Muffin Commando Squad, Celebrations, and Adamant Release!

It's a mega-post today, enjoy the highlights!

I'm super excited to be a part of C. Lee Mckenzie's Muffin Commando Team for A to Z!!!

Q: What kind of muffin are you?
Well, I'm a huge fan of banana nut . . . but can I be the same kind of muffin as Carrie Butler?
If not banana nut, then I'm cinnamon-apple-nut muffin. :)

Q: What's your latest book, short story, publication?
A Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts, A Pocket-Sized Jumble of 500+ Writing Prompts (paperback), and Jumble Journals 1 and 2. Like they sound, these are books chock full of writing prompts.

Q: What was your theme last year? And, why did you choose it? Character Names from The Champion Trilogy and World-Building Ideas. I was hip deep in revisions for Champion in Flight, and the joint topics were simmering on my brain.

Hint: This year, my theme will be a little less about me, and a little more about (to be revealed on the 23rd).

If you haven't already, please go meet the rest of the Muffin Commandos: C. Lee Mckenzie (leader extraordinaire), Carrie Butler, Yvonne Ventresca, Donna McDine, Patricia Lynne, Tara Tyler, and Tammy Theriault.


Celebrate the Small Things is led by Lexa Cain, and co-hosted by LG Keltner and the Cyborg Mom.

Celebrations:

1. Two of my hint fictions stories were published at Espresso Stories. Check them out for free:
"Ocean's Promise"
"Tone Deaf"

2. Elizabeth Seckman's guest post on Wednesday!

3. My youngest daughter's knee ultrasound looked awesome! Her PT is going good, and she can move from going easy to pushing a a bit harder at racing practice for flat-water sprint kayaking. (They use their legs for "leg drive" - and use their whole bodies to put power into their paddle strokes.)

4. My oldest daughter is dancing this Sunday evening at a benefit for the Tacoma City Ballet's financial aid program. It's called 10 Tiny Dances, and it's at Jazzbones in Tacoma, WA. If you're local, you could come check it out! :) She'll be in the "scary doll" tap dance. Yep, it's definitely not Singin' in the Rain, but it's fun. And I've added a little preview video - an interview video with her teacher.

5. Had a bit of a rough week with some virus-ick in the house and just plain insecurity over writing projects, so I found some solace in these things:

I read Shelley Sly's MG One Hundred Thirty Stars and loved it - beautiful, poignant writing. I felt like I was with Birdie while she struggles to get to know and understand her estranged father at a game convention, and in her thoughts and heart throughout the whole book. Highly recommended!

I finished watching Not Another Happy Ending. It's a romantic comedy about a debut author and her small press publisher/editor that I've been watching in short installments via Netflix - if you're a writer, there's some extra comedy in there on the "sure, that happens to all authors, yeah right" scale, but all in all, it was just wonderfully quirky, and it just hit the spot. Highly recommended, especially if you're on an editing/writing/marketing downturn (as in it feels like it all sucks and in need of a laugh and some inspiration).


And now, presenting . . . ADAMANT!

On an alternative 21st-century Earth in which our world is one of many in the Multiverse, the Inter-World Alliance exists to keep the peace between the worlds, and keep the monsters out.

Ada Fletcher is twenty-one, keeps a collection of knives in her room, and is more interested in fighting than her day job as a cashier. She also risks her life on a daily basis, helping refugees from a devastating magical war on her homeworld hide on the low-magic Earth. But when she’s taken into custody by the Alliance, her unusual magic makes her a prime suspect for a supervisor’s suspicious death.

For Kay Walker, whose family founded the organization, there has never been any doubt that his future is with the Alliance – even if it means dealing with sarcastic centaurs and dangerous monsters in the dark Passages between worlds. But when his supervisor is murdered, Kay discovers that a research project might have been the reason, and faces the choice of whether to ignore his instincts or risk becoming the next target, not to mention digging into the Alliance’s history and memories he’d rather keep buried. And there’s something not quite right about the strange, fierce girl he arrested as a suspect.

The last thing Ada wants is to help the infuriating Alliance guard who arrested her, but it soon becomes clear that the Alliance knows too much about Ada’s offworld origins. More, in fact, than she knows herself. Now she has to choose between loyalty to her family, and helping the Alliance save the Earth – and the Multiverse – from a deadly enemy.

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Emma spent her childhood creating imaginary worlds to compensate for a disappointingly average reality, so it was probably inevitable that she ended up writing speculative fiction. She was born in Birmingham, UK, which she fled at the first opportunity to study English Literature at Lancaster University. In her three years at Lancaster, she hiked up mountains, skydived in Australia, and endured a traumatic episode involving a swarm of bees in the Costa Rican jungle. She also entertained her creative writing group and baffled her tutors by submitting strange fantasy tales featuring dragons and supernatural monsters to workshops. These included her first publication, a rather bleak dystopian piece, and a disturbing story about a homicidal duck (which she hopes will never see the ight of day).

Now a reluctant graduate, Emma refuses to settle down and be normal. When not embarking on wild excursions and writing fantasy novels, she edits and proofreads novels for various publishing houses and reads an improbable number of books. Emma is currently working on the Alliance series, a multiple-universe adult fantasy featuring magic, monsters, cool gadgets and sarcasm. Her upper-YA urban fantasy Darkworld series is published by Curiosity Quills Press.

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