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Publisher’s Note: Boss is Back!
It’s a very cool thing when your job requires you to read some of your favorite books. That happens to me all the time, of course, but one of my favorite assignments of all is working on Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s Diving series. From the kickass main character of Boss to the vast mystery of the Fleet to the incredibly rich universe, these books are everything I love most about great fiction.
I was a fan of the Diving books before I took the helm of WMG, and now I get to be part of bringing them to all of her other fans. That is as incredibly cool as it sounds.
And so, tomorrow will be a very exciting day at the WMG offices, even if those offices are now in several different locations thanks to the pandemic. Because tomorrow marks the release of the latest Diving novel: Thieves!
Set at the same time as Searching for the Fleet, Thieves features Boss diving the Boneyard and making some very exciting discoveries. Here is the synopsis:
A race against time.
Weeks after Boss’ injury from the runabout dive, she continues the mission to salvage Fleet wrecks for the Lost Souls Corporation. But Boss feels like she lost something after that fateful dive.
Until something happens in the Boneyard to catch her attention. Something that sparks her interest with an intensity she thought she lost.
Now, Boss must assemble a team—her old team—to dive this new discovery.
But Boss worries that someone knows her plans. That the Boneyard might prove more sentient than she knows.
She feels the clock ticking—and she worries time will run out once and for all.
A thrilling new adventure, Thieves provides pulse-pounding new developments in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s award-winning Diving series.
Click here to buy the book in ebook, paperback or hardcover.
As for me, I need to get back to reading the next book in the series, The Chase. There’s a preview of the first few chapters at the back of Thieves. We don’t have a release date for The Chase yet, but we will later this spring. And once you read that preview, you’ll know why I’m spending my nights and weekends working until I finish it.
It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it <grin>.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: Take a Chance on Love
I’m still very much feeling the love this week. Our Valentine’s Spectacular Calendar of Stories is in full swing, and Fiction River: Chances, which is romance-themed, publishes tomorrow.
As I mentioned last week, my husband and I celebrate our wedding anniversary this month. I talked about falling in love with him in my foreword to Chances, which was edited by Denise Little and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Here’s what I wrote:
The stories you are about to read might remind you of your own great love story. They certainly remind me of mine.
For many years, I thought true love was a construct of fiction. And I made decisions accordingly. When you don’t believe you’ll find love, you settle. And settling, I’ve found, never goes according to plan.
I settled twice before I met my true love. I was on my second marriage. He was engaged to the woman who would become his third wife (and his most regrettable choice). We worked together for a while back then. We connected on a deep level, but as neither of us were unattached, we focused on what it could be—friendship.
It would be a decade before the timing was right for us to take a chance on love. And a chance it was: me with two divorces and him with three. That’s one of the many ways I knew I had found true love: it was so very worth the risk.
And those are the very best love stories, after all. The ones that inspire hope.
Because true love is out there. You just need to find it.
You can start with the stories in this book, because each of them proves that finding love is worth taking chances.
And we could all use a few more happy endings these days.
And while we’re waiting for those happy endings, we can focus on happy moments. These stories, and the ones in the Valentine’s Spectacular Calendar of Stories, provide plenty of those.
To read more about Fiction River: Chances or to buy the volume, click here.
There’s still time to sign up for the Valentine’s Spectacular Calendar of Stories, too. Those stories will be delivered one per day through Valentine’s Day, Feb. 14. And if you buy the calendar, you will also get the ebook edition of the Sweet Valentines anthology, edited by Annie Reed, which will be released before Valentine’s Day 2022.
Click here to learn more or to sign up.
I encourage you to find a little more love and joy these days, with whomever or however you choose to share yourself.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: Love is in the Air!
After everything we’ve all been through for the past year, we could all use a bit more love in our lives now, right? I certainly learned not to take my loved ones for granted two years ago (the brain surgery year), but 2020/2021 has certainly driven that point home.
So, it seems only appropriate as we begin the month most known for love to really embrace the concept this year.
February is already a love-filled month for me because my husband and I celebrate our wedding anniversary. And then, of course, there’s the holiday dedicated to love: Valentine’s Day.
Ok, so I guess it’s supposed to be about flowers and candy and jewelry and romance, but I like to focus on the love aspect. We celebrate as much with our daughter (probably more) as with each other. My husband grows me roses, so no need for expensive store-bought flowers. Jewelry is for other holidays in our house. And I get romance every single day. I will admit I do love the chocolates, though.
