Jane, Forgotten, and other news

I’m delighted to say that I am now well underway on Novel #4, and it finally has a title (which may, of course, change yet, but for now, there are good, weighed-up, thought-through reasons for its choice). Jane, Forgotten. As you may recall, this is the book I’ve been playing around with in my head for a while, and the storyline is inspired by the carvings on my old trees. I wrote about it before, and again, and the Saucepans from the blog entry a few weeks ago now have their place in Chapter 2. So that’s both Exciting, and Progress.

Meanwhile, Dear Isobel is creeping ever-closer to publication, and I am expecting the Galleys (which I believe is the US term for what my UK counterparts refer to as proofs. We just had to suss out how to handle the formatting of the letters and text messages that frequent the book, and now my publisher is busy finalising the layout even as type this.

Meanwhile, A Diet of Death will soon need cover decisions, and once Dear Isobel is in its own final stages, we can turn some attention to Jess O’Malley and her series (beginning with A Diet of Death).

Oh yes, and with all the novel excitement I keep forgetting that another anthology is due out in the next few days – Phantoms releases on September 12th and includes my short story A Day at the Fair. WHile the overall theme of Phantoms is horror, and ir is being released to be the perfect Halloween read, my own story is far from the spookiest! This anthology is already on pre-prder, and you can order the paperback here (UK) or here (USA). I will add the details to my books and stories page once I have the links for the ebooks ready to add.

This week I also decided to use some of my MA work to submit a selection of Flash stories – each of the 5 submitted stories is under 400 words – to a contest. I have missed writing Flash lately and the MA classwork has gien me a much needed boost at that as well as keeping Jane, Forgotten ticking along nicely.

Then, there’s the day job. You will recall that I mentioned how the Online ESL world has been somewhat rocked lately, and this has resulted in my putting many hours into gathering private students, interviewing for new companies, and creating new curriculum materials. Lots of good news there, including my first Introduction to Story Writing children’s class launching very soon. You can find details of that here, at Bean Learning. The first session is a trial session with extremely limited numbers. Further sessions will be added.

However, despite all this, there’s even better news! My daughter fianlly made it home for the final two weeks of the summer, which is aweome. She heads off again to university on the 18th September, so her visit is short-lived, and the rest of my day is to be spent with her.

See you next time!

Love, Jinny.