Get a free story when you subscribe
Menu
(I am so very busy. I’m sorry. This is all I had time to do. At least they are pretty images and informative, too!)
When I was nominated the second time for the Bram Stoker award, I wrote about Awards and Imposter Syndrome. Now that I’m home from StokerCon 2017 and have lost the same award twice, I have a number of thoughts about this. It’s a bit disjointed, but stay with me. These are my personal thoughts.
1. This is the perfect example of graduating to a “better class of problem” as an author as you level up in your career.
2. Even thought you may arrive at the convention in a zen state of mind, this will be shattered by people congratulating you and saying things like “I’ll be very surprised if you don’t walk away with this.” That pessimistic shield/armor you’ve built over time to protect your fragile side will come tumbling down like dominoes.
3. It’s better if at least one of the people you are competing against is someone you know and like. That way if you both lose, you can commiserate. If your friend wins, your happiness for them outshines your sadness for yourself.
4. Sometimes, being gracious (in public) sucks. And you must be a gracious loser. I had a little help with that. I must admit I still straddled that line between envy (I wish I had what you have) and jealousy (I want what you have and I don’t want you to have it). This is human. Anyone who says they don’t fight with this is either a much better person than I or is lying to someone (including themselves).
5. Condolences after the fact will kill you.
6. Everyone who privately messages you with funny, catty, witty, snarky versions of “you were robbed!” will make you smile through the pain. As long as you keep it private, you can agree in the same tone.
7. Time heals. 24 hours later, the pain is there, but distant. I’m back to thinking about what I need to do next. I have novels to write and an agent to feed. Honestly, there’s always next year. Or the year after that. At least I got to see some of my favorite people and spend time with them.
8. 48 hours later, I get to marvel at my life. Ellen Datlow asked me how many times I’d been nominated. Gini Koch shared a couple of dirty jokes with me. I got a hug and a smile from Jonathan Maberry. I flew down to the Queen Mary for a banquet and an awards ceremony. People I know specifically watched the Stoker livestream just to see if I won. My life is amazing and I am grateful for it.
9. But losing a second time still stings. I look forward to the moment I win. I look forward to the moment losing an award is just part of the process (like story rejections). I look forward to continuing on. As I said when it happened: “Didn’t win. Kinda sad. Will keep on keeping on.” I’ve got work to do.
Thank you to all of you for joining me on my journey.
Here is a paraphrased IM conversation I had with Seanan from Wednesday morning, the 23rd (mostly because I can’t find the chat log).
Seanan: Yay!
Jenn: Yay?
Seanan: Have you looked at your email today?
Jenn: No. Didn’t sleep well last night. Guess I should.
Seanan: Go read your email, hon.
Jenn: Oh! Oh! Yay!
Seanan: Yay!!
Jenn: Thank you. I was a little afraid of reading my email this morning because of this.
I read my email and discovered that The Last Days of Salton Academy has been nominated for the Bram Stoker award. My imposter syndrome had convinced me that I would never make the ballot two years in a row. It’s why I didn’t sleep well the night before the announcement and why I was afraid to check my email that morning. I didn’t want to face the disappointment.
Being a finalist for an award is awesome. Especially something like the Bram Stoker award.
However, being a finalist for an award for the second time is even better—for me that is. There’s something wonderful and concrete about the second finalist nomination. It tells me:
…I wasn’t ‘just lucky’ the first time.
…It wasn’t a pity vote.
…It wasn’t just my friends voting for me.
…I do have skill and talent as an author.
…It validates me as a creative professional.
Imposter syndrome is a green-eye monster that wants your attention. It doesn’t want you working on the next thing. It doesn’t want you to celebrate your wins—no matter how large or small. It wants you spiraling into its clawed embrace with no way out. With this repeat nomination, I have a reprieve from imposter syndrome’s ever-present looming nature. At least for a little while.
I’m happy. I really am.
Of course, I want to win the Bram Stoker award. The Last Days of Salton Academy is a good book. Also, that haunted house statue would look lovely on my brag shelf. It really would. Until then, I really am honored to be Bram Stoker nominee again.
I’m working on revisions for the Sekrit Project Alex extras and the final tie-in story for 2016. They both have fiddly bits to get correct. So, here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you.