I guess you could say we’re nontraditional when it comes to the holiday. And I love that about us. Holidays should be about spending time together and making your own traditions. And, of course, love.
Which is why I’m delighted to tell you about a very special way you can celebrate Valentine’s Day this year with your fellow booklovers.
Remember the WMG Holiday Spectacular Calendar of Stories we did for the winter holidays? Well, this year, because we need ways to find joy more than ever, we’re doing a Calendar of Stories for Valentine’s Day, too.
Comprised of stories that will publish next year in the Sweet Valentines anthology, edited by Annie Reed, the Valentine’s edition of the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2021 launches later this week. Here are the details:
Starting on February 7, 2021, you get a Sweet Valentine’s Day story per day sent to you automatically.
That’s a story per day for eight days!
Get a daily dose of sweet romance in your inbox. Want to give a gift of love to someone who likes romance? Of course you do! Give them the literary equivalent of a box of chocolates that will brighten their Valentine’s Day and warm their hearts.
Click here for more details.
And if that’s not enough romance reading for you, next week, our latest Fiction River volume—Chances, edited by Denise Little & Kristine Kathryn Rusch—hits the shelves. More on that next week.
So much great reading to be had. Now, that’s my kind of romance!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: Kickstarter Kicking Butt
That Kickstarter I told you about last week? It’s going great, so a huge thank you to the 160+ backers who’ve already supported the project!
We’ve already reached the third stretch goal for the Colliding Worlds Kickstarter, which means that backers at the $5 level and above get the following stretch goal rewards, in addition to the reward of their choosing:
- Fiction River Presents: Time Travelers edited by Gwyneth Gibby (ebook)
- Killer Advice by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (ebook)
- Laying the Music to Rest by Dean Wesley Smith (ebook)
- Life of a Dream: An Earth Protection League Novel by Dean Wesley Smith (ebook)
- Classic Workshop Writing Science Fiction ($150 value)
- Classic Workshop Writing Time Travel ($150 value)
That means a $5 backer gets about $320 worth of product. What a phenomenal deal!
At the $30 level, you get ebooks of the five volumes in this project—twenty-story collections, with ten stories each from Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith—called Colliding Worlds. That’s $350 worth of product for $30.
There are many more rewards to choose from, including novels from Kris and Dean’s popular science fiction series, writing workshops, and even a signed/limited hardcover set of all five volumes.
You can read all about the Kickstarter here. And be sure to watch the delightful video to see Kris and Dean talk about this fun project, if you haven’t already.
And if we hit the fourth stretch goal (at $12,500), all backers at the $5 level and up with also get an ebook copy of Fiction River: Moonscapes, edited by Dean Wesley Smith, and the Pop-Up class Making a Living with Short Fiction (a $150 value). Plus, we’ll add more stretch goals!
This is a stellar project you won’t want to miss. So hurry, there’s only about a week left!
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: When Worlds Collide
The turmoil of 2021 (and 2020) continues, but life marches on. We all need some sense of moving forward into a better future.
Here at WMG, we are focusing on just that: the future. Oh, and a whole lot of other sci-fi tropes. In fact, I can’t think of a better time to have launched our latest Kickstarter project: Colliding Worlds, which showcases some of the best science fiction you will ever read.
For more than four decades, New York Times and USA Today bestselling authors Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith have been writing professional science fiction short stories that have not only won awards and sold millions of copies, but also have been acclaimed and enjoyed by fans over the entire world.
Now, for the first time, we are collecting 100 of their science fiction short stories together into a five-volume set called Colliding Worlds. The series will feature fifty stories from each author, with ten stories from each author in every volume.
That’s right: joint collections featuring Kris and Dean’s writing. They are very different writers with very different styles, but the worlds they each create are marvels to behold.
You can read all about the Kickstarter here. And be sure to watch the delightful video to see Kris and Dean talk about this fun project.
The Kickstarter, like all of our Kickstarters, features bonus material (including a free ebook copy of Fiction River Presents: Time Travelers for every backer at the $5 and up level), stretch rewards (we’ve already unlocked the first one, which means all those backers also get Kris’ novel Killer Advice), exclusive workshops and much more.
And because this is a Kickstarter Make 100 project, there is also a reward limited to 100 backers for signed/limited hardcovers of the five Colliding Worlds volumes.
Again, you can click here to read all about it.
But before I sign off for another adventurous week in January 2021, I would like to thank those of you who reached out to send your well wishes for my dad and stepmom’s health. It got quite scary there for a bit, but they are both now recovering from Covid.
