Publication News

The Circle Broken: Pushing Daisies Leaves Room for Pie

Somehow, I managed to overlook posting here about a nonfiction essay I wrote last fall! “The Circle Broken: Pushing Daisies Leaves Room for Pie” appears in Journey Planet #58 “Cancelled Too Soon!”

A magazine cover with images from several TV shows that were cancelled too soon.

This special double isssue of the Hugo-nominated fanzine was “dedicated to Television Programs that were cancelled after two seasons or less! Thrill to tales from fans, critics, show-runners, inspirations, and writers about the shows that were loved, or at least watched, and lost.” Steven H Silver edited the issue. You can download it here for free.

What did I write about? Why, as you can tell from the title, the answer is Pushing Daisies!

I’ve long listed Pushing Daisies as one of my all-time favorite shows, but because it lasted such a short time, that was really more wishing for what could have been than the reality of what the show was. You see, it’s easy to view something with rose-colored glasses when it’s been snuffed out in its prime, before the realities of a long life add depth to that vision….but now, I’m getting ahead of myself. 😉 If you’re interested in pondering how Pushing Daises broke the cycles of life and death, and how having the show’s own cycle get cut short may have been the best thing that could have happened to it, then take a few minutes and dive into “The Circle Broken: Pushing Daisies Leaves Room for Pie.”

Of course, there are a great many other essays on great works of television that did not get their due in this issue of Journey Planets! Enjoy the excuse to relive a little of those works that you loved and download the issue.

Wings Unfurled Book Review at Monty’s Book Reviews!

Today’s Blog Tour review of Wings Unfurled is glowing! Thanks to Monty’s Book Reviews for sharing their thoughts. Here’s a snippet:
“An enthralling story told from three separate viewpoints which are skillfully woven into a free flowing narrative that keeps the reader’s interest throughout. The characters are both interesting and flawed which endears them to you as the story progresses and ensures that a vested interest in their future is maintained. “
Read the full review at https://montysbookreviews.blogspot.com/…/wings-unfurled… and find an excerpt from Chapter 3, the silver moon’s first POV chapter! Have you entered the Meerkat Press Wings Unfurled prize drawing yet? Only four days left to enter….
Cover art for Wings Unfurled, featuring a silver stag with blue tones and two moons in the background.
And here’s today’s contextless quote from Wings Unfurled:
He wilted, a vine in the sun. Alive, but with too much taken from him.

Worst Writing Advice I’ve Ever Received

Today, on the Wings Unfurled Blog Tour, you can visit Ali Lucia Sky’s blog, where I answer “What’s The Worst Writing Advice You’ve Ever Received?” It’s a claim I’ve heard many times, from many writers, but one that lacks the nuance that newer writers need to hear, in my humble opinion.

You’ll also find an excerpt of Chapter 1 in the book! This comes from Serra’s point-of-view, and she’s at Castle Callyn for the first time in quite a while….and for reasons she needs to report to King Dever right away.

Don’t forget to also visit the Meerkat Press masterpost to enter our $50 giftcard prize drawing! And now for today’s contextless quote from Wings Unfurled.

“I heard the Green Lady was building a new glass house, so I came with my hammer and thought to help.”

Wings Unfurled Release Week – New Readings to Watch!

Week 1 of the Wings Unfurled Blog Tour is almost over!

Promo graphic featuring the book covers of Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled

There are no new stops on the tour scheduled over the weekend, but I still have new content for you! But first, don’t forget to swing by the Meerkat Press masterpost to enter our $50 giftcard prize drawing! Not quite 100 folks have signed up yet, so you have a nearly 1/100 chance at the moment—that’s actually really great for an online prize drawing.

New content? Yes! You can now watch video of me reading the prologue to Wings Unfurled! This was recorded as part of the Strong Women, Strange Worlds reading series, which I appeared in this past November. Head here to YouTube to watch!

On the same YouTube page, you can watch the full video of that First Friday Quick Reads session with Strong Women, Strange Worlds. Six authors in total read, each of us for just 8 minutes, to give you a quick sip of our work. Featured authors beside myself: Sandra Barrett, Ellen Booraem, Jennie Goloboy, Angela Yuriko, and Sylvia Woodham.

