Tag Archives: Fiction River

Getting Justice Storybundle

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I’m thrilled to report that my “women’s thriller” novel, Shelter, is featured in the Getting Justice Storybundle for the next three weeks. I’m in excellent company, with seven other novels plus two short story collections, all featuring mysteries that deal with justice. Here’s what Curator Dean Smith has to say, in part, about the bundle:

JUSTICE: A GREAT WORD: by Dean Wesley Smith

I learned that if you ask a writer for a story about justice, you get all kinds of books and genres. But mostly when you say the word “Justice” you get mystery and crime fiction.

And that was fine by me. To be honest, that’s what I thought of when I started putting together a bundle of books with the theme “Getting Justice.”

Turns out the concept of justice isn’t so easy to define. I know, I ended up looking it up. The most common term in the many definitions is “fair.” For example, the best definition in my mind for the idea of justice is “the quality of being just, impartial, or fair…”

But when you add the word “Getting” in front of the word “Justice” it brings up an entirely different form of story.

For StoryBundle, you decide what price you want to pay. For $5 (or more, if you’re feeling generous), you’ll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

  • Unexpected Good Guys by Annie Reed
  • Independent by Means of Magic by Kari Kilgore
  • Shelter by Marcelle Dubé
  • Justice by Fiction River

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus six more books, for a total of 10!

  • The Meter’s Always Running by C.A. Rowland
  • Help Me Nora by Diana Deverell
  • Beyond the Grave by R.W. Wallace
  • Death by Polka by Robert Jeschonek
  • Ace High by Dean Wesley Smith
  • Street Justice by Kris Nelscott

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (epub, mobi) for all books!

For Dean’s complete essay, visit storybundle.com.

The Verdant Gene

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Falcon Ridge Publishing has recently reprinted my short story, The Verdant Gene. It was originally published in February 2014 by WMG Publishing in Moonscapes, part of their Fiction River anthology series. Verdant was also briefly available as an audio story, read by the wonderful Jane Kennedy, to promote the anthology.

THE VERDANT GENE

Marcelle Dubé

Verdant Gene

We landed on Verdant one hundred and three years ago, in what turned out to be Year Three of the thirty-year Cycle.

In a stroke of cosmic bad luck, the probes that explored Verdant and mapped its solar system did so at apogee, when Castor and Pollux, the twin moons, were stable in the sky at the farthest they would be from Verdant, and each other. How were we to know that this stability would only last a year?

It took the original colonists a few years to realize that Verdant’s moons were slowly drawing closer to each other and to the planet. The attendant tides and wild weather soon made the colonists relocate the settlement to higher, more protected ground, but it was only at Year Fifteen of the Cycle, at perigee, that the colonists understood the full impact of the moons’ strange dance.

There have only been three Perigee Years since we landed on Verdant. With each one, we were better prepared to survive the physical onslaughts of storm and surge. But with each one, we lost more and more people to the Cycle madness.

* * *

To read the rest of the story: amazon.com | amazon.ca | barnes and noble | kobo | apple | smashwords

Fiction River: A subscription drive for a new era

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It’s a Brave New World out there. In the old days, publishers would pepper us with requests to subscribe to their magazines, including email reminders, return address cards, etc.

WMG Publishing, the folks who publish the Fiction River Anthology Series among other wonderful books, have decided on another route for their subscription drive. Since they went with a Kickstarter campaign to fund the debut of the series, they’re going back to Kickstarter for their subscription drive. The incentives they’re offering are enticing–everything from a free e-copy of one of the first ten volumes to the right to choose the theme of an upcoming anthology and the opportunity to co-edit it with Dean Wesley Smith who, with Kristine Kathryn Rusch, is the series editor. In between those extremes is a wonderful array of workshops, subscriptions and books by almost all of the contributors to Fiction River anthologies.

As for the connection to moi, two of my print novels are being offered as incentives: Kirwan’s Son and Backli’s Ford, as well as one of my e-books.

Check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/403649867/fiction-river-subscription-drive?ref=discovery

FR Moonscapes ebook cover webKirwan's Son front coverBackli cover-POD-Dube name-REV

Why it matters

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[This is a post I wrote for Not Your Usual Suspects, published June 13, 2014.]

A few weeks ago, I posted to a local arts list about a free podcast of a short story of mine. The story, The Verdant Gene, is science fiction and part of the Fiction River: Moonscapes anthology. I was very pleased that the publishers decided to feature my story that week, as they had a great selection of stories from which to pick.

A day or so later, a fellow I know slightly wrote to tell me that he had loved the story and that it was “first rate.”

I actually got tears in my eyes. Isn’t that silly?FR Moonscapes ebook cover web

It was kind of him to take the time to let me know what he thought. We probably wouldn’t know each other if we passed each other on the street, so he needn’t have said anything and I would never have known that he had listened to the story, let alone whether or not he liked it. But he made a point of telling me that he had liked it, and why. That’s true generosity.

