Mark Friday on your calendars. Use a cheerful color.
I like to think of myself as a man of the world, a well-traveled and experienced individual. My girls say “Nah, you’re just old.” Either way, I never imagined myself in a situation where I would feel out of place. Not uncomfortable, mind you, just clueless. Enter the world of publishing, from an author’s perspective.
Yeah, I buried the lead. “The Winds,” my short story, will be included in the anthology Dirty Magick: Los Angeles, to be released Friday (hence the cheerful color). The anthology is a genre mashup “telling stories where crime and magic intersect in the city that birthed noir, Los Angeles.”
I consider myself to be truly fortunate, sharing pages with establish authors Neal Pollack & Richard Rayner and DRS alumni Justin Macumber & Terry Mixon, to name just a few.
Friday is the “soft launch” of the E-Book version. Here’s where my green is showing, I had no idea what that meant, this being my first foray into the wilds of publishing, and all. My previous exposure to launches always involved rockets. It seems, according to Wikipedia, a soft launch is more of an exclusive preview to discerning and select clientele. Swanky. It’s either that or the book’s rocket motor will ignite outside of the launch tube. The latter ends in a bang (and probably tears), so I’m opting for the former.
Since you are so very clearly “discerning and select clientele,” please consider this your “exclusive invitation” to the book’s launch. You can check out the publisher’s site for more breaking news and information (which is quicker), or wait for me to report on it here (which is not quicker, but still really, really fast). Better still, you can join the conversation on Twitter at #dirtymagick for more exclusive content. Well, except for @DirtyBaggsMoon. I’m not sure what he is up to, but it does indeed seem to involve dirt. Consider him nonsequitur bonus content!
Am I excited? Oh, yeah. The whole process has me giggling. No, that’s not as creepy as it sounds. This has been a brand new experience for me and I’ve had a lot of fun with it. Our editor, Charlie Brown, has been fantastic to work with. Any hinkiness in my story will be directly due to my not listening to him. And a special round of applause goes to our artist, Trent Oubre, for creating such a great cover.
The plan is for this to become old hat. I’ll probably giggle about it even then.
Leave a Reply