New Events and Stories Coming Out! Including Baltimore Book Festival on Sept 19 at 1 PM

Okie dokie do, I have newz for youz.

First things first, see me on Sept 19th at 1 PM at the Baltimore Book Festival for the panel “Warriors, Assassins, & Sorcerers: The World of Dark Fantasy” at the Peabody Heights Stage, presented by Charm City Books. As always, the Baltimore Book Festival is free for anyone to attend.

Now the “More at 11” stuff:

I did WriteHive, that was a fairly good experience. (With exception to the one White person who somehow thought the BIPoC discord channel was for her to ask dumb questions because she writes “[B]lack characters using Hip Hop” and (somehow that made her valid????), WriteHive got rid of her and scrubbed the channel of her question, thankfully). And those WriteHive vids will be up shortly, just like every year. You can look at previous WriteHive Conventions on their channel.

Butterfly should have been out this past May but it simply was a no-go due to the crunch time I had from after I returned from South Korea. I will try to have it released either later this year or early next year. That’s bumping it up against the Glass & Dreams duology that was supposed to be either this year or next year but I’ll see how that all turns out. It looks like I’m getting a bit of a back-up as it pertains to audio creations. The works that still needs to be voiced:

“Stalwart”
The Harlequin

And this now includes two new works that have been officially picked up by two different anthologies, both expected out in 2027.

• Contemporary fae fantasy short story “Come Through | Step Through” will be in Wings Under the Leaves anthology. This anthology will be out in May 2027. Follow their Instagram (@winsbookspublishing) for more info.
• Contemporary fantasy short story “Ready or Not” will be in The Cookout Anthology. TBD 2027. Follow their Instagram (@tco_anthology) for more info.

These both will have to be voiced but that’s just going to have to go on the pile when I get there. I wrote both of those works after I came back from South Korea in the journals that I got from Hurricane Kimchi (@HurricaneKimchi) on Christmas so it is nice to have a couple works that have a pretty fast turn-around from idea to written to picked up for publishing. Right now, as it currently stands, I prefer to have shorter works picked up for publication (short stories, mainly) and publish longer works myself. I’ll also publish shorter works myself but those will be collections. Not every story I write gets sold and I rather have control of the rights of my works. It’s nice to get picked up but the longer the work, the more tenuous things get, rights-wise. I tried super duper hard to get traditionally published at the start but now, I really wouldn’t want to be one, given the gripes and hardships I have seen from trad pub authors. It’s not like how it was 20 or 30 years ago, which wasn’t diverse but also didn’t screw authors nearly as much as the system does now. At this point, trad pub is pretty much an IP rights grab – and at least one trad pub is going all-in on feeding their authors’ works into AI, no consent or concern about the authors. They ask way too much of the writer now and give nothing equitable in return except for a bunch of headaches and playing shuffling card tricks with the royalty checks, which are also smaller and smaller, even if you hit New York Times bestseller. Not worth it. Especially if you’re a queer author, an author of color and definitely if you are both. Trad pub frankly sucks nowadays. I do distinctly remember very vividly how I desperately wanted to be traditionally published and worked extremely hard for it – now, I don’t want it because of how trash it has become. It’s a moneygrab from the greedy and bigoted in tradpub, which helps no one, and I can only imagine the warp-speed level back-pedaling that will be seen (probably complete with fiery Back-to-the-Future level tire marks) that will undoubtedly happen once the administration changes over in a couple years. Like I said, this current bs is going to help no one, including those who are currently helping themselves to whatever they can suck up from writers like pigs at a troth.

As for my works, I also think these are the first works published that uses my current system of writing with a fountain pen, which I started in 2022 after having such trouble writing The Harlequin and how the supply chain issues caused that. Huh, I thought the duology would go first but, hey, at least something did. I’ll make a page about which ink was used on what work eventually. For right now:

“Come Through | Step Through” was written in Diamine’s Bashful Blueberry (which was a bear to find the name of because some genius thought “fill in the blank for both maker and ink name and leave at the free ink table at the pen show” was clever 😒). It’s a light-ish blue ink. Pretty ink, very nice.

“Ready or Not” was written in Pelikan’s “Apricot Achat”. It’s an orange ink. See through ink in my pen, always a plus. Very light but very readable, not at all highlighter neon.

I did a podcast for Win Publishing in promotion of the Wings Under the Leaves anthology, listen to it here or watch it below:

Moving on from that, just like I said above, I have also been invited to be a panelist for a Dark Fantasy panel, hosted by Charm City Books, at the Baltimore Book Festival on Sept 19 at 1 PM. The details are still getting banged out but that’s what’s known for now. The Book Festival used to be held at Mt. Vernon and then at the Harbor for a little while (because books and water somehow mix, just ask the Peabody Library), but now, from what I understand, it’s going to be in Waverly. Either way, I will be there. The Baltimore Book Festival is free to attend. I used to go as a yippy ol’ teenager (part of why SFWA and I don’t get along) and now I’m attending as a yippy ol’ adult. Here’s the book festival’s website for more details.

So far, that’s probably all there is right now, as far as updates go.

That’s all teh newz for now. Woo.