What's Up, and What's Up?

Sorry no post! I was visiting family last weekend so I didn’t have a post ready for last week.

What’s up with me? Not too much. I’m working hard on re-polishing a novel that I want to start submitting again. Some of you will recognize it–it is the Austenpunk fantasy that I used to write about on my old writing blog. I’m not sure yet if I want to submit to agents or publishers, or attempt to go it alone. What do you think? If I do it myself, then I can publish it on all the major platforms as well as CreateSpace for a hardcopy version. But I think that would be biting off more than I can chew, at present. I’d have to devote all my vacation time to it, because I don’t have much time otherwise.

If you’re not familiar with it, it is a spy fantasy taking place in a secondary world during a Regency-like era. Hence my calling it “Austenpunk”. It is by far the lightest novel I ever wrote. Have a short excerpt of the current opening:

Saturday Night, 10:15 PM

Starcaster Bureau Headquarters

It’s unsettling to realize that you’re good at something of which you disapprove.

I do approve of spying. The Tarch dictatorship’s ambition for Alden’s part of the Aldainian Peninsula could not be denied, and war is a murky business. I also approve of theft if it keeps national enemies from achieving their objectives. I even approve of subterfuge, since in the spying game, the other person is usually trying to deceive you as well—if they can get away with it.

However, breaking men’s hearts in order to beguile them out their secrets—it didn’t sit well with me. And it wasn’t mere missishness, even if that’s what certain people thought. I had too much firsthand experience of that sort of betrayal. There was once a certain young man, and he…well, if that secret were to ever emerge, it would cost me my career, and possibly my father his barony.

And so, even though I am the very epitome of homespun and ordinary, with brown hair, brown eyes, and worst of all, freckles—I work as a fem. And despite my attitude and appearance, I seemed to be good at it. By this time, I had a short string of fem successes under my bonnet. Some people say that I succeed because my appearance forbids suspicion. However, tonight I did not succeed.

I am thinking about serializing it on Wattpad. I have not yet been brave enough to do so. Are any of you on Wattpad? If you are, please let me know. It might be easier if I knew a friendly face or two!

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The other thing I’ve been up to is trying to find a platform to re-launch Debuts & Reviews. I have been experimenting with Dupral, which is too complicated, and another platform that I cannot recall, which would require too much moderation, and BuddyPress, which I can plug into WordPress, either this blog or another one I’d set up for that purpose. BuddyPress might be winning, but first I would like to play around with other BuddyPress sites, to see if it is what I am looking for.

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Other than that, I finished reading a book or two, and I might have a review for you later this week. What about you? Find anything interesting online that you would like to share? Read any good books lately?