The story is NOT about Jane, but it is set in her Trueniverse. In fact, it stars the  ladies of Triptych whom you met in book three: Moo, Cappie, and Shar. You get to see them in action, working on a case.

I really hope you enjoy reading more about these ladies! Let me know what you think.

I hope all of you are doing well. It’s been crazy busy here at Casa Peeler, and I’m only halfway through the insanity. Last week we had our MFA residency, which is always an enormous amount of fun, if a lot of work. But to make it even better, we had as guest speakers my good friends Juliet Blackwell, Sophie Littlefield, and Rachael Herron. They stayed with me, and it was so good to see them. Besides being awesome house guests, they were also inspiring, insightful speakers who spoke on two very difficult, and different, subjects: revisions and gender in publishing.

I hated to see them go, but I’ve not got too much time to mourn, as I’m off for Boston and Arisia 2012 in a few hours! I’m very excited to be in Boston again after a few years, as I still have loads of friends there (I did my undergrad at Boston University).

So without further ado (and because I gotta get to steppin’), here’s my Arisia schedule:

Saturday the 14th

11:30 AM

Autograph—Hunt & Peeler — 1hr 15min — Autograph Space (1E)

Autograph session with Walter Hunt and Nicole Peeler.

Walter Hunt, Nicole Peeler

Sunday the 15th

10:00 AM

Humor in Writing — 1hr 15min — Otis (2)

As the saying goes, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” Why is writing humor so difficult? How much is too much or too little? How are different styles of humor conveyed through the writing?

Greg R. Fishbone, Esther Friesner, Toni L.P. Kelner, Barry B. Longyear (m), Nicole Peeler

5:30 PM

Creating and Maintaining Your Public Persona — 1hr 15min — Revere (2)

You’re a known writer with a few published credits, and you’re starting to get some recognition. How much of what you say elsewhere (on Facebook, in web forums, or on your blog) becomes part of your image? And how can you shape that image in the best possible light?

Randee Dawn, Genevieve Iseult Eldredge (m), Maddy Myers, Nicole Peeler, KT Pinto

7:00 PM

Reading:D’Entremont, Kingsgrave-Ernstein& Peeler — 1hr 15min — Quincy (2)

Authors Michele D’Entremont, Catt Kingsgrave-Ernstein, and Nicole Peeler read selections from their works.

Michelle d’Entremont, Catt Kingsgrave-Ernstein, Nicole Peeler

It’ll be great to be back in Boston, and I’d love to see some of you at the panels. The conference is quite reasonable for day passes, and most of my stuff is Sunday, so that’s rather handy. Here’s a link to day pass information.

Well, that’s me for the next week! I’ve also going to be doing quite a bit of work for next semester while I’m at the hotel, but I know I’ll be ready. I always am, by hook or by crook. So see you next week, or at Arisia!

For those who follow me on Twitter, especially, you probably know I’m sitting on enough eggs that when stuff starts hatching, it’s going to be like an ejector seat.

And I was hoping that this blog post would be able to reveal some of those things, but I’ve been muzzled again.

I can tell you that there’s something very fun coming your way mid-January that’s not something Jane, but it is something from her Trueniverse.  And that, eventually,  it will be  TWO cool things, and it’s literally torture not to be able to tell y’all about it. But soon!

Denise Townsend, author of gorgeously sexy selkie erotic romance, is also just about to be born, and I’ll let you know as soon as she’s ready.

So, in the meantime, I’m going to leave you with a reminder of last week’s Erotic Cozy Title Contest, being judged by Juliet Blackwell. It’s still going strong, but even if you don’t want to enter, be sure to read the comments. They’re hilarious.

I will also leave you with a new Thing I Like Very Very Much. So much so, in fact, that I’ve been listening to it slightly obsessively since I downloaded it.

It’s Of Monsters and Men’s debut single, “Little Talks.” They’re an Icelandic band, which only makes them even more adorable in my eyes. I adore this song and can’t wait for an album!

I will try to take pictures, and hopefully I’ll be inspired by my new, upgraded iPhone. But no matter what, have an awesomely fun Halloween. And if you get bored while I’m gone, I thought the movie 50/50 was very entertaining. Here’s the trailer:

See you soon!

Hello fellow Selkie lovers,

I am not only a fellow fan, but I count Dr. P. as one of my dear friends. She has invited me to say a few words on the occasion of my debut book recently being published, for which I thank her.

A brief introduction and explanation: I’m currently an English Literature Ph.D. candidate at Umass-Amherst, have just published my first book of poems (yes, poems), but am a lover of all things science fiction and fantasy and even have the bare bones of a SF novel I some day hope to finish. And what I want to share with you is a brief story of a little boy fascinated by the fantastical and the futuristic became a poet—and the debt both he and poetry owe to the genre of speculative fiction, to writing that imagines beyond the present and the possible.

In my earliest writing memories, I am fabulist. I write about a talking proto-zebra who leaves the savannah on an epic journey into the big city to acquire black stripes; I write about a crash-landed alien who needs orange juice to fix and power his spaceship; I write about magical snow that slowly swirled to life (an six-year old’s homage to Frosty!). This wasn’t just what I wanted to write. This is what I believed writing was. The fables and fantasies and talking animals and secret bridges and little boys whose touch could turn anything to chocolate—these were not only my diet, they were having a kind of genetic effect on my imagination. I was being engineered on a molecular level as a specific kind of dreamer.  (If I were to trace things back as far as memory allows, I would find myself in a black movie theater in 1977…I am four years old…I am about to fall in love…I am about to watch Star Wars.)

