Tag anthology

They’re Here! They’re There! They’re in Balboa Park?

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment

It has been an exciting couple of weeks! Two of Emerald Cove’s long-awaited books are finally live on Amazon.

The fantasy anthology Exiles of Eeria is now available as an ebook. Exiles of Eeria is Emerald Cove’s most ambitious project to date. The collection of urban-fantasy short stories tells the adventures of the Grysaille, San Diego’s secret, non-human residents. The book features Sue Dawe’s magnificent artwork on the cover and offers some of her original drawings inside. The stories were separately written by the various Emerald Cove authors, but many of the characters appear across the stories, tying the book together.

As you can imagine, working in a shared universe is not easy, particularly when the authors are as eclectic and opinionated as the band at Emerald Cove. However, those differences in writing style and voice add interest and charm to the anthology. All of us at Emerald Cove hope you will find it an enjoyable read!

The second announcement is even more exciting for me. John and I have finally completed The Door Ajar, the sequel to The Keyhole Wizard (formerly Prophecy’s Malignant Son). The novel opens about two months after the end of The Keyhole Wizard and follows the ongoing adventures of the three main characters from the first book. Both the ebook and paperback versions are live on Amazon.

John and I plan to make the formal announcement of the book’s launch next week (after I finish updating our website, Amazon author page, and Facebook page), but for all my loyal blog readers, I am including a link to the book below. If you have read all the way to this point in the blog post, you are awesome! I mean that seriously — back in the dark days of the early pandemic, when it seemed like my world had dwindled to a small box around my house, all the people that followed this blog and “liked” the posts were the ones who kept me writing. I will always be grateful to all of you!

Here is the link to the ebook version of The Door Ajar: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B8C38ZC1

Talk to you next week when we make the formal announcement!

-Susan 8/5/2022

New for 2022 at Emerald Cove Press

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment
Here is a copy of the ad for our shared world anthology, with artwork and design by Sue Dawe. The image above is just a photo, so the links to the books depicted in it are not live, but you can find live links on the website: emeraldcovepress.com. Of course, you can also find the links at susanandjohnruff.com.

Here is my first blog post for 2022 and my 89th post since I began blogging on May 1, 2020. It’s time for an update on the Emerald Cove projects.

Before I get to the exciting news, however, I have an announcement about this blog. Instead of writing a post every Friday, as I’ve been doing for more than a year, I’m switching to the first Friday of every month.

Why change from once-a-week to once-a-month? There are two main reasons. First, my beloved co-author and I are nearing completion of the sequel to Prophecy’s Malignant Son, so I need the extra writing and editing time. It takes a long time for me to produce these posts each week — particularly the ones with the travel pictures. At present, I really need to focus that time on the new fantasy novel.

Second, a weekly commitment can be rather stressful, particularly on those weeks when I am unable to think of a good topic for the blog. Coming up with 12 topics a year will be far easier than 52. If I switch to the first Friday of the month, it will take off a lot of pressure and ensure that this blog continues to be a fun activity that I look forward to completing.

When I first started writing the blog in May 2020, I was in a writing slump. John and I had published 60th Hour, but we didn’t know where to go from there. The pandemic shutdown had been going on for two months, and I still felt lost and insecure. I was trying to rewrite an older manuscript to use as our second published novel, but it just wasn’t working. The project did not excite me, and I was dragging my feet.

Producing this blog every week, got me enthused about being an author again. Apparently, writing about writing is a great way to get excited about writing. The blog helped “jump-start” our fiction and got the two of us talking about new story ideas. By September 2020, John and I came up with the plot for Prophecy’s Malignant Son, and we finished writing it in less than a year from start to publication. We began writing the sequel in June 2021.

Will this blog ever go back to a weekly format? Perhaps. We’ll see.

Well, so much for that. Now, on to the real news!

Emerald Cove Press has finally announced the title of its upcoming anthology. Exiles of Eeria will soon join the Cove’s line-up of short-story collections. Unlike the two previous anthologies, which included unrelated stories on a particular theme, the new book is a shared-world anthology. Although each short story is separately written, they all take place in the same fantasy universe with many of the same characters. In this case, the fantasy setting is our own beloved San Diego, a truly magical place if there ever was one.

It’s Emerald Cove’s most ambitious project to date, and we’re very excited about it. In addition to two short stories by yours truly, it includes great fiction by Danny Atwood, Sue Dawe, Stephanie Golightly, and Jefferson Swycaffer. It also features amazing artwork by Sue Dawe. You can see her great book cover featured in the picture at the start of today’s post.

