I’ve featured this anthology during January, and I hope you’ve enjoyed meeting some of the authors. Now here’s Loni Townsend to wrap up this Featured Author month.

Thanks for featuring FULL DARK this month and letting me pop onto your blog, Lee. I got pretty lucky when it came to this anthology. I’m critique partners with Melissa Maygrove, and I kept in touch with her via email. She had previously mentioned her desire to do an anthology, and I told her to keep me in mind if she ever wanted contributions. My story, Just a Matter of Time, came to me one afternoon, and I ended up pounding out the short story within a few hours-the fastest I’ve ever finished a story. It took about four revisions before it was where I wanted it to be, but once it was there, I was smiling. I didn’t originally write it for the FULL DARK anthology, but I knew it’d be a good fit and sent it to Melissa to see what she thought. Much to my joy, she agreed.

Just a Matter of Time is actually the first one in the anthology, and as I cruised through the anthology’s preview, I found you can actually read the whole story in the provided Kindle snippet. I’d definitely recommend checking it out, and then picking up a copy to read the rest of the fabulous stories. All proceeds are donated to the Gary Sinise Foundation.

Loni Townsend - Wife. Mother. Writer. Ninja. Squirrel. By day, she writes code. By predawn darkness, she writes fantasies. All other times, she writes in her head. People call her peculiar with a twisted sense of fashion, but don’t let those understatements fool you. Her behavior is perfectly normal for a squirrel disguised as a human. That’s part of being a ninja—blending in. Find her at her blog at http://lonitownsend.com.

Thanks so much, Loni.

When I read Loni Townsend’s contribution to FULL DARK, I applauded her fresh take on an ancient story. Her MC was perfect for this century.

For thousands of years, the Grim Reaper, has roamed the earth, reaping human souls. He really comes into his own on October 31. He’s easy to spot: skeleton, hooded robe, scythe, and the imagery is clear. But when did this spooky character emerge? From what I could find, he arrived with the pandemic called the Black Death in the 14th century. Now that I’ve spread cheer, want to take another of those little T/F quizzes? Well, just in case, here’s one for you.

1. During the mid-1300s, the Black Death destroyed about 1/3 of Europe’s population.
2. The plague that caused the Black Death is really a rodent disease that’s always present, and only includes humans accidentally.

Answers to last week’s T/F Quiz on anthologies and sci-fi.

1 Early science fiction was developed and nurtured in serial newspaper articles.*FALSE. It was the pulp magazines like Amazing Stories that really gave sci-fi the boost in popularity.

2 One of the early sci-fi pulp fiction magazine was edited by Hugo Gernsback. The Hugo Award was named after him.

*TRUE. This magazine really gave sci-fi the audience it needed. Some early contributors included: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Howard Fast, Ursula K. Le Guin, Roger Zelazny, and Thomas M. Disch.

Quote of the Week: “I drive a motorbike, so there is the whiff of the grim reaper round every corner, especially in London.”
― Benedict Cumberbatch

Because my background is in linguistics, the etymology of words always fascinates me, so while I was featuring this collection of short stories in FULL DARK I looked up “anthology.” It seems the word entered our language in the 1600s. We borrowed it from the Greek word, anthologia which means The Garland. The story behind this association belongs to a Greek named, Meleager who collected lyric poets’ work, put them into a single collection and compared each poet to a flower or plant, forming, in a metaphorical way, a garland.

Want to test your knowledge of the anthology and it’s link to Sci-Fi? Try these True/False Questions and next week I’ll be back with the answers-I hope. [Read more…] about Full Dark Anthology

You must know by now that Jan. 18 is the next #IWSG, but in case you’ve been testing out cave dwellings this winter, here’s a reminder. Need more information? HERE it is!

This month I’m featuring FULL DARK a collection of tales that has something for everybody. And sci-fi is well-represented. Today please welcome David P. King, one of the Full Dark authors. Take it away, David!

Forerunner was one of my favorite stories in this anthology. My REVIEW.

Okay, Sci-fi writers/readers are you up for a wee quiz this week? [Read more…] about Featured Author, David Powers and Forerunner

Soul Coin is set in India and the flavor of that country really comes through in this story. This is one country I’ve never visited, so I have to rely on my East Indian friends and what I’ve read about it. But here’s some interesting things I’ve learned from afar.

Once a colony of Great Britain, today 125 million of its inhabitants speak English. The U.S. is the only country with more English speakers. If it weren’t for this linga franca, a lot of people wouldn’t be able to talk to each other in India. There is no national language, but there are a multitude of regional dialects.

Want to test your knowledge of India? Try these True/False Questions and next week I’ll be back with the answers-I hope. [Read more…] about Featured Author, Laura Rich and Soul Coin

Donna Galanti and I have had a lot of fun together doing character interviews and showing up on The Secret Files of Fairday Morrow when we’ve had new books out. She’s taking over my blog today to give me a break. I have some family business to take care of. I know you’ll enjoy her post. Thank you, Donna.

I lost my childlike wonder for quite some time. As my son became an avid and selective reader, I started reading the books on his bookshelf and fell in love with the magic of being a child again. And in doing this I began to see patterns in these kid adventure tales – and I began applying what I learned to create my own stories. So, I started out my author career writing thrillers for adults but a newfound love for reading and writing middle grade books inspired me to switch to writing thrillers for kids. But still, sometimes, my childlike wonder fades.

What evokes childlike wonder? And as adults writing for children, how can we recapture that?

Regaining a childlike sense of wonder isn’t about returning to a childlike state, it’s about letting yourself be awed by the little things in your grownup life. The mundane every day is what can dull our wonder. And just because those little things happen every day doesn’t mean they aren’t miraculous.

But keeping your childlike wonder can be difficult when grownup duties mount. Two years ago, in a pressure-cooker twist I had final proofs to revise and edit on book one in my fantasy series, Joshua and the Lightning Road, and was committed to deliver book two on the same day. Did I say “same day”? I did. With two books due on February 1st I had to grasp the wonder again – and fast.

So I ran away to a secret lodge to get it all done. I wallowed in editing drudgery. Line by line. Word by word. Character by character. Emotional moment by emotional moment.

Book one was the story I spent three years writing and revising with a developmental editor and after I got an agent and book deal for it, was presented with additional story edits. Book two was the story I wrote in four months and had six weeks to revise – and know what needed to be done. But did I really? And could I?

And somewhere in my editing elbow grease, I lost what the stories had become, and how to edit them. What words to eliminate. Sentences to re-arrange. Ensure consistent details through the series. Repetitive scenes to cut and move. Find and replace. Etc. Etc. Etc.

Each day through my lodge window I watched two kids sled. Up and down the hill they went. And their laughter and joy snapped me out of my trapped trance. I remembered being ten years old and how a whole day of sledding was magical. I also remembered turning twelve and sad with the awareness that I didn’t want to sled anymore. I had moved on, just like we move on into adulthood.

And I realized now that in order to do my job well as a children’s author and to find joy in it, I needed to rekindle my kid wonder again. Just as I pondered this, a video of babies going through tunnels popped up in my Facebook feed. I couldn’t help but laugh at their wonder. And I thought, as writers of middle grade, how can we keep that kind of wonder with us?

[Read more…] about December’s Featured Follower-Donna Galanti