Hello again, future readers! Dropping a quick line to let you know that YELLS FOR OURSELVES is now a full third of the way to its preorder goal. Thanks again to everyone who helped make this happen. As I’ve said previously, I’m working on a large preview for all preorder-ers; it’s nearly complete and should be coming your way next week.

I also wanted to direct your attention to a new feature over at yellsforourselves.com. When I first started writing this book, I imagined it as a more robust ebook with lots of neat interactivity and such. One feature I really wanted it to have was a calendar of regular season games that a reader could consult to see what happened on any given day. Though the super jazzy ebook never happened, I went as far as writing all the content for that calendar.

So rather than letting that content go to waste, it’s now posted at the link below. You can see the season broken down by month, with capsule "snapshot" descriptions for each game. There’s even some video where available (both clips and contemporary news coverage, for people who wondered what Len Berman had to say). For instance, you could look at today’s date in 1999 and see that that it was the Mets’ home opener, wherein starter Bobby Jones hit a tie-breaking homer and Bobby Bonilla actually received a standing ovation (his first and last as a Met, I assume).

http://www.yellsforourselves.com/2017/04/05/1999-day-by-day/

I have a similar calendar for 2000, which will debut in the coming weeks, so keep your eyes peeled for that. And of course, if you know of anyone else who might enjoy this book, please help spread the word.

Thanks again!

— Matthew

Once upon a time there was a friend. This friend asked me to join a contest, and I didn’t think about it too much and just did it. First mistake: had I known what I was getting into, I would never have pulled the trigger on Inkshares in August ’16 and started the journey that culminated in a publication deal in March ’17.

Second mistake: She asked me to join another contest, this one a flash fiction writing contest from Sci-Fi-London (the 48hr Flash Fiction Challenge), and I did that too. On April 8th I opened the site to view my story requirements. A title, a line of dialogue, and an optional bit of science. The maximum word count was 2,000 words, and I had just two days to write it in.

Title: NOT ON MY WATCH
Dialogue: When the clouds are this low it can be a nightmare to get a clean signa
lScience (optional): Augmented reality becomes so good we neglect reality, when the system to fails, the decay is revealed.

Except I worked all day on Sunday, so I really had just one day. And then I knew that in all honesty I probably just had Saturday morning to write it. The good news was I already had a pretty good idea what I wanted to put to paper. I popped open Scrivener (worth it’s weight in gold), wrote out descriptions for about seven story points, and then just...

...wrote.

I finished up a little over 2k words before noon, trimmed it down, sent it to some friends to read, edited the mistakes, and then sent it off. I’m not sure how I got that word count done so fast, but my brain was sizzling with ideas and I just let it get on with it.

And now YOU can read it! I published the short story through Pronoun, making it available for free on all major ebook retailers’ sites, and you can access it here: NOT ON MY WATCH.  If you download it, please rate and review it! It’s only 8 pages, so it shouldn’t take you long at all. Every review or rating helps boost it’s status among other ebooks, and in return gives my author page more recognition, and all of this will help me when Fae Child comes out.

I don’t know if I’ll win the Sci-Fi-London contest, but hey, stranger things have happened? And those things I listed as mistakes at the beginning of the post? Actually they were probably the best decisions I could have made, regarding my writing. Thank you Jenny!

~ Jane-Holly
p.s. Of course, the work on Fae Child continues! We are #2 on Inkshares in Teen and Young Adult, how cool is that?