Skip to main content

Story News: Five Magic Spindles




Five Magic Spindles will be out on July 22.  I am terribly excited, and I hope you are too!  One of the other anthology authors, Rachel Kovaciny, has been hosting a series of interviews with the authors on her blog, Hamlette's Soliloquy.  Check out http://hamlette.blogspot.com/ and look for her posts from June 2, June 9, June 16, and June 23. 
We've all had a chance to go through the book's galleys, and the influencer readers have now received their e-copies of the book.  Ironically, the influencer readers see the final version before we authors do!  (I'm really curious to know who ultimately won a certain grammar battle in my story... The editors and I went back and forth about a particular verb form several times.  They kept changing it to a perfect tense form, I kept changing it back to a past progressive.  The funny thing is, the first few times I thought "Oh, I must have made a mistake," and changed it without realizing that I was reverting to my original text!)

Having other people read my story closely and edit it has been a very interesting experience.  We've mostly disagreed about punctuation.  Apparently, my understanding of the common comma is stuck in the 1800s (Edgeworth, Dickens, Burney, Trollope).  I use commas in every possible spot.  The Rooglewood editors get rid of commas in every possible spot.  Ah, well.  It could be worse.  They could have wanted to mess with my semicolons...

I devoured the other stories within about 48 hours of receiving the galleys.  I enjoyed all of them.  Rachel created one of my favorite characters and narrator voices in Man on a Buckskin Horse.  Michelle Pennington really impressed me with her confident writing.  Ashley Stangl created a world and a culture I need to hear more about in Out of the Tomb.  And Grace Mullins wrote the story that made me laugh the most and that I will most enjoy reading to my young relatives (fans of Patricia Wrede and Christopher Healy, rejoice!).

Comments

  1. Hamlette (Rachel)July 8, 2016 at 7:59 AM

    NOOOOOOOOOOO! Not semicolons! Never semicolons. Perish the thought.

    You have young friends who love Patricia C. Wrede? My son (8) loves her books! She is his favorite author, and he got The Thirteenth Child out of the library so often, I bought him his own copy, which is now about worn out. I need to sit down and read it myself one of these days.

    Thank you for the compliment, by the way :-) I'm getting so excited for this release!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mackenzie A. LockhartAugust 20, 2016 at 2:07 PM

    Hey Kathryn! Just wanted to let you know that I've featured your short story contribution to the Five Magic Spindles collection in a review on my blog :) --> http://hiddendoorways.blogspot.ca/2016/08/five-magic-spindles-review.html

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Kathryn McConaughyAugust 31, 2016 at 12:42 PM

      Thanks for your review! As you can tell, I'm not as used to the novella length... I think that "Guardian" is the shortest complete story I've ever written! But I enjoyed writing it despite the length restrictions and will have fun continuing to explore that world in other stories. :)

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Penprints Flash Fiction Dash: Painted with Light

[I wrote this story based on a prompt for the Penprints Flash Fiction Dash.  Yay flash fiction!  If you check out the Penprints site in early June, you will be able to see the stories from everyone who participated!  The Penprints site is <https://rosalievalentine.wordpress.com/> ] Painted with Light Duomik slipped through the liner’s banquet hall, a poncho wrapped around him, bare feet sure.   Despite the blasting warmth of the liner’s heating system, the floor carried a trace of cold. “That’s one of them—the divers,” a teenage girl hissed to her mother, abandoning her plate of fish.   “Ask him!” “Excuse me,” the older woman called sharply. Duomik turned back, squinting against fluorescent lights and tourists’ stares.   Skinny, pale, he was anything but impressive. “Does it work?   The lights?   Does it bring them out?” she asked. “It says in the brochure, na ?” Duomik wrinkled his nose.   The stinks ...
6 comments
Read more

TL;DR - Highlights from the Magic Mirrors Blog Tour

Looking for portal fantasy?   Dystopia and dragons?   Sister stories?   Rich historical fantasy?   Orphans and hangings?   You can find them all in the stories of the Magic Mirrors co-release! If you’re like me, you found the extent of our recently-completed Magic Mirrors blog tour a bit daunting.   So many interesting posts on so many blogs—how could you possibly keep up?   I know there are some posts that I missed… but I haven’t the slightest idea which ones. So I’ve assembled a few highlights from the tour for quick access and easy reading.   (To find links for the entire tour, go here .) Free bits of story Blood in the Snow (Sarah Pennington) – first chapter here For Such a Time as This (Heather L. L. FitzGerald) – whole story free if you sign up for her newsletter here Overpowered (Kathryn McConaughy) – first chapter here , first forty pages here The Seven Drawers (Kendra E. Ardnek) – first chapter here I’...
1 comment
Read more

You Set It On FIRE? (Thorn and Cedar Promote Overpowered)

Promoting a new book is a lot of work... all those interviews and so on take up an awful lot of your time.  But after reading the Silmaril Award presentations from this year (here and elsewhere: http://jenelleschmidt.com/least-competent-henchman-award/?fbclid=IwAR3jvdWWrF60p0NzKH33Z_I_l6TnrIovYUyAMAcH4RBeuheAGmJc5Fy5GrQ) I had a bright idea: send my characters to do the interviews in my stead. In hindsight, this may not have been the best idea. *** Host : Thanks for joining us today for an all-new episode of the Fairy Tale Show!   Kathryn McConaughy was supposed to be here to talk about her new book, Overpowered , but since she is busy writing her dissertation she sent some of her story’s characters in her place. The host sits behind a heavy desk at the center of a curved stage.   Several armchairs are arranged across from him, at right angles so that the studio audience can see the faces of anyone who sits there.   Behind him a curtain hides the b...
3 comments
Read more