The One with ALL the Giveaways
So. Many. Prizes. Also, join my Crown Club!
Read all the way to the end on this one—I’ve got one giveaway linked at the bottom open to everyone, plus the opportunity to get monthly prizes in a new Crown Club program! This is the newsletter with all the giveaway info, basically!
Join Me in Writing a New YA Fantasy!
My latest book, Museum of Magic, is…different. I got a taste of interactive writing with Blood and Feathers (now complete here or on Patreon, coming soon to paperback), but I realized that it wasn’t as interactive as I’d like. I wanted more—more chance, more interactions, more fun.
And so, Museum of Magic started growing. I’ve been posting about it for awhile. The main character came about thanks to a Dungeons & Dragons chart where I rolled for her characteristics. I have a map and a chart where I’m plotting the dynamics that you can see here or in more depth here. And starting January 1, I began writing chapters!
What Museum of Magic is about:
A girl who absolutely does not believe in magic despite being descended from a witch and living in her old house that’s been turned into a witchcraft museum
Spoiler: the girl is also a witch
A boy who pops up as if by magic inside her house/musuem and immediately breaks something valuable
Spoiler: the boy is fae and also chaos
A quest to remake the thing the boy broke because otherwise the witch hunters will kill the girl, the wall between the mystic and mundane with break, and magic will run amok.
Take Evie from THE MUMMY, make her an English witch, and turn Brendan Fraser's character into a choas demon, and you'll get this fun romp!
The book is currently only available on Patreon, but will be coming to Kindle Vella in February!
Each chapter—every single chapter!!—is based entirely on a combination of chance, fate, and reader votes. I start every chapter with a tarot card draw that determines the theme and mood of the chapter, and then I follow the major choices with dice rolls or random drawings, and I conclude the session with something for readers to vote on.
After a Prologue to set up the story (inspired by some truly weird visits to local museums)…
Chapter 1 showcased a battle scene run with Dungeons and Dragons dice rolls.
Chapter 2 featured the main character trying to find the truth—and whether the other charcater lied or was honest was determined by dice rolls…but you only got to find out whether it was a lie or the truth for ONE of the questions
Chapter 3 had the main character sifting through ashes to find magical items. To determine which items she found and how many, I used a combination of dice rolls and drawing items from a hat.
Until now, the chapters have only been on my Patreon. However, I’m now starting to upload them on Kindle Vella in February, and I want to invite you to be a member of my new Crown Club!
Join My Crown Club & Get Prizes!
I am going to be updating this book one chapter a week, and what I really want is to make sure the people who want to hear about it do. (This is basically an open call for a street team, if you’ve ever wanted to be a part of one!)
Also? I would really like to see this book hit high in the Vella ranks. It’s a personal goal that’s directly tied to how profitable Amazon will allow the book to be, and in order to get some of Jeff Bezos’s coin, my story needs crowns.
So here’s the plan:
Sign up for my Crown Club. It’s a separate email list where I send you a quick note once a week, when the story updates.
I hope that, by getting this reminder, you check out each new story! I’ll include some behind-the scenes or other fun stuff, but it’ll mostly just be “here’s the new story, please check out the chapter!”
At least once a month, at least one person on the list is getting a prize. It could be gift cards to buy tokens, it could be physical items like signed books or swag, it could be something else. But someone is getting a prize.
How many prizes I give out will depend entirely on how many people sign up—frankly, if more people sign up, I’m sending more prizes, because I’m hoping more people reading will also mean more crowns for the story, which will enable me to send out more prizes.
So, if you want to get an email update once a week to send you to the new chapters of this fun story PLUS also get entered to win prizes automatically just for signing up…
New Patreon Tiers for Writers
Patreon not only got the first chapters early, they also get to be the ones to vote on how the story develops and what choices each new chapter starts with. Recently, I added two new tiers to Patreon that will be of interest specifically for aspiring writers.
For $25 a month, you get all the story perks of Museum of Magic, additional background information on writing and publishing, a behind-the-scenes look at the developmen tof the book and a monthly 5,000 critique from me. It can be anything—a query letter, a short story, a chapter or two—but every month you get direct feedback in both a line edit and a developmental edit. You can also treat this cumulatively, sending subsequent chapters or revisions, and you can roll over to stockpile for a longer critique if you’d like.
You can also join at the “Writing Coach” tier, which is all of the above—the story, the behind-the-scenes, the writing posts—and also a month worth of critiques or a one-on-one coaching session. You can pick either:
one hour long video conference call to discuss any aspect of your writing you’d like to, either in pitching, developing, pub questions or more
20,000 words of a critique, which can either be done in one big lump, or 5,000 words per week (which means I could essentially be your beta reader, giving you input as you write)
any combination of those—such as 10,000 word critique and 30 minutes of a video call
Again, this is designed to be cumulative, so you can send one chunk of your book one month, get feedback, and either revise or send another chunk the next month.
Space is very limited. I love coaching and critiquing, but it takes time, and I only have a few spots open in each tier so I know I will be able to give the proper attention to the people who sign up.
(Also, if both spaces open up, you are welcome to still join at the $5 or less tiers to get the story and/or background information, and Patreons who are already subscribed get first dibs on any open slots.) And everyone who’s a Patreon is automatically entered in the Crown Club giveaways.
Podcasts
I’ve been doing a lot of work with podcasts recently!
Followers of the Force recently interviewed me to help celebrate the anniversary of Rogue One and Rebel Rising! Rachel also does a wicked awesome cosplay of Jyn Erso, so Star Wars fans, you’ve gotta check this one out!
First Draft podcast recently celebrated a million listens, and I’m lucky to say that I had the chance to talk with Sarah early on in the podcast’s development. You can listen to my interview here!
Fictional Hangover did a series on Across the Universe that was simply hilarious, and they tossed in a reading of my short story, “The Girl and the Machine” which includes a really hilarious aside dealing with boobs. I don’t want to ruin the experience—and trust me when I say that this podcast is an experience, lol.
Also? Fictional Hangover made basically the coolest swag ever. You can see it all here!
Also, also? You can win some! The girls at Fictional Hangover released their podcast right around the same time that I re-released my sci fi short story collection. I started a giveaway over on Instagram, but for an additional entry, just make a comment to this post (there’s a button below) that you want in. So that’s two entries to win a signed copy of The Future Collection + some Fictional Hangover stickers that are super cool. If I get enough entries, I’ll pick an extra winner!
What I’m working on now…
Museum of Magic, a YA fantasy with witches and witch bottles. Prologue to Chapter 3 are up by Sunday, with a new chapter every week. Available on Patreon and coming to Kindle Vella in February. (Current word count: 6,818)
Secret adult science fiction project 1: Finally done and turned into the editor at 110,000 words. This was 20k words more than I intended. That last 20k kicked my tail, but I think they’re good words that are really fun and will be worth it! Now awaiting edits!
Secret adult science fiction project 2: currently drafting: 48,000 words written, plot fully outlined. I’m almost at the sexy bit and it’s intimidating. #avoidance
YA historical co-written fantasy: 🤐…but working on it again in February
New story idea (paranormal with ghosts): outline done, planning to start it in the new year, but not until March or so
These are just the official projects I’ve got going on, and it’s…a lot! I recently started using a planner to keep up with everything, and I’m compartmentalizing days to fit it all in.
I will definitely check out the podcasts! Thanks for the opportunity to win!
I'm not really a podcast person, but very excited for this book!