All I want for my Birthday (and Christmas for that matter). Please consider buying one of my books for yourself or as a gift for someone else. It helps keep my cats in kibble and me working on the fiction you know and love.
Article: On the Qwillery – The Perfect Line in the Sand on why zombies are the perfect kind of monster and why we used them so much.
ebook Release: The kindle version of THE LAST DAYS OF SALTON ACADEMY is live! Here is the Barnes and Noble link.
Interview: On Wag the Fox focused around THE LAST DAYS OF SALTON ACADEMY and YA fiction.
Interview: On Ginger Nuts of Horror. This was one long, meaty interview filled with intriguing questions I’ve never had to answer before.
Release: TEMPEST, All-New Tales of Valdemar. I’ve got my second story of Hadara and Kitha in here. This is the fourth Valdemar anthology I’ve written for. I’m still pinching myself at how lucky I am I get to play in Mercedes Lackey’s Valdemar world.
Review: Ginger Nuts of Horror reviewed THE LAST DAYS OF SALTON ACADEMY – It doesn’t look like the reviewer liked it very much. But they are correct in saying the book was written for a different age group. (I much prefer these kinds of reviews. 🙂 )
And a picture of Mena being oh-so-dignified. I love this picture of her.
On Friday, December 9th, I turn 46. I didn’t have a problem with 29, 30, 35, 40, or 45. But, for some reason, 46 is messing with me a bit this year. I don’t if it’s because 2016 has been a rough year all the way around or what.
All I want for my birthday (and for Christmas for that matter) is for you to buy one of my books (for yourself or as a gift to someone else) and leave me a review. It’s been my standing birthday wish for a few years now. Please consider getting yourself a gift of one of my books for my birthday. You have a great selection. I would love to see pictures of you and my books, too.
This year, I’d like to highlight a couple of books that came out in 2016.
Never Let Me – This is the omnibus of my Bram Stoker nominated YA sci-fi thriller series. It contains Never Let Me Sleep, Never Let Me Leave, and Never Let Me Die as well as an original short story in the universe, “Never Let Me Feel.” This omnibus is only available in print form.
The Karen Wilson Chronicles – This is the omnibus of my urban fantasy quartet. It contains Caller Unknown, Children of Anu, Keystones, and Chimera Incarnate as well as every Kendrick short story ever written and a John Corso story that is only published in the omnibus. This is available in trade and ebook as well as a signed, numbered, limited edition hardback.
The Last Days of Salton Academy – This is my most recently published book. It’s YA horror. Think Night of the Living Dead meets Lord of the Flies. It’s been called a “gothic zombie book” and I’m just fine with that. It is available in trade and ebook formats.
Of course, if you have those already or aren’t interested in them, you can pop by my website and see the whole list. As always, if you want a signed book by me—even my obscure stuff—the University Bookstore is your best bet. Also, I signed a bunch of books for the Cedar Hills Powell’s Bookstore, too.
The Last Days of Salton Academy has been released! This YA horror novel is getting some love.
Amazon | Barnes and Noble | Ragnarok Publications
It’s referred to as ‘The Outbreak,’ and it happened just over three months ago, casting the world (or at least this part of it) into a state of powerlessness and chaos. The Salton Academy has become a rare sanctuary for those few students who remained behind over fall break.
As winter approaches, cracks are revealed in the academy’s foundations as it’s discovered someone is stealing food, another is taking advantage of a captive audience, and yet others have banded together and are thinking about mutiny, even murder. One thing’s for certain — a supply run must be made soon, or everyone will starve before winter’s end.
Oh yes, and then there’s the matter of the headmaster’s son and his undead dog…
“The Last Days of Salton Academy is a dark, twisted rollercoaster of a book. Jennifer Brozek knocks it out of the park.” — Stephen Blackmoore, author of City of the Lost and Broken Souls
“If Lord of the Flies had occurred during a zombie outbreak, it would read something like this. A bloody good tale you can really sink your teeth into.” — Timothy W. Long, Author of the Z-Risen series.
