My Farpoint Schedule & HEYYYY THRIFTY FASHION IS BACK!
SOOOOOO I’ve got my Farpoint schedule, so if you’re going to be there, LET ME KNOW/COME FIND ME! I want to see you!
Apparently I’m the Author Guest of Honor at the Friday Cocktail Party (I’ve emailed to see if this is true or was a typo on my schedule, but I’ve not heard anything back)… somehow I find this (me being the Author GOH) hard to believe, but I’m going to show up in the off chance it is true. If it’s not, then no biggie, either way I’m looking forward to socializing/seeing fellow Farpoint attendees. It begins at 1900, so I hope to see you there!
Everywhere else I’ll be:
Friday:
Farpoint Book Fair, 2200 Dulaney Valley 1
Saturday:
Beating Writer’s Block 1000 Chesapeake 1
How to Kill A Character 1100 Chesapeake 1
The Heirs To Harry: Young Adult Science Fiction in Books & Film 1600 Chesapeake 1
Sunday:
Antihero or Villain: What’s the Difference? 1000 Chesapeake 1
Crowdfunding Your Project 1100 Chesapeake 1
Autograph Table 1200 Atrium Front
Oh hey! Remember when I used to do these? It’s been like over a YEAR. And I have a ton of pics/outfits that I haven’t posted about and went through all the trouble of getting pics of, sooooooo I’m going to do another post.
I’m going to do two looks – one winter because, yeah, winter, and one summer, BECAUSE I MISS THE SUN OKAY.
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Athena’s Daughters Kickstarter Lessons Learned
Wow, it’s been 2 weeks since the Athena’s Daughters Kickstarter, and I still feel like it JUST happened. And of course, I am still looking at the final number and going “whoa.”
A few people have asked me “how did you run such a successful kickstarter?” Well, the answer is simple. *I* didn’t!
It truly was a group effort, and without everyone coming together there is absolutely no way we would have gotten the word out nor interest in the project piqued. Everything from one of the authors for Apollo’s Daughters tipping off someone he knew at i09, to all the authors’ relentless promotion across all forms of social media, to people who stumbled across the Kickstarter page, thought it was cool and told all their friends about it, contributed greatly to the success.
How to moderate a panel
One of the best moments of DragonCon 2013 for me was following a Phineas and Ferb panel I had just moderated. One of the panel attendees came up to me afterward to thank me for the excellent job I’d done moderating the panel.
Since then I’ve had a Con programming directly recently say “I wish you could teach my mod’s how to properly moderate a panel.” Don’t get me wrong, this is not a “oh hey look at me, I’m an awesome Mod” post, but rather a “I guess I do an OK job at the Mod gig, so I’m going to share with you what I do, since someone asked me to.”
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2013 in review
Oh, 2013 I am NOT sorry to see you go. We had some highs and lows together, but professionally you were great to me, so I won’t complain.
Soooo, let’s start with January:
I submitted 2 stories to anthologies and began getting a 3rd edited. I also started writing the final novel in the War of the Seasons trilogy, The Hunter, (something I was both excited and scared to do)
I also began putting together my first anthology, A Hero by Any Other Name, which was a bit scary, but fun at the same time – it’s was something I’d never done before.
I also attended the Presidential inauguration (a first for me!) and visited SEVERAL countries for the first time: Algeria, Cyprus, Germany (where I met Vice President Biden!), Israel, Morocco, and Turkey (where I met Vice President Biden!).
All in all, a VERY busy month.
War of the Seasons, Book Three: The Hunter
The temperature dropped, and, shivering, Story stood and turned slowly around.
A massive polar bear towered over her, his mouth twisted into an animalistic grin.
“You’re sick, Geamhradann.”
“I’m so glad you remember me.” The Winter King sat down on his haunches and licked one of his dinner plate sized paws clean of drying silver blood. “And I’m feeling quite well, thank you very much.”
Story rubbed her hands over her arms against the freezing wind. She couldn’t feel her feet any longer, and though her head told her to run, she knew it was no good. Geamhradann would catch her as soon as she moved. She looked around for a weapon, a rock, a chunk of ice, anything to throw at him to force him to break his concentration and therefore loosen his hold on her in the dreamscape, so she could wake up.
“You should know better, half-blood. You can’t hurt me here.”
