The anthologies usually retail at around $10, so if you read e-books, this is a great time to pick them up.  Antlered Bird is currently listed at $1.59–I’m not sure if that’s a glitch or not, and I’ve e-mailed the publisher to check, so I don’t know how long that extra bit of savings will be available.

Also a great time to pick up Sarah Avery’s Rugosa Coven books, and works by many many wonderful Drollerie Press authors.

Sale ends October 17.

For instance, have you ever heard Smetana’s “The Moldau”?  (Note, I said classical that I’m not overly familiar with, earlier…)  It starts out all gentle and floaty, then becomes this dramatic march.  When I listen to it, it becomes the story of the Queen of Winter, and her love for a man of the summer lands, and their battle, and the triumphant end.  “Bolero” is a chess game, fought between a couple and the cruel man who wants to steal the wife from her husband.  Roxette’s “Fading Like a Flower” is a parlor piece, set in the 17^th century…a love story between a highwayman and a young lady.  Maybe it’s because I started listening to the radio in earnest when I received my first radio in 1987, when the TV show Friday Night Videos was still on, showing the rock videos for the most popular songs of the week, but I always see images when I hear a song, I put together a story.

There have been, once in a great while, songs that spurred a story that I would have to write.  There was a song by INXS’s Michael Hutchence, that he sung for a movie soundtrack called “Rooms for the Memory,”  that inspired a short story.  I remember, since this song was on a tape, going over to my Brother Word Processor, hitting play, writing for the length of the song, pausing, rewinding, hitting play again, over and over until the story was done.  To be honest, I’m not sure if the song and the story that eventually came from it match each other very well, but this was how I managed to write…and finish…my first short story.

By the way, the next Drollerie Chat is on Sunday, September 27th, at 4:00 PM eastern.  We’ll be giving away copies of our September releases…so come and talk to us!

I will be coediting an anthology with Sarah Avery for Drollerie Press.  The details:

Drollerie Press is seeking entries for a pair of short anthologies.

• Trafficking in Magic deals with the sale and transport of magical goods and services, including magical beings, artifacts, fortune telling, communing with the dead, and other spells for hire, or the sale of magical energy itself
• Magicking in Traffic deals with magic in the flow of traffic–which could be street traffic, commerce, the flow of energies, or something else entirely–whether to aid, block, or manipulate the flow of traffic, or simply to play in it

Creative interpretations of the title(s) are also encouraged.

Both will be edited by Sarah Avery (author of Closing Arguments and Atlantis Cranks Need Not Apply) and David Sklar (author of Shadow of the Antlered Bird). The two e-books will be sold together as a pair. If sales warrant a print edition, it will be set back-to-back in a single book with 2 front covers.

Contributors are encouraged to send 1 short story or up to 3 poems. Query first if sending fiction over 12,000 words or poetry over 100 lines.

Submissions close January 5, 2010.  Send submissions for this anthology only to magic[at]drolleriepress[dot]com

And they’re giving an incentive to spread the word: If you pass word along about The Chocolatier’s Wife and let Deena know by posting a link here, then you’re entered to win a gift certificate from Fannie May Chocolates. As a Drollerie author, I’m not eligible to win, but I want to see Cindy’s book do well, and if one of my friends can get a treat in the process, so much the better. So please spread the word, and you may get something sweet for your efforts.

Subterranean Song (poem) by David Sklar

“Ghosts and Music intertwined: to dance their way out of hell, or fall from the gates of heaven.”

A story set to poetry, literally, and utterly enthralling. I loved the imagery Sklar speckles through his verses. I cackled delightfully over his version of -er-hell. Artists, Musicians and Writers, of course, should get a kick out of this.

To whet your appetite, I give you my favorite lines:

“‘Cause death’s not so bad; I know people who’ve done it/and hunger and cold you get used to in time/but wondering what has become of someone/fills the twilight with shadows and wind.’”

His bio mentions he’s written more poems, I do believe I will have to go find them.

You can read the review in its entirety here.

 Enjoy!

Hello, David Sklar’s readers! This is E. G. Diehl (a DP stealth author more commonly known as DokodemoElisa), and I jumped on the blog-tour bandwagon just in time to catch the topic on fathers. I must say, this is a topic close to my heart, and it also happens to be a topic close to my budding authorial career. So, without further ado, it’s story time!

I started working for the family business (a ServiceMaster franchise) as soon as it was legal for me to do so. I was very enthusiastic about the idea of making my own money, but I was also far too young to be spotted doing janitorial work or cleaning carpets and floors alone. Thus, from the get-go, I spent all of my time in my first job either working with my dad or my uncle.

