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Month: August 2022

Hallowed Hill

Maybe you should look a gift horse in the mouth. After the sudden loss of her parents, 16-year-old Martie Torsney receives a surprise scholarship from a prestigious boarding school. This is the opportunity she needs to leave the heartbreak and echoes of her parents behind. Greyson Academy sits deep in the forests of Vermont, high on a hill overlooking the trees. The school has a long history of helping its students succeed in life. If Martie excels here, she’ll be set. But all is not well at Greyson. Scholarship students are very rare, and none has ever completed their time at Greyson. And, now, someone wants Martie gone too. Her things are moved, cryptic messages are left, and the school is vandalized in her name. But is it the living trying to scare her away–or the dead? Martie is determined to stay, for herself and for her parents’ memory. But staying may cost her more than she ever imagined. If you love ghost stories and mysteries, check out Hallowed Hill now! Buy the ebook here: ( Kindle | Smashwords | Kobo | Barnes&Noble | Apple )Buy the paperback here: ( Amazon )

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I Am Not Prepared

Tell me I’m not the only one who lands in this boat every blinking time I/they turn around. I had every intention of being prepared. I like to write my TDP post on Sunday, edit it a bit on Monday, and go through it once more quickly Tuesday before I post it. Alas, that didn’t happen this week. I blame the shingles vaccine. Don’t get me wrong–I’m very glad to have the shingles vaccine! I’ve heard shingles itself is horrible. But I hadn’t planned to get the vaccine on Sunday, and then I did, and I hadn’t planned for it to knock me on my butt, since vaccines rarely slow me down–but this one did. I started dragging Sunday afternoon, and by Monday morning I could barely get out of bed. I told my boss if the zombies had come that day, I would have blended in just fine. So anyway. Not prepared. I didn’t prep my food for the week either, or get water and now I have to go tonight and it’s storming, and… Anyway. Speaking of boats, I’ve been watching Drain the Oceans on National Geographic. It’s more fascinating than I expected, though I’m not sure why I’m surprised–it has shipwrecks, secrets, archeology, and history. What wouldn’t I love about that? Last night’s episode (watched twice because I fell asleep watching it the first time, see above re: vaccine) was especially good, as they were searching for slave ships and other wrecks that illustrated that dark time…

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Any Procrastination in a Storm

Good afternoon, friends. It has come to my attention that I am bad at priorization. I say that because I’ve been working on my book description for Hallowed Hill for like a month now and have yet to finalize it. But neither have I finished anything else useful in that time frame. You see, my brain seems to work like this: Have important project that needs to be done Panic because important project is IMPORTANT and must be done right Decide to work on other, less important projects because Important Project is overwhelming, and then at least things get done Cannot focus on other projects because Important Project is outstanding Fall apart Play Solitaire I’m really good at Solitaire. Earlier in the week I made a list of everything that needs to get done in the hopes that I could then make some headway because it was all written down, but instead I’ve only done one thing and have been existing in a vague form of panic. I’m getting real sick of my executive dysfunction here. I have Things To Do. And I swear I used to be way better at this. Like, I would sit down and get things done. And I could work on multiple things and make progress on all of them. Is this leftover COVID trauma? Is my brain going as I get older? Well, it will all get done eventually. Maybe if I sic my children on me. Like, tell them I need to be…

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My Body, My Head, and I

Why are bodies? as the kids say. Or, translated: Why are bodies so demanding? I’m a writer (obviously) and editor. I like to live in my head, which means I tend to ignore the fact that I’m not a brain in a jar. Sometimes my body makes demands, and when it doesn’t get what it wants, it complains — increasingly so, as I get older. This summer I’ve been trying to pull myself out of the sedentary lifestyle that I’ve been seduced into by the pandemic and its attendant anxiety and depression. I love walking anywhere there are trees, but Toronto’s summers are humid and gross (and our winters and sometimes our springs are damp and gross; we have beautiful autumns, though). I enjoy doing yoga at home, where I can go at my own pace and modify as much as I need, but I can’t seem to make the habit stick. My beloved dance community ran for a few months in the spring after its pandemic hiatus; I’ve made it to only one dance so far, but am hoping to go regularly when it restarts in autumn. Then there’s that demanding body. First my ankle complained. Then the ankle healed but my knee started acting up. Now I’m having a recurrence of an old wrist and shoulder issue…plus an eye issue that came up in the spring and isn’t going away. Most of these aren’t huge problems, but they’re all annoying and concerning. Especially because they’re getting in the…

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Announcement: Making Some Tweaks at TDP

Hello readers and loyal fans! You’re getting a bonus blog post from me this month because we’ve got some adjustments to tell you about. As you may have noticed, the last few years have been…kind of a lot, as the kids say. Here at TDP, the four of us are writers, but outside of TDP we also have families, health challenges, and day jobs to juggle, on top of, well… *gestures to the world at large* So we’re pulling back on the monthly free content. Instead of a yearly output of 10 freebies (short stories, serial installments, poetry), we’re moving to 4 freebies. The weekly blog posts will stay the same. We’ve been putting out 2 longer works (novels or anthologies) for sale each year; we plan to maintain that schedule or even increase it if we can. That may mean you’ll see a range of lengths, not only full-length novels. We’ll indicate the length (novel, novella, etc.) on the marketing copy for each so that you’ll know what you’re getting, and they’ll be priced accordingly. We’re excited about these changes. Some of us shine the most as writers with stories that have more space to breathe, and we’ll be able to focus on the kind of storytelling we love best. We’ve been writing more serials lately, and now we’ll be able to explore those middle lengths even more, which in turn opens up more storytelling possibilities. And in general, writers do their best work when they’re not scrambling for…

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