What's in a Week - Vol. 56

August wanes and the pale amber light of late summer gleams upon the curling leaves of the sycamores, already tinged with bronze. The nights are suddenly cooler, and I feel like I can exhale again...

Anthology Update

Our limited-time Indiegogo campaign expired, and while we did not meet our funding goal there, we will be disbursed the donations we did receive, and will fulfill all the reward tiers by February 2025 for release for Of Shadows, Stars, and Sabers (official book page here). Thank you to those who contributed!

We're still crowdfunding for the remaining costs but will switch back to Ko-fi.

Support Via Ko-fi:

https://ko-fi.com/post/Publishing-Imprint-News-and-Opportunity-H2H2XH2SN

This Ko-fi campaign is an ongoing campaign until our goal is met. Money donated goes directly to paying our authors and for expenses in the making of the book. It also ensures we can make more anthologies! We have two more anthologies planned for 2025, which are themed.

Publishing News This Monday!

Stars and Sabers Publishing ramped into high gear this past week. We have begun our acquisitions for single author works. On Monday, we will have an announcement related to this! I'll be sending a separate newsletter about it.

For the moment, I will tell you that we have been reading manuscripts and making decisions. We've also begun working with literary agents, which opens up a new phase for us. More to come!

We have a publishing slate forming for 2025, and that is a very satisfying thing and tremendously exciting as we ramp up.

It's all happening!

Anthology Author Features This Week

This week on our Stars and Sabers News, we've got two anthology author features! Both are award-winning cross-genre writers. Their wonderful stories will be in Of Shadows, Stars, and Sabers and we are delighted and proud to have them on board.

Read about Ai Jiang:

Anthology Contributor: Ai Jiang – Stars and Sabers

Today, we’re honored to showcase our anthology contributor Ai Jiang (江艾). Ai Jiang (江艾) is a Chinese-Canadian author and winner of the Bram Stoker®, Nebula, and

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Read about Paul Cornell:

Anthology Contributor: Paul Cornell – Stars and Sabers

We are delighted beyond time and space to showcase New York Times bestselling author and Doctor Who writer Paul Cornell as a contributor to our cross-genre a

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Interview with Fellow Appalachian Author Andrew K. Clark

Watch my interview with fellow Southern Appalachian writer Andrew K. Clark, in which we talk about his new book, Where Dark Things Grow, and what it was like to grow up in the region, how our heritages and histories shaped our fiction, and more!

On Deck

New! I'm going to feature games occasionally. This week I was delighted, after decades, to return to Magic the Gathering in the form of Bloomburrow!

Now, I'm a sucker for magical animal stories, so when I saw this deck become available, naturally I squealed at such a high octave that I think I shattered a small window somewhere. Perhaps. Anyway, look at this delightful trailer! I'm ready to get out my protective card sleeves and geek out.

On the Screen

I finally watched Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and absolutely LOVED IT. This movie serves as a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, set in George Miller's Mad Max universe of post-apocalyptic Australia. We return to the Wasteland, a brutal and unforgiving landscape, 45 years after the societal collapse, and this time we see the origin story for Fury Road character Imperator Furiosa, who in that film was spectacularly portrayed by Charlize Theron. In Furiosa the film, the character is shown from girlhood onward, and played alternately by Alyla Browne and then chiefly by Anya Taylor-Joy. Both were terrific in the role as Furiosa at these younger stages of her life. Furiosa is gorgeously filmed at the micro and macro levels, and the set pieces are stunning.

This movie affected me more deeply than I expected it would, and I found it masterful in its exploration of humanity and the mythos that George Miller has built in these Wasteland stories. There is a true sense of myth, allegory, and legend weaving among them all, and that has always been the case, but it is maybe most evocative in Furiosa. No matter how brutal the setting, the power of story endures.

On the Page

I'm in ARC heaven! That's advance review copy heaven. I've just finished one ARC and now I'm reading two more, so I can provide review blurbs. I've also been catching up on some comic books, like the recent run for Labyrinth.

And I decided to subscribe to a popular U.S. book box to see what it's like, both as a reader and as a publisher for...reasons...

Writing Update

I've been wearing the Editor-in-Chief hat this past week, as well as the Back-to-School Mom hat. It's been busy, and not conducive to much writing.

I did put some words down on a noir story I've been toying with from time to time, and having fun with that. This coming week, I'll be writing on my sequel The Secret of the Sapphire Sentinel.

The Week Ahead

As I mentioned earlier, I'll make an announcement tomorrow for publishing news, and then it's back to reading and editing submitted short stories for the first anthology as the August 31 deadline approaches for those. I also will attend an online Sketch Club on Saturday with artist Sam Marshall, who is a delight. I've been making art for fun lately (you can see some of those sketches on my TikTok), but will be switching gears to make art prints for sale soon.

Wishing you all a lovely final week of August and I'll pop by again soon.

Write on!
Jendia