I also appeared on Story Hour this past Wednesday, which is a lovely readings series that began with the pandemic and has been running strong weekly ever since. Story Hour focuses on short stories, so I did not read from Wings Unfurled. Instead, I shared “Garbage,” a humorous, but as host Laura Blackwell described it, “funny and disturbing,” science fiction story. I read with Barbara A. Barnett, who graces the first half hour with a short, sad read and then a longer, funny tale that’ll make you think twice before your next bite of salad.

My half starts about 25:00 minutes into the Story Hour. I hope you enjoy the listen!

And let me leave you with another contextless sentence from Wings Unfurled. Place your order by clicking on the vendor of your choice in that right sidebar over there ↗↗↗

“What does the mama snake say to the baby snake?” “Ssssnuggles, ssssnakelet!”

Preorder Wings Unfurled!

I am delighted to share that you can now pre-order Wings Unfurled. Officially Book 2 of the Wings Rising series, Wings Unfurled releases on December 6, just a little over a month from now. Just in time for those holiday gifts, right? *wink wink nudge nudge*

Cover art for Wings Unfurled, featuring a silver stag with blue tones and two moons in the background.

The print version is $18.95 and the ebook is $8.95.

At the Meerkat Press listing page for the book, you can see all the ordering options. But if there’s one thing authors know, it’s that we should give you direct ordering links to your favorite service whenever possible! So here they are:

You can also order it from your fave local bookstore!

Now, the first question you’re going to ask me is which vendor should you buy it from so that I get the most royalties? The answer is honestly that I get the same royalties no matter where you buy it from. But if you’d like to support my publisher, then ordering directly from Meerkat Press is best.

The second question is “So, what’s it about, Becca?”
Well, here’s the backcover blurb!

The vicious claren that used to plague the reunited countries of Medua and Lansera are long gone. So what are the new dark patches appearing in Lady Serra’s second sight?

She rushes to King Albrecht to report the danger, only to discover that he’s ailing and Vesperi, Prince Janto’s wife, has fled far to the north to grieve her disappeared daughter.

Vesperi still wields the silver flame, possesses all the authority she’s ever wanted, but nothing can heal the wound of a missing child. When the silver moon Esye begins to fade, a gnawing fear preys on her for the first time since she escaped her father’s cold rule.

Ominous creatures once thought mythical are now rampaging through the countryside. Janto sends Serra to investigate. But without her friendship and Vesperi’s love, he fears he cannot slay this challenge. He failed to find his own daughter, after all.

To save the Lanserim, the legendary bird with three heads must fly again. Will Janto, Vesperi, and Serra find the strength to raise it? Or will this menace, with the might to drain a moon, devour them first?

I hope that gets you excited to read about the new adventures and challenges Vesperi, Janto, and Serra face, six years after the events of Wings Unseen. I also shared a geeky writer note on book structure with my newsletter subscribers this past weekend, so I’m going ot share it with everyone now: I didn’t know that Wings Unfurled’s organization would so closely follow Wing Unseen’s when I started writing it, but I’m delighted that it worked out that way. Wings Unseen is laid out in two parts: The Breeding Season and The Culling. Wings Unfurled also has two parts: Moonfall and Moonrise. Two stanzas of prophetic prophesy are also very important to both plots! Here’s a teaser of the first two lines of the new prophecy from Wings Unfurled:

 When leaps the mighty cantalere
the dark brother drains his foes. 

Uncover the rest of that prophecy and what it portends for the Lanserim by preordering now!

Cover Reveal for Wings Unfurled!

Last week, Meerkat Press revealed the cover art for Wings Unfurled, the sequel to my epic fantasy novel Wings Unseen!

There it is! I especially love how beautiful the silver stag is and the vivid color scheme. It’s quite a different style of fantasy cover from Wings Unseen, and that’s because we’re embracing the fact that my writing style is more adult epic fantasy than it is YA. As Wings Unfurled takes place six years after the events of Wings Unseen, Serra, Janto, and Vesperi are all firmly now into adulthood as well. Thus, the cover art has been redesigned with more of a mass market fantasy appeal.

Obviously, the silver stag is familiar iconography for fans of the first book, but there are other aspects of the cover, especially when you compare it with the new cover art for Wings Unfurled, that’ll gain more resonance as you read the story.

What’s that? New cover art for Wings Unseen, too? That’s right!

