Quills Conference 2023 comes to a close

 This Quills Conference was memorable for a couple of reasons. One, I'm no longer part of the executive committee. Every year or two, we cycle in a new President Elect, the old President Elect becomes President, and the President becomes Past President. I've been the Past President for two years, so I am now out to pasture for a bit before finding where I want to land in the local writing community. I gave a nice (and short) speech on focus, and that you find more of what you look for. So go looking for success, and do things successful authors do, and hang out with successful people.

Also memorable was winning two first place awards on the writing contests.

The first win was for my unpublished short story "Scrappers of the Great Starship" about a guy who makes a meager living scrounging scrap from an old starship that crashed generations earlier.

The second was a tie for first place for the Gold Quill in the Collections catergory of published works with The Best of the Planetary Anthology Series which can be found on Amazon. I've updated the cover to include the emblem for the award as shown here. I couldn't have done this one without the help of twenty-two awesome authors and several editors from the original series.

You can click the picture to go to Amazon to see it there. It comes in ebook and paperback. It's also on Kobo, Apple, and Nook. This was my first venture into wide ebook distribution with self-publishing, and it worked out pretty well.

A bit of construction

 I'm changing email list providers, so if you can't find my mailing list signup at the top of the page, give it a day or two. I'll have it set up and ready to go with new giveaways in no time.

Update: It's all better now. Everything's switched to MailerLite.

The Best of the Planetary Anthology Series

 I've got a new anthology coming out. The Planetary Anthology Series of eleven books has gone out of print, so I contacted the publisher to get their blessing to put together a single book pulling two stories from each volume. This is the result.

The official release date if February 27, 2023. You might notice on the date of this post that this is still almost a week away, but here's a secret. I released it a few days early. :)

This book contains 22 stories, selected as the best available, to go into this remastered, re-edited volume. Here's the lineup:

Sol

• Sundown And Out (David Hallquist)
• Let The Dead Bury Their Dead (Caroline Furlong)

Mercury

• The Mirror of Circe (John C. Wright)
• The Element of Transformation (L. Jagi Lamplighter)

Venus

• The Fox’s Fire (Danielle Ackley-McPhail)
• The Rocket Raising (Frederik Gero Heimbach)

Earth

• We'll Always Have Earth (Bokerah Brumley)
• Extinction Point (Richard Paolinelli)

Luna

• Luna Sea (Jody Lynn Nye)
• Samaritan (Karl K. Gallagher)

Mars

• Human, Martian—One, Two, Three (Kevin J. Anderson)
• The Clockwork King of Mars (C.T. Phipps)

Jupiter

• Sunward (Jeb Kinnison)
• Freeze (Jane Lebak)

Saturn

• The Clockwork Copper and the Priestess of Mystery (J.M. Anjewierden)
• Doing My Job (Dana Bell)

Uranus

• Room to Breathe (Marina Fontaine)
• Muddification (Clint Hale)

Neptune

• The Dogfisherman (Edward Ahern)
• The Lost Wind (David Breitenbeck)

Pluto

• The Heart of Pluto (Christine Chase)
• A Brush (J.D. Arguelles)