What’s Going On?

Just a quick note today, to keep you up on my current projects.

I hoped to get another short story collection together this spring. This one would feature my short work that’s more oriented to adults. However, when I sat down to organize it, I found I don’t have enough material. So that goes on hold while I pester myself to write more short stories.

On the other hand, the collection of material from this blog is coming along. I pulled down what I thought was the best material — general dragon lore, folk tales and myths, plus my silly poems and the ponderings about what dragons mean to people. I’ve tried to leave out anything that’s strictly publicity for my books and material that relies too much on links to other articles or using photos I don’t have rights to.

Even with that, it’s a lot of material to sift through. Currently I’m going over six years, from 2012 to 2017. But it’s so much, I may cut it back to an even 5 years. We’ll see.

I’ve also struggled a bit with format. My first try has been to sort the material into chapters, with all the folk tales together and so on. But I’ve found in several cases that this requires breaking up a particular thread into different chapters. Dragon’s Teeth, for instance, begins with mythology but then goes into some real-world objects that were named after the mythology. This feels to me like I’ve lost momentum.

For that reason, I will most likely publish the material in the order it appeared, and then figure out a way to include bookmarks or possibly hashtags to help people find categories such as folklore or mythology. Suggestions would be welcome.

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RadCon 2018

This coming weekend, I’ll be at RadCon Science Fiction Convention in Pasco, WA. This con is an old favorite of ours that we regularly attend, and I’m really looking forward to going again. Here’s my schedule of panels and talks during the weekend.

Friday, 3:15 pm — (Re)Tired Genres? Noire, vampires, zombies… What are some of the tired genres? Ones you think should be retired, and why they haven’t been.

Saturday, 11:00 am — Book Table. I’ll be in the dealer’s room, persuading anyone who comes near to buy one of my books.

Saturday, 3:15 pm — Reading. I’ll be reading from my books and greeting fans.

Saturday, 4:30 pm — Writers Answer Questions. Writers answer the questions you always wanted to ask.

Sunday, 10:15 — Reading Education for Writers. This is the panel I’m working hardest to prepare. Using my experience as an educator and children’s writer, I’ll discuss how Common Core has changed reading education and what opportunities this creates for writers.

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Welcome, 2018

Don’t Let the Door Hit You, 2017

Last year was turbulent for many of us. The political climate in the U.S…. Need I say more? And the daily trials like large, unexpected bills. Plus I was intensely involved with SpoCon, my local science fiction convention. That appropriated a lot of my creative energy this year.

I’ve felt very much off my pace in 2017. My goal was to write 4 short stories and 15 chapters (60,000 words) of a new novel. I managed to write 2 short stories, neither of which have sold yet, and the novel I started last January stalled. I’m up to 10,000 words on a different novel now.

I’ve also been waiting for my publisher to set a release date on my next novel, Trials of the Eighth Order. I hasn’t come. That leaves me with no new, traditional publications in 2017. Of course, I did self-publish my two novellas, so I’m not completely skunked.

Coming Up in 2018

My next project will be a short story collection of my work for adult audiences. Tentatively known as Aunt Anne’s Archive, it should appear sometime in the spring. Aunt Anne’s Archive will contrast with Aunt Ursula’s Atlas which represents my children’s work as Lucy D. Ford.

There is also a good possibility I’ll go through my five+ years of blogging here on Wyrmflight to select the most interesting and popular posts for a collection. Dragon legends and Real-Life Dragons are probably the best categories for this project. I’d love to get feedback on which topics you readers might want to see.

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Sign up for my newsletter and win a free E-book, The Weight of Their Souls. Just to go my Facebook page, AuthorDebyFredericks, and click the link on the left that says “Join my mailing list.” Easy, right?

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Egyptian Serpent Gods

The ancient civilization of Egypt has long fascinated with its stunning monuments and the lure of treasure-filled tombs. One of the culture’s most striking features was the animal-headed deities of its traditional religion. Although their mythology did not include dragons as such, there were several reptilian deities among the pantheon.

Perhaps the most recognizable of these is Sobek, the river god. Sobek (also translated as Sebek, Sobk, Sochet and more) was depicted either as a crocodile or a man with a crocodile’s head. From the most ancient times, this deity embodied a cluster of traits centered on the river. He was the powerful flood, and the gift of fertility in its wake. Since a crocodile was one of the most lethal creatures known along the Nile, Sobek also represented Egypt’s military might and the pharaoh’s power.

Initially, Sobek’s cult was centered in the Shedet region (modern day Faiyum) near Lake Moeris, where crocodiles must have been common. A great deal of building around Shedet was devoted to Sobek. Another cult center was at Kom Obo, in southern Egypt.

The worshipers had no illusion about the god’s capacity for violence. Among his titles were “he of pointed teeth,” and “one who loves robbery.” When people prayed to Sobek, they were asking him to moderate the cruelty of the river and ward off disasters such as real-life crocodile attacks.