Please keep yourselves and your loved ones safe, y’all.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: A Very Long Week…
In last week’s blog, I said this: “The challenges and turmoil from 2020 will naturally bleed over into 2021, of course, but change is on the horizon. And hope.”
I didn’t mean to be prophetic. And I still believe that we have hope for better days. But after all the events of last week, I’m tired.
When I studied violent political acts against civilians for my journalism master’s thesis, I never expected to see such events on U.S. soil. I watched the events unfold at the Capitol with a stunned sadness I hadn’t felt, well, ever.
It had already been a hard week. My father and stepmother tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday. So far, their cases are mild, but it’s terrifying. This disease is so unpredictable.
And before the week was out, we’d also lost a family friend to Covid. Someone close enough to have attended my wedding.
I saw a meme on Facebook that said: “I’d like to cancel my subscription to 2021. I’ve experienced the 7-day free trial and I’m not interested.”
Sounds about right.
But while I was on Facebook, I also saw a lot of posts about cats. And thank goodness. Cats make everything better.
And so, this week I’m giving you a free story. It has a cat, and I think it’s a wonderful salve to a challenging week. It’s one of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s delightful Winston & Ruby stories, called “Un-familiar.”
Here’s the synopsis:
Winston’s familiar Ruby, a small black cat, avoids dogs whenever possible. So when Winston sees her talking quietly with a toy poodle-Chihuahua mix, he wants to know why.
Ruby, usually so vocal, says nothing. Her silence, that dog, and a storm in the Oregon Coast community of Seavy Village all combine into one of the most memorable days of Winston’s life.
Click here to read this story for free for one week only. Hopefully, next week will bring better news.
Because tired as I am, as we all are, we must continue to move forward. We can’t let these challenges define us. Better days are coming. We just have to hold on until they do.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: New Year’s Resolutions
Well, here we are: 2021. We survived 2020. The challenges and turmoil from 2020 will naturally bleed over into 2021, of course, but change is on the horizon. And hope.
I started 2020 in a very hopeful place. After 2019 (brain surgery), I knew 2020 had to be better. Yeah, totally didn’t see 2020 coming…
But after three very challenging years (2018 was rough for me because of health issues for some of those I love), I’ve learned to prepare for the future but live in the now.
As a result, my New Year’s Resolution this year is the same as last year. Stay healthy, concentrate on the joys in my life, and focus on my goals (personal and professional).
And adjust those goals as necessary to adapt to whatever changes the universe throws my way.
Versatility will be key this year, I suspect. If I had to make a prediction, I’d say 2021 will be a year of transition.
Our universal goal for 2021 is to find our new normal. But that will take time. Just like the vaccine rollout will take time to help us achieve that goal.
In the interim, the pandemic rages on. And so, for now, we must continue to live in a Covid world. But that can’t stop us from working toward our goals and making new resolutions.
And for writers, those goals and resolutions often include improving their craft and increasing their knowledge of the publishing world.
So, WMG is offering what we hope is the last workshop sale of this pandemic to help writers meet their 2021 resolutions and goals.
That means that now through 5 p.m. PST on Thursday, Jan. 7, every WMG Publishing Workshop, Lecture, Pop-Up, Class, or Subscription on Teachable will be HALF PRICE!
That includes the new workshops COVERS 101 and MAKING MONEY WITH YOUR WRITING, and the almost new PUBLISHING 101 and KILLING CRITICAL VOICE. Plus, the new Pop-Ups and any of the challenges, as well as the brand-new Collection Classes. The latter are two-month-long special classes and are not included in any subscription, but you can get all six of them for 2021 and end up with a published collection. Now that’s a resolution worth making!
Even the Lifetime Workshop Subscriptions are half price.
The coupon code to get anything on WMG’s Teachable at half price for the next 12 days is: Resolution.
And feel free to share this offer with any writer in your life, but remember that the sale ends sharply at 5 p.m. PST on Thursday, Jan. 7.
Click here to read Dean Wesley Smith’s full blog on the sale and here to go straight to Teachable.
Hopefully, some ay soon, the need for these sales will end because the pandemic will be under control, and we’ll transition to our new normal. But until then, WMG resolves to do what we can to help writers get through the coming months and get 2021 off to a better start.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: 2020 Year in Review
For this week’s Publisher’s Note, I turn you over to WMG Associate Publisher Gwyneth Gibby, who has prepared a comprehensive Year in Review for a very challenging year.
May your holidays be safe and merry and filled with as much joy as you can eke out of this weirdest of years.