It’s no small wonder I didn’t drive those poor men mad. To keep my mind busy while I dusted and emptied trash cans, I whistled, sang snippets of songs I didn’t know very well (usually Disney), and talked incessantly. I had a grand time, really, and some of my fondest teen memories are of the times I spent in the car between jobs with my dad. We often talked about fantasy novels I’d borrowed from him, or barring that we entertained one another by bickering (most often in a good-natured best friends sort of way. Dad and I can be a bit like siblings, and we’re remarkably similar, stubborn people). Our two primary modes of conversation merged about a decade ago when I started writing novel-length fantasy fiction. When I was too young to know better, I wrote a winding, cliffhanger-riddled, melodrama-prone thirteen novel series that Dad couldn’t have gotten me to not-talk-about if he’d taped my mouth shut.

So, not long after I started weaving the worlds that were growing in my school notebooks to my dad in the car between floor jobs in grocery store bank branches, my dad started telling me I should publish. The argument, which repeated itself until I was in my mid-twenties, ran something along the following lines: Dad would say that I should publish. Worse stories had been published and sold reasonably well, and there was no reason that I shouldn’t be making the money they were making. I, in turn, would fervently object to the very idea on the grounds that the series was a work in progress, needed more editing work than I could imagine devoting to it in a single lifetime, and had been written by an inexperienced kid with delusions of grandeur (that last bit sprung up in varying degrees, and far more often in the later phases of this conversation series). I was, perhaps, excessively worried about finding myself humiliated by my own work in the unlikely event that somebody actually did find it worth publishing.

Dad, through sheer persistence, ultimately won the argument, but in my defense, by the time he won, he had managed to get Mom on his side. I was outnumbered. Also in my defense, the two books that are scheduled for Drollerie Press e-book release this summer have nothing at all to do with the series I wrote in high school. Nor do they have anything to do with the five other books I wrote between that series and this. Still, I’ll admit I never would have taken the time to submit anything to anyone if it weren’t for my parents’ unwavering drive to convince me it should be done. Incidentally, Mom and Dad also kindly loaned me a room in their house for eight months between my three-year sojourn in Gunma, Japan and the start of my grad-school studies at the University of Hawaii, during which time I finished the last 60,000 words of the second book and put forth an uncomfortably fervent effort to find a publishing home for the first.

Now, instead of presenting my dad with the hundred and ten reasons I don’t want to publish, the conversations we have on the phone often go as follows: “Hey, Elisa, did they release your book yet?” “No, Dad. Believe me, I would have called you if that had happened.” “I thought you said that was going to happen this summer. I checked that website. I don’t see any news about your book.” “It’s not there, Dad. Believe me, I’d have called you if that had happened.” “Are you sure they’re working on it?” “Yes, I’m sure. Everyone’s very busy. It’s a really small company, and everyone has a lot on their plates. It’ll happen. I’ll call you as soon as I know” and so forth. I would swear he’s more eager and impatient about this than I’ll ever be. Conceivably he’s earned the right. He’s been the wind blowing in my (reluctant) publish-these-things sails since years before I’d conceived of the hero character who shares his middle name.

No, the middle name they share isn’t “Stubborn” or “Unrelenting.” It’s a little more mundane than that, but you’ll have to wait until the silly things have actually been published to find out what it is. Until then, I’m not telling!

Needles & Bones is now available in the Drollerie Press bookshop (buy page: http://drolleriepress.com/bookshop/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=11&products_id=85 description page: http://drolleriepress.com/needles-bones/)

It will be available at mobipocket.com soon, and at Fictionwise and Amazon as soon as they process it.. . .

Look for the full post to come out on June 21. 

Vivian’s Story

Drollerie Authors Blog Tour Post, May 21^{st, 2009Vivian Belgrave is the mother of Clara in my story “Dead Woman Walking.” She’s a handful. You can read more about her in the “Bump in the Night” anthology that just came out from Drollerie Press.There are no mothers of any worth in the old tales.}

I am a woman of strength, of stature – the Belgrave estate has been in my name for the last ten years and I have managed it, without the aid of a man. I have managed my life. I am present. I am powerful.

Yet even as I feel this child growing in my womb, I see it in their stares when I wander through the market, hear it in their concerned words while on my way to handle the trading of the grain. You need a man, their stares seem to say. You are weakened by your burden, their subtext whispers.

Lessened. Diminished.

I am far from diminished. Do they not know the skill I possess with the Craft? Have they not seen how my property outgrows even the wretched Fowlers’ every year? Have they not seen the abundance of my estate? Even as my pregnancy quickens, I feel the Craft growing ever nimble in my hands. One day, I will be more than a match for Fowler with his handy spells and tidy potions. One day, he will not cast his shadow over me, with false proposals of marriage and degrading propositions.One day, I will have everything he took from me.

Because I am powerful.