Publisher's Note
Publisher’s Note: Not-Your-Typical Holiday Stories
As the holiday festivities continue to ramp up, we’ve gone all-in here at WMG. We’ve even got our first-ever holiday issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine hitting the proverbial shelves later this week!
About half of the stories in Pulphouse Issue #15 have a holiday connection.
Now granted, this is Pulphouse, so the holiday stories here are not normal holiday stories. They are everything you’d expect from a Pulphouse story, but with a holiday twist.
Publisher’s Note: Home for the Holidays
It has begun. Christmas at the Longueira/Hurley house is in full swing. My husband has created a wonderland of Christmas lights outside (you do NOT want to know our lighting budget…). Inside, the tree is up, the regular dishes and some of our usual decorative items have been swapped out for Christmas ones, the stockings are hung, and the train is set up.
But most importantly, the advent calendars have begun and my daughter’s Elves on the Shelf have returned.
And my daughter can’t stop saying how much she loves Christmas.
Publisher’s Note: Sale-ing Away!
As soon as Americans finish their Thanksgiving feasts, the holiday shopping season launches into full swing with Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday.
Now, here at WMG, we’ve been gearing up for the holidays for weeks, as readers of this blog are well aware.
But since today is Cyber Monday, I thought we’d join in on the fun by offering deals for our writers AND our readers.
For our writers, we’re running a special Black Friday/Cyber Monday Sale on our Teachable platform.
Publisher’s Note: Giving Thanks to One and All
Thanksgiving has taken on new meaning for me since my brain surgery. Near-death experiences tend to change your perspective.
My experience of American Thanksgiving before the pandemic revolved, like many celebrations do, around food.
I only had one “normal” Thanksgiving after my surgery, which was spent with my husband’s family and a huge buffet of Thanksgiving dishes. In the beforetimes, I always enjoyed spending Thanksgiving elsewhere. Growing up, we always traveled for Thanksgiving, so I was never involved in the meal preparation aspect of the holiday. My experience was seeing family I rarely saw otherwise and eating food prepared by others. There’s pretty standard fare at American Thanksgiving: turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, pumpkin pie…
Publisher’s Note: A River of Releases
We had crazy, wild weather here at WMG headquarters last week.
Days of heavy rainfall led to dangerous flooding and even landslides. The Coast Guard was called in to evacuate campers from campgrounds and deployed at least one rescue swimmer—inland!
Fortunately, WMG’s offices are on high ground. As are all of our employees’ homes, although I did have a new water feature in my back yard for a while…
And while I was watching this literal flooding, I was instead thinking of a deluge of a much happier kind. A flood of new releases over the past year by our own Dean Wesley Smith.
Only this massive event was no freak occurrence. It was the result of a lot of planning and hard work by Dean (with a little help from his friends…at WMG).
Publisher’s Note: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up!
I registered my daughter for her Covid shots last week, literally the moment the signups opened. She’s 11, so we’ve been waiting desperately for the emergency use authorization as the school year continued on and more of her fellow students dealt with exposure quarantine (or worse, Covid itself) and missed two weeks of school.
This is one of the many reasons Nola is so eager to be vaccinated. Once she has finished her series, she won’t have to quarantine if she’s exposed (unless she becomes symptomatic, and then, well, duh, we would keep her home anyway). And she won’t have to worry so much about bringing Covid home from school to her family or inadvertently giving it to her classmates with diabetes.
For Nola, the vaccine represents freedom from the worst of the pandemic and a protective shield for herself and those she loves. For me, it’s pure relief.
What a long, strange trip it has been.
Publisher’s Note: One Gift to Rule Them All!
Now that Halloween is behind us, I’ve really ramped up my holiday shopping.
As crazy things have been for the past almost two years, and the supply chain issues the pandemic has caused, I’m checking off my list ASAP.
And I’m getting creative with my gift choices. The less I have to worry about product fulfillment and shipping times, the better.
If you’re looking to do the same, and you have readers on your holiday shopping list, the WMG Holiday Spectacular Calendar of Stories makes the perfect gift.
Publisher’s Note: Tempting Treats for the Holiday Season
Last week, I talked about the Month of Short Fiction. And I talked about how gifted Kristine Kathryn Rusch is as a short fiction writer.
This week, I need to tell you that Kris doesn’t just love writing short fiction. She loves reading it, too. And she loves the holidays.
So, holiday projects that offer great short fiction. Sign her up!
But she couldn’t sign up. Because what she wanted was a way to sign up to receive a holiday short story every day throughout the holiday season. Like an advent calendar, but for readers.
So, WMG created one. And Kris edits it. It’s called the WMG Holiday Spectacular Calendar of Stories, and we’ve just launched our third year—and our third Kickstarter—for the project.
Publisher’s Note: The Month of Short Fiction
I have to admit that before I started working for WMG, I wasn’t a big reader of short fiction. That all changed when I started publishing Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s short stories. She has been putting up one of her short stories for free on her website each week since before I started here almost 10 years ago, and WMG publishes them simultaneously if they haven’t already been published.
Kris is a renowned and gifted short story writer. Who better to introduce me to the art of short fiction?
Good thing, too. Because we’re publishing a butt load (did you know that’s a legitimate unit of measure?) of short fiction this month. Forget the week of short fiction. This is the month of short fiction.
Publisher’s Note: The Week of Short Fiction
Avid readers of this blog (I’m told you exist) might remember me talking about how many books we have on our calendar this year. This week will certainly drive that point home.
And fans of short fiction will have many reasons to rejoice. Nine of them, to be exact!
That’s because we’re releasing nine new titles this week, and they are all short fiction based: three holiday anthologies, one short story collection, and five Pulphouse books!