I got some great news last week. Caller Unknown, the first Karen Wilson Chronicles book, earned out. Yippee! I’m pretty happy about that. Also, here’s the cover to Keystones, the third Karen Wilson Chronicle book. Cover art by Amber Clark.
I’m very happy with it all.
Jennifer Brozek is a multi-talented, award-winning author, editor, and media tie-in writer. She is the author of Never Let Me Sleep and The Last Days of Salton Academy, both of which were nominated for the Bram Stoker Award. Her YA tie-in novels, BattleTech: The Nellus Academy Incident and Shadowrun: Auditions, have both won Scribe Awards. Her editing work has earned her nominations for the British Fantasy Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the Hugo Award. She won the Australian Shadows Award for the Grants Pass anthology, co-edited with Amanda Pillar. Jennifer’s short form work has appeared in Apex Publications, Uncanny Magazine, Daily Science Fiction, and in anthologies set in the worlds of Valdemar, Shadowrun, V-Wars, Masters of Orion, Well World, and Predator.
Jennifer has been a full-time freelance author and editor for over seventeen years, and she has never been happier. She keeps a tight schedule on her writing and editing projects and somehow manages to find time to teach writing classes and volunteer for several professional writing organizations such as SFWA, HWA, and IAMTW. She shares her husband, Jeff, with several cats and often uses him as a sounding board for her story ideas. Visit Jennifer’s worlds at jenniferbrozek.com or her social media accounts on LinkTree.
Loren Rhoads is a friend of mine and she’s in one of my critique groups. I love her research stories. If you haven’t read any of her stuff—fiction or non-fiction alike, you have a treat waiting for you. Today, she’s got one hell of a research story to tell you. One of the stories in Unsafe Words, my new collection, features Alondra DeCourval, a witch who travels the world to protect people from supernatural monsters and vice versa. I’ve written a series of stories about her over the years. While I haven’t yet finished a novel about Alondra, I know a lot about her life. Many of the stories I’ve written take place in the year after her teacher suffers a catastrophic heart attack. Alondra panics, unable to face living in the world without Victor’s protection. She goes to more and more extreme lengths to save his life. Although “Valentine”...
Writers, by and large, are mildly crazy. We have voices in our heads. We see stories everywhere. We are affected by both. Case in point. After my shower, I was standing naked in the bathroom, combing out my hair. I heard a noise. I walked out of my bathroom to look down the stairs to see what I could see. Nothing but cats. Probably a cat making noise. Back in the bathroom, this conversation ensued. It lasted all of 10 seconds. Maybe. “You know, people in horror movies do stupid shit because they don’t know they’re in a horror movie. Like you just did… walking naked to the top of the stairs to investigate a strange noise.” “Not in a horror movie.” “Naked girls get killed first.” “Not a girl. Not nubile. Not in a horror movie. I have 4 cats. They make noise.” “The cat is always the ruse.”...
