The Annual Awards Eligibility Post, 2017 Edition

We writers ask a lot of our readers. Not only do we ask you to read--and love!--our stuff, we want you to buy it, rate it, review it, and yes, nominate it for awards. Reading and loving feeds our twisted little writer souls. But sales, promotion and awards are what pay the rent and keep the cat in kibble. (Trust me, you do not want to attempt stringing words together around a hungry cat. It never ends well.) 

With that in mind, I'd like to say thank you again for everything you read and reviewed over the past twelve months. If your 2016 keepers happened to include any of my stories, I'd be thrilled if you nominated them. But the important thing is to recognize the work you loved in 2016. Awards are one of those rising tides that lift all boats. The recognition gives us all a boost. 
To get you started, here are some links to the awards now open for nominations: 

- The Dragon Awards 

- The Hugo Awards 

- The Nebula Awards

- The WSFA Small Press Award 

And just in case you were trying to remember the details of that story you loved, here is the relevant information for my 2016 releases, including excerpts: 

Story: "The Clockwork Nightingale" 
Length: 16,000 words (novelette) 
Publisher: E-Spec Books 
Release Date: May 29, 2016 
Excerpt 

Story: "The Five Bean Solution" 
Length: 9,200 words (novelette) 
Publisher: Zombies Need Brains, LLC 
Release Date: September 15, 2016 
Excerpt 

Tales from the Vatican Vaults (which includes "Cooking up a Storm", my secret history story about the Burning of Washington in 1814--with voodoo) was published in the United Kingdom in 2015, but wasn't released in the US until last month. I'm adding it to this list, because that 2016 US publication date means it wasn't eligible for a Nebula until this year.

Story: "Cooking up a Storm"
Length: 17,700 words (novella)
Publisher: Constable and Robinson
US Release Date: December 27, 2016
Excerpt

 Hey, a girl can dream!

Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens is officially ticking!

Just in time for you to see what all the fuss is about before Zombies Need Brains starts up another Kickstarter, ZNB's first anthology, Clockwork Universe: Steampunk vs. Aliens has landed at a retailer near you. It's got Steampunk. It's got little green men, bug-eyed monsters, secret agent chickens and Chihuahuas. What more do you need ?

A table of contents? We can do that:

"The Cavorite Job" by Ian Tregillis
"Gracie's Fire" by Leah Cutter
"Quinta Essentia" by Bradley P. Beaulieu
"When Comrade Ekaterina Died for the Motherland" by J.R. Hargenrader
"A Clockwork Alien" by Gini Koch
"Heart of the Empire" by Jason Palmatier
"The Red Queen and the White" by C.B. Pratt
"The Wizard of Woodrow Park" by Jean Marie Ward (me!)
"Of War and Wings" by Tansy Raynor Roberts
"Airship Down: A Sound and Fury Adventure" by Gail Z. and Larry N. Martin
"Steamsuit" by David J. Fortier
"Fingers of Steam, Veins of Gold" by Brad Hafford
"Heart of Clockwork" by S.C. Butler
"Lady Antheia's Guide to Horticultural Warfare" by Seanan McGuire

All edited by the irrepressible Joshua Palmatier and Patricia Bray, the same folks who brought you The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity and After Hours: Tales from the Ur-Bar.
Wanna taste? I've got your excerpt right here. Or you could check out one of the early reviews:

"They take a steampunk nineteenth century…and add aliens. Would Earth even recognize the threat? It’s a nod to industrialism… A high-five to technological advancement… And, above all, kudos to the genius of action-packed prose."

Word of the Nerd 

Not only that, the book comes in all your favorite flavors:

Trade Paperback 

Kindle

Kobo 

Nook

What are you waiting for? Those Chihuahuas can't hold out forever, you know. ;-)

Athena's Daughters Has Achieved Cover

Isn't the print cover just gorgeous? I can't wait to hold this book in my hands.

Even better, from a purely selfish point of view is the illustration for my story, "The Gap in the Fence" (below). Want to know more? Well, you can read a taste of my story here. Or better yet, pre-order the entire book here. You won't be disappointed!

Looking ahead

Art by Kelli Neier

Those of you who obsessively check the sidebar of my website (there's gotta be one of you, right?) will have noticed the release of Hellfire Lounge 4: Reflections of Evil has been pushed back again, and I still don't have a release date for Gaslight & Grimm. (Boo.) But a new story and a new convention have joined the list. (Win!)
First and foremost in any writer's mind is the latest acceptance. "The Gap in the Fence" is one of my favorite contemporary fantasies, but I wasn't sure it would find a home. Then Janine Spendlove and Ron Garner of Silence in the Library Publishing invited me to submit a story to Athena's Daughters. The fit between story and anthology was so close, it's almost as if I wrote it with Athena's Daughters in mind.
Athena's Daughters will be the subject of a Kickstarter later in the year. The first level will fund the ebook, which features the beautiful cover by Kelli Neier shown here. As we go up the levels, there will be additional authors, illustrations and a paper edition. You better believe I'll have more about that as we get closer to launch.
Also listed is my first confirmed con of 2014: World Fantasy Con. The 2014 edition will be happening just a few minutes from my home. But this is one local on I won't be commuting to. I plan to party!
I also plan to party at next weekend's Capclave, and I'll be posting my schedule early next week. Hope to see you there!

"Burning Down the House" for Fun and Promo

I missed the posting deadline for Six Sentence Sunday for the second week in a row. Bad blogger, that's me. By way of apology, I thought I'd offer a slightly longer excerpt from "Burning Down the House" from Hellfire Lounge 3: Jinn Rummy which will be launched at Balticon, May 25-28. I promise to share the date, time and details as soon as I learn them. Meanwhile, I hope you enjoy what happens after our poor protagonist Eddie Woodhouse sits in that big comfy chair:

“Do you have the bottle?” he asked.

