My daughter has a busy week involving two different kinds of artistic endeavors.
First up is her school district’s centennial concert celebration. Nola plays several instruments: alto sax, tenor sax, euphonium and tuba. For this performance, she’ll be complementing the low brass section on the euphonium.
She loves playing her instruments, and she takes very good care of them. She’s even brought her euphonium and tuba home for baths (these are school instruments, but no one has maintained them; don’t even ask what we found inside the tuba once we got it apart…).
I played tuba in high school, but I’d never given one a bath before. It’s an adventure.
Needless to say, she’s one of her band teacher’s favorite students.
And two nights after the concert are her final two performances as Queen Aggravain in Once Upon a Mattress. She’s in good company in that role. Carol Burnett played the role in the 2005 Disney 2005 TV remake of Once Upon a Mattress. (Fun fact, Carol Burnett played the role of Winnifred, the princess, when the show opened on Broadway in 1959. You can read more fun facts about the Broadway production here.)
Once Upon a Mattress was inspired by a book, of course: “The Princess and the Pea” fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen. Don’t all good things come from books?
We obviously think so here at WMG. In fact, I’m in Las Vegas this week for the Romantic Suspense Craft Workshop, which is taught in-person by the amazing Kristine Kathryn Rusch. The study along version, writers do from the comfort of their own homes (or wherever they park their computer), is taught by the also amazing Dean Wesley Smith.
And while it’s too late to sign up for this particular workshop, it’s not too late to sign up for the other study along workshop options we have this year. Just click here to see all that’s on offer.
And don’t forget all the other workshops we have available on our Teachable platform.
Who knows where that next story will take you!
The Year of the Rabbit hasn’t even started yet, but WMG is already hopping!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
I’ve long been told I’m direct. I consider that a compliment. I’m not one to waste people’s time trying to guess what I’m thinking or what I’m feeling. I’ll tell you. Especially if we know each other well, and I know you can handle it.
Some people can’t. I get it. Our society isn’t really built that way.
Take the way we shop, for example. We’ve been trained on the superstore model of shopping. Everything in one convenient place. Not the best of anything, or anything made by that store itself (store brands notwithstanding). But a lot of things.
That can be true. And I certainly do stop by that kind of store from time to time and for specific reasons.
But shopping that way has never been my jam.
When I was a teenager, my parents would take me to department stores to buy clothes. I hated every minute of it. I found them overwhelming: messy, crowded, packed to the gills with merchandise. I had no idea where to even start looking for what I’d like, let alone find multiple things.
Then, I found specialty retail stores. These were organized and focused. I either liked the style of clothes they had or I didn’t. It was easy to see from the window. That I could handle.
Even now that I do almost all of my shopping on my phone, I still shop that way. If I need jeans, I go to the app for the specific retailer whose jeans I prefer. If I need shoes, same thing. I do not buy clothes from the big online super-retailers. Not my jam.
For a lot of readers, big online super-retailers are not their jam, either. But if that’s the only way to buy the book, well, that’s what they’ll do.
For a long time, the only economically feasible way for writers and publishers to sell books was through those big retailers. But thanks to technology that’s advancing at warp speed, that’s no longer the case.
Selling direct is not only doable now, it’s preferable.
Which is how the WMG Publishing Bookstore came about. Powered by Shopify, the site features more and more product weekly. We now have about a third of our ebook inventory available on the site, and we will be adding paper books in the future.
If you want to start taking a look around, may I suggest starting with Dean Wesley Smith’s Bryant Street stories. They’re delightfully twisted.
You can find Bryant Street (as well as all the other series we’ve uploaded so far) on the bookstore’s series page here or jump straight to it here.
And since we’re talking about being direct (both in spirit and in selling), here’s a code for 30 percent off all Bryant Street stories available in our store.
BRYANT30
Just add whatever stories you want to read to your cart and apply the code at checkout. The code is good for the rest of the month.
See, direct is the only way to go!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a lot of awards. But the ones that matter most to her are the Readers’ Choice Awards. Her readers, you see, are who matter most.
