Publisher's Note
Publisher’s Note: A Wonderful New Venue for Our In-Person Workshops!
I’m back in the office this week after a fantastic week in Las Vegas for the Fantasy Caper Craft Workshop. It was so good to spend some time connecting with our writers again.
We had to stop offering these workshops during the height of the pandemic, and then the venue we had used for years became undesirable for a host of reasons.
That’s all changed now!
Publisher’s Note: What a Fantastic Way to Kick Off the New Year!
I’ll never forget my first adult fantasy novel. Stephen King’s The Eyes of the Dragon. I was more of a Little Women and Jane Eyre reader up to that point, and The Eyes of the Dragon was a totally different kind of fiction for me (and for King, at the time, but that’s another story you should look up).
I was a freshman in high school when the book came out in mass market paperback. I didn’t connect at the time (or for years afterward) that it was by Stephen King. It’s a good thing, too, because if I’d known it was written by that Stephen King, I wouldn’t have read it. His horror was (and still is) too much for me.
But that first foray into fantasy fiction paved the way for my enjoyment of so many other fantasy works.
Including the many incredible short stories of Kristine Kathryn Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith.
Publisher’s Note: Looking Ahead to the New Year!
Well, it’s officially 2023! Back in 2020, we weren’t sure we’d get here, but here we are. It seems like we’ve found our new normal. It’s weird, but, well, I’m trying to look, as Monty Python says, “on the bright side of life.”
As such, I’m looking ahead to the coming year with lots of exciting changes afoot.
But first, a little insider background on the publishing industry.
Publisher’s Note: The 2022 Year in Review
Although we at WMG are off today for the observed Christmas Day holiday in the US, the excitement of Christmas is now over. The presents are unwrapped, the advent calendars are done, and we’re officially in that in-between space between the festivities of Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
This week has its own special feeling. It’s still technically the holidays, the tree and the lights are still up, but the stress of the holidays is gone. It’s also the perfect time to reflect on the year that’s about to end and plan for the new year.
Publisher’s Note: Wishing you a Very Merry Pulphouse!
At long last, Christmas is almost here! My daughter is so excited. She’s on break for the next two weeks and I’m taking some time off, so we’ll be spending time together finishing up the shopping, making Christmas cookies, going out to lunch, and all sorts of other things we don’t have time for when she’s in school and I’m working.
So, if you’re like us, and you’re still celebrating everything holiday, our latest new release is just in time for some last-minute holiday reading.
Publisher’s Note: Holiday Happenstance
Isn’t it strange when fiction bleeds into real life? Sometimes, it’s a sense of déjà vu, where you could swear you’ve read or seen something before. Sometimes, it’s the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon (also called the Baader-Meinhof effect or frequency illusion) where you learn something new and suddenly start noticing it everywhere. (It’s an interesting phenomenon…you can read more about it here.)
And sometimes, it’s just a strange coincidence.
Publisher’s Note: Travel without Traveling this Holiday Season
I don’t travel for the holidays anymore. At least, not if I can help it. Between the brain surgery and the pandemic, I have a really hard time with crowds now. And traveling at the holidays is a guaranteed way to find crowds. So, I’ve found ways to travel without...
Publisher’s Note: I can finally say it: Happy Holidays!
Okay. It’s official. The Christmas season has begun!
Our tree is up, our lights are strung, our house is decorated, and the holiday music and movies are streaming!
I love the Christmas holidays, as you might have gathered.
My daughter is very excited, too. And we haven’t even started the advent calendars yet. This year we have three: our annual Jacquie Lawson electronic advent calendar, an Escape Advent Calendar (which I supported via Kickstarter), and one I do myself (little drawers that I fill with different things year after year).
As you can see, we love advent calendars here at WMG.
Publisher’s Note: With Gratitude
I was talking with a friend recently about vision issues, and I was trying to articulate what it’s like to have lived for as long as I can practically remember with extreme nearsightedness. I’ve needed a correction of more than -10 diopters for my entire adult life, and I was at greater than -3 by middle school. For those of you who are mercifully not nearsighted, -3 diopters of nearsightedness puts you at about 20/400 vision (unable to see even the big E on the top of the chart).
I’m currently at a correction of -15 diopters, which puts my vision at about 20/2,000. But that’s not really accurate, either, because who can see 2,000 feet away?
What’s really relevant here is that I haven’t truly seen the world since I was 8. I mostly see it. But not what it really looks like.
Publisher’s Note: A Free Trip to the Old West
I promised last month that I’d tell you about another of our free first-in-series ebooks in November, and that time is now!
Dean Wesley Smith’s Thunder Mountain series is deftly blends together science fiction and time travel with the old west, and even throws in a little romance, to boot.