This Halloween Danica was an ‘infected’ which is sort of like a proto-vampire. It was an idea that came from a book she loved, Skulduggery Pleasant . This is a picture of her. I’m using it because it’s the closest think I’ve got to a zombie picture, and I wanted a zombie picture because I placed two more of my zombie poems from the poem-a-day challenge from November. Yay!

“Attachment” and “Last Thoughts” will appear in a future issue of Star*Line. Yay!

The biggest problem I’m finding with some of these individual poems is that while they stand alone alright for the most part, some of them lose a great deal of their horror if they are read outside of the ‘zombie apocalypse’ context. That is easy to maintain when you’ve got a whole collection, but less so when it’s just one piece. That wasn’t a problem for “Attachment” or “Last Thoughts” though, so yay!

The contract has been sent, signed and sent back to the publisher. That means it’s official! My novella, Shades of Green has been accepted for publication by Sam’s Dot Publishing. *squee* The publication date is January 1, 2010 and I can’t think of a better way to start the year.

Shades of Green is an Aphanasian story, it was originally part of my novel-in-stories, Swamp Story, before I decided to rip it apart and make the stories stand on their own. Shades of Green is about a swamp elf, Z’thandra, who lives with the reptar, a fierce race of lizard-people who resent her presence and want her gone from the village. When she discovers a human in the swamp and falls in love with him, she needs to make a difficult decision, the reprecussions of which will affect the Reptar for generations.

It’s a love story…of a sort, and I am really proud of it. I can’t wait to see it in print and be able to share it with readers!

*does a little happy dance*

When the editor of ‘The Monsters Next Door’ invited me to submit something to her upcoming poetry anthology I was blown away. I’ve never been personally invited to submit to an anthology before! You can bet your butt I was going to take advantage of the offer

It was tough though. I put all sorts of pressure on myself to come up with some new poems that would fit her theme (dark, scary and not haiku LoL). In the end I submitted four poems, one of which was a repeat; The Sepultress, Zonnet (a zombie sonnet), Lycantrick (which I co-wrote with Jo) and a set of three werewolf haiku.

She accepted them all. Yay! I think the book is due to be released in May, so hopefully everyone else will like them too once that happens LoL

I had a good day yesterday, no, actually, it was a great day. Days like that don’t come along very often.

First, my short story Axe was chosen to appear in the first ever print edition of Demon Minds. Yay! I was very excited about having it accepted for the online version a few weeks ago, but I’m one of those writers who love, love, loves to see their work in actual print. Axe is the most disturbing story I’ve ever written, though, so it’s exciting and nerve-wracking to know it is going to print.

Also in the category of nerve-wracking is that I heard back from one of the agents I’d queried about Blood and Stone (which I’ve renamed Swamp Story). She requested a partial. *squee* I’m so excited, but nervous too. Keep your fingers crossed for me…

But wait, there’s more!

The day before yesterday I got an email from Carolyn Clink inviting me to read some of my poetry at an open mic event during World Fantasy. I don’t intend to read, but I hope to attend and listen, and I did do a little fan-girl squeal and bounce in my seat at reading the email. It was sent to me and a few other people, but we were all mentioned by name in the body of the email. Yes, I really did think ‘Oh my god, Carolyn Clink wrote me an email, she totally knows I’m alive!’. Yup. For those of you not familiar with Carolyn, she’s a very talented poet and she is married to Robert J. Sawyer. Yup. So full of awesome.

But, more about yesterday…

I’d entered a contest a few days ago and I got the email yesterday that I’d won! I would include a link here to the book I won, but um…I don’t have the link yet. Once I do, I’ll share it

Last, but certainly not least, my copies of Lost Innocence arrived yesterday. They look amazing! I can’t wait for people to see them, they are so gorgeous. Now I just need to figure out how to get them to the post office (I don’t drive and 40 books are heavy). I suspect they will be being mailed out in waves.

So yes, I had a fantastic day yesterday. Have you ever had a day like that? I’d love to hear about it.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here already — I tend to try and keep things to myself until they are so official my paranoid little brain doesn’t need to worry about jinxing them, so I may not have However, I got the contract today, so now I can brag

Abominations is a brand new anthology by Shroud Publishing. It includes “13 spine-tingling tales of murderous monsters” and one of those tales, is written by yours truly. That’s right. My short story, Spoiled Picnic, is included in this anthology which is now available for pre-ordering.

Am I proud?

Hell yes. How cool is that title? Abominations. *purrs* I love it. And the cover? To die for (though it does look better full-size than it does in my ’shrunk-down’ version ).

Yay me!

That’s not very professional-sounding is it? Hmm…well, still, yay me