And now, she’s won another. “Serving Process” was chosen as one of the top ten mystery stories of the year by Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine.
If you missed reading it there, WMG published the story in February.
Here’s the synopsis:
Julia serves process in Corvallis, Oregon. One of the lawyers in her office warns her of the dangers her job poses, but she just needs two more years of interning to qualify for law school.
But her last subpoena of the day offers more than she bargains for—and holds more lives than just hers in the balance.
With its heart wrenching twists, “Serving Process” proves Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s mastery of crime fiction.
Find out what all the buzz is about. Click here to buy the story.
Cats like buzz, too. But more in the “ooh, let me catch that bug” kind of way. Cats prove endlessly entertaining with such antics. They’re real characters.
And they make great characters in fiction, too.
So, as a reminder, you still have time to grab the Cattitude StoryBundle, curated by Kris, of course. For $20, you’ll get ten books of cat fiction, including three exclusive to this bundle, plus a chance to donate to an important charity.
As longtime readers of this blog know, I lost my three beloved cats within nine months of each other the past two years. They were all elderly, but it was still heartbreaking and brutal. I was NOT ready to love a cat again. Not yet.
But, as many cat-lovers know, you don’t choose the cat(s). They choose you. Or, in my case, they choose my husband.
In the middle of my year of goodbyes, a feral kitten (maybe three or four months old) showed up under our porch. We had no idea whether she was male or female until she became pregnant shortly after finding us. I had no capacity for kittens at that time, so even the one time we could have intervened, I couldn’t do it. I was broken.
But lo and behold, the kittens found us anyway. And my husband spent the summer socializing them. Our house literally had an open-door policy when it came to cats.
And now, the two kittens we were able to socialize are our new beloved cats.
I wasn’t ready. But they needed us. And I must admit…every home needs a cat. At least, every home I want to live in.
Cats just make everything better.
That goes for fiction, too. Just ask Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She’s the curator for the latest Cattitude StoryBundle. Here’s what she has to say about the subject:
Cozy mysteries, serious witches, not-so-serious witches, musicians, dead musicians, pirates, pirates in space, space opera, fantasy, and romance. What do these things have in common? Cats, of course. Delightful cats. Dozens of cats. More cats than most clowders usually have.
This Storybundle has all of these cats and these stories, plus maybe a dozen more. From short stories to novels, novellas to anthologies, you’ll find it all in this bundle, so long as the fiction contains a cat. For $20, you’ll get all the books, including three exclusive to this bundle, and a chance to donate to an important charity.
You know who else likes to feature cats in his fiction? That’s right: Dean Wesley Smith. A group of kittens even play a prominent role in one of his Cold Poker Gang mysteries: Ring Game.
There’s something about cold cases that really pulls at you. We humans don’t like unsolved mysteries. And the longer they remain unsolved, the more frustrating they get.
I think that’s why we so love cold-case mystery novels. The cases get solved.
And one of the best writers at cold-case mysteries is Dean Wesley Smith. Just ask the many fans of his bestselling Cold Poker Gang Mystery series.
We haven’t had a new mystery from Dean in a bit, but that’s all about to change thanks to our latest Kickstarter featuring not only a new novel but also a new collection!
And not only can you get Case Card, the new novel, and Action, the new collection, in ebook and trade paperback but we are also offering limited hardcovers signed by Dean in Las Vegas, and they can be personalized if you’d like.
Talk about feeling like you’re right there where the action takes place!
And if you’re a writer and you really want to get in on the action, we have two incredible special Kickstarter-exclusive workshops on writing mysteries.
In Murder Most Cold, writers will learn the techniques that go into creating and writing cold case mysteries. And in Murder Most Modern, writers will learn not only how to write and create mystery plots using the modern techniques of crime labs, but also how and why and when detectives use those techniques.
We’ve already hit two stretch goals and are well on our way to the third, so be sure to check out all the free reading and learning you can get in addition to whatever reward you choose.
There’s no mystery about what you need to do next.
