(<—– over there)

announcing the celebration of Homeschooling Today‘s 20th anniversary. I encourage you to click it, because they are giving away weekly prizes and several grand prizes, and you might win (among other really cool things) a copy of my book Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled or even a complete paperback set of the Seventh World Trilogy.

Homeschooling Today has been publishing quality magazines for a lot of years. They published my first-ever paid article, “First I Was Zero,” something like eight years ago, and they’ve been publishing features and columns from me ever since. It’s been a privilege to work with them.

In other news, I have a lot of news but probably won’t share any of it until I return from the Philippines, where I will be until the end of this month. In the meantime, go help HST celebrate!

Description:

When Celine meets Tomas, they are in a cavern on the moon where she has been languishing for thirty days after being banished by her evil uncle for throwing a scrub brush at his head. Tomas is a charming and eccentric Immortal, hanging out on the moon because he’s procrastinating his destiny—meeting, and defeating, Celine’s uncle.

A pair of magic rings send them back to earth, where Celine insists on returning home and is promptly thrown into the dungeon. Her uncle, Ignus Umbria, is up to no good, and his latest caper threatens to devour the whole countryside. He doesn’t want Celine getting in the way. More than that, he wants to force Tomas into a confrontation—and Tomas, who has fallen in love with Celine, cannot procrastinate any longer.

Lady Moon is a fast-paced, humourous adventure in a world populated by mad magicians, walking rosebushes, thieving scullery maids, and other improbable things. And of course, the most improbable—and magical—thing of all: true love.

Rachel Starr Thomson is also the author of Taerith, the Seventh World Trilogy (Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and Coming Day), and other novels and short stories.

Buy It for just $3.99 from my Amazon Bookstore or Smashwords page. Coming soon at other online retailers!

Description:

Hawk is a nobleman’s son in search of a giant to kill or a maiden to save. The trouble is, when he finds them, there are forty-some maidens—and they call their giant “the Angel.” Intrigued by conflicting rumours, Hawk ventures out to see if the strange man in the woods is angel or demon.

As a reward for his courage, he is swept into the heart of a patchwork family and all of its mysteries: the Giant, who guards the woods with vengeful power and tends his flock with infinite tenderness, the Pixie, whose only clue to her past is a piece of embroidery, Illyrica, whose scarred throat explains her silence and hints at a tragic history, and Nora—mistress of the Castle, of laundry, of the children, and increasingly of Hawk’s heart.

As the Giant trains him to protect and provide for the family, Hawk is transformed by the innocence and love of those around him—but the outside world cannot be kept at bay forever. The wealthy and influential Widow Brawnlyn suspects the Giant of hiding a great treasure. Driven by greed, she sets out to tear the family apart and bring the Giant to destruction any way she can. Appealing to Hawk’s pride and desire to be a hero, Widow Brawnlyn and her dangerously beautiful daughter Genevieve place him at a crossroads: caught between the terrible truths he discovers about the family’s past and the unalterable fact that he has come to love them, he must face his fears and overcome his flaws if he is to rescue the Angel in the woods.

Rachel Starr Thomson is also the author of Taerith, the Seventh World Trilogy (Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and Coming Day), and other novels and short stories.

Buy It for just $4.99 from my Amazon Bookstore or Smashwords page. Coming soon at other online retailers!

On top of that, the best way to build an indie publishing business (or so I gather) is to create content. The more the better.

SO. I cranked out a publication schedule for this year and got to work. I hired a cover designer (my friend Mercy Hope), sent my assistant instructions on how to format and upload, and started reading through old manuscripts to get them all spruced up for release. I was aiming to have all of my fiction and a lot of nonfiction out digitally by the end of June and everything eligible out in print by the end of July.

Today has been fun because Mercy and Carolyn (my assistant) have been going at the books like gangbusters and catapulting me officially way ahead of schedule.

The novels Angel in the Woods and Lady Moon are in the process of publishing right now. The short story “Butterflies Dancing” was released today, and more should trickle out over the next week or so.

The last novel to be released will actually be one of the earliest written: an adventure novel called Reap the Whirlwind which, together with Theodore Pharris Saves the Universe (already released) marks my first real foray into writing “real books.”

Once that’s done we’ll be putting up a lot of nonfiction, mostly short-form stuff, and making Letters to a Samuel Generation available as an e-book. By the time it’s all through, I should have 58 or 59 different digital products available, and 14 print books.

And THAT, ladies and gentlemen, will put Little Dozen Press on fairly firm footing.

Then I’m going to write again :).

(Cover art by Mercy Hope.)

Description:

She has always known there were Powers in the world that others could not see or hear. Some of them sang to her in her cradle. Others have hunted her since she was a child.

A cripple from birth, a foster child who grows up tormented and outcast, she knows that she does not belong in this world. When the young man who calls himself Lone Warrior appears, she loves him as she has never loved. And when he disappears, wandering into the wilds of a national park with no intention of ever coming back, she will follow him no matter what doors he steps through.

Even if it means defying all of the Powers in this world and every other.

“Butterflies Dancing” is a short story, originally published in While the Morning Stars Sing, an anthology of spiritually infused speculative fiction from ResAliens Press.

