yay!

Of course I’m writing to you not about my birthday, but about some news I’d like to share.  I’ve finished my first editing pass through “More Fun and Games,” the sequel to “It’s All Fun and Games!”  I hadn’t even looked at it since penning it during NaNoWriMo back in 2011, and I’m pleased to announce that it’s a fun little story, with quite a few twists and turns.  The story follows the friends to the busy streets of Providence City as they make their way east and attempt to establish alliances to help them on their quest.

I do all the editing by hand on paper, and then I go back to the computer to input all the changes, working through wording and making other edits as I go.  This acts as a second full editing pass.  Once all the writing has been cleaned up (and some of it was pretty messy), I’ll then turn to think about bigger structural and story continuity issues that may need to be addressed.  Only once that has been done will I start seriously looking at how to bring the book to market.

I’ve been at it for about a month now, and finally finished, so wanted to share.  I’m proud of the story and can definitely see it turning into something everyone will enjoy. 

And now some announcements -

I’ll have a table at the Bangor Toy and Comic Con at the Cross Center over Memorial Day weekend, so if you’re in the area, feel free to stop on by and say hello!

More immediately, I’ll be at TotalCon at its new home in Marlborough, MA the weekend of February 25th, mostly playing in the Pathfinder Society area.  Again, feel free to say hi!

Lastly, since it’s my birthday, if you wanted to give me a present, head over to Amazon or Goodreads and leave me a review!  I’m up to nearly 80 on Amazon, averaging 4.6 stars.  I’d love to break the 100 review barrier!

Some of you folks may get this twice, once from Inkshares and once from my own mailing list.  I apologize for the spam, but am trying to be more savvy about marketing stuff and getting more eyeballs on my posts.

Thanks again for all your support!

Dave

Greetings hexers,

Dear Readers of "Nowhere Else I Want to Be: A Memoir":

Here is a lovely review of my memoir in A&U Magazine this month:

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Nowhere Else I Want to Be: A Memoir
by Carol D. Marsh
Inkshares

Reviewed by T.J. Banks

The book that really jump-started Carol Marsh’s imagination as a teenager was Catherine Marshall’s Christy. “I dreamt of being like Christy,” she recalls, “and going to work with poor mountain families—later, Indians on reservations, and later still, overseas with the Peace Corps—and helping people who needed me.” She saw herself living “a life of service in which I would make things perfect for some small village or group of children. For that they would, of course, love and appreciate me.”

Somewhere along the way, Marsh realized that her calling was working with women in need. So, in 1996, she founded Miriam’s House, a place for homeless women in the Washington, D.C., area who were struggling with HIV and AIDS.

Each woman came to Miriam’s House with a painful back story all her own. Claudia was mentally ill. Rebecca had been incapacitated by a stroke and communicated by pointing to pictures or words in a little book that one of the interns put together for her. Laila had contracted the virus from a blood transfusion following a car accident during her childhood. Alyssa, one of the youngest residents, had been pimped out by her mother, who had “needed the money to pay the drug man.”

Marsh and her husband Tim lived at Miriam’s House, and she learned that there was much more to being the director than she’d imagined. She accompanied residents to the ER; sat by deathbeds; and dealt with staff issues and substance-abuse relapses, learning a few truths about herself in the process. But what gave her “real joy,” she discovered, “was relating on an intimate level with the residents.” Over time, “being in service” morphed into “being present” for the residents, and “[t]here was humility in ceasing to help the vulnerable and commencing to be with them. To stay with them.”

Marsh paints vivid word-pictures of the women of Miriam’s House, enabling us to enter their lives as much as it is humanly possible to. And we come away from the book moved by both the story she tells and the honesty with which she tells it.

T.J. Banks is the author of Sketch People, A Time for Shadows, Catsong, Houdini, and other books. Catsong was the winner of the 2007 Merial Human-Animal Bond Award.

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An author is truly gratified when a reviewer really ’gets’ her book. I’m grateful to T. J. Banks for this review.

Peace, Carol

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