Hello everyone, Glitter Minion here. What an amazing month to start here, with Jenn’s successful Kickstarter! Two reward tiers were unlocked, and now we all get to enjoy this unique story between pen pals. I can’t wait to get my rewards!
Even if the giant Kickstarter push has just finished, and Jenn is officially identifying as tired, she’s already jumped right back into her creative works, including edits for the sequel to her YA novel Shadowrun: Auditions (available now)! The sequel, Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run will be released on July 1st.
Help this hardworking writer out by buying her a coffee (the words will come faster)! And don’t forget to show your support, always, by picking up the latest anthologies, Shadowrun books, or dig into some of her great re-releases.
What's up from Jennifer:
“Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980” ended up funding at $8K, with coloring book pages, bookmarks, and digital wallpaper unlocked. Right now, my artist, Elizabeth Guizzetti, is hard at work designing the bookmark and coloring the digital wallpaper I chose. Also, me and my team are going through all the questions that are needed for the Backerkit survey. Hopefully, that will be out in early May. I would like to be mailing the first letter by mid-June, but that really depends on when we get all the surveys returned.
In the meantime, I’ll be working on final edits to Shadowrun: The Mosaic Run and managing edits for two other Shadowrun anthologies. I’ve got another project I’m talking to my agent about, and now that it is springtime, there are some household projects that must be done. Plus, there’s a website overhaul on the docket…
However, the big thing in May is Level Up: The Business of Writing from Can-Con. I will be teaching one of the workshops on May 16th but there will be six awesome workshop leaders teaching something new and different every Tuesday and Thursday for 3 weeks. This is not one to miss.
Publishing Tip of the Month:
This month’s editing tip is about the value of Time and Distance away from your work-in-progress (WIP) AKA Write Something Else. I don’t know about you, but when I go back and read something I’ve written months (or years) ago, I can see the flaws within the prose and the story itself, so much clearer. Usually, beyond time passing, I’ve thrown myself into multiple new projects and I’m not as familiar with that older work. I’ve forgotten some of the story and many of the details. What I’m left with is only what’s on the page. That, my friends, is one of the most valuable things an author can have.
It’s no secret that I am always telling my mentees that it doesn’t matter what you meant to write. All that matters is what’s been actually written. Your readers are not in your head. All they have are the words on the page and the words that came before and will come after. Once you finish one WIP and have done one edit pass on it, if you have time, you should put it away for 1-3 months and write something else or several other things. Allow your mind to rest away from that previous work and to fall in love with the next thing. Once you have finished the next thing(s) then you can go back to the first WIP and look at it again with fresh eyes.
Conventions/Classes
Conventions/Events
2024
Crypticon (May 3-4) - At the HWA Seattle Chapter table and panels
Signing at Totem Lake Barnes and Noble (May 11)
Origins Game Fair (June) - Authors Alcove, Panels
Gen Con (August) - Writers Symposium, Workshops
Can-Con (November) - Editor GoH
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: Auditions is live! I’m so happy with this book! Shadowrun: Auditions
“Dear Penpal, Belgium 1980” is done and funded!
Tell Me: Emily Bell
A Most Stellar Experience, aka my eclipse adventure
On Conventions and Car Crashes (I won’t bury the lead: everyone is fine)
Shout out: Black Gate Magazine blog post by S.M. Carrière: Don’t Quit
Recent Releases
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…
The Reinvented Detective Anthology
The evolution of crime, punishment, and justice in the future.
What happens when time and technology change the definition of crime and punishment? Science fiction often focuses on future technology without considering the society housing it. Social norms may change as tech changes — or not. What will criminals, investigators, judges, and juries look like in a complicated future of clones, uploaded intelligences, artificial brains, or body augmentation? What stories emerge when we acknowledge the possibilities of new laws, new police methods, and the birth of sentient Artificial Intelligence, as well as all the ways they can clash or combine?
Edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek.
The Many Deaths of Jennifer Brozek
An author can live a thousand lives through her work.
She can die a thousand deaths, too.
From 2014 to 2015, Jennifer Brozek wrote an “Author Story Card” for every convention she went to. On one side would be a piece of flash fiction: The Many Deaths of Jennifer Brozek: [Convention Name Year]. On the other side was a list of her currently available books and a QR code on where to find them. They were free for the taking and were a huge hit.
(A fact that still occasionally disturbs the author.)
With this edition, all of the convention story cards have been gathered up into a single collection, for the first time in ebook format. It debuted in the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium limited-edition ebook bundle to benefit Symposium writers and programs. Now it is available for you to enjoy.
Also included is Jennifer Brozek’s chapbook, Mastication. A chapbook created for Gen Con 2009 in an act born from desperation and a lack of experience because none of her books arrived in time to be sold at the convention.
Never Let Me Omnibus, the Melissa Allen trilogy (re-release)
Never Let Me Sleep. What would you do if you discovered that everyone, in your house, on your street and in your town was dead? Then you discovered you weren’t alone–and whatever was out there was hunting you? Melissa Allen knows. With only a voice on the phone to help her, Melissa must find out what happened, stop it from happening again, and do it before the monsters get her. And that’s just the beginning of her story. Finalist for the Bram Stoker award. This special edition features all three books in Jennifer Brozek’s Melissa Allen series: Never Let Me Sleep, Never Let Me Leave, Never Let Me Die as well as the bonus short story, “Never Let Me Feel.”
Written by the Glitter Minion.
Edited and approved by Jennifer.
Thank you for reading.