With the passing of ages, Sobek became incorporated into the central myth of Osiris, Isis and Horus. After Osiris’ brother Set murdered him and flung parts of his body around the delta, Sobek helped Isis find the pieces and restore Osiris. As an associate of the sky god, Horus, his ferocity was turned to protecting the innocent and warding off evil. This also underlined Sobek’s association with kingship. He remained prominent in the Egyptian pantheon until it was displaced by modern religions.

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Just a few of my books:

Aunt Ursula’s Atlas, Lucy D. Ford’s short story collection

Masters of Air & Fire, Lucy D. Ford’s middle-grade novel

The Grimhold Wolf, my gothic werewolf fantasy, and my epic fantasy, The Seven Exalted Orders.

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Drum Roll, Please…

And cymbals crash as the door flies open. Ta-da! Aunt Ursula’s Atlas is here.

So I’m super-excited, in my stoic way. After years of searching out markets for my retro fantasy short stories, I’ve taken the leap to self-publish a collection. It’s a little bit scary, but mostly fun, to bring out a book on my own initiative.

 

Cover illustration by Margaret Organ-Kean.

On a high shelf, in a hidden library,
There is a book of unknown wonders.

Open its pages. Explore mysterious lands.
See for yourself what lies within
Aunt Ursula’s Atlas.

So what’s inside?

Dragons, of course! And a unicorn. Some witches. A dryad. A dwarf. Thrilling adventures and hard lessons to learn. All this for $3.99.

Eleven short stories for middle grades — that is, grades 4 to 6. Half are in the fairy tale style you might remember from my podcast, The Dragon King. The others are an assortment of fantasy styles.

Where can you get this wondrous-ness?

Right now, it’s available only as an e-book. Trade paperback is in the works. It’s in Apple, Kindle and Epub formats, through a variety of outlets. I hope you’ll follow your favorite link and give it a try.

General purchase hub (links to Apple, Nook, Kobo, 24 Symbols, Inktera). Others soon to be available include Page Foundry, Scribd and Tolino.

And, of course, Amazon.

Not exactly a purchase link, but here’s Goodreads as well.

One last thing

Reviews! If you do buy the book, I sure could use some reviews. I’ll be contacting a few friends about specific publicity, but any one of you could add it to wish lists, mark it to-be-read, and otherwise help spread the joy.

Thanks for being so awesome!

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MisCon Schedule

MisCon Science Fiction is celebrating its 30th year with a fine convention the weekend of May 27- 30th, 2016. In case any of you will be there, I thought I’d share my schedule for the event.

Friday, May 27th
6:00 p.m, Workshop, Description to Die For. I’m leading this one. It’s just under an hour of actual writing practice, so bring your writing materials.

Saturday, May 28th
10:00 a.m, Writer’s Workshop. Just what it sounds like. You had to pre-register for this one.
Noon, Elevate Your Dialogue.
1:00 p.m, World Building 101
4:00 p.m, Sky Warrior Books Group Reading
7:00 p.m, Open Mic Fiction Slam! Another of my pet projects. Anybody who wants to read, can read.

Sunday, May 29th
2:00 p.m, Anthologies and Collaboration

Things get hectic at school during the last few weeks, so I’m definitely looking forward to visiting my favorite Alternate Reality — science fiction!

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Ponderings

I find myself at one of those points we writers all reach, where I’m considering my work to date and pondering which direction to take. This particularly involves my short fiction, which I always struggle to find markets for.

Okay, yes, it is substantially my own responsibility that I continue to write stories that don’t have ready markets. I know that adult magazines consider stories with a fairy-tale flavor too juvenile for their readership, and I know that a 2,000-word short story is too long for juvenile magazines. But, bless me, that’s what I keep coming up with!

So I send submissions to 1 or 2 magazines with a remote chance of publishing me, because that’s all the markets there are. After that, I just have these stories without anywhere else to submit them. And so it goes.

I’m reluctantly coming to the conclusion that if I want my stories to be read, I will have to create a market for myself. It wouldn’t be the first time I set out to make something happen because I needed it to. I started volunteering with SCBWI in the early 2000s, because I couldn’t afford to travel for my career. I’m happy to say the local chapter is still going strong, too.

So I could go whole-hog and start a magazine for the readers I imagine when I write my own work. An actual magazine! The idea scares me to death, because it’s such an investment and there’s so much I don’t know. Also, it’s pretty cheesy to publish your own work and call that a magazine. Thus, in all likelihood, my stories still wouldn’t be published.

A more realistic goal might be to self-publish my stories in a series of collections. Perhaps 3 or 4 at a time, with a modest price tag. Since there are about 16 of them, depending which I choose, I could stretch that out for as much as two years depending on frequency.  Since I’ve finally got another microphone, I could podcast concurrently and have these available in e-book or audio.

To be even more modest, I could just do another podcast. Spring Break is in two months, and I’m sure I could get another novelette ready to record by then. However, I suspect that would not be enough. To build audience and achieve some recognition, I think I’ll need to push myself toward the second option.

This is what I’m currently pondering. The options, the expenses, the time away from my novel in progress. Those of you who have done this before, I would welcome your insights and advice. Thanks in advance, and stay tuned for further announcements.

 

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