Rachel Starr Thomson is also the author of Taerith, the Seventh World Trilogy (Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and Coming Day), and other novels and short stories.

This writer’s life has been punctuated by a couple of events. My poetic short story Magdalene was released just in time for the end of Lent and the beginning of Easter, which is appropriate considering it’s told from the perspective of Mary Magdalene, who was once possessed by seven demons and later was the first person to see the resurrected Christ. And I’ve hired a new cover designer for Little Dozen Press: my friend Mercy Hope, whose talents you can see at work on the covers of Magdalene and the redesigned cover of Taerith.

Several new books and lots more shorts should be coming out over the summer, so look for those! If you’re a blogger or reviewer and would like to be put on a list to review the forthcoming novels Lady Moon and Angel in the Woods, just shoot me an e-mail.

Finally, an unexpected thing has happened: since putting much of my work on Kindle, someone is buying my paperback books in record numbers. If that’s you (or if you’ve bought one of my digital books–I’m not a print snob), THANK YOU. You’re making this writer’s dream come true.

Blessings,
Rachel

***

What else is in the newsletter?

Magdalene links to Kindle and Smashwords, new cover for Taerith, and a free article.

Subscribe to the newsletter on my website’s sidebar to stay in touch!

Luther Martin is a werewolf. Not many people know it–his estranged father, a Lutheran minister, does; so do the wife and daughter he managed to run off in a fit of rage. But to the rest of the world, he’s just an ordinary man–the quiet little man next door.

That is, until Matt Mikalatos, the self-appointed Neighbourhood Watch Man, stumbles across the secret. It takes Matt a little while to figure it out–after all, he’s being chased by a horde of zombies at the time, caught up in the fleeing crowd just when he was in the middle of busting mad scientist Dr. Culbetron and his android assistant, the Hibbs 3000–but once he does, he commits wholeheartedly to helping Luther find a way to escape his own monstrous nature.

The answer, of course, is in becoming a Christian. The problem is that Luther, a Lutheran, has already tried that.

The story that ensues is all at once an allegory, a comic-book romp, and a deep, sensitive exploration of true transformation. With monster hunters and vampires and mad scientists, psychologists and pastors and churches full of zombies, it’s laugh-out-loud funny even as it makes us look more closely at the reality of human nature, the hope of true transformation, and the non-answers we all too often settle for.

Once again, Matt Mikalatos–yes, the same one who features as the story’s narrator and one of the main characters–has given us a novel that uses humour and compassion to make us look in the mirror and face what may be painful revelations. The look is well worth taking.

(Yes, I know I forgot to post this yesterday … my apologies!)

This second book is, in my opinion, even better. I read it in a few hours and have already lent it out. Review coming tomorrow. Today, links:

• Matt’s website.
• Night of the Living Dead Christian on Amazon.

And the rest of the CSFF Tourers (Tourists? Tour Guides?):

Gillian Adams
Julie Bihn
Red Bissell
Thomas Clayton Booher
Thomas Fletcher Booher
Keanan Brand
Beckie Burnham
Morgan L. Busse
Theresa Dunlap
Amber French
Tori Greene
Nikole Hahn
Ryan Heart
Bruce Hennigan
Janeen Ippolito
Becky Jesse
Jason Joyner
Carol Keen
Leighton
Shannon McDermott
Rebecca LuElla Miller
Nissa
Joan Nienhuis
John W. Otte
Crista Richey
Sarah Sawyer
Chawna Schroeder
Rachel Starr Thomson
Steve Trower
Fred Warren
Shane Werlinger
Nicole White
Dave Wilson

A new cover designer: my dear friend Mercy Hope.

A new cover for Taerith:

A new post at Speculative Faith, who were kind enough to ask me to guest blog even though I’m not a regular there anymore:  http://www.speculativefaith.com/2012/03/23/not-a-waste-of-time

A new short story published on Smashwords and (as of tomorrowish) Kindle:

The link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/144555

The description:

She is named for Miriam, the sister of Moses—a prophetess and one of the greatest women in Jewish history. She lives in a time when her people are all but slaves, and she dreams of doing as Miriam did: of dancing deliverance and ushering in freedom. Of mattering.

But the dream is bitter, for she is more enslaved than any other she knows: she is Miriam of Magdala, possessed of seven devils.

This short story is a powerful, poetic interpretation of the life of Mary Magdalene and the Messiah she longs for.

Rachel Starr Thomson is also the author of Taerith, the Seventh World Trilogy (Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and Coming Day), and other novels and short stories.

This doesn’t have a title, but here you go:

Warm and generous, like the sun
Always giving, ever feeding
The hungers of a world still young
And green and grasping, ever needing–
Roots that seek and sink down deep
Branches stretched like fingers reaching
To soak up light and drag it down
To hungry hearts that never sleep
And souls forever starving, leeching
Life from air and light and ground.

Soak it up and drag it down
To feed this aching, yawning dark
This ravenous, this hungry ground
This open, empty, grasping heart
I take and take, and still I yearn
To know how fulness feels and see
The Giver smile, and hear him bless
The soil with warmth and peace, to learn
To rest in generosity
And full, at last know happiness.

But though he ever gives, yet still
Hungrier I am, it seems
With pits and depths and cores to fill
I am earth, I live, I need.