This is sooo overdue, it's not even funny! Anyway, I wanted to pimp Michael Jasper's (michaeljasper) newest novel, A Gathering of Doorways. :)

Mike let me read it a few months before the novel came out, and I read the entire thing in a weekend. I really like Carl Hays' description of A Gathering of Doorways in his Booklist review: "...imaginative rendering of middle-class angst with the familiar supernatural ingredients of a 1980s-era horror novel."

Even though vampires and werewolves are great, the horror aspect in A Gathering of Doorways is within all the normal things surrounding the Anderson family, which makes the novel, and the horror, so much more real and relatable. You don't simply get lost in the forest--it pretty much takes you!

Each chapter is from the point-of-view of Gil, or his wife, Melissa, or their son, Noah, and I absolutely loved Mike's ability to differentiate the three voices. Noah's my favorite!

Due to the stillbirth of the Andersons' second child, the family is unraveling, and not only have they become mentally separated, but when Noah wanders off, they're physically separated, too. However, together is the only way the family will be able to overcome the psychedelic Undercity, which, it turns out, governs all the creepy stuff that's been going on.

Amazing writing, a captivating story, believable characters, and things that go bump in the night... and day. What more could you want?

Back cover/Front cover; My name's fifth on the list! :D
Cornstalk Gypsies: The Iowa Flood Relief Anthology, a 230-page science-fiction/fantasy anthology, is finally available! Click here to purchase a paperback copy for $13.00 (plus shipping) or a digital PDF copy for $4.95.

My story, "A Spell of Winter," is in the anthology. It features a dwarf, a crazy swarm of fairies, and a couple humans (for good measure)!

Most importantly, though, 100% of the proceeds from this anthology will go towards relief of individuals, businesses, cities, and schools affected by the 2008 summer floods in Iowa. So, if you buy this anthology, every cent of your money will be helping people!

Please feel free to pimp the anthology on your own journals, too. Not only because my story's published in it, but because every copy sold will help victims of the Iowa floods!

What're you waiting for? Click here to purchase the anthology! :D

Howdy, folks! Hope life is well for yall. :)

jenniferapril and I spent the better part of the last two weeks (rere...rerere)revising the BLOOD MOON manuscript. I'm so happy with the changes we made. Hopefully, an agent will like the changes, too! ;) We also planned out quite a large portion of book 2, which was exciting. Things are going to get much darker, so that's fun!

I have one more week of bliss. Come August 25th, classes are back in session for me. One cool thing I'd forgotten about until I took a look at my schedule this morning is I'm taking a really cool required music class (to cover a 'fine arts' credit): GUITAR HEROES. I hope the class ends up being as awesome as it sounds. *_*

Anyway, michaeljasper/Michael Jasper (that's a link to his new site!) tagged me: ( Top 48 SF Movies Based on a Novel )

Conclusion: I need more sci-fi in my life! The last sci-fi novel I read was Starship Troopers during my senior year in high school. =/

I tag the following: jenniferapril, gracelessheart, enablelove, cattys, and hermionesparkle. :)

Anyway, I suppose that's it. I'm off to make my last week of summer count! :)

As the subjectline reads, the deadline for the Iowa Anthology has been extended. If you'd like to submit a short story, or know someone else who'd like to, click here!

( Favorite authors meme! )

My short story, "A Spell of Winter," will be included in the Iowa anthology! :)

I'll post more when I know how you can buy a copy of the anthology, should you be interested. All I know so far is that all proceeds will be used for flood relief in Iowa.

Jen and I took a giant break from the manuscript once we finished revising it. It's been almost a month, or something, since we last looked at it, but yesterday we started (rerererere?)revising it again, and the chapter titles caught my attention. When we edited last month, we changed several of our chapter titles, and now that I'm reading through the manuscript again, I've come to realize that a good chapter title really does affect how you feel going into a chapter. Maybe that's obvious, but it feels like I'm reading through the manuscript for the zillionth time, yet some of the new chapter titles manage to get me giddy about reading a chapter I've already read at least a dozen times. It's kind of cool!

Anyway, just wanted to update to talk about that. For now, it's back to revisions. Y'know, again. ;)

P.S. New layout!