First of all, I apologize for the snow if it’s bothering you. I am physically incapable of ignoring the option to put falling snow on any website. Complaints may be taken to the Landsquid. Bring Cheez-Its with you. The Landsquid loves Cheez-Its.
Actually, it has come to my attention that perhaps that option just makes it snow on all blogs for me. I am uncertain. The thing about the Cheez-Its remains true.
Moving on.
I would like to announce the launch of Turtleduck Press. TDP is an independent publishing label designed to deliver quality works that fall between the category cracks. This can be because of length, genre, format, etc. Between major releases TDP will also have shorter works available (for free!) and an on-going blog.
TDP came about kind of strangely. All members of TDP have been submitting shorts and novels traditionally, but one of our members had been getting several personalized rejections on requested material that basically summed up to “Love it, but can’t sell it.” So she said, “Screw it, I’ll self-publish then.” Some of the rest of us said, “Actually…” and hence TDP was born.
The world of self-publishing and Print on Demand is an odd place, inundated by works. It’s hard to get over the stigma that all self-published works are of poor quality, poorly edited, not worth reading, what have you. We figured that by consolidating into a publishing label, limiting membership, and making sure everything we put out has been read, edited, reviewed and is something that we, as a collective, are willing to get behind and stake our careers on.
That brings us to my first contribution to the madness, a fantasy adventure novella called Hidden Worlds. HW was never something I intended to go a traditional route on. I wrote it for fun, and then, because there was enough interest, I edited it and self-published it last year, just before Christmas. I offered to bring it under TDP, did some edits to get it up the standards of the group, and have released a second edition.
Here’s a quick blurb:
“??????Margery was lucky enough to stumble across upon the Spork Room, a magical writing community where writers from across the globe could gather as they wanted. The Spork Room has many useful writing tools, but the crowning one is the Door, through which all their stories come to life. Margery is writing a story about a pirate queen trying to bring her dead lover back to life. She goes through the Door to watch this occur, but she breaks the number one rule of the Door – don’t go in without letting someone else know. She and her main character manage to release an unspeakable evil, unbalancing the Door and making escape from it impossible. Someone, a jack of all trades character used by the sporkers, makes it in just before the Door unbalances and manages to find Margery and her main character Cass. Now, to set everything right and return to the Spork Room, they must find the Light Chest before it’s too late.”
TDP has a lot of good things going for it, and I’m excited to see where the label gets to go in the future. Check us out! Give us a read!
