Leona Wisoker’s Next Venture

Color us excited!  Leona says,

Announcement time! I’ve embarked on a new adventure called The Scribbling Lion, LLC. What’s it all about? Glad you asked. Please step right this way…

Check this out.

One Door Closes; a Dozen More Open

On January 17, 2014, Mercury Retrograde Press will cease normal operations. By that date, all the books Mercury Retrograde has published will go out of print; the rights to those stories will return to their authors. We’ll be honoring our commitment to appear and sell books at Memphis Comic and Fantasy Convention in November, but that will be Mercury Retrograde’s last public appearance as the publisher of the authors and works we’ve sponsored in the past.

This decision has been a difficult one, and it’s been a long time in coming. Since we first began in 2007, I’ve been developing and re-developing not only books, authors and artistic careers but methodologies for bringing to press genre works that matter. Mercury Retrograde wasn’t my first foray into this crazy business of publishing, but it was the first time I’d been at the helm of an operation whose vision was mine alone; and that vision is one I still believe in passionately. But in recent months it has become increasingly clear that there is not time enough, energy enough, me enough to support both Mercury Retrograde and my own artistic work. That no matter how I increase our staff, expand our resources, rearrange our methodologies, it cannot achieve the mission for which I’d conceived it without being my primary focus.

There are any number of people whose truest creative outlet is the running of a business about which they are passionate. I am not one of those people. In order for me to do the work that is my truest passion, I must set this mission aside.

I wait with great anticipation for news of the house that picks up this mission, or something similar: a publishing house whose truest passion is genre fiction, which is committed to creating the space and providing the resources necessary for genre writers to free themselves of the expectations of a market that demands entertainment the way kids demand snack foods when what they really crave is a fulfilling meal; it will be my pleasure to offer that publisher (or those publishers!) whatever aid I can. I hope I’ve left the genre world a little something to think about, a glimpse of something cool that might and should be. But I need to turn my energy to other projects.

I am grateful to all of the Mercury Retrograde authors for being part of this adventure, and I wish them all possible success and happiness in their next phases. And I am grateful to all of you for the love and support we’ve received since this grand experiment began. I hope we have brought you some pleasure or learning in return.

What will happen next for all the Mercury Retrograde books and authors we love? Those stories are just unfolding. I can promise you haven’t seen the last of any of them, and in the remaining months we’ll be passing along what news we can about their next adventures. For now, you can find them at their respective websites, blogs and social presences:

Edward Morris (author of There Was a Crooked Man)
Blog: http://edwardrmorrisjr.blogspot.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/edward.morris.5
G+: http://plus.google.com/104385582777697605163

Larissa N. Niec (author of Shorn)
Personal Website: http://www.larissaniec.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/larissa.niec
Twitter: http://twitter.com/LarissaNiec
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/LarissaNiec

Zachary Steele (author of Anointed: The Passion of Timmy Christ, CEO and Flutter: An Epic of Mass Distraction)
Personal Website: http://www.zacharysteele.com
Blog: http://zacharysteele.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/zachary.steele
Twitter: http://twitter.com/zsteele
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/2830492.Zachary_Steele

Leona Wisoker (author of Secrets of the Sands, Guardians of the Desert, Bells of the Kingdom and Fires of the Desert)
Personal Website: http://www.leonawisoker.com
Blog: http://leonawisoker.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wisokerwriting
Twitter: http://twitter.com/leonawisoker
G+: http://plus.google.com/104152009371385721105
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3316576.Leona_Wisoker

Barbara Friend Ish (author of The Shadow of the Sun)
Personal Website: http://www.barbarafriendish.com
Blog: http://barbarafriendish.wordpress.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/barbarafriendish
Twitter: http://twitter.com/barbarfriendish
G+: http://plus.google.com/110606999298495001556
Tumblr: http://barbarafriendish.tumblr.com
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.combarbarafriendish
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/barbarfriendish

Fires of the Desert by Leona Wisoker: the eBook lives

After much crying and smashing of computers, we have at long last overcome all the technical hurdles and finalized eBooks that play nicely with the hardware platforms of all our retail partners…and Fires of the Desert by Leona Wisoker is available for Kindle, Nook, and Kobo users, on their respective stores and from devices everywhere. It’s been a long, strange trip for this eBook, and we know it’s been too long a wait–but we appreciate your patience with us as we took the time necessary to give you a well-produced eBook.

As always, the book is also available in Trade Paper, from Amazon, B&N, and all the usual suspects. And if you buy the book in paper, you can download the eBook for free, from our site.

Happy reading!

The Shadow of the Sun Read-Along: Week Three

Bloggers around the interwebs are chatting about a new series of discussion questions about The Shadow of the Sun this week. You can catch the Week Three posts and the comment threads springing up in their wakes by clicking through the links below. Rather than bombard your feed, we’ve just updated the original post on our blog–and the discussions page for that book on the website. Participating bloggers include:

A Dab of Darkness
Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers
Just Book Reading
Lynn’s Book Blog

And the list of related posts on Barbara’s blog continues to grow.

Conversations about the read-along are also taking place on the Mercury Retrograde Press Goodreads discussion group.

If you like this book, you’ll love these conversations. If you’ve been feeling shy in previous weeks, it’s not too late to jump in to the comment threads. Stop in and join the fun.

Where Were You When…?

A writer writes, of course. Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night…no, wait, that’s mailmen. But rather like mailmen, we must persevere, against natural and unnatural intrusions, even if Cthulu himself is bashing through the door or the Sha’Daa is scheduled for next week. Writers must write. I know a few, Ed Morris among them, who could probably hold Cthulu off by simply pointing a smoking-hot pen at him and saying, “BACK OFF! I’M ON A DEADLINE!”

A corollary to that: writers must write no matter where they are. This has been said by better speakers than myself, and all I can do is nod along enthusiastically. When someone tells me that they have to have “space” in which to write, or that they can only write at the kitchen table while sipping their morning coffee, I immediately assign the tag “beginner” to my mental file on them. This is not intended as a slam, in any way, mind you—everyone starts somewhere. As for Big Name Writers who claim to have such locational restrictions on their writing output, that’s an entirely different situation—akin to a great artist who can draw fantastically lifelike figures, yet in his later career focuses on creating puzzling abstracts resembling a five-year-old’s effort. I  don’t have the words for the difference; it just is. Perhaps one of my fellow Purposefully Backwards bloggers will be able to articulate this better than I can.

Moving along and leaving the people whom I just offended to froth amongst themselves, I arrive at my point, which is to talk about the various places I have written. Specifically, where I wrote the Children of the Desert series, because that progression illustrates what I said above.

Secrets of the Sands took me about five or six years (as I’ve mentioned before, I didn’t know it would be published, so I didn’t track from the First Day Of Writing) to draft, revise, polish, revise, edit, agent, edit, revise, edit, edit, sign with publisher, then edit, edit, and edit before final publication. The agent to publication cycle took about three of those years, all told, and I’ve already recounted the story of how Secrets came to be, so I won’t bore you with that again. But I wrote that all sitting at my desktop computer, because back then I didn’t have a laptop to speak of; just a clunky ancient thing with a broken monitor hinge that my husband loaned me from time to time when we traveled together. (How old was it? Well, it took 3-1/ 2 disks. Yeah. That old.) It took me forever, even with all the time in the world available to me—I didn’t work Outside the House all that often, and I had all day available to write while my husband was at work. And yet it took a long, dreary slog to get the bloody thing to the publication point.

Mind you, by the time I started to write the second book, I had the agent but not the publisher; so there was a certain amount of overlap involved. And the second book very nearly wrote itself. I had read somewhere that publishers wanted 90,000 word novels, and the original manuscript for Secrets of the Sand weighed in at twice that (it cut down to about 140K by publication time). So I wrote book 2 very tight, very lean, and it flew out of me in three insanely intense weeks of sitting at the desk, devouring the sandwiches that occasionally appeared beside me, staggering off to bed at 2 a.m. and sprinting back to the computer at 6 a.m. (no, seriously, I did leap out of bed that early) to start on the next segment.

That 90,000 word marathon has since become two 160K books, but  never mind that now. The point is that I locked my focus down and did it, and it was wildly exhilarating and incredible fun and I never want to do that again. I don’t think I got out of bed for a week after I finished that book. So I found out that I don’t want to take five years to write a book, and I don’t want to take three weeks. There’s lots of middle ground, of course, but once I locked into a contract with a publisher that middle ground became: one year. Write it, deliver it, and get moving on the next one.

Now, I’m lucky; I have a publisher who will slide timetables around and let me have the time I need to write a really good book instead of a fast one. I’m also lucky in that I have routinely been writing one to two books ahead of contract, so deadlines really haven’t been an issue for me up to this point.

However.

Once one signs that magical publishing contract, there is a certain amount of peer pressure, if you will; an expectation among one’s readers and fellow writers and family members that the next book will be produced in the shortest possible time. That you will always, always, be working on the next one, whatever that might be. And so the landscape of location changes from my sacred single spot writing place to wherever the hell I have half an hour to finish that chapter.

When it came time to rework the second book into what later became Guardians of the Desert, I began writing on a real laptop when I traveled–or when I was ill–or when I just didn’t feel like going upstairs to my office–or when I wanted to work at a local cafe, just for the fun of it. So Guardians was written in an increasingly varied set of locations. I believe at one point I threw my back out and wound up in bed, all propped up on pillows and writing away. It was wonderful; nobody bothered me at all, and despite being in pain I got tons of work done.

By the time I started working on the first draft of the restructured book three, I’d totally gotten the hang of writing on the go. I was able to write at conventions in between panels, sometimes, or in the early morning before going to my first panel, or after I staggered back to my room at the end of the night. I wrote in hotel rooms a lot for books three and four, actually, because between conventions and traveling to visit family, I spent a lot of 2011 on the road. At one point, during a trip to Florida, I booked a hotel room for two nights just so that I could get away from my family and write several chapters on the latest revision of book three. They thought I was nuts. I got the work done. They still think I’m nuts. I have a book I’m really proud of. I call that a fair trade-off.

I wrote at least two intense chapters of Fires of the Desert while sitting in airports waiting for my flight. I wrote at the dining room table. I wrote in bed a lot. On at least two occasions, when we lost power at the house, I went to the nearby Panera and wrote for hours over endless cups of coffee and the occasional pastry. I wrote in the car (with my husband driving) on the way to and from conventions. I wrote during meetings with my beta-readers; whenever they questioned or commented unfavorably on a section, I asked them to wait for five minutes, whipped out a couple hundred words by way of correction, and read them the new version to astonished applause.

Because of the way the book revisions and restructuring have been overlapping, I haven’t written a book a year. I’ve written two books a year, when you untangle the process. My typing speed is way higher than it used to be, mind you, after that much practice; and the books have largely been revisions of existing drafts (I was working on book four, in truth, before we started tearing book two apart). And I didn’t have an Outside Job last year.

Still. I couldn’t have done all that if I’d stayed in one place to write. It’s not just the laptop; it’s the attitude that I have to write, and I’m going to write wherever I am, that’s made the difference. And that’s a positive example of peer pressure if I ever saw one, because I am by nature the laziest creature on the face of this planet (except, perhaps, for my dog Shadow, also known as “that big black puddle in the sunny spot over there”). It’s only through meeting people like Ed Morris, whose output and drive truly shames me into insignificance, that I’ve set the bar for my work so high–and begun working harder than I ever have before in my life,  in ever more varied and occasionally bizarre locations.

Because a writer writes, and neither travel, nor family, nor the dark of power-outs, shall stop us going about our appointed duties…

The Shadow of the Sun Read-Along: Week Two

Another batch of terrific discussions about The Shadow of the Sun went live around the blogosphere yesterday: not just the Week Two posts themselves, but the comment threads that spring up in their wakes. Rather than bombard your feed, we’ve just updated the original post on our blog–and the discussions page for that book on the website. Participating bloggers include:

A Dab of Darkness
Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers
Just Book Reading
Lynn’s Book Blog

Conversations about the read-along are also taking place on the newly-minted Mercury Retrograde Press Goodreads discussion group.

If you like this book, you’ll love these conversations. Stop in and join the fun.

Mercury Retrograde Discussion Group on Goodreads

Goodreads users, a perfect storm is brewing: there is now a Mercury Retrograde Press discussion group on Goodreads, led by book blogger Susan Voss/nrlymrtl of Dab of Darkness fame. Presently the group is reading The Shadow of the Sun, making the group one more outpost of the Shadow of the Sun Read-Along. But apparently the group plans to do formal group readings of other Mercury Retrograde Press books as well–and it seems to be developing into a place for general Mercury Retrograde book conversations. Stop by and join the fun!

On Our Way to RavenCon

We’re heading out on the road again: this time to RavenCon in Richmond, VA, which will be held at the Holiday Inn Koger Center, Friday, April 5 through Sunday, April 7. We just adore Raven for its wonderful mix of bookish, filk, and media programming and guests, and we’re really looking forward to seeing our old friends and meeting new ones. This year there will be several of us participating in programming: Barbara Friend Ish, Jonah Knight, and Leona Wisoker. And we’re bringing a terrific party for Leona’s fourth installment in her Children of the Desert series, Fires of the Desert—featuring not only Leona, her beautiful new book, and dinner, but Jonah’s new Children of the Desert song. We’ll be selling Fires of the Desert and all our books from our table in the Dealers Room–and Fires of the Desert will be available for purchase at the launch as well.

Elsewhere around the con, we’ll be sitting on plenty of panels, doing concerts (well, Jonah will), and holding the fantastic meaty conversations for which RavenCon is rightly famous. You can catch us at these program events:

Leona:

Friday 3 PM–Writing Fight Scenes
Friday 10 PM–Fighting Writer’s Block
Saturday 9 AM–What’s New from Perseid Publishing
Saturday 6 PM–Launch Party for Fires of the Desert
Saturday 9 PM–Reading
Sunday 10 AM–Writing Up Close and Personal
Sunday 1 PM–Signing

Jonah:

Friday 7 PM–Performance at Opening Ceremonies
Saturday 12 PM–Concert
Saturday 2 PM–Signing
Saturday 3 PM–History of Podcasting
Saturday 6 PM–Launch Party for Fires of the Desert (Jonah will perform his new Children of the Desert song)
Saturday 8 PM–Geek Music
Sunday 10 AM–Cross-Media Collaboration
Sunday 1 PM–Concert

Barbara:

Friday 4 PM–Another Galactic Empire
Saturday 1 PM–Potions, Poisons and Plots: Inventive ways to kill a character 
Saturday 4 PM–Social Media for the Introvert
Saturday 6 PM–Launch Party for Fires of the Desert
Sunday 10 AM–Cross-Media Collaboration
Sunday 11 AM–Naming Names, Titling Titles

Come out and see us this weekend. You’ll be glad you did.

Read-Along of The Shadow of the Sun

The first of the Mercury Retrograde book read-alongs begins today. Join book bloggers across the Internet in discussing The Shadow of the Sun. Participating bloggers include:

A Dab of Darkness
Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers
Just Book Reading
Lynn’s Book Blog

Conversations about the read-along are also taking place on the newly-minted Mercury Retrograde Press Goodreads discussion group.

 

As posts go live, we’ll be adding links to them here.

Week 1:

The Shadow of the Sun Read-Along Part I: Dab of Darkness

All the Myths I Stole:
Barbara Friend Ish’s response to nrlymrtl’s challenge question

The Shadow of the Sun Read-Along–Part 1: Just Book Reading

Place as Character: Using Worldbuilding to Develop Story
Barbara’s response to Amy’s question on her Just Book Reading post

The Shadow of the Sun by Barbara Friend Ish Read-Along: Week 1: Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers

The Shadow of the Sun Read Along, Part 1: Lynn’s Book Blog 

Week 2:

The Shadow of the Sun Read-Along Part II: Dab of Darkness

That’s Not Even a Real Word! How I invent languages for my fiction:
Barbara Friend Ish’s response to nrlymrtl’s Week 2 question

The Shadow of the Sun by Barbara Friend Ish Read Along: Week 2: Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers

The Shadow of the Sun Read Along – Part 2: Just Book Reading

Shadow of the Sun by Barbara Friend Ish, readalong week 2: Lynn’s Book Blog

Week 3:

The Shadow of the Sun Read Along Part III: nrlymrtl’s post on Dab of Darkness

The Sex Lives of Male Characters: Our Cultural Assumptions in Action:
The first of Barbara’s responses to nrlymrtl’s question for Part 3

Writing About Sex: Love Through Other Eyes:
The second installment of Barbara’s response to nrlymrtl’s question for Part 3 (live 4/16)

The Shadow of the Sun Read-Along–Part 3: Amy’s post on Just Book Reading

The Shadow of the Sun by Barbara Friend Ish Read Along: Week 3:
Sue’s post on Coffee, Cookies, and Chili Peppers

Shadow of the Sun by Barbara Friend Ish, readalong week 3: Lynn’s post on Lynn’s Book Blog

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If you missed the earlier post about read-alongs, online book discussions, and how you can play, you can find it here. It’s easy to get involved by clicking through to the participating blogs. You can also add your blog to the list.

This particular read-along is being led by nrlymrtl, host of the Dab of Darkness blog. Here is the

Planned Read-Along Schedule

April 1st: Chapters 1-7
April 8th: Chapters 8-15
April 15th: Chapters 16-21
April 22nd: Chapters 22-28
April 29th: Chapters 29-END

Don’t have a copy of the book? Not to worry. For the duration of the Read-Along, you can download your free eBook here. And Dab of Darkness is hosting a giveaway that includes not only eBooks but a couple of signed Trade Paper copies.

nrlymrtl is a master of spinning interesting questions. This should be a great conversation. See you around the blogs!

Read-Along Fun

Some of our favorite book bloggers, led by the intrepid Elizabeth Campbell, Lady Darkcargo, have started a project: group readings, called Read-Alongs, of Mercury Retrograde Press books. To say we’re honored by their interest would be an understatement! They’ll be holding read-alongs of a variety of Mercury Retrograde Press books over the course of the year, and we have all been graciously invited to play along.

Who is “We”?
All of us, the readers. Oh, yeah, and the writers, too, but mostly those of us who adore books, who treasure the smell or the way the backlight of the eReader casts just enough light in a darkened room.

What is a Read-Along?
It’s a bit like an online book club. One person will volunteer to lead the reading of a particular book; she will figure out how to break down the book into manageable chunks (because people have lives, you know) and propose a schedule for all the participants to post about the book they’re sharing (once a week seems to be pretty common). Other book bloggers will sign up to participate and the parties involved nail down the schedule and other details. Then the reading starts.

Meanwhile, the read-along leader develops sets of discussion questions for each chunk of the book and distributes them to the participants. Then, on the agreed-upon dates, all the bloggers put up posts of the questions and their thoughts. Then discussion ensues: they comment on one another’s thoughts; their readers do the same. And then they go back to the book, read the next chunk, and do it again.

How can we readers participate?
It seems clear that the most fun is had by participating bloggers: people who go to the trouble to actually post on their own blogs. Maybe this is just the push you’ve been waiting for to finally start your own blog. Go for it! But if you don’t have a blog, you can still participate by stopping in to the participating blogs on the read-along days and joining the discussions there. We’ll be posting links to the posts of read-alongs as they develop, just to make it a little easier.

I’m a blogger! How can I get in on the fun?
Start here. You can join read-alongs if you want, but if you’re more interested in the independent route, there are plenty of other options. And, as always, reviewers and book bloggers are welcome to inquire about review copies of any of our books. If you want to get in on a read-along, Lady Darkargo can put you in touch with the bloggers leading them. (If you’re interested in the Shadow of the Sun read-along, get in touch with nrlymrtl, who runs the Dab of Darkness blog.)

What if I haven’t read the book yet?
No worries! Most of the people involved are reading for the first time as they play. The joy of these things is hashing over the books while you read, not doing a book review or book report. And if you haven’t bought the book in question, as long as it’s a Mercury Retrograde Press book, we’ve got you covered: for each of the read-alongs book bloggers do for a Mercury Retrograde book, we’ll be offering a free download of the book in question for the duration of the read-along. Usually we’ll post the free download a week in advance of the first read-along date for the book, so that everyone has plenty of time to get started.

What books will have read-alongs?
I don’t know, but I’m as anxious to find out as you are. This project belongs to the bloggers, and they’ll be deciding what to read. The people organizing the read-along of Mercury Retrograde books have agreed to start with The Shadow of the Sun. But there has been chatter about read-alongs of a number of other books on our roster. I can’t wait to see what they’ll read!

The Shadow of the Sun read-along starts April 1. Details, and download links, available here.