Emerald Cove has not yet announced the official publication date for Exiles of Eeria, but I’ll keep you posted as soon as that occurs. In the meantime, have a great month!

I’ll talk to you on Friday, February 4, 2022.

-Susan 1/7/2022

What’s New at Emerald Cove in Fall 2021?

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment
St. George and the Dragon on display in the dining room of the Hotel Ritter in Heidelberg, Germany. (Photo by Susan Ruff 1991.)

It’s been a while since I provided an update about our Emerald Cove Press projects, so this seems like a good time.

The Emerald Cove writer’s group met at our favorite Denny’s last Friday. It’s great to be back to live meetings again. We had a long discussion about the upcoming shared-world anthology. The cover art is finished and looks great. (Thank you, Sue Dawe!) We considered possible type fonts for the lettering on the cover and talked about the order of the short stories within the anthology. I distributed review copies of the new short story that John and I had written. (So far, we’ve contributed two stories for the upcoming book, both very short and humorous.) While Emerald Cove doesn’t have a specific publication date for the anthology yet, I am anticipating it will be out by the end of the year.

In other news, the second edition of the paperback version of 60th Hour is live and available on Amazon. It corrects a lot of the formatting glitches of the original paperback version and has a new cover. So far, the ebook version has not changed (though I may update it to add the new cover).

My beloved co-author and I are currently on chapter eight of our new novel, a sequel to Prophecy’s Malignant Son. We had originally anticipated publication some time next fall. However, that time table may move up because of my other news:

I think we are going to try the NaNoWriMo challenge in November this year. (National Novel Writing Month.) The idea, as I understand it, is to produce 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days, which comes out to roughly 1,667 words per day. As some of you know, in our husband-and-wife writing team, John helps with plotting and ideas, while I do the actual typing and word composition. I know I can write at least 500 words per day, and when I am really inspired, I can sometimes produce up to 2,000 words with no problem. To do that consistently, every day, for an entire month, however, is both a daunting and exciting prospect. If we succeed in reaching 50,000 words in November, it probably won’t be enough to finish the new novel, but it will definitely move up our publication date.

John and I have also started advertising our books Amazon. I took a basic class to learn about AMS (Amazon Marketing Services) a few weeks ago, and I will taking a more advanced class starting about two weeks from now. If it works out well, I’ll let you know.

That’s about all for now. Talk to you next Friday!

-Susan 10/1/2021

p.s. You may be asking why there a picture of St. George and the Dragon at the start of today’s blog post? Stay tuned for Emerald Cove’s upcoming shared-world anthology to find out!

Writing Inspiration Destination: Balboa Park

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment
Balboa Park’s Botanical Building and surroundings. (Apologies for the photo quality — it was scanned from a photo taken in the mid-1990’s.)

Sometimes, you don’t need to go any farther than your own hometown for writing inspiration. This becomes much easier, of course, when your hometown happens to be a major tourist destination with beaches, parks, culture, museums, and other fascinating places to visit.

Balboa Park’s iconic California Tower.
The Organ Pavilion, a beautiful location for outdoor concerts.

I grew up in San Diego County, and it is still one of my favorite places in the world. Balboa Park, in particular, has inspired my writing in the past, and continues to do so. Given its beautiful Spanish-style architecture, paths winding beneath the eucalyptus trees, lovely gardens, and wonderful museums, the park’s ability to inspire the written word is not surprising.

What did surprise me is how few pictures I have taken of the park. When I sat down to write this blog post this morning, I thought my task of finding park photos would be easy. Instead, I discovered that, despite hundreds of park visits over the years, I have taken fewer pictures of Balboa Park than I have of Disneyworld in Florida.

Walking near the House of Pacific Relations International Cottages. The last time I visited the park, it appeared that they were expanding this area to add more cottages.

Balboa Park is especially relevant to my writing at the moment, because of Emerald Cove’s upcoming shared-world anthology. Until we have an official publication date, I don’t want to say too much about the book, but Balboa Park definitely makes an appearance. The writer’s group is meeting tonight, so I should know more very soon.

In the meantime, I leave you with this silhouette of the park, taken on a December evening many years ago. I will never forget that night, with its clear skies and beautiful weather, because I flew out to visit relatives a few days later, and ended up in a snowstorm. (It was quite a contrast for a Southern California girl.)

Talk to you next Friday!

