Outbreak Monkey and the skinny on our Little Goddess

SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  Don’t you just LOVE THEM?

So, the Outbreak Monkey tattoo is sort of a story point in my upcoming book, Beneath the Stain, and I actually commissioned a friend of Chicken’s to make me a tattoo to put on the cover.  It’s beautiful, and Chicken knows good work when she sees it!  I think this monkey is going to go all sorts of places…  T-shirts, yarn bags, backstage passes… I think this monkey is gonna go real far…

*happy sigh*  

Yeah.

  

*snaps back to business*

Okay, so…

Some of you may noticed that it’s pretty hard to buy any of the original Little Goddess series on e-book.  

There’s a reason for that.  

See, I was planning to write Quickening this summer, but, well, it was hard.  I have grown used to having people help me with production– better minds than mine working on editing, and suggestions for covers and a louder voice in marketing.  I know some people have done amazing things in self-publishing in the past ten years, since I released Vulnerable, and I’m really excited for those people.  But I spent six years self-pubbing, when it got pretty much zero respect, and I have got to say, I love writing– I would definitely do it for free (and I have!) but I am really happy with a publishing company.  I was reluctant to leave the safety of my friends to venture out on my own.  

Well, back in April, Dreamspinner announced its plan to create another imprint called DSP Productions.  I loved the idea of this imprint–it’s for genres that are not necessarily M/M romance, and are not necessarily romance at all–but that’s certainly allowed.  The idea is, for established M/M writers to have somewhere to publish their other stories–somewhere their name recognition matters, but where girl parts are allowed, and urban fantasy or thrillers or historicals without romance is encouraged.  Their initial plan was to start small– and to go to their writers whom they knew had titles that would already fit the bill.

The Little Goddess fit the bill.  In fact, Dreamspinner had already published the three linking novellas to her, and Lynn and Elizabeth had already read them.  Elizabeth didn’t think they worked well for Dreamspinner Press, but given they had a thread of M/M running through them, she thought they worked very well for DSP Productions.  And Lynn has confessed to a little crush on Bracken which makes me very proud.  (Lynn has a thing for surly assholes with a heart of good.  I love that about her.)  Anyway, we were at lunch, and they asked me if I would be interested in publishing The Little Goddess with them, instead of independently.  

If I could write Quickening in the winter, so it could be published next September.

If I could write for and with my friends who already loved my world and my ideas and wanted to help me make the story better, instead of going it alone.

I sort of burst into tears. 

Oh hell yes.  

I so wanted to not publish alone anymore.  

Now, I know that lots of people are moving from publishing with indie presses to going it alone.  All sorts of people are taking their name recognition on the road–and I’m rooting for them.  I think it’s great that the means are in place, and independent publishers no longer have to rely on places like iUniverse (which, I’d like to say, made a bundle off of me and offered me jack in return) to get their work out and to be known.  I’ve always maintained that self-publishing has a great place in the future of literature– and a lot of my heroes have done it (Walt Whitman, William Blake) and a lot of my heroes were screwed over when they didn’t (Edgar Allan Poe).

And I’ve done it too, and it allowed me to build my name, and it allowed a lot of people to fall in love with Cory when they ordinarily might not have.  I’m not slamming it, by any means.

But I’m really not ready to go back to it.  

I love writing for my people.  I love writing for my editors and my publisher and the people who love what I’ve done already and want to see what I’ll do next.  

And I’m going to love writing Quickening.  Not just for me, because I’ve needed to write this book for so long, but for my fans who’ve been waiting so patiently.  

And for my people, for the new imprint, for a new idea about how to change the face of publishing and how to make urban fantasy as all inclusive as it’s always wanted to be.  

So there you go.  It’s happening– Quickening is happening, and expect new covers and new edits on the rest of the series starting in February.  And get ready to hold your ears…

Cause I’m not done with the SQUEEEEEEEEEEing!!!!!!  for a long, long time!