* * * * *
Story must face an evil greater than any she’s encountered before. As darkness looms over Ailionora, Story, her companions, and all of the races of Ailionora band together to fight for their very survival.
Editorial review
“Spendlove acknowledges authors Michael Stackpole and Aaron Allston in her book. Her writing style mirrors the easy readability of those two master wordsmiths, where the words flow and the characters don’t make you stop and wonder why they are doing something. The tale just feels believable and the characters relatable.” -Tricia Barr, FANgirl Blog
Read a Sample
The Uinseann is coming: December 21st, eBook release of War of the Seasons: The Hunter
My dear friend Kelli just sent me the above image saying “Just a little something I made… The third book of a trilogy is a big deal! I’m thrilled to be on this ride with you.”
As am I, my dear friend. Thank you so much!
If you would like to order War of the Seasons trilogy, you can do so here or here.
The first link is to my current Kickstarter, the Athena’s Daughters all women Sci-Fi/Fantasy, and the second link is to my shop here.
If you would like to just order The Hunter, you may do so in my shop as well. The eBook will be released on the 21st of December (an important date in the War of the Seasons trilogy), and the print book will be available in January.
Thank you all for your support!
Ever wonder what happened to Amelia Earhart? My newest story, “Millie”
So, I totally meant to post this last week, but the week has been NUTS. Like in a good way. The short version is that we launched a new kickstarter for an all female anthology that immediately went gangbusters, funded in 36 hours, 5 days in and we have over 600 backers, and we keep running out of backer rewards. It’s a GREAT problem to have.
The anthology is called Athena’s Daughters and it’s a science fiction and fantasy compilation completely done by women – all the artists, authors, and the editor are women, and all the stories have a female lead.
Science Fiction and Fantasy are wonderful mediums to teach our youth (and our adults), to expand our horizons, and encourage thought and imagination. But I still see a lack of women as leads out there* and I think it’s very important for children (and adults!) to have strong** female role models in their lives.
That’s what inspired Athena’s Daughters.
There are so many awesome stories in this anthology, like Maggie Allen’s “Lunar Camp” all about a young girl and her exciting (and life threatening) adventures on the moon, or Sherwood Smith’s “Commando Bats”, which is all about 70+ year old women who become superheroes (I’d like to point out that one of these women is the survivor of a stroke and wheelchair bound – and she’s the most fantastic of them all!).
As for my own story in the anthology, “Millie”, it’s about a modern day Marine pilot Sara Colón (a helicopter pilot based on an old friend of mine from my first days in the Corps) who has a chance encounter with a very familiar time traveling Aviatrix (have you ever wanted to know what really happened Amelia Earhart?).
You can see the amazing artwork that super talented artist Autumn Frederickson did for my story in the header for this post. I love it!
If you’d like to read an excerpt of my story click here.
If you’d like to listen to an excerpt of my story click here.
Oh, and the introduction to the anthology was written by retired astronaut (and even more awesome, SHE’S A PILOT!) Pam Melroy!
So to say I’m just a little bit excited about this anthology would be a massive understatement.
As I mentioned in the opening, the kickstarter for Athena’s Daughters launched a few days ago, and it already funded and we are WELL into the stretch goals. Basically, for only $5 you can get the eBook of Athena’s Daughters, 3 novels, 1 album, and 7 short stories, with many more short stories on the way. Again, all that for ONLY $5! Honestly, if you’re a voracious reader you can’t afford NOT to get in on this. Just sayin!
Even if you’re not interested in the project yourself, but think you might have friends or family who might, I’d really appreciate it if you could make a mention of it on your social media or through your email connections. The link to the Kickstarter (order) page is http://tinyurl.com/athenasD.
So in short, awesome women doing awesome things – check it out!
*Yes, I know we have The Hunger Games, Divergant, my own War of the Seasons trilogy, along with many more female led stories out there that all totally rock, but it’s still a dearth compared to male leads.
**Strong here doesn’t necessarily mean physical strength (though it certainly can!), but ALL kinds of strength. The strength to stand up for what you know is right, the strength to make an unpopular decision, the strength to be a calming voice in a contentious situation, etc.
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GMX Wrap up – as always, SO FUN!
In our family we always look forward to GMX – it’s the most fun con of the year for us!
ROAD TRIP!
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