Sword and Sorceress 30 Release Week!

It's out! Sword and Sorceress 30 is now available in both e-book and print. The volume contains my second Justice short story, "Diplomacy in the Dark."

So far, the e-books are available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble, and the print book is available online at Amazon. If you want to support your local indie bookseller, you can always have them order a copy through Ingrams.

Hopefully, I'll have the full-length novel, A Question of Balance, out soon as well. It's currently with my beta reader, who also happens to be the timekeeper for their local high school's soccer teams. Unfortunately, regional tournaments started last week. ARGH!

I shouldn't complain since it's totally my fault for not getting the story to my beta sooner. And I totally rely on this person because without them, I wouldn't have licensed the two short stories to my favorite anthology!

What I can give you a sneak preview of is the cover from For the Muse Designs. Cool, right?

Sword and Sorceress 30 Is Available for Pre-Order!

The Kindle version of Sword and Sorceress 30, with my Justice Anthea story "Diplomacy in the Dark", is available for pre-order! As far as I know, there will be a paperback version, but it's not showing on any of the retail sites yet. But if you want instant delivery to your reading device on November 2, get your order in now!

In the meantime, I'm busting my ass on editing the full-length novel!

(Not that I'm excited about this or anything. *grin* )

Back in the Saddle

Things on the home front finally settled down last weekend. Our impromptu houseguest moved out, and as of Monday, I'm back to working full-time.

Hallelujah!

Over the last three days, I've prepped Amish, Vamps & Thieves for my formatter. This morning, I'll enter the data for the paperback's ISBN, finish the front matter and deliver everything to her. Next up is getting Blood Sacrifice ready for paper printing.

A Question of Balance is done, and is in what I call it's resting phase. That means I write something else before I start editing. Sort of like a palate cleansing. While I hope to have it ready around Sword and Sorceress 30's release date, I won't make any promise because I'll jinx the process. *smile*

So what am I doing to cleanse my palate? Zombie Goddess hit 27K this week. I'll work on it for the rest of September and October, keeping my fingers crossed that I get it done before NaNoWriMo starts. For this year's NaNo, I want to get the bulk of Ravaged, Bloodlines #7, done.

The Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa series is currently on hold. My co-writer Xxxxx Yyyyyyy bowed out for personal reasons, but she released her rights to the story and characters and gave me her blessing for finishing the project. If I can get the other three books mentioned above written, edited and published by the end of the year, I'm hoping to pick it up again in January.

It'll be a busy last three months of the year, but it really feels good to be working again!

I've Been Thinking...

Life's been a little crazy with the new addition to our household. Like a lot of writers who are parents, I'm looking forward to school starting in ten days.

I've been working on A Question of Balance over the last three weeks, and I'm almost done. But I may not release it right away.

Why? Because I think readers (assuming they liked the short stories) might want more than one novel. So I may wait and release all three novels at the same time.

As a reader, what would you prefer? In other words, read as soon as each book is completed or have a binge?

Curious minds want to know.

The Latest Craziness

When it rains, it pours.

First of all, I've given up trying to fix the damn blog post on my website. Then I found out that the company that subhosts my website is closing, so it's time to make some changes. Over the next month, you'll be seeing the updated "Suzan Harden - Writer" as my webmistress and I migrate the old stuff to a new host.

Jaye and Elaina are jamming on the paperback formatting and new covers respectively for the Bloodlines series. I'd planned to start rolling them out at the beginning of this month. But once again, personal crap has hit the fan. I hope to start uploading by the end of the month along with the new novels.

That same personal crap has put what I hope is a temporary halt on the writing of Hero De Facto. It's frustrating because we're only a handful of chapters from completion and we've got a fantastic cover artist lined up.

The only good news I've got right now is that another Justice Anthea adventure will be in Sword and Sorceress 30 in November. After the bullshit of the last five months, I take that one victory.

I take that back. The other good thing is getting back into Sam's head after three years. I'd forgotten how much fun she is.

There's Good News and Bad News

Let's start with the bad news first.

Qqqqqqqq, the first book in the Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaa series that I'm co-writing with Xxxxx Yyyyyy, won't be out won't be out by May 1. The original cover artist we wanted is booked through July already. We got off on the wrong track, but it was early enough (i.e. February) that I though we'd recover.

Then my Murphy-curse turned on Xxxxx. She's moving this week. Trust me, there's a long, involved story that's not mine to tell. Anyway, the poor gal's a little upset about missing a deadline, so please think good thoughts for her!