Fast-forward to high school. I am trying my hand at Star Trek novel in which Enterprise-B is crewed by a chaotic assemblage of screw-ups, neurotics, and dreamers.  Sacrilege, I know.  But I wasn’t a “popular kid,” was decidedly not athletic and chubby and so was using the novel to help myself feel empowered—look at this world I’m creating, the power I wield! At the same time, a friend of mine starts to write poems in math class. As a hard-core reader and future English major, this blows my little rule-following mind. It is the most daring act of anti-math terrorism I can imagine. I start to write poetry, too. The poems don’t make much sense, as I recall. They were mainly about sounds and playing with white space on the page. Perhaps that’s all I could manage while I listened to the teacher drone on about quadratic equations. Or maybe, just maybe, I was feeling my ways along the edges of language because that’s all I knew of poetry.

I see this as a kind of nexus, where things merged and were clarified for me–where I went from a child copying the stories he loved to a young adult learning the power of the word—where I began to see language as not just the means to tell a story but as a way to celebrate the imagination, to draw from fantasy a sense that I was special.

As I type these recollections, I see how science fiction and fantasy were teaching me to believe in their power, to believe in my power, to believe that one could create anything one could imagine just with the right words ordered in the right way.  (I can’t help but think of Coleridge’s belief that poetry is “the best words in their best order.” Of course, I am also reminded of Fox Mulder: “I want to believe.” I need both of these references for my brain to work.)

As I flip through the pages of my book of poems, I see in those pages that love of the fantastical still at work, only now it’s not talking animals or aliens. It’s the love of speaking in another voice, (what the poem does so well)—like the poem in in which I am in drag as Rosaline from Romeo & Juliet. There might not be spaceships, but there’s a Winged Muse who flies high over the Azure Coast and drops words into an unknowing human being below. There might not be magic snow but there’s Icarus who flies to the Moon to escape a judgmental daddy Daedalus. Another about witches and a “ghost boy.” And of course poems where the fantasy lies embedded in the form—a poem using Google to create a collage, another built solely out of the deathbed words of the famous, even one poem addressed to a tuxedo.

I am so grateful to have taken this tour of the fantastical and of the imagination in my life and my poetry. It helps begin to pay a debt to my childhood loves that I now see are the very blood and being of my adult voice.

Learn more and read sample poems.

On Amazon: Love-In-Idleness by Christopher Hennessy

First, you can read why I’m so pissed off at the Write Agenda, and what we’re doing about it over at the League, here.

Then you can see the League of Reluctant Adults throw down its gauntlet of snark, here.

Mama likes.

And don’t forget there’s still a week to enter to win TWO mass market paperbacks of your choice! Check out Karen Duvall’s guest post below for more details.

I’m only there for two days, basically, and it’s going to be intense! I have to keep up with Juliet Blackwell and Sophie Littletfield. I have to do a signing with a stranger. Not to mention, I’ll be hanging out with two of the hottest, smartest, hottest men on the planet, my friends from Chicago, Ervin and Gary. One of them might be who Anyan’s sorta kinda based on. So we’re talking hot broads, hot dudes, and my disheveled ass! Woe is me!

Mama needs to look less like she rolled out of teaching Basic Comp and more like she’s ready for a little RAWR. But I’m also lazy and I have to take a carry on.

So I’ve taken pictures of four options, and I want you to vote on your TWO MOST FAVORITE. One I’ll wear Friday, one I’ll wear Saturday. Sunday I’m traveling so I’ll look like a hobo, as usual.

Here are your choices! Keep in mind I’m horribly unphotogenic and also not a proper photographer. Furthermore, these will not be worn with leggings, but tights. This fact is important for choice B.

Choice A. It’s a new purple number that may make me look like the purple people eater. But I like it with the silver belt!

Choice B. Right now this bad boy makes me look a bit preggers. BUT keep in mind I’ll be wearing tights, not leggings, for the real deal (it was too hot to wedge myself into anything other than leggings). I also blame the lighting. And not my big fat belleh. *rubs it, soothingly*

Choice C. This is one of my faves. You can’t see it in this lighting, really, but it’s a lovely navy blue. It’s also super comfy, and has fun frills down the front.

Finally, Choice D. One of my fave little black dresses. You’ve seen it before, but it’s that dress.

Have yer vote! Please, only pick two! Or I’ll have to wear one on each thigh.

That said, I’m only going for three days and I’m not on any panels. But I did manage to wrangle a signing! For those of you who’ll be at Bouchercon, I’ll be at the Crimespree table, in the Dealer Room, on Saturday morning from 10 AM – 11 AM. I’ll be with Tom Schreck, who writes about boxing and basset hounds, and I’m looking forward to meeting him.

Now, on the one jazz hand, YAY SIGNING. On the other (less jazz) hand, the dealer room is only open to people with Bouchercon passes. So anyone already a part of Bouchercon who wants to come see me just has to show their badge at the door. BUT, Bouchercon does sell day passes for those of you who can’t do the whole con. They’re 75$, and they’re for the full day. The Saturday schedule for B’con is here. On Saturday, you can use that day pass to see far cooler people than me, such as Sara Paretsky, Val McDermid, Charlaine Harris, and Toni L.P. Kelner.

That said, if you happen to be in the hotel, and you happen to see me at the bar, come talk to me, pass or no pass. I drink Guinness or Makers Mark Manhattans, btw. Just sayin’.

So yay for signings! Also yay to the fact I just turned in Book Five, Tempest’s Fury, to the editrix. She still needs work, obviously, but getting that first draft in always feels gooooooooood.

It also means that I can start on some new projects, one of which is a short story. Who’d like to learn a little more about Capitola, Moo, and Shar, the ladies of Triptych?

In pimpage news, Sophie Littlefield has another of her awesome dystopian zombie fictions releasing this week. Exciting! Here’s the cover with a link to Amazon:

The pimp hand has smacked! And now I must write a book. *le sigh*