“The Last Days of Salton Academy is a delightful character study which combined boarding school antics with the survival horror of a post-apocalypse thriller. The characters are fresh, the dynamics interesting, and the story engaging from beginning to end. It is a YA story I heartily recommend.” — C.T. Phipps, author of Esoterrorism and Wraith Knight
“As much as I love all things undead, what kept me turning pages wasn’t the zombie horde, but something far more horrible: the students and staff of a pretentious prep school. The Last Days of Salton Academy is compulsively readable—I devoured it in one sitting. With a cast of all-too-believable characters and a set of ever-ratcheting disasters, this novel is guaranteed to keep you up past your bedtime.” — Wendy N. Wagner, author of Starspawn and Skinwalkers
The Last Days of Salton Academy will be released on 11 Oct 2016. The pre-order is for the novel only, but there will be an ebook version as well. Pre-order at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
It’s referred to as ‘The Outbreak,’ and it happened just over three months ago, casting the world (or at least this part of it) into a state of powerlessness and chaos. The Salton Academy has become a rare sanctuary for those few students who remained behind over fall break.
As winter approaches, cracks are revealed in the academy’s foundations as it’s discovered someone is stealing food, another is taking advantage of a captive audience, and yet others have banded together and are thinking about mutiny, even murder. One thing’s for certain — a supply run must be made soon, or everyone will starve before winter’s end.
Oh yes, and then there’s the matter of the headmaster’s son and his undead dog…
The Last Days of Salton Academy is a classic tale of horror in the spirit of Night of the Living Dead meets Lord of the Flies, featuring an ensemble cast and written by Hugo Award-nominated editor and award-winning author, Jennifer Brozek.
“The Last Days of Salton Academy is a delightful character study which combined boarding school antics with the survival horror of a post-apocalypse thriller. The characters are fresh, the dynamics interesting, and the story engaging from beginning to end. It is a YA story I heartily recommend.” — C.T. Phipps, author of Esoterrorism and Wraith Knight
“As much as I love all things undead, what kept me turning pages wasn’t the zombie horde, but something far more horrible: the students and staff of a pretentious prep school. The Last Days of Salton Academy is compulsively readable—I devoured it in one sitting. With a cast of all-too-believable characters and a set of ever-ratcheting disasters, this novella is guaranteed to keep you up past your bedtime.” — Wendy N. Wagner, author of Starspawn and Skinwalkers
I’ve already written about what I did in 2015. Now I’m looking forward to what I need to do for 2016. The short version: A whole lot of contracted tie-in fiction, some editing, and a bunch of travel.
Contracts signed: 1 board game mythology/background, 1 reprint RPG fiction collection, and 1 tie-in novel.
Forthcoming contracts: 1 serialized YA tie-in novel, 1 anthology as editor, and 2 tie-in short stories. (As in, discussion is done, I’ve agreed to do it, and we’re just waiting on paperwork.)
Planned contracts: 1 tie-in novella. (Proposal requested. Writing is probably slated for early 2017 if all parties agree.)
Planned editing: 2 novels, 2 omnibuses, 3 novellas, 1 monthly fiction feature, and 1 anthology. (For Apocalypse Ink Productions and Evil Girlfriend Media.)
Events planned: 8 conventions (3 as GoH), 1 workshop, 2 readings, 1 wedding in Iceland.
The writing metrics for 2016 are daunting. It’s about 200,000 words of contract tie-in fiction. This doesn’t count any of the editing for that work or research or one-off anthologies or one-off articles. Or any blog posts. Or any of the 10,000 other things a freelance author-editor does.
What this means is that I’m going to have to buckle down and change my personal working schedule. I’m probably going to have to institute a “no internet before noon” policy to focus on my writing. Leave all the email and such to the afternoon once my word count for the day is done. It is too easy to fritter away my time online, answering emails, reading articles, and watching videos.
Scheduled Appearances:
Spiders, Gods, and Monsters
“What’s your book called?” I’ve been asked a couple dozen times since I announced its upcoming release.
“Oh. Is there a real spider in it?” is the inevitable next question.
This is where I get stuck. I want to say, “Yes, there is a real spider in it, insomuch as the gods and monsters we write about in sci-fi and fantasy are real.”
