June 2024 Summary
Jennifer Brozek
Hello everyone, Glitter Minion here. It was an eventful month for Jenn, especially with Origins Game Fair, where she was on panels and had a table in the Authors Alcove. A fun time was had, but unfortunately COVID followed Jenn and husband Jeff home. Rest and Paxlovid are here to save the day!
Despite that, there’s still a lot to celebrate! Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run is now available! Curious to find out what happens to the characters following Shadowrun: Auditions? (Trust me, you’ll want to find out!) Then pick it up and enjoy—it’s a perfect summer read with, um, only some death.
Also, super cool realization for Jenn this month: With five short stories sold so far this year, she’s sold well over a hundred stories! That makes for a lot of stories to enjoy and collect!
As always, show your love to Jenn and all that she does by buying her a coffee and picking up the latest anthologies, Shadowrun books, or dig into some of her great re-releases!
What's up from Jennifer:
Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run has been released! I hope you all enjoy it.
It is convention season. Next up is Gen*Con! If you go to Gen*Con, I have three workshops this year: The Art of the Pitch, Project Management for Creatives, and Seven Steps to Better Self-editing. These workshops do sell out. You can find my schedule online. The Gen*Con Writer’s Symposium is so worth going to.
ALSO, for you authors out there, I will have a new ongoing open call! Keep an eye on this newsletter or my socials (BlueSky/Facebook). I think y’all are going to be excited about this one.
Website news: I have seen the website work-in-progress and it is amazing. Caro is so talented. The new website might be ready as soon as July 8, but we will see. After that I will be setting up my mailer lite group and starting the process of shifting this newsletter over to there by the end of the year..
Publishing Tip of the Month:
In a previous monthly summary, I mentioned “Productive Procrastination” and have received a couple of questions about it. Thus, that will be my publishing topic for the month. Productive Procrastination is a technique I use when I am inflicted with the “don’t wannas.” This is an insidious malady that most authors (and editors) get from time to time. What is an author to do when they look at their WIP and just don’t wanna? Especially on a deadline?
The answer is to pivot.
Different than having 2-3 projects going at one time that one can switch to in times of need, Productive Procrastination is all about cleaning up a myriad of small tasks that always bunch up: email, blog posts, interviews, logging freelance expenses, plotting PR campaigns, making decisions about calls for submission and/or forthcoming events, submitting stories that don’t have a home, submitting published works to awards, and on and on. The list is never-ending.
The benefit to Productive Procrastination is multifold. You get lingering items off your plate. You clear your mind for writing. You get your name/work out there again. You keep up with the career tasks that are necessary. And, often, you shake off the “don’t wannas” with each victory, each task accomplished.
If you don’t, at least you got a number of lingering tasks off your “To Do” list. That, in and of itself, is a victory. You can also write tomorrow with a calm mind and a clean slate.
Conventions/Classes
Conventions/Events
2024
Gen Con (August) - Writers Symposium, Workshops, Panels
Can-Con (November) - Editor GoH
Written in the Northwest Bookfair with Seanan McGuire (November)
Classes
Jennifer and the Cat Rambo Academy for Wayward Writer Classes.
You can find all the information from this one link. Spots and scholarships are available.
http://www.kittywumpus.net/blog/faculty-jennifer-brozek/
Bubble & Squeek
Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run is available! Get your copy today!
Get some more time with the Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run characters by reading the prequel stories in Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run Auditions.
The Cthulhu FhCon: Short Stories Starring Cthulhu, Fans & Frenzy Kickstarter was funded! Keep an eye out for more updates! It’ll include my story on what happens when a LARP event gets a little too real…
New story alert! Coming in March 25, 2025, I’ll have a story (co-written with Samatha Chalker, Jack’s daughter) in Permutations: A Well World Anthology, edited by David Boop.
Tell Me: Trendane Sparks chats about the value of human performance in book narration.
Gen Con registration is open! Search for Jennifer Brozek to sign up for my panels and workshops.
Shout out: Not only is Trendane a magnificent person and a talented voice actor...one of my Shadowrun novels is waiting to be produced by him. If you can help out, that would be kind.
Recent Releases
WHEN HOME BECOMES A PRISON...
Fixer BlotterBabe has been around longer than most people realize. Long enough to have built herself a secure home in a protected park reserve. She greased all the right wheels, paid off all the right people, forged all the correct documents, hid all the tracks of her passing, created the perfect security systems inside and out. She planned for every contingency—except one.
The need to escape from her own home.
After realizing her sanctuary has been discovered, BlotterBabe brought just the right people to the right place to help her flee from her gilded cage with everything she holds dear—but she is too late. Now she has to escape the underground complex she spent decades building.
The enemies are inside the perimeter. They have control of the security systems. Spinrad Global will stop at nothing to keep her a prisoner in her gilded cage.
BlotterBabe and her friends must risk everything for her freedom—including their lives.
99 Fleeting Fantasies Anthology
EVEN A DREAM CAN BE CAUGHT IN PROSE…
There’s nothing better than a moment of whimsy and a dash of the fantastical to get the mind wandering. 99 Fleeting Fantasies is a flash fiction anthology readers can tiptoe through for a bit of wonder or while away an afternoon as they meander from old-time tales to far-flung fables to serious snippets of legend and lore that come from all over the world, including Australia, Canada, England, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Malaysia, Mexico, Nigeria, and the United States. Featuring stories from the imaginative minds of Cat Rambo, Charles Stross, Crystal Frasier, Jody Lynn Nye, Jonathan Maberry, Premee Mohamed, Seanan McGuire, Wole Talabi, and many more!
FOUR SECRET AUDITIONS…
Fixer BlotterBabe must have exactly the right actors for a production that requires very specialized talent. The actors must not only be skilled, they need to have the right attitude and an ability to adapt to extraordinary circumstances.
A Kiss to Die For: Kintsugi and Sartorial choose love over duty, but their respective families will do everything in their considerable power to stop them from being together.
See How She Runs: Terrapin witnesses a murder and is handed a package destined for some important and lethal people. Now she is running for her life.
Unrepairable: Landon and Liana love vexing megacorps for fun and profit with their Matrix show. Unfortunately, the megacorps always play dirty, and will do whatever’s required to shut them down for good.
The Kilimanjaro Run: Charlotte, Neema, and Elijah embark on an unexpected adventure that turns into a nightmare when they discover nothing is what it seems. They are left with no choice at all when choosing between the abhorrent and the right thing to do.
FOR THE MOST DANGEROUS RUN OF ALL…
Having auditioned thousands, BlotterBabe is out of time. It’s come down to these few teenagers. Either they will save the day or lose it all…
Written by the Glitter Minion.
Edited and approved by Jennifer.
Thank you for reading.