Susan 8/20/2021

Book Titles by Committee

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment

With normality finally on the horizon and a small possibility that there might actually be a live Comicon in San Diego this coming summer, the authors of Emerald Cove are once again turning attention to our shared universe anthology. As I mentioned in a much earlier blog post, the stories are set in San Diego County with a fantasy twist. Each of the Emerald Cove authors has contributed at least one short story, involving different protagonists, to the anthology. Because it is a shared universe, some of the secondary characters will appear in multiple stories. (The role-playing gamer in me tends to think of those secondary characters as NPC’s.)

We originally intended to finish the book in time to unveil it at Comicon last year, but that didn’t happen because…well… 2020. When the pandemic made a live convention (with a dealers’ room and art show) impossible, it dampened all our spirits and the shared universe anthology languished.

In light of the new hope brought by the vaccines, our intrepid band of eclectic authors is bouncing back into action. The first drafts of the stories are done and are in the rewrite phase. The cover art is progressing.

Now comes the really hard part of the project. We have to choose a title for the anthology. It is difficult enough for a solo author to invent a catchy title for a book, a title that will interest the reader but still stay true to the book’s theme and/or plot. That task becomes even more difficult when that same title must also please four other authors.

So far, we’ve been sending emails back and forth with suggestions for the title. Many suggestions. Very many suggestions. Some of them are even serious proposals (though the joke ones can be amusing). Eventually, after many more emails, we’ll settle on one that we can all live with. That’s what we did with our last two “themed” anthologies. (Kidnapped! and Stolen!)

This time around, we have established a couple of important ground rules:

  1. Don’t choose a title that was already used by Robert Louis Stevenson. (Kidnapped!) He’s really hard competition when you want people to find your book by searching for the title on Amazon.
  2. Don’t use a single word that is so common there are dozens of pages of book titles on Amazon with the same word or variations on that word. (Stolen!)
  3. Don’t assume that adding an exclamation mark to the end of the title will make it stand out from the others. (Search engines apparently ignore punctuation.)

Once we agree on a title and it gets closer to the publication date, I’ll let you know more about the anthology (and maybe even give a sneak peek for some of Sue Dawe’s amazing artwork for the book).

Talk to you next Friday!

-Susan 2/26/2021

Update on Current Book Projects

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment
Concept sketch for a possible cover of Prophecy’s Malignant Son (planned for publication in Spring 2021)

It’s been a while since I provided an update on the current writing projects, so this seems like a good time. John and I are still hard at work on our latest fantasy novel Prophecy’s Malignant Son. We have over 50,000 words written at this point, and we are still hoping for publication some time in early 2021. The novel will probably end up longer than the 70,000 words I had originally intended, but it will be a complete story with no cliff-hanger endings. Any sequels will be separate stories (although they will probably involve some of the same characters).

So far, the comments from the Emerald Cove writing critique group on the manuscript have been favorable. The other authors have suggested a few tweaks here and there, all of which will help the final story. (We are fortunate to have such a great critique group to help us!)

A couple of weeks back, I started playing with some ideas for the cover. The rough sketch above represents one of the ideas I had. I am currently talking with an artist friend about possible cover art. For those of you who read 60th Hour, you know the cover art on that book was pretty abstract. To produce it, I played with variations on a photograph I had taken of a state capital rotunda. That was fine for the initial edition of our first published book, but this time I’d like something a little more “fantasy” looking. Depending on how things go with the cover for Prophecy’s Malignant Son, I may also commission some cover art when we put out the revised edition of 60th Hour (to correct all those little formatting oddities that I mentioned in an earlier blog post).

We held our latest Emerald Cove meeting via Zoom on Wednesday night. Things are progressing with the shared universe anthology. All the stories are now complete and have had their initial reviews by the group. We just need to make revisions and finalize them. At a prior meeting, Sue gave us a peek at her partially completed cover art, and it looks amazing. I can’t wait to see the finished product.

We are still in the process of writing the short stories for the Haunted! anthology. John and I have finished our contribution, but plan to revise one section of our story based on the comments we received from the group.

I hope you are all having a safe and healthy holiday season!

-Susan 12/4/2020

Coming in Spring 2021: Prophecy’s Malignant Son: What happens when a prophecy goes wrong . . . very wrong?

One Hundred Words to Defeat Writer’s Block

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment

As authors, we all know that our craft is part inspiration and part discipline. Inspiration is the fun part — those wonderful ideas and words that flow into our heads when we are writing, daydreaming, walking, or doing absolutely nothing. We all love it when just the right phrasing or fragment of dialogue strikes us. (How many times have I rushed out of the shower to write down the perfectly crafted sentence before I forgot it?)