A flash from the dance floor lit her eyes like an evil smile. She placed an empty absinthe bottle on the table.

“May your next transfer run as smoothly as the one from your bank.” The blare of the music muted the scrape of her scimitar nails along the glass. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather do this someplace more private?”

“No.” The jinni inside him lashed his face. He couldn’t hide the bulge of their shared skin or his flinch of pain.

The woman added teeth to her smile. “Your funeral. I trust you’ll be more careful where you stick your straw in the future.”

Her exit line raised a different kind of welt, but he didn’t care as long as she left. Nobody paid any attention to a fat man in a club full of beautiful people. More importantly, the security cams and warding spells focused on the tables would keep her from trying anything more than what he paid for. He’d never been a contender in the magical department, but he never thought he’d sink so low that he’d owe his life to the sorcerous paranoia of Ducky “Duc d’Or”.

Eddie’s teeth chattered against the glass as he closed his lips around the neck of the bottle and chanted the first of the thirty-one goetic evocations from The Secret Key of Solomon under his breath. The words didn’t always make sense, but he suspected the real spell lay in his mind’s desperate prayer: “Take this damned thing outta me and I’ll never do magic. I’ll never so much as make a wish. Never. Ever.”

The words burned his throat. Never. The jinni swelled inside his lungs until he thought his ribs would explode. Ever.

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What happens next? Well, you'll just have to read the story--or come to the launch--to find out.

Six Sentence Sunday: "Fixed", Part 4

Here it is, your last Six Sentence Sunday entry for the month of "Fixed", my story in The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity. And because I am evil, it is a cliffhanger. If you want to read more, well, you just have to buy the book. ;-)

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“Just as I thought,” she said. “Prepare this animal for surgery. I need to operate immediately.”
His head shot upward. Backed against the steel bars, he couldn’t help seeing past her glamour. The lines scoring her forehead and bracketing the corners of her wide, lipsticked mouth floated like a painted veil over a pale, ageless face as perfect as a marble Madonna.

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News, News, News, News

No sooner did I finish the story that kept me hunkered down in the writing cave all January, when another New! Shiny! request landed in my email box. So I'm going to play prairie dog and head back to the burrow until sometime this spring. But before I do, I wanted to catch everyone up on all the good stuff.

First, if you want to get a taste of the story that occupied my January, head over to Beyond the Veil, the Samhain Publishing paranormal writers blog, for a discussion of how I developed one of the names for that story, aka "Fixed". Yes, there is a cat involved, and a shelter, and the cat winces a lot.

The next two items are personal appearances that might be of special interest to folks in the Washington DC area. On March 5, from 10 a.m. to about noon, I'll be moderating a panel of comprising noted science fiction and fantasy authors Catherine Asaro, Mindy Klasky, Pamela Palmer, Diana Peterfreund, Rebecca York and special guest Colleen Gleason. The panel is part of an all-day seminar hosted by Washington Romance Writers at the Bethesda-Chevy Chase Regional Service Center, Bethesda, MD. It will continue after lunch with Colleen's workshops on the hero's journey and world-building. Click here for more information (including links to driving directions). This event is free and open to the public, and I know from personal experience, WRW always offers prizes, including books signed by the participating authors.

The spiffy logo belongs to SynDCon II, the Washington DC area's premiere gaming convention, set for the Rockville Hilton (former home of Capclave), April 1-3. The convention will feature board games, role-playing games, miniature war games and a host of special events, including a writing workshop and panels targeted to the needs of gamer writers and developers. The cast of characters will include Danielle Ackley-McPhail, Vonnie Winslow Crist, Kelly A. Harmon, Diane Whiteside and me. I'll post more details on the program as they become available.

Finally, I'm celebrating the release of "Person Demons", my short story about a Tibetan-American sorceress practising her craft in America's most romantic city, Alexandria, VA. The story appears in Hellebore & Rue, an anthology celebrating queer women magic users. It was was a big stretch for me on a number of levels. I'm one of those writers who follows characters around taking dictation, and I was very worried about getting it right when the lead character was so different from me. But some things are universal: love, hope--and devils manipulating people's emotions for their own ends. I hope you'll check out the anthology, if only for the cover, which is as lovely as any I've ever seen.

Happy Valentine's Day!

For your Halloween pleasure: new stuff!

Just in time for Halloween, I've updated the JeanMarieWard.com "And Stuff" page with links to two real life ghost stories:

"Everyday Haunts" -- You think you know your neighborhood? Maybe it's time to talk to the resident ghosts. (And check out the great cover J.C. Wilder found for the story. Is that a great door to mystery or what?)

"Real Weird" -- More spooky stories from the most ordinary house on the block.

Happy haunting! And don't forget, I'll be signing Dragon's Lure and Fantasy Art Templates at Tea With the Authors at Constellation Books in Reisterstown, Maryland, from 3-5 p.m., Saturday, October 30. Looking forward to seeing you there.

Yesterday I Will

Last August, Jim Levin of the York Emporium bookstore and curiosity shop announced a writing competition. The only criteria were the story had to be under five thousand words and it needed to carry the title "Yesterday I Will". Inspired by a preview of Weird Tales' first One-Minute Weird Tale, I wrote a 69-word story that I thought was pretty funny. Fortunately, the judges agreed. The story made it to the final anthology, which I finally got to hold in my hot little hands at Balticon. No reviews so far, and it's only available through Fortress Publishing, Amazon and The York Emporium, but if you like new voices and edgy science fiction, this is the anthology for you.

And then there's my story... ;-)