Maybe his compliment meant so much to me BECAUSE we don’t really know each other. Does that make sense? Of course your mom will tell you she loves your stories. And co-workers and friends. I mean, what else are they going to say? But when someone you don’t know (or barely know) makes the effort to tell you they liked your story—wow. It matters.

Readers have no idea what power they wield. One sincere compliment can make your month. (And when you’re 60,000 words into your latest novel and they all seem like crap, that compliment can help you keep butt in chair.)

So, Dear Reader, have you ever told a writer that you enjoyed her story? Why or why not? And writers, do you react differently to a compliment from someone you know, versus someone you don’t?

Oh, and if you like great short stories, check out the WMG Publishing series of anthologies. Highly recommended.

 

The Verdant Gene – a free podcast

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FR Moonscapes ebook cover webWMG Publishing, publishers of the wonderful Fiction River anthology series, will be podcasting my Moonscapes short story, The Verdant Gene. The folks at WMG do a fabulous job with their podcasts and even better, they offer them for FREE!

So, mark your calendars for Wednesday, May 21, which is when the podcast becomes available. It will remain available (and FREE) on the WMG website for a week.

Can’t wait to hear it, especially as the story will be narrated by Jane Kennedy, a talented voice actress and experienced audio director.

The Verdant Gene

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FR Moonscapes ebook cover webI may have died and gone to Heaven. The Fiction River anthology: Moonscapes has just been released and my short story, “The Verdant Gene,” is in it. Not only am I chuffed to have made it into a Fiction River anthology, but I am humbled at the company my story will be keeping there: Annie Reed, Steven Mohan, Jr., Scott William Carter, Kristine Kathryn Rusch… and that’s just to name a few.

Here’s the blurb:

We all look up at the moon and wonder. And maybe dream. For centuries, the moon  filled our imaginations. Eleven professional writers took those dreams and set  original stories on moons scattered all over the galaxy. Yet, as the dreams of centuries, every story holds a human touch. From a mythical man fulfilling a
childhood wish to a fantastic addition to Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s bestselling Retrieval Artist series, this volume of Fiction River allows you to travel to eleven different moons without leaving the comfort of home.

Fiction River is an original fiction anthology series. Modeled on successful anthology
series of the past, from Orbit to Universe to Pulphouse: The Hardback Magazine, the goal of Fiction River is to provide a forum for “original ground-breaking fiction of all genres.”

For more information on the Fiction River anthologies, visit: FictionRiver.com

Moonscapes is available as an ebook and as a trade paperback from regular retailers including: amazon.com, amazon.ca, barnesandnoble.com, kobo, chapters

WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION

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From the Not Your Usual Suspects blog post August 7, 2013:

Most people take vacations to rest. They go to the cottage, a resort or the beach to unwind and relax.

On my vacations, I go to writers’ workshops in Lincoln City on the beautiful Oregon coast. And there’s nothing restful or relaxing about ‘em.

I’ve just returned from the latest one. It was an eight-day “Advanced Master Writing and Business Seminar” and it was—bar none—the most mind-blowing business experience I’ve had as a professional writer. Some of the topics we covered included:

  • Selling to traditional publishers in the new world
  • Copyright law and contract law for fiction writers
  • Cash streams and cash flow for writers
  • Accounting for writers
  • Advanced audio training for audio books
  • How to sell short fiction to traditional publishers
  • Advanced cover design

The main instructors were Dean Wesley Smith, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, and Scott William Carter. They were aided by Christina F. York, accountant by day and mystery novelist by night (writing as Christy Fifield and Christy Evans); Jane Kennedy, writer and audiobook producer for WMG Publishing; Allyson Longuiera, publisher of WMG Publishing and professional graphic designer; Lee Allred, writer and all-around cool guy; Matt Buchman, who writes fabulous military romances and was a Project Manager in a previous life; and a surprise guest speaker, Mark Lefebvre, who writes fiction under the name Mark Leslie and whose day job is Director of Self-Publishing & Author Relations, Kobo Inc. I mean, how cool is that?

Weeping Woman We had the wonderful Sheldon Mcarthur, owner of North by Northwest Books in Lincoln City, who not only submitted to an interview with Dean Smith about how a bookstore owner does business with an independent publisher (including writers who publish their own books), but who also hosted a group book signing at his store, which included me and my two books, The Tuxedoed Man and The Weeping Woman.

Not only did we learn a lot from the formal presenters, we learned a lot from each other, too. We were over 30 participants from all over the U.S. and Canada, not to mention the United Kingdom and Germany. I was seated between two fabulous writers, Karen Abrahamson and Annie Reed, both of whom are well published, experienced and very generous with their knowledge.

Can you see why this was exhausting? I filled two notebooks and by the end of the week, I felt like information had to be shoehorned into my brain because it was already so full.

And to top it all off, the participants were invited to submit two short stories for consideration for two Fiction River anthologies edited by Dean Wesley Smith, and he bought my story for the Moonscapes one!

I left Oregon buzzing with ideas, information and plans. And in spite of the fact that it was very tiring and that no lying about on the beach took place, the writer in me is refreshed and recharged, ready to roar!

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