I have a guest post up at the Novelists, Inc. blog today: Writing and Holidays.
And now, the time has come for me to sum up the year, in terms of sales and publications. This year was a hard one because of a death in my family, so my writing was sidelined. But here goes.
First, I did a new thing: I became a paid blogger for Heroes & Heartbreakers (romance) and The Criminal Element (mystery). As of this writing, I have not counted exactly how many posts I submitted to those two blogs over the course of 2011, but it was close to fifty. Not bad. Finally I have made commercial use of all those years of reading genre literature! Also it’s been a lot of fun.
I critiqued in-progress novels for members of my writing workshop, and commented on a story by a friend who hasn’t yet made a professional sale. Early in this year, I provided topic-focused comments on a novel that came out later on in 2011, as well as extensively critiqued a tie-in short story for the same author.
I only had two short stories published:
“Vanilla,” May 2011, in Dream Lover: Paranormal Tales of Erotic Romance from Cleis Press. Kristina Wright edited the anthology; and “Crimean Fairy Tale,” August 2011, in The Mammoth Book of Hot Romance, edited by Sonia Florens.
I’d written “Vanilla” many years ago, but never managed to find a version that would sell until now. More than one review of the anthology mentioned it favorably, which was great, as I love the characters and setting. “Crimean Fairy Tale” was written in the month before it was due, and was my first attempt at writing a short story that was romance rather than erotica, though it does have sex scenes. I had fun researching it; it was my first time reading about the Crimean War in detail.
My sales, I can count in two ways. If I count the three stories to a cancelled anthology, I sold five in 2011. If I count only those that are not cancelled, then I sold two that will be published in 2012.
“Under Her Uniform (Hailey’s Story),” is due out in May 2012. It’s a Harlequin Spice Brief, so will be available only in electronic format. This story involves characters who appeared in The Moonlight Mistress, and takes place during World War One. (The Moonlight Mistress: Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, IndieBound, Powell’s)
“The Airplane Story,” June 2012, will appear in Girl Fever: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex for Lesbians from Cleis Press, edited by Sacchi Green. That was another story I’d had around for a while, in several versions, for which I finally found an appropriate market.
As yet unsold officially, I also agreed to write a story for an anthology; that’s due February 1, 2012, so I can add it to next year’s list.
Finally, I’ve been doing a lot of nonfiction research reading, for my next project, and made a few notes for it. I guess I’d better start writing that in 2012….
