Writing has been tough for me for a couple of years. I’m one of those writers who had a horrible time putting pen to paper during the pandemic. Although NaNoWriMo 2022 helped, I didn’t really rebound from stuckness until I made a day-job career change earlier this year.
But I am now unstuck! And I’ve been replanning a writing career that’s been on hold much longer than I would have liked.
Rethinking Circle City Magic
Don’t worry, this isn’t an announcement that I’m killing this series! On the contrary, I’ve found a way to save it entirely from my bouncing between political anger and ennui, and that is to…basically pretend the United States didn’t go insane in 2016 and reality didn’t go even more insane in 2020. I know, ignore the bad years and pandemic won’t work in real life. But for fiction, I think it’ll definitely make the books more fun to write and to read!
That said, I don’t have plans to finish or release the next full-length novel until 2024. In the meantime, I’m considering an anthology.
Circle City Anthology Contents
Over the years, I’ve written a lot of short stories set in my Circle City Magic series. The publication rights to all of those stories are returning to me, and I almost have enough to create an anthology. I know a lot of people don’t enjoy reading an anthology with several different authors in it (I used to be like that myself). I honestly also want to have a print anthology to make going to author fairs a little simpler!
- C is for Carotid
- A Spirit of Camaraderie
- Gift of the Werewolf
- G is for Gentry
- A is for Ad Hominem (see also Character Assassination)
These stories are all published in one form or another, most of them in Rhonda Parrish’s Alphabet Anthologies. I would definitely like to add at least one original story/novella for the anthology. I have a lot of characters I love in this series, and there are lots of things I’d like to explore, so I’m kicking around some story ideas as I work on finishing Shroudling for the Storms in Amethir series.
I’ve gotta say, it feels really good to be back in the writing headspace!