But what about those days when words are not flowing and inspiration seems distant? What happens when you don’t even want to sit down at the keyboard because you know you will stare at a blank screen without typing a word?

That’s when the discipline of writing takes over. Many authors have written about overcoming writer’s block. My favorite method is the “100 Words a Day” plan. (I think I developed it on my own, but if I subconsciously took all or part of the idea from someone else, then I sincerely apologize for not giving the author credit. Please feel free to leave a comment or send me an email and correct my ignorance! No matter who came up with the plan, it works for me.)

The plan is pretty simple. Each day, I make a commitment to sit down and write 100 words of fiction. I can write more than that, of course (and I usually do), but the important thing is to write at least 100 words. It doesn’t have to be great writing or even mediocre writing, but the 100 words must be part of an original work of fiction. If I miss a day because of circumstances beyond my control (like family emergencies), then I have to write at least 200 words the next day. (It doesn’t work the other way, in case you are wondering — I can’t write 500 words one day and then skip the next four days. The point is to discipline myself to write each day.)

It’s very easy to write 100 words — I had already written 100 words in this blog post before I finished the first two paragraphs. Word processing programs usually give a word count, so on those days when writing is particularly difficult, I know when I am nearing the finish line.

Once you have established that discipline, you can even try gradually increasing the daily word count. I currently write at least 500 words a day. However, increasing the minimum number of words is not critical. The most important part is to discipline yourself to write each day. Don’t worry about how good or bad those 100 words might be. If they are garbage, you can always rewrite them later.

That’s all for this blog today. I still have 500 words of fiction to write!

-Susan 9/25/20

What’s New at the Cove?

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment

Somehow, despite pandemic malaise and wildfires’ haze, the authors at Emerald Cove Press are making steady progress on the next two anthologies. (And, all joking aside, I think I can speak for all of us at Emerald Cove when I say our hearts go out to those affected by the pandemic and the recent fires.)

Of the two upcoming projects, the one most likely to see publication first is the next themed anthology: Haunted! John and I have finished our contribution: The Ghost in the Mines and are eagerly awaiting feedback from the critique group. Like our short stories in the previous themed anthologies, The Ghost in the Mines is a light-hearted fantasy tale set in the Five Lands of Arbel. It takes place concurrently with the events in Lord Larrin’s Trophy, but in a different land, so there won’t be any cross-over characters. The story chronicles the adventures of a Junior Inspector of Structural Supports, Department of Walls and Columns, Division of Mine Safety, Royal Bureau of Mining (try repeating that fast three times) and what that unsuspecting inspector discovers deep below the ground.

The anthology probably won’t be ready for publication by Halloween (which is too bad, given the theme), but there’s a good possibility it will be out in time for Christmas.

The second upcoming anthology is a bit different from the themed books. For the first time, Emerald Cove is assembling a “shared universe” anthology, in which all the authors’ short stories take place in the same fantasy setting with many overlapping characters.

The fantasy setting is modern day San Diego County. While I freely admit that America’s Finest City has a magical, fantasy quality even on the most mundane days, the Emerald Cove anthology will add an interesting fantasy twist to our beloved urban setting. The book will also feature beautiful Sue Dawe artwork — I may post some of Sue’s preliminary sketches (with her permission) closer to the publication date.

As I mentioned in a prior post, I am still mulling over what to do with my twenty-five year old novel Feast of Five Crowns. I am currently reviewing the manuscript to see what can be savaged and how much will need total rewriting.

In the meantime, John and I have started work on a new fantasy novel. It is based on a premise that I have been playing with for a while, and is set in a universe unrelated to the fantasy settings of our prior stories. We’re still in “world-building” stage at the moment, so I can’t give too many details, but I’ve had fun working on it so far. We’ll see where it goes.

I hope you all have a great week!

Susan 9/18/20

99 Cents for a Filched Fish

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment

My sixth grade teacher once asked the class what grade we thought he should give each of us for a particular assignment. I was a straight-A pupil at the time, but trying to be humble, I responded that my assignment deserved a C. When the teacher gave me my first B, my dad rushed into school to find out what went wrong. The teacher told him, “Look what she wrote. She thought she deserved a C. I gave her better than that.”

My dad then sat me down for my first lesson in self-promotion: When a teacher asks you what grade you deserve, you tell them you deserve an A. Always say that. No matter what. If the teacher asks you for reasons why you deserve an A, don’t be humble. Explain how great your work is and say you deserve an A.

So I did that for the rest of my schooling and it worked.