Will it be out this summer? Hell, yes! We're looking for a new cover artist. (P.S. If you are, or you know someone who is, a comic book artist, we'd love to see your portfolio!) The formatter and proofreader are lined up. And we have a detailed outline, so it's just a matter of finishing the last ten (or so?) chapters.

The good news is the new covers and print versions are moving ahead. Not as fast as I would like, which is my fault, not that of the two lovely ladies doing all the work. But the latest cover has even DH *squee*ing in fanboy delight!

Okay, so I *squee*d, too!

Testing...

Testing RSS 2.0 instead of SmartFeed.

But is it really?

This Is Only a Test

Hey, Folks!

If your seeing this message, my webmistress and I are trying to track down the frickin' feed problem.

Have a lovely spring!

How a Fan Stabbed Me in the Heart

Piracy is out there. I know that. I could try to stop it, but in today's digital age, that's like catching rainwater in a sieve. So for the most part, I ignore the piracy. It's as faceless as I'm sure I am to the pirates and people who feed them.

But this week was different. This week, GK's social studies teacher had the class google themselves and their parents. As a writer, I have the biggest internet footprint in the family. So I was stupid enough to google myself later that night...

And I wish I hadn't done it. I stumbled across a discussion of Zombie Love in a comic book online forum. One gentleman had borrowed Blood Magick from his local library. As far as I know, it's only available from one library, the Harris County Public Library. Anyway, he LOVED it, and he was rather upset that Zombie Love wasn't available through the library because he wanted to read it NOW!

And he didn't want to buy it.

So there was a discussion on this forum of all the places he could download it cheap or free. All of which were illegal as only one commenter pointed out. This commenter also pointed out that this was how I make a living.

To my mystery supporter, thank you for standing up for me and all the other writers and artists out in the world. This IS how I pay for not just my food and rent, but my multitude of maintenance drugs for my chronic illness.

As I read the comments in this forum, I think I was most surprised by my own reaction. I wasn't angry. I was heartbroken. If he loved my work that much, why did he feel he needed to steal it?

So to my fan, I wish you had contacted me directly. I don't know your circumstances. And I know you don't mine.

If you borrowed Blood Magick from another library than HCPL, you could have contacted the library and requested that they order Zombie Love.

If you had contacted HCPL and talked to Michael, the lovely gentleman who handles the e-book department, he in turn would have e-mailed me directly about getting the book into their program.

If you had simply asked me why Zombie Love wasn't available through the HCPL, I would have been honest and told you. And maybe if you had asked nicely, I would have given you a free, legitimate copy.

But you, dear reader, chose to go a different route, and as your fellow commenter said, that's between you and your conscience.

To the rest of my fans who felt it was worthwhile to purchase a legitimate copy of my work, thank you from the bottom of my heart.

What's Going On?

I know I haven't posted anything since January, but it's been crazy-busy here at the new headquarters of Angry Sheep Publishing.

First of all is getting formatting/interior design done for the Bloodlines series. It means proofreading the books again, and finding the occasional typo that managed to slip by everyone the first million rounds of editing. It means selecting artwork for the new covers and discussing options with the new artist. It means I'll have print books soon. In some respects, I feel like I'm doing IT project management again.

Out of all this work, the bad news is I'm going to have to raise prices on the Bloodlines books. This won't happen until June, so if you planned to pick up the first five e-books, do it soon while they're still $2.99.

Secondly, Xxxxx Yyyyyy and I are jamming on the new Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa series. We're hoping to have the writing wrapped up by the end of the month, then on to editing, formatting, etc. We have a tentative release date of May 1 penciled on our calendars, which I'm fairly positive we'll hit. We may need lots of potato chips in the meantime...

Angry Sheep Publishing is finally getting a business logo and it's own website. Links will be up (fingers crossed) around Easter.

Last of all, there's stuff brewing that I can't talk about yet. I'm excited, and I think y'all will be, too!

Stay tuned! New covers and other news is coming soon!

Justice Is Now Available as a Podcast

Far-Fetched Fables is the fantasy portion of the District of Wonders series of podcasts. Last year, I was contacted by the editor, Nicola Seaton-Clark , about one of my stories. Podcast No. 38 contains the audio version of my short story "Justice" that was originally published in Sword and Sorceress 28 back in November of 2013.

If you didn't catch "Justice" the first time around, you can listen to it or download the podcast for free from the Far-Fetched Fables website or download it from iTunes.

And definitely check out the District of Wonders other podcasts!