My daughter turns 13 this week. And while I can’t quite believe she’s a teenager already, she is taking this harder than I am. She told me this birthday is making her sad. She doesn’t want to be a teenager yet. She doesn’t want all the pressure and responsibility that comes with the teenage years. She said next year, she’d have to get a job already.
I don’t know where this is coming from. It’s certainly not coming from me. The job part is probably coming from the fact that we live in an economically challenged community, like pretty much every tourist town everywhere. The people with money are the ones who visit or have second homes or own the businesses where the majority of the community’s residents work for minimum wage (or these days, the minimum the market will bear). Most of her classmates come from homes that support tourism rather than profit from it. Those kids all need jobs as soon as they can get them.
That makes me very sad. School takes a back seat before these kids even start high school.
The rest of Nola’s anxiety, I can’t fully explain. But it’s something I’ll be working hard to get to the bottom of. She puts far too much pressure on herself sometimes.
It’s frustrating for me that as hard as I work NOT to put pressure on her, to let her enjoy her youth, we’re still here. But, of course, I’m not the only influence in her life. And these days, with as interconnected as our kids are to the world, that pressure is everywhere.
Which is probably why I find myself thinking of one of international bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s most haunting novellas, Coolhunting, which was a Locus Award finalist, and winner of the Science Fiction Age Reader’s Choice Award.
Here’s the synopsis:
Steffie makes her living as a coolhunter—someone who discovers an interesting look and makes it fashion, often overnight. She managed to escape her stifling upbringing, but her sister KD—genetically altered to remain a child—remains trapped.
Steffie left KD behind once. But when KD asks Steffie to help her run away from home, Steffie must decide whether to help or to abandon her sister for a second time.
In celebration of my daughter’s apparently bittersweet birthday, I offer this to you free for one week. Click here to download this powerful novella.
Meanwhile, I’ll be doing my best to make sure my daughter enjoys her birthday. A trip to the trampoline park is just the beginning…
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
First, it was recently announced as an Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award winner! The novel first appeared in Asimov’s in two parts last year, and Asimov’s readers loved it, choosing both parts to win in the Best Novella/Novel category.
Congratulations, Kris!
The second piece of good news is that tomorrow, you can buy the novel in ebook, trade paperback, and hardcover everywhere!
Here’s the synopsis:
The Renegat Renegades finally learn their fate in New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades, the gripping new novel in her award-winning Diving series and an Asimov’s Readers’ Choice Award winner.
As the surviving crew of the Renegat face court-martial for mutiny—100 years in their future—the case makes everyone nervous. Prosecutors worry the survivors will prove too sympathetic to convict. The defense worries about the reliability of the defendants. But the survivors worry about what might happen should the truth—the whole truth—finally come to light. Set in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s expansive Diving Universe, The Court-Martial of the Renegat Renegades adds rich new background to this powerfully written series.
With shocking secrets, a deepening mystery, and a surprise witness, this spellbinding sf mystery mixes the best of legal fiction and space opera and proves Rusch’s place as a master of science fiction.
If you missed the buying novel in the Kickstarter we ran earlier this year or in the preorder phase, now’s the time to pick it up and see what all the buzz is about. Click here.
And don’t forget to check out the rest of the series here.
Go ahead and dive into this amazing universe!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
I’m lucky to have not lost a family member to war, at least not in the past several generations, despite my family’s legacy of service. My grandfathers both survived in the Army World War II (although my maternal grandfather received two purple hearts). My stepdad served in the Navy during peacetime. My dad served as a Marine in Vietnam (and also received a purple heart). And my husband served as a security officer in the Air Force during peace time.
But my father and grandfathers lost many friends in those wars. They didn’t speak of it much. But the loss was palpable at times of remembrance, like Memorial Day.
I’ll never forget visiting the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington, D.C., with my dad and watching him scan for the names of his fallen fellow Marines. It was haunting.
Kristine Kathryn Rusch captures that feeling in her powerful Anlab Award-winning story, “The Museum of Modern Warfare,” which is free for you to download for the next two weeks.
Here’s the synopsis:
When the Ambassador to the Dylft System—a veteran of the Dylft Wars—receives orders to lead a diplomatic mission to Craznaust, she wonders at the wisdom of accepting the assignment.
Still, when she arrives at the controversial Museum of Modern Warfare, she believes herself prepared to face the past and address whatever diplomatic issue she might find there.
But nothing could prepare her for what she finds deep within the museum. Something long buried. Something that could change everything she thought she knew about the war.
I’m back in the office this week after a fantastic week in Las Vegas for the Romantic Suspense Craft Workshop. It’s always such a treat to spend some time with our writers again in-person!
It’s also cool to see how Resorts World Las Vegas continues to expand its offerings. New restaurants, new shows, new shops. I even shared an elevator with the drummer from Katy Perry’s band (which is there in residency). Nice guy.
The hotel is really responsive, as well. They have a new art installation that includes loud music into the wee hours, which was disturbing some of our guests (including me!), and the hotel moved us immediately. The city view side was perfectly quiet, and bonus, I got to see what happens to the mountains outside Vegas when the thunderstorms move through and drop so much hail on them that it looks like it snowed…except it was 96 degrees in the city at the time.
If you’ve been hesitating to sign up for the upcoming Fantasy/Thriller Craft Workshop in July, I encourage you to get off the fence and sign up. These in-person workshops are one of the rare opportunities to learn the craft face-to-face from bestselling and award-winning writer and editor Kristine Kathryn Rusch. And Kris’ in-person workshops are legendary.
To view the full list of in-person workshops on offer, click here. And if you just can’t make it in person, you can do the study along version with bestselling and award-winning writer and editor Dean Wesley Smith. Click here to see those.
Speaking of Dean, don’t forget that the entire curriculum for all of our workshops (in-person and online) is available here.
What happens in Vegas definitely doesn’t stay there. What you learn at these workshops will stick with you for your whole career.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
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.
