Praise be to the alarms that reminded me to do this. Update! This week I wrote an urban fantasy short story in my Bone Witch series for an upcoming St. Patty’s day anthology. I wrote it mostly into the dark (that is, no outline) and wrapped up at 7600 words.

That was sent to the editor (on deadline! yay!) and left me with extra time today to take care of more admin tasks.

I’m working with two friends to create a new anthology series called The Department of Dragon Archives. The first anthology had its call for subs close about two months ago and we’re reading through them now.

If you’re ever writing a story to submit to a magazine or anthology, please follow the brief. Anthologies are usually themed, ours is, in this case, Books and Dragons. Your story needs a book and a dragon in it, but we’re very flexible on tone and genre. The number of really great stories I can’t even consider in my inbox right now is nearly HALF the submissions. Because they don’t have a book in the story.

So, want a really easy way to climb to the top of the submission pile? Follow the brief. Genre, wordcount, submission dates, story content. These are all under your control as the writer!

Anyway, other admin this week included formatting ebooks 2 and 3 for Hellebore vampires and I’ve started on the cover art illustration for the fancy hardback.

I still need to write the prequel, and once that’s done I can reach out to my cover artist and provide paperback/hardback spine dimensions for the wrap-cover.

I’ll be doing a Kickstarter for Hellebore in a few months with ebook, paper, hardback, and signed illustrated hardback with dust jacket options. Art prints and stickers will be available, also and I’ll share those as I finish them in the next two months.

Next week I write my dragon story for the anthology (with a book!) The next several deadlines are in April, so I am inching my way forward in the production queue.