Writing a review of a year like 2020 was—challenging. But the image that kept coming back to me was the immigrant ships that came to this country more than a hundred years ago, in the early part of the 20th century. My grandparents were on one of those ships in 1912, sailing from Liverpool after their short wedding ceremony in a village chapel in Wales. They traveled steerage, which was notoriously cramped, foul smelling, rife with disease, and generally nauseating.
And yet, it got them to the New World. So I began to think of our passage through the year 2020 as a similar journey from a familiar world into an unknown future, on a vessel that was sometimes cramped and foul smelling, and at times rife with disease. But with some good sense and some good luck and whole lot of grace, we now look forward to reaching port and a new life.
In the meantime, like the immigrants on those steamships who told each other stories, sang songs of the old country, and danced in spite of the tough conditions, we at WMG have not been idle!
I counted thirty titles that WMG published in 2020; there were novels, short story collections, anthologies, bundles, and on top of all that, our second annual WMG Holiday Spectacular Calendar of Stories, thirty-seven original holiday stories, is going strong as we speak.
We also ran six successful Kickstarter campaigns and held several workshop and lecture sales to help writers keep learning and writing during the pandemic lockdowns. And we started a newsletter called Grab a Book and Chill to keep writers and readers alike up to date on all of the resources WMG has to offer to get through this year and come out of it with something creative.
Let’s take a look back at the books WMG published this year, despite the pandemic:
Big news in Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s award-winning Diving Series! After The Renegat, 2019’s magnum opus, Kris came back this year with not one novel but two. Squishy’s Teams came out in November, and to the delight of her fans, Boss returns in a major new novel, Thieves, this coming February.
On top of Boss’s return, Thieves has some big surprises and that will knock the socks off of fans in particular. And you can preorder it now!
Dean Wesley Smith’s Cold Poker Gang are up to their usual tricks in a new novel Ring Game that published in April. And true to the year’s cat theme, two of the Gang’s retired Las Vegas detectives rescue a family of cats and uncover a creepy and diabolical series of cold cases—with the help of cats. Next up in the series is Bottom Pair—which will be out next year!
Speaking of cats, our new series The Year of the Cat has lovers of the four-footed beasts purring and asking for more. The project started as a Kickstarter Make 100 Challenge and has blossomed into a feline favorite starring a wide variety of cats. There are books featuring cats of a different color and of disdainful looks as well as cats of perfect taste, heroic hearts, strange lands and more.
Book #8, A Cat of Roving Nature, drops tomorrow, leaving four more books in the series to come.
More Make 100! We published one hundred of Dean’s short stories in three volumes, each of which contains more than 400 pages of Dean’s signature science fiction, fantasy, and uncategorizable original fiction. All three—The First Thirty-Three, The Second Thirty-Three and The Final Thirty-Four—are available in ebook and paperback.
We released two new volumes of Fiction River. Doorways to Enchantment, edited by Dayle A. Dermatis, tapped into the longing we sometimes feel to find a passageway from the real world to an imaginary one. Does that ring a bell for anyone? The stories in the second volume, Stolen, edited by Leah R. Cutter, take on all aspects of theft, from the urge to steal a magical moment to the fear of being robbed. Sounds familiar?
We also published three volumes of Fiction River Presents, our series of reprinted favorites from Fiction River: one called Cats! (of course), followed by Mysterious Women with stories by Kate Wilhelm, Julie Hyzy and Kris Nelscott. Last came Time Travelers because we wish we could, right?
Pulphouse Fiction Magazine saw its ninth issue in 2020, which included a very special story cowritten by Pulphouse regular Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart, the well-known Rush drummer who passed away recently. Also this year, we published A Twist of a Knife: Mystery Stories from the Pages of Pulphouse Magazine. That will be followed in January by Aliens Among Us, sci-fistories from Pulphouse, and then in February Pulphouse #10 will arrive!
To inspire authors to keep learning and developing their careers even in these trying times, we bundled the seventeen most popular WMG Writer’s Guides together and created five books on writing and publishing. The bundles are on the topics of Business, Productivity, Craft, the Industry, and Marketing. They not only offer tons of information, expertise and advice, but each one is a terrific bargain!
There are thirty-seven stories the WMG Holiday Spectacular Calendar of Stories this year, which subscribers get in their inboxes every day. Sweet, mysterious, fantastical, the stories are a delight this year. We published the three anthologies from the 2019 Spectacular this fall, Joyous Christmas, Bloody Christmas, and Winter Holidays. Also available is the compilation of all stories with their introductions from the 2019 calendar in The Holiday Spectacular #1.
