November 2024 Summary
Jennifer Brozek
Greeting
Hello everyone, Glitter Minion here.
It’s been a busy month for Jenn! If you follow her on social media, you know she was a Guest of Honour at Can*Con in Ottawa and the Spotlight Media Tie-in Author at the Written in the Northwest Bookfair. That’s already a lot, BUT, more importantly, Jenn has new KITTENS!
Have you met Mimir and Freya? They’re adorable! Head over to her social feeds to meet them!
Congratulate Jenn on her household additions, and on somehow still getting words done despite their cuteness, by treating her to a cup of coffee (as she is made of caffeine). Keep your eye out for many more incoming announcements!
What's up from Jennifer:
Reminder: This Googlegroup will go away as of 1 Feb 2025. (This is the penultimate newsletter from this place.)
After that reminder, please sign up for my MailerLite newsletter. The MailerLite version contains secrets. Secrets that only my MailerLite subscribers receive.
My 25th anthology, Shadowrun: Through the Decades is now released! I’m so happy with it. The first issue of Augment magazine is almost in the can. It will come out in the first quarter of 2025. I have some formatting to do as I wait on fact check to make sure nothing is messed up.
December is my birthday month! I usually celebrate my birthday for the whole week. As always, my preferred birthday gift is that you buy yourself or a friend one of my books and leave me a review. As I understand some people don’t like that, here is my Amazon wish list. Also, here is my kindle wishlist. Otherwise, you can buy me a cup of coffee on Ko-Fi. :D
Publishing Tip of the Month:
For my last publishing tip of 2024, I’d like to talk about two important and related things. The first is to Celebrate Your Wins and the second is The Importance of Community. By-and-large, writing is a solitary affair. It is also a long haul. Even if you are working at an accelerated pace (as with tie-in writing or self-publishing), it still takes months from conception to publication for a novel. Thus, it is important to celebrate each win and acknowledge it as part of the process.
· Created an outline? Celebrate.
· Finished a chapter or wrote every day for a week? Celebrate.
· Finished your rough draft and now the real work of writing (editing) begins? Celebrate.
All of it is part of the writing process. All of it counts. Even the thinking. Especially the thinking. And the research. And every other part of it.
One of the ways you can celebrate is to share your accomplishments with other writers. Writers are usually odd by our nature of living worlds inside our heads. We don’t look at the world the way the rest of the mainstream does. Thus, it is important to connect with other writers. People who get us. Who understand when we say something like, “my characters are fighting me” or “there’s something wrong with this ending but I can’t tell what it is.”
Writers often feed off of each other creatively. When I come back from a convention or a writing retreat after having spent time with other writers, bouncing ideas off each other, asking for advice in situations that writers have to deal with (contracts, editors, agents, calls for submissions, etc...), I feel invigorated and seen. I don’t feel so alone in the world. There are other people out there like me. Other authors celebrate my wins with me as I celebrate their wins with them.
The joy of companionship is important to many writers, and a good writing community can provide that. Find your people—online and off. Figure out who the other writers are who get you and what you write. Mentor junior (in their careers) writers as you are mentored by senior writers. Teaching cements concepts within. Sharing the love is always worth it.
2025 will be for answering questions from you—either from my social media followers or newsletter subscribers. Feel free to ask me anything.
Conventions/Classes
Conventions/Events
2025
Gen Con 2025
World Con in Seattle 2025
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/
No classes are scheduled for the rest of 2024 outside of conventions.
Bubble & Squeek
I have a new Valdemar story out in “Feuds,” edited by Mercedes Lackey! “Dueling Minstrels” was co-written with Marie Bilodeau, and it’s a lot of fun. I hope you’ll check it out.
Read about kittens here! With pictures!
Marie Bilodeau dropped by to Tell Me about her StoryBundle “Never Too Old to Save the World.” The bundle is unfortunately done, but the blog is still interesting, and the books are still available everywhere else.
On the blog: 10 Things that May or May Not Have Happened Around My Canada Trip.
ICYMI: Raven Oak dropped by to tell me about footnotes in fiction, and how they enhance the story.
I’m currently accepting donations for my Little Free Library.
Written by the Glitter Minion.
Edited and approved by Jennifer.
Thank you for reading.
Recent Releases
Shadowrun: Through the Decades
INTO A DARK, DISTANT FUTURE…
The year 2084 may be decades away for us, but in the Sixth World, it’s now. However, the decades in between are filled with wild events: The Awakening. SURGE. The Night of Rage. The assassination of the dragon elected president, Dunkelzahn.
Through the Decades takes you from now to then, with seven original stories by grizzled veterans and brash newcomers to the shadows. Representatives of the newly established Native American Nations battle political skullduggery and assassins in their quest to form a more perfect union. Prime shadowrunner Ryan Mercury returns in a tale of his early days, and a love found, lost, and found again while running the shadows for Dunkelzahn. An exiled changeling returns home to try and pick up the pieces of his shattered life after the Year of the Comet. And legendary shadowrunners Wolf and Raven confront a bold new world—including dealing with their own children—as they get up to their usual tricks in today’s Sixth World.
These and three more new stories reveal glimpses of the Sixth World’s storied past…and provide the foundation for the future of the murky world that is Shadowrun.
Shadowrun: Magic, Machines, and Mayhem
IT'S A WILD, WILD, WILD SIXTH WORLD…
There are a million stories in the dark, gritty world of Shadowrun, and this all-new volume brings sixteen of the best together for an in-depth look at this dark future of megacorps and the street warriors fighting against them.
Featuring established authors as well as brand-new voices, each tale is a vicious slice of life in the Sixth World. An injured street samurai whose call to DocWagon turns into the opportunity of a lifetime…if he can just live to collect it. A street-smart runner team confronts their most dangerous mission yet—hiding out in an isolated rural town. A corporate executive squares off against a ruthless vice-president in their own megacorp in a razor-sharp battle of wits and words. This collection also features stories about top runners such as Winterhawk, and a brand-new story featuring Wolf and Raven.
From the highest floors of a megacorp's global headquarters to the darkest streets of the dirtiest sprawl, every story here delivers that unique mix of magic, machines, and mayhem Shadowrun fans demand.
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.
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…