But I see the look. Spiders are creepy. Scary. I’m not buying a novel with a spider in the title, and on the cover, and in the damn book.
So I say, “No, the spider is a metaphor. A part of a fairy tale actually.”
“I like fairytales. Which one?”
Now I’m stuck again. If I say that it’s a brand new fairy tale that I made up, I get a new look. I’ll believe you wrote a hundred thousand word novel. But a brand new fairy tale. Come on, author-man. I’m not buying it.
I take the easy way out. I change the subject. I start talking about the novel’s title. It spent more than half its life being called Genesis Lied. I liked the title. It came out of a spit-balling session with my writers group at California Pizza Kitchen. I like it, but I didn’t love it. I stayed on the lookout for something better.
That something better arrived in the form of a 120 year old Herman Melville poem I found while searching for epigraphs for the book. The line, sort of the poem’s volta, just sang. I snatched it like a six year old pocketing a three pound gummy bear in a candy store – no thought for result or consequence.
The new title vanquished the old. But a new trouble arose. My novel had nothing to do with spiders, laurels, or Herman Melville. I had to take a step back. Re-see and reevaluate.
I’d already built an entire new mythos for the book by reinterpreting Mesopotamian and Minoan mythology, weaving this through Biblical tradition, and tying it to a little-known (at least, little-known outside of Europe) Dark Age relic called the Vase of Soissons.
But the thing about mythology is that it’s macro, by definition. It’s all about explaining origins and defining archetypes. That sense of scale, that aloofness, had pervaded the entire story. It had turned my characters into types, not people. I needed to re-humanize them.
The solution came to me while I was shopping in a bookstore with my wife, choosing which fairytale collections we wanted for our soon-to-be-born (at the time) daughter.
I set to, right away, thumb-typing into my phone’s ‘memo’ app. Fairytales, you see, are the next step in any mythology. They break from explaining the universal, and focus instead on teaching the individual. What better way is there for a parent to teach a child not to judge a book by its cover, or to beware strangers, or perhaps – as Simon teaches his daughter MacKenzie in my novel – to trust her heart most when the danger of betrayal is at its highest.
“Long ago, when it was still good to wish for a thing,” I wrote, “there was a red-haired princess in a kingdom by the sea.”
I wrote the whole fairytale in a day. I gave it to MacKenzie for safe keeping. And yes, there is a spider in it. But it’s only as real as gods and monsters. And when have they ever prevented a good night’s sleep or a happily ever after?
—
Michael Pogach is the author of the sci-fi thriller The Spider in the Laurel. He began writing stories in grade school. He doesn’t remember these early masterpieces, but his parents tell him everyone in them died. He’s gained some humanity since then, and has been known to allow characters to survive his tales these days. You can find his stories in journals such as New Plains Review, Third Wednesday, and Workers Write, as well as the chapbook Zero to Sixty. He is hard at work on two more novels, countless more stories, and keeping his infant daughter from eating everything she can reach. Michael’s website is: www.michaelpogach.com.
Release date for The Spider in the Laurel is Sept 21.
I’m deep in the throes of writing NEVER LET ME DIE, Melissa Allen #3, so I’m not checking Twitter or Facebook right now. However, lots has happened. Here’s a Bubble & Squeek for you.
Award: I was nominated for a Hugo Award. This is both exciting and terrifying.
Convention: I’ve been added to OrcaCon’s Special Guest lineup. I’m also on their kickstarter with a custom game of Katanas & Trenchcoats for you and four of your friends.
Interview: I was interviewed by Douglas Hawk for his 7 Questions series. Want to know what my workspace looks like?
Publication Release: DocWagon 19 is out the door! Get it here: Amazon | BattleShop | DriveThruRPG
Recommendation: Horrorstor by Grady Hendrix is one of the best, messed up horror books I’ve read in a long time. I will never look at a large home store the same ever again.
Recommendation: Science STYLE – Taylor Swift Acapella Parody. I just really liked this video.
Review: Goodreads review of Chimera Incarnate.
Review: Goodreads review of DocWagon 19.
Sale: I sold The Last Days of the Salton Academy to Ragnarok Publications! Yay!
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 multiple Hugo Awards. 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.