Branding is an important part of book sales, so to keep the brand recognition strong between Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled, Meerkat Press has redesigned the cover for Book 1 as well. I do miss the little claren bugs dotting the font, but I think the two new designs go smashingly together.  And now, I have two editions of the same book—that’s honestly a really fun thing as a writer. But if you still want to pick up the first edition of Wings Unseen with the original cover, act fast!

wings unseen rebecca gomez farrell meerkat press cover fantasy

For the time being, you can still purchase Wings Unseen with this cover from Amazon, Meerkat Press, and Bookshop . The change will be made closer to Wings Unfurled release date of December 5, 2022, when the Wings Rising series takes to the sky!

This is publishing in the time of COVID, so there is always a chance that date may change, but I should have pre-order details available next month. 🤞And with its publication, I’ll officially be the proud creator of a published series! Will it become a trilogy? The faintest of ideas are jangling around in my head, but I do have some other manuscripts for other series that I’ve been meaning to shape up for a while…

I hope you like the cover art for both books! Want me to explain what the other significant differences are in the covers between the books? TOO BAD. You’ll have to read it to figure it out in full. 😉

“Fresh Catch of the Day” now available in A Quiet Afternoon 2!

I’m quite proud of “Fresh Catch of the Day.” This fantasy story appears in A Quiet Afternoon 2, the second volume of an anthology series of low-fi speculative fiction from Grace&Victory Publications.

a quiet afternoon 2, low fi speculative fiction, rebecca gomez farrell, fresh catch of the day

Low-fi spec fic aims “for a peaceful break from a stressful world.” Volume 1 contained my “An Inconvenient Quest,” and I’m delighted that the G&V team thought “Fresh Catch of the Day” would make a great addition to Volume 2.

Often, when I’m writing a new short story, I’m doing it with a challenge in mind. For “Fresh Catch of the Day,” that challenge was writing a short story with a solid plot contained within 1,000 words. Oh, I’ve written plenty stories of that length before! But those have all tended more toward the poetic prose side of my writing, generating atmosphere and character more vividly than the plot.

Enter Jiàn, an older woman with a middling magical gift compared to everyone else in her world. Hearing about a special seafood catch at the local market leads her to make a perhaps hasty decision to pursue it with a single-minded focus.

You’ll have to order A Quiet Afternoon 2 to see if she pulls it off! I ultimately pulled off the story at just over 1,100 words. Like Jiàn, I know sometimes you have to push yourself past your limits to get the job done. 😉

A Quiet Afternoon 2 contains 27 low-fi tales. It’s available in ebook formats from Grace&Victory directly at Payhip. The anthology is $9 CAD, so a little over $8 in USD.

I do hope you enjoy it! Here are the first few lines of “A Fresh Catch of the Day” to whet your appetite.

Jiàn, seventy-one but as spry as sixty-three, pondered which vendor she’d like to barter with to use her water-spouting skills for lunch. A spark of light about as bright and fast-fizzling as a firecracker caught her eye. Ah, the light-weavers are at work.

And a photograph to set the mood:

oysters, hog island, the gourmez, nz wine

An oyster chef at work.

I hope you enjoy “Fresh Catch of the Day!”

“She Could Be Me” Reappears at Bards And Sages Quarterly!

“She Could Be Me” was one of my very first short stories published, back in 2010. Sadly, its original publisher, the e-zine Flashes in the Dark, no longer exists. But I’m delighted to announce that Bards And Sages Quarterly has rescued “She Could Be Me” from obscurity!

bards sages quarterly, she could be me, rebecca gomez farrell, april 2021

This issue of the magazine came out in April 2021 — yes, I’m behind in sharing publication news, AGAIN. You can pick up the e-book for $3 or the print version for $9 from Amazon here. I quite like Editor Julie Ann Dawson’s short description of my story, in this collection of eight short stories in all:

A peculiar phone call from her husband is only the first in a strange series of events that upends a woman’s well-manicured life in “She Could Be Me.”

I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the April 2021 Bards And Sages Quarterly and give it a read! Our new kitty, Bemo, did. 😉

bards sages quarterly, bemo cat, bemo, kitten, magazine, rebecca gomez farrell, she could be me, cat reading

Wings Unfurled Flies in 2022!

