Due to the fact I am judging an ebook contest, and taking a class on New Zealand ecology, I don’t have time to do the necessary editing of Wintermoon Ice. So I’ve asked my editor to delay publication until mid-October.  This is the first time I haven’t been able to turn around my edited manuscript in the proper time frame, and I am feeling pretty bad about it.  Next time I’ll have to remember not to load too much on my plate!

I haven’t been doing much writing lately and I really need to get back into it.  Part of it is my fault, as I’ve been spending far too much time “Facebooking.”  Fun, yes, but hardly productive.  Also I am taking a University-level class called “Introduction to New Zealand Ecology.”  Really interesting, but I’m having to play catch up, as I know little about the subject.  Today though I set myself a goal of writing 500 words a day on my short story, as well as finishing my first assignment this week, on an endangered species.

Less time for Facebook, but I don’t think the world really needs to know everything I am doing anyway.

Here is my publisher’s blog entry for Beyond the Gyre!

Mushroom eBooks Blog — News and comment about Mushroom’s eBook offerings.

I finally broke down and started a Facebook page.  It’s under my real name, Susan Hamel.  Add me as a friend!

Beyond the Gyre will be out in paperback on July 28th.  This is the fourth and final book in the Song of the Arkafina series.  I’m pretty proud of the little stack of books I have on my bookshelf now.  Hopefully Wintermoon Ice and Summermoon Fire will join them some day.

Wintermoon Ice

Wintermoon Ice, the first volume of Sons of the Mariner, will be coming on September 7th!

Also, as you can see above on the tab heading, I have added a new page on my blog for Sons of the Mariner.  It is the second set of books I have written about  the Gyre Cosmos.

I’m really a little bit surprised to suddenly be the published author of two series. It seems, sometimes, like I’ve just started writing.

Here is the tagline for Wintermoon Ice:

An unexpected inheritance throws Tessa into the arms of a volatile alien-hunting mariner and challenges everything she understands about time and space.

Strangely enough, I thought I was writing another Fantasy book, but my publisher informs me that because this one has Aliens and Time Travel it is actually Science Fiction! Plus a dash of romance of course…

I’ve never been much of a short fiction fan, either to read or write.  Usually I find short stories frustrating, because if an author does a good job with the writing I invariably want to read more.  And if the material isn’t strong enough for a longer work, well then why bother to write it in the first place?  So I’ve turned out very few short stories myself, and I’ve never investigated the techniques behind creating good ones.

Yet here I am, trying to write one that I can put on Manybooks.  The rationale behind this is to create an expanded market for my published works by giving away a series of short works.  These will be prequels, mostly.  I think.

So far I am enjoying the process.  I finished the first chapter today.  My biggest problem is trying to strike a balance between action and detail in this reduced format, because usually I like to do lots of scene-setting and description.  No time for that with only 20-25k words though.  But I have to admit, it’s pretty cool watching the word counter slide over so quickly!

Erotic shorts are the fastest-growing segment of the publishing industry today, so who knows what I might end up writing if I find I enjoy short stories after all… 

I can’t believe it’s  been a whole year since I wrote the entry on Larnach Castle, which was my 7th anniversary trip.  This year it was DH’s turn to plan the surprise, and he did a fantastic job.  We drove to the sleepy fishing village of Moeraki, about an hour north of Dunedin.  Moeraki is most famous for its very unworldly-looking collection of boulders, which I have visited a couple of times before.  But I had no idea that the town had so many other interesting things to see.

Like the Katiki Point lighthouse and wildlife refuge, where we saw four of the sweetest little baby furs seals.  And Fleur’s Place, the world renowned seafood restaurant, where we had a fantastic dinner upstairs in the loft.  We also rode our bikes around the town, but it was too cold to stay out for long!

The next day we drove into Oamaru, and visited the historical district.  After a nice lunch at the Star and Garter, accompanied by live piano music, we strolled around the magnificently restored stone buildings and visited an artist’s cooperative.  We finished the day by walking a bit of Graves Track, which hugs the cliffs (sometimes scarily so) on the ocean side of Oamaru.

It’s finally here. The third volume of Song of the Arkafina, Dawnmaid, is now for sale on Amazon and other book retailers.

While I am doing research for Operation Darkspar, I am going ahead with another project I have had in the back of my mind for some time.  It is a series of four long stories (can’t call them “short” when each one will be about 25,000 words) which will form a sort of prequel to the events in Song of the Arkafina.  Well, oddly enough, the story falls both before and after SOTA, but since the Amaranthine are able to travel through time, that makes sense.  Sort of.  To me, anyway.

I’ve called the collection Red Feather Fables, because the leader of the Firaithi wears a red feather in his braid.  The first story, Quondam, is named after the Firaithi word for past.  For those of you who haven’t read Dawnmaid, I’ll explain.  The Firaithi, who are a travelling people, consider time to be a helical country, winding through the Gyre.  Each kind of time is a location in that land.  Quondam is the past, Prox the present, Sequent the future and Nowhen, an indeterminate place beyond or outside of time.  So I plan to write four stories, each with a fable attached, dealing with some of the history of the Amaranthine, who are descended from the Firaithi.