Whew! That’s our list for 2020. Tons of great fiction, lots of terrific nonfiction, lots of cats.
Which reminds me, our two chief feline staff members at WMG Promotion Central, Cheeps and Gavin, have stepped up to the plate and kicked into high gear, giving their jobs a thousand percent effort…OK, not really. But they do occasionally take a break from the serious business of napping and wander into Promotion Central. You can follow their—well not their antics exactly because that would be too energetic, so let’s just say their snacktivities on Facebook.
You know what? The year 2020 may have felt like steerage, but if anything, it has been a journey not into the heart of darkness, but out of the dark and into the light.
Gwyneth Gibby is associate publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, former Hollywood director, and an expert in narrative storytelling.
Publisher’s Note: Countdown to Christmas
Christmas week is here at long last. This is my favorite holiday, and no pandemic is going to change that.
But I won’t pretend it’s not bittersweet. But my husband and I have done our best to make this Christmas amazing for our daughter. We probably overdid it on presents (not probably…), and we’ve been baking together and binge-watching Christmas movies together, and enjoying all of our Christmas decorations.
She’s missing out on so many things, but Christmas morning won’t be one of them. That much, fortunately, I can control.
We have all, hopefully, found our coping mechanisms this year. And for many of you, I suspect, one of those coping mechanisms is reading great fiction.
As part of our WMG Holiday Spectacular 2020 Calendar of Stories, we feature one story from the calendar each week to post for free for all who want to read it.
This week’s story, “The Last Hour of Hogswatch” by Michael Warren Lucas, is a powerful gut-punch of a story that seems to embody so much of what many people are dealing with this year. It was written before the pandemic, but it’s the perfect embodiment of the spirit of Christmas 2020.
You can read it for free here. And if you want to read more, you still have time to sign up for the Calendar of Stories by clicking here.
And you still have time to pick up The Good Cheer Holiday Bundle to really embrace your holiday reading spirit. That StoryBundle includes The Santa Claus Stories by L. Frank Baum (of Oz fame), Dean Wesley Smith’s Through the Jukebox collection of stories set on Christmas Eve, Kristine Grayson’s Tidings of Comfort and Joy from her Santa Series, and Joyous Christmas, a cheerful anthology from the WMG Holiday Spectacular 2019.
You can get the bundle here.
From all of us here at WMG, we wish you a safe and healthy holiday season. And we hope, a happy one, as well, even during these challenging times.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.
Publisher’s Note: A Year Full of Twists
If 2020 has proven to be predictable in any way, it’s by being unpredictable. The twist and turns of 2020 will go down in the history books to mark this year as a year like no other, I’m sure.
But we’re closing in on the end, thank goodness.
And because I believe that fiction helps ease all ills (hence, my job), I think our latest release is the perfect book to read in the twisty-turny final days of 2020.
A Twist of a Knife: Mystery Stories from the Pages of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine, edited by Dean Wesley Smith, is available in ebook and trade paperback. It’s one of the Pulphouse Books that are part of the Pulphouse Fiction Magazine line.
Here’s the synopsis:
Stories in Pulphouse Fiction Magazine cover all genres, from science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance, and literature. And just about everything in between all of those. Editor Dean Wesley Smith looks for great stories that don’t fit, that just feel sort of different, but in a good way.
This volume contains ten great mysteries from all the mystery stories published in the first ten issues of Pulphouse. From old spies with attitude, to a heartbreaking tale of a grieving father, to an assortment of detectives including one hard-boiled with fancy sunglasses, one zombie, and a ghost, to a dramatic story behind a famous painting, these stories will entertain readers, make them laugh, and even touch their hearts.
Includes:
“The Geezer Squad” by Annie Reed
“Don’t Make Me Take off My Sunglasses” by O’Neil De Noux
“Looking for the Bastard” by David H. Hendrickson
“Heartbreaker” by Kevin J. Anderson
“The Time Cop” by Patrick Alan Mammay
“Red Carnation” by Lee Allred
“Just Desserts” by R.W. Wallace
“Under the Blood-Red Maple” by Joslyn Chase
“The Distant Baying of Hounds” by J. Steven York
“The Case of the Vanishing Boy: A Spade/Paladin Conundrum” by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Like I said, it’s the perfect book to read at the close of a very strange year. But these stories are the good kind of strange. A good kind of weird. Won’t that be refreshing?
Find out more here.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.