Many years later, I interviewed for a promotion at my government job. I had always received praise for my work, and I thought my work would speak for me.

It didn’t. I did not get the promotion, and I was devastated.

The next time that promotional examination occurred, my supervisor gave me another lesson in self-advocacy: When you go into that interview, you’ve got to tell them all the great things you’ve done for the office. Do NOT be humble.

So I did. It was extremely difficult. Judging from the interviewers’ expressions, I may have been a little too over-the-top in my enthusiasm for the greatness of my contributions to the office, but it worked. I got the promotion.

Now I am an Indy author with the daunting task of trying to self-promote my own fiction. For successful Indy authors that process comes naturally, but not for me. I would love to have my work speak for itself, but that will never happen unless people actually read it, and people will never read it unless I self-promote it. Blargh!!!!

So, here is my shameless plug…err…clever and witty attempt at self-promotion: Emerald Cove is currently running a sale on the Stolen! anthology. Between now and September 17, 2020, you can get the book for $ 0.99. Yes, for less than a dollar, you too can read Lord Larrin’s Trophy, the adventures of a hapless security chief trying to find a stolen fish to avert an international crisis. It’s funny. It’s fishy. It’s a breath of fresh air in the midst of all the bad news of the real world.

But wait! There’s more! The anthology also includes some great fiction by the other Emerald Cove authors. Here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/Stolen-Scoundrels-Heists-Cons-Pilfered-ebook (Note: This is my first attempt at adding a link, so if it doesn’t work, please let me know. Thanks!)

(*Drawing in a deep breath*) Ok. Shameless plug over for today. Next week, we return to our regularly scheduled blogpost.

By the way, if you do read the story, please send me an email and let me know what you think: susanruff@emeraldcovepress.com I would love to hear from you!

-Susan 9/11/20

Making an Old Story New

susanandjohnruff Leave a comment

Back in the early 1990’s, before self-publishing was common, before I even owned a cell phone, I wrote a fantasy novel called Feast of Five Crowns. I dutifully attempted to get my manuscript published in the old fashioned way. The rejection letters I received were very polite. One publisher told me that, if it was my second novel, the company might consider it, but it was not good enough for an unknown author.

After a while, I gave up and went onto other books and other pursuits (little things like getting married and buying a house). So the manuscript for Feast sat on my various computers in WordPerfect format for all those years. I think my original backup copy was on 3 & 1/2 inch floppy disks, just to show you how old it was.

Then came the 2010’s and the Emerald Cove anthologies (Kidnapped! and Stolen!). John and I used a generic fantasy setting for our tongue-in-cheek kidnapping story, Lord Larrin’s Daughter. When I decided to write a humorous sequel for the second anthology (Lord Larrin’s Trophy), the story setting fell naturally into one of the lands from Feast of Five Crowns, so I placed it there.

Like many fantasy novels, Feast involved potentially world altering events that the characters had to address. I avoided any mention of those events in Lord Larrin’s Trophy, because I was not sure if I wanted to set the story before or after the events in Feast. However, by the time Trophy was finished, I had set it (at least in my mind) shortly before the opening of Feast.

As I mentioned in a prior blogpost, when 60th Hour was published, I thought I could dust off Feast, add the characters from the two Lord Larrin stories and have a second self-published novel. However, after some of my fellow authors at Emerald Cove reamed…err…gave me constructive criticism regarding the first four chapters, I realized: 1) my writing has apparently improved since the 1990’s; and 2) it would take the ton of work to make Feast into a novel worthy of publication. Essentially, I would have to rewrite the entire novel from the ground up (with John’s help).

Thus began my dilemma: did I really want to spend that much time rewriting a story that no one wanted to publish 25 years ago? Should I put it back in storage and move on to another novel?

In the meantime, John and I have been working on a story for Emerald Cove’s upcoming anthology (Haunted!). Almost from the first moment Emerald Cove announced the theme for the third anthology, I knew which story I wanted to write. Not only is the story set in the Feast of Five Crowns universe, it contains background material from the novel. In effect, it is a prequel to the novel.

With three short stories now set in the Feast universe, I guess it’s time to take a stab at rewriting the old manuscript. At this point, I am thinking of using the main characters from the short stories as the point of view characters for the novel. I’m also thinking of giving the novel more of a light-hearted feel, perhaps not as overtly humorous as the fish story, but not as serious as the original book.

Will the help of my wonderful co-author and more than two decades of writing practice be enough to turn Feast into a book that people will want to read? Only time (and my Emerald Cove critique group) will tell.

Susan 9/4/2020