I am so delighted to announce that Wings Unfurled, the sequel to my epic fantasy novel Wings Unseen, will be coming out in 2022! Meerkat Press will publish the sequel, just as they did Wings Unseen. Here’s their official announcement of the upcoming publication.

Some of you may remember that I wrote Wings Unseen as a standalone novel. Or rather, I first dreamed of it as a trilogy in the early 2000s, but by the time I seriously started writing it, in 2009, the going advice was that a first-time novelist couldn’t get a multi-book deal. So I shifted gears, focusing on writing the full story in one book instead. That made for a much tighter narrative, but by the time I began shopping the manuscript around, the collective wisdom in speculative fiction was back to recommending series of books as the best bet for a writer, first-time or established!

Luckily, Meerkat Press took the risk on Wings Unseen as a standalone book, and I’ve always been happy that I could tell people that the story is complete in and of itself.

wings unseen rebecca gomez farrell meerkat press cover fantasy

Such a shiny, pretty debut novel!

But after its release, my publisher, Tricia Meeks, the driving force behind Meerkat, mentioned that she’d be interested in a second book. So of course the wheels of a new story for Janto, Vesperi, and Serra began turning!

My wheels don’t turn very fast. Wings Unseen was published in 2017, and I didn’t begin writing Wings Unfurled in earnest until October 2019. Yet somehow, I managed to send off the manuscript’s third draft for consideration by Meerkat in March 2020, and they purchased it! That’s the fastest I have ever written a book, for sure – faster than I’ve written most short stories, to be honest. I’m definitely someone who puts manuscripts aside for a while, letting time do the solving of plot puzzles before coming back with fresh eyes.

So what’s Wings Unfurled about? Well, I’m not going to spoil it, but it begins about six years after Janto, Vesperi, and Serra have rid Lansera and its formerly Meduan lands of the invisible plague of claren and the thrall of the Guj. I won’t tell you more than that for now – except to tease that there’s a fourth, and briefly a fifth, new point-of-view character in the book. Not a pigeon this time! But rest assured, there are plenty of feathers left to lash in Lansera.

I’ll be dropping hints about Wings Unfurled along the way to its publication, leaving you a tasty trail to follow until then. Maybe I’ll even share a recipe for the lemon cakes that Janto, and another family member, so loves! Waits are always easier to endure when there’s a snack.

grandview bakery, pittsburgh bakeries, cupcakes, lemon cake, almond cupcake, los angeles

That image is of Pittsburgh’s Grandview Bakery’s almond cupcakes – NOT Mar Pina’s lemon cakes in Lansera, but not far off from what I imagine…

Listen to “Submission Caws” at the Centropic Oracle!

In the madness of moving, I haven’t had time to share this news: “Submission Caws” received an audio production by the Centropic Oracle!

centropic oracle, thlush a lum, rebecca gomez farrell

The recording was released on January 29, which was the day we were originally scheduled for escrow to close. The release of “Submission Caws” stayed on schedule, though our escrow took a few days longer…

…but that’s another story! This story is a fictional rant about the process of submitting manuscripts out for publication. It is funny and silly, particularly if you are also a writer undertaking this process on a regular basis. It’s a fantasy take on the concept, with recipes for magic spells subbed in for manuscripts themselves. It ends with a dare that the editors at the Centropic Oracle took, just like Defenestration did before them when the story was first published in 2019.

Jill Raymond performed the audio version, and I quite enjoy her take on the story — the character of Betty, a bubbly and annoyingly successful composer of magical recipes, comes through loud and clear. To listen to or read “Submission Caws,” head to the Centropic Oracle’s website here.

Or of course, you can read “Submission Caws” at its original home at Defenestration, right here.

The first few lines to entice you onward:

A black crow swoops onto the open window ledge, and yearning gushes from deep within me. I tamp down the emotion swifter than the crow can deliver its charge: a rolled parchment that bangs against the bookshelves as it flips toward the floor. The crow musses its feathers and launches into the air, off to retrieve its next assignment. Soon, someone else will receive fresh misery. I retrieve the parchment, find it quaint that the Gate Keepers use it for correspondence when they could just place a call by sandspelling. The parchment’s seal displays a sentinel guarding a mountain of scrolls piled behind an ornate, locked gate.

And some photographic inspiration: