We’re leading with Maybe the Bird Will Rise today because Mack and Tess ended a week bookended with books. (Oh, my. If I wrote that into my fiction, I’d edit it on out. This, however, is not fiction, and so I will not.)

Last Sunday, authors Joyce Tremel/Joyce St. Anthony and Amanda Flower did a joint conversation and book signing, hosted by Pittsburgh-based Riverstone books. Best of all, they came to the McCandless store, which is closer for me than their city-based store. Although give me a reason to go to the city and I’ll usually grab it.

It was great fun, and I encourage you all to pick up Joyce and Amanda’s books. I had every opportunity to and… honestly? After ten years of having a rigid book budget of $0.00, I don’t want an overflowing bookshelf. (I actually have recently culled my shelves and have more than a few boxes to haul off to resell.)

And then I got word of a new bookstore opening in town. Reading Ready Pittsburgh, it’s called, and I am 100% behind this. Not only should we support an effort to get families and kids reading from the get-go, but those kids deserve to see themselves on the page, too. As do we adults!

On the editing front, since I was just doing a re-read this week, I knocked that out and surprised myself by getting it back to its author on Friday. But it was good, and interesting, the change from first person to third changed the book’s genre! How was that for a fascinating discovery?

This week, I’m tackling a debut romance from a new client. So yes! If you want to work with me, I may take you on! (I do not take on everyone, because you deserve the best client for you.)

And then I ended the week with another book event… my own! With seven others, but still. We did a panel discussion that was comfortable, relaxed, fun, and had total strangers riffing on each other in a good-natured way, and then we retreated to our tables and sold books. Not quite all the books, but enough to make me happy! One reader told me the plot of Populated was more interesting to her than the plot of the Bird, and that’s super! (also, not unexpected… it’s the art thief that gets everyone.)

So this is your reminder that you CAN read Populated first. Or you can even read only the odd-numbered books and only the even-numbered books in the Tales from the Sheep Farm series. And, of course, the ebook version of Populated is still on sale for $2.99 at your favorite retailers, including my own shop, if you too need a copy because what’s this about an art thief?

And, of course, Maybe the Bird Will Rise is 99c, and so is the preorder of Safe House and gosh darn it, but I forgot to plug Safe House’s presale yesterday… This is why I have a lot of signs on my table.

Grab a book — Hell, grab all the books — while the sale is on. And remember to leave reviews (I encourage you to leave HONEST reviews. A one-star review never killed an author and I won’t see it anyway.)!

If you’re an author who needs me, reach on out. I’m here, and the queue is starting to get a little thin.

There’s been a lot of chatter this week on socials about quick releasing books. I stand by the practice… IF the author can hold off on publishing until their books are the best possible, they’ve been through editing… in other words, don’t rush. Publishing is the long game, so it’s smart to make sure you’re playing to your best advantage.

That’s what I’ve done with the first four books in the Sheep Farm series. (I’m working on Book Five right now, in fact, and I do hope to have it out for you by the end of 2024.)

Which brings us to today’s subject matter: Safe House, Tales From the Sheep Farm #3 is up for preorder at all the usual retailers. And like always, it’s 99c

Here’s your universal book link.

I’ll have my amazing web person update the books page soon, but in the meantime, here’s the book description:

A deadly virus is bearing down on the world and Emerson Mackenzie, CEO of PharmaScience Technologies—now back in its ancestral home of Port Kenneth, Tennessee—opens up the historic Mackenzie house on the family’s defunct sheep farm to six people: himself, his wife Tess Cartieri, his house manager, two members of his board of directors, and his executive assistant, Taylor Alexander.

Taylor won’t abandon Emerson, but at the same time, they don’t want to be there. Taylor has secrets, a past and memories they cannot face, and they fear that being locked in a house with five others will be entirely too revealing.

Taylor’s passion is to be outside, hiking, in a world that makes sense to them, and Emerson harnesses that, asking Taylor to map the boundaries of the old sheep farm and maybe help discover secrets buried on the land. Taylor is glad to do so, although the secrets they help Emerson and Tess discover are immediately darker and more disturbing than any had expected.

As the virus rages, as tensions across the country simmer, as relationships within the house change, and as the land gives up its secrets, Taylor realizes time has grown short. Their secrets cannot remain hidden any longer.

When they spill, Taylor is exposed for all in the house to see.

And every person inside the house responds in ways Taylor never expected.

If you’ve read the first two books, or even just Maybe the Bird Will Rise, you’ve met Taylor. But now you get to really know them. So did I as I wrote this, and I really like who Taylor revealed themself to be.

If you need a copy of Maybe the Bird Will Rise or Populated, both are on sale right now to celebrate the release of Safe House.

And of course, if your library uses either Hoopla or Overdrive/Libby, look for me there. I get paid, the library gets circulation numbers, you get books within your budget… it’s a win-win-win for everyone.

On the editing front, I’m going to be finishing up one that’s taken me longer than I would have liked, but it needed a lot of attention and love. Next up in the editing queue is a genre switch by an established author. This is the second time I’ve gone over it for her (reminder that I charge half the original amount when you ask me to do this) and I’m anxious to see her improvements. This author, like all of my clients, is more than willing to do the hard work, and it shows. Watching her develop as a writer has been a pleasure and a privilege.

Next week (Feb. 3), I’ll be appearing with a few other authors at the Peters Township library here in the Pittsburgh region. If you’re nearby, come see me and my friends!

That’s it from this end. Expect more of these updates and let me know what you think of them!

Are you ready?

I am.

And I am not.

But here we go!

Book One of Tales From the Sheep Farm, Maybe the Bird Will Rise, is up for preorder, with an on-sale date of September 26. That’s not very far away from right now!

To entice you toward the preorder, do I have a deal for you. It’s 99c through the end of September. And then it’ll go back up to its regular price of $5.99. That’s five bucks off!

That’s because I want you to read this book. I want you to love Mack and Tess and the fictional city of Port Kenneth as much as I do. I want you to find alligators. I want you to think about issues of racial justice and equality. (If you’re an author, I want you to enter my world and write a book set here. I want to hear YOUR voice, real and raw and powerful and often censored by other spots within this publishing ecosystem.)

I want this book, and this series, to challenge you. To make you think. To strive to do tikkun olam, the Jewish act of healing the world.

Ready for what Maybe the Bird Will Rise is about?

Tess Cartieri has called Port Kenneth, TN home for her entire life. An architect specializing in urban renewal, she’s long dreamed of renovating an old sports field at her alma mater, Kenilworth University. But without the funding, the field sits, forgotten—until the day she’s hired to take on this project at last.

The money is coming from, of all people, the man Tess set free after college, Emerson Mackenzie. He had shared this dream with Tess but had turned his back on her and Port Kenneth when the family business needed him.

But now Mack is back in Tess’ life, still reeling from the recent loss of his wife and hoping this project will help him heal. There’s something about Port Kenneth, though, something more than how normal and natural it feels to be with Tess again, that calls to him and he begins investigating what it would take to move his company to the city.

Old family secrets come out of hiding and as Mack and Tess face them together and discover the legacy of the Mackenzie Treasure, they cement their commitment to each other and begin to understand how the past will affect their futures.
Maybe the Bird Will Rise is a story of the search for answers, the hope that adventures brings, and a second chance at love.

See those last four words? This book isn’t a romance, for a bunch of reasons. But there’s romance here, or at least a rekindling of what was, as two people move forward to a future full of uncertainty and secrets.

Seriously. This is the place. This is the time.

Pick up your copy; here’s the universal link!

Need to know more about the entire Tales From the Sheep Farm project? Follow this link, and I’m glad to share. If you have questions, reach out! Don’t be shy. People are treasures too — and that includes you!

Whew, have I been busy, or what?

Definitely not “or what.” I have been busy.

This collection was even easier to put together. It’s shorter than Permission to Enter by almost half! (That’s because there’s no novella in there… Among other reasons.) All I had to do was make sure no typos had crept in and… we were off to the races. Even the title came to me easily — Broken and Undaunted are the titles of two of the stories, so it was a matter of… well, Broken but Undaunted just fit, didn’t it? It certainly ties the theme in with Permission to Enter.

When I stopped and thought about the stories in here, I was actually surprised. Almost all of them are either tie-ins to the Trevolution series from all those years ago. The two that aren’t are the two most recently written — if 2011 and 2015 count as recent!

The point, though, was to gather the stories into one spot. Many of them are now out of print, and it’s fun to have them for posterity. Look at how far I’ve come… or just go visit with my old friends. I’m glad to stand behind these stories. They encapsulate a period of time in my life, and I had a really good time revisiting them as I weighed whether or not to publish them like this.

Pick up your copy of Broken but Undaunted.

Also, bear in mind that starting at Authors in the Steel City in 2024, you’ll be able to pick up special print editions with the cool dark covers designed by Lex Valentine! (The covers for this and Permission were designed by Rachel Bowdler and I’m proud to work with both women on this project.)

I honestly never thought this day would come. And to be honest, being primarily an editor is great fun and I love it and I hope that no matter where this author ride takes me, I remain an editor first.

But.

I had a couple days back in March without editing work. And that’s NEVER good. Idle Susan equals trouble, in big, fat, screaming capital letters.

So I decided to channel that trouble and dig through my hard drive. It wasn’t as much of a mess as I thought, which is good. And I knew all this material was there, so it was a matter of taking a good hard look at it through my editorial lens, not my Susan-who-wrote-this lens, and I decided I have enough material to bring you a collection of short stories.

I know. I know. Believe me, after the Demo Tapes, I know! Short stories don’t sell.

In this case, I don’t care. There’s some strategy here, but mostly, this collection is full of material I’m really proud of, really confident of. And I want to share it with the world. (That means you.)

So. Permission to Enter.

Now, I hope a few (only ten!) copies will have arrived by the time the Books Books Books Festival in Lititz, PA happens at the end of September (If you’re nearby, come see me!). BUT in 2024, you’ll be able to pick up special editions with special covers. The content will remain the same. It’s just going to be an in-person bonus of sorts with a slick cover that’s kind of opposite this one, and it’s just perfect and I love it too.

So go and pick up your own copy of Permission to Enter.

Oh! Wait! You need to see the official description, especially because I love it as much as I love the stories themselves.

Permission to Enter

Women feature in this collection of short stories and one novella. Women regaining their power, moving forward through life, learning to face and deal with their pasts. These women have lived, loved, and lost. They have optimism for the future and darkness in their pasts. They have been granted permission to enter, they have seized it, or else they stand ready to do so.

Really, they’re just like us.

Okay! Universal Buy Link to make sure you can pick up the book where you’d like! If your library supports Overdrive or Bibliotheca, you can read it that way! Hoopla is coming at some point, if that’s your poison. I do encourage and support library use, so I hope you do the same.

And, as I say every time I post a Featured New Book Spotlight, remember that the best way to thank an author for their hard work is to gift a copy to your friend. The next best way is to recommend it. And the third? Leave an online review.

Have at it. Have fun.

I’m really proud of this little collection!

What’s this Littsburgh stuff? You all thought I was West of Mars!

Well, I am BOTH. Littsburgh is the literary hub for us publishing folk in the city of Pittsburgh and maybe you missed it, but West of Mars definitely refers to the only city or town of Mars in the United States. The question I usually won’t answer is how far west of Mars I am, but that’s because I hate it when people show up on my doorstep. Of course, showing up on my back deck is even worse, so don’t do that, either. And before you go, “A-ha! I’ll use the garage,” know that’s where the boy’s bows are stored. Just sayin’.

So because I’m both West of Mars and a proud part of the Littsburgh community, Nick and Rachel and Katie were more than glad to feature me with a quick four-question interview about my story, “Undaunted,” in the Running Wild Anthology of Stories.

I know I’ve done other interviews and stuff about it already, but somehow, seeing myself up on Littsburgh, being an active part of the writerly community… it’s darn cool.

Check it out. If you haven’t picked up a copy for yourself, what are you waiting for?

Trevor Wolff did not blame others for his own issues, thankyouverymuch. Not that being ugly was an issue; issues, you could fix somehow. Ugly, you were just stuck with.

It’s free everywhere but Amazon (sigh — but feel free to report it!):
Smashwords
B&N
iTunes/iBooks/Apple
Amazon
Kobo
Overdrive
Scribd

For all that boy had been through, Trevor never stopped seeking the joy in life.

It’s free everywhere but Amazon (sigh):
Smashwords
B&N
iTunes/iBooks/Apple
Amazon
Kobo
Overdrive
Scribd

“We can make that sappy shit happen ourselves. But how often do you get to take on the bad guys and save the world?”

It’s free everywhere but Amazon (sigh):
Smashwords
B&N
iTunes/iBooks/Apple
Amazon
Kobo
Overdrive
Scribd

Things were about to get good; getting kicked out now would not be smart.

It’s free everywhere but Amazon (sigh):
Smashwords
B&N
iTunes/iBooks/Apple
Amazon
Kobo
Overdrive
Scribd

“A flag,” Trevor repeated. “A ShapeShifter flag. For our fans to pledge their love and shit to. You know… one nation, all for one, buy the inevitable shitty records and defend them to the death when people let themselves think mean words about us. A flag.”

It’s free everywhere but Amazon (sigh):
Smashwords
B&N
iTunes/iBooks/Apple
Amazon
Kobo
Overdrive
Scribd

I sat down last night to write a post. It’d be my usual Says the Editor type of post, pithy and fun and the sort of thing that one of you would submit to the Passive Guy so I could get the free promo and pack my schedule and work my tail off and redo my family room, now that the windows are taken care of.

But something funny happened.

It happened last week, actually. I sat down, put the laptop on my lap (go figure. They tend to work better from that position, or else I have weird arms), and … opened a Word file I hadn’t touched for almost one entire calendar year. I believe the date on the file was April 14, 2014, actually.

Yes, your editor friend found her way back to her fiction.

Oh, I’ve done this off and on over the past couple of years. I’ll start to work on something, start to write — I have a whole other project I’ve played with, off and on, for awhile now — and then get distracted or overwhelmed or just plain worn out. Staring at a screen all day doesn’t exactly make me want to stare at a screen all evening. Playing with other people’s words doesn’t exactly inspire me to turn off that editor part of my brain and do the sort of crappy first draft that’s necessary for my own writing process. Running the kids from activity to activity doesn’t exactly… You get the idea. It’s a full life I lead. It’s a good life and I’m happier than I’ve been in a long time.

But I’d be happier if I was writing, creating, letting characters run amok in my brain instead of it being full of the daily struggles of worrying about taking care of a house and two kids and myself and a business and all the other stresses of life. In that vein, I had it easier in the old incarnation of my life. And yes, the further away I get from the old incarnation, as I fix the problems I was left to discover, the more relieved I am that life took such a drastic turn.

I do miss writing. I miss my characters. And heck yeah, I miss those royalty statements. Even though I love editing with a passion I thought I’d never feel, it is an engagement with a book in a different way than when I’m engaging as the writer. The book I’m editing right now blows me away with its vision and creativity — as do they all, but this one in particular makes me shake my head in amazement at the quality of the ideas and the ability of the author to go to these places. There are many times a day when I sit back and envy and admire my authors and their storytelling abilities.

At some point, I’ll find that elusive balance between editing all day — the challenge of seeking out weaknesses and trying to build a better infrastructure, better word choice, better sentence structure, deeper characterization — and my own writing — that head rush of watching characters do what I wasn’t expecting, the lip-pursing moments when I fight for the right word or idea.

But for now, like so many of my clients, I struggle. And I remind them that I feel their pain even as I put them first. Not just because it pays my bills. But because it fulfills me in a way writing can’t.

Just as writing fulfills me in a way editing can’t.

It’s Read an E-Book Week! And, as I do every year, to celebrate, I’ve discounted all my books so you’ll be extra tempted to pick them up and join the Trevolution.

My catalog is getting bigger, deeper, even though I’m doing more editing than writing these days.

The best part of this new age of publishing, I think, is that your books can be on sale forever. They never go out of print. And weeks like this are perfect for reminding you of that.

Older, newer, it doesn’t matter. You can pick them all up at Smashwords and whoa, Nelly! Look at that discount!!

Yes, even my newest release, not even six months old yet. Broken, the short story you just gotta read.

So what are you waiting for? Go get some copies and read an e-book this week!