You're invited to the launch of Dead Serious by Wendy Truscott

Dear Brian,

 I’m excited to announce that Winged Publications has released my new novel, Dead Serious, a psychological thriller/romance set in the world of amateur theatre. On Tuesday, July 25th at 4:30 p.m. there will be an official book launch at the Baysville Library. {Note: Baysville is northeast of Bracebridge / southeast of Huntsville. Map here.}

Dana Williams never suspected starting a new life might end with her death.

Fleeing a devastating breakup, the aspiring playwright moves to a new neighbourhood. There, her future brightens, as she finds a new job, a cozy apartment, and most exciting of all, an offer to produce her first play.

While the world of theatre is mostly make-believe, the people in it are all too human. When disturbing events begin to occur around her, she realizes she is the target of a demented mind. When these events lead to murder, she is forced to question whom among her new friends she can trust.

It soon becomes clear almost everyone has something to hide, and Dana acknowledges how little she truly knows many of the people in her life, including the one who broke her heart. With her own life in danger, she must consider everyone a potential killer, even her new best friend, her landlady, and the woman’s intriguing nephew. Tensions build to a terrifying confrontation with a clever killer who has outsmarted everyone.

The story is set in The Beach neighbourhood of Toronto, where I grew up, and many will recognize the location on the cover. Like my first two novels, Haunted Journey and MacGregor’s Curse, it also has a strong Muskoka connection.

Dead Serious is available on amazon.ca and .com or through me at www.wendytruscott.com or on Facebook: Wendytruscottnovels.

Haunted Journey and MacGregor’s Curse, both YA historicals set in Muskoka, are available on Amazon, Chapters/Indigo, Barnes & Noble. They also appeal to adults who enjoy stories of families and communities pulling together during difficult times.

Thank you, Brian. I hope to join another of your valuable courses before long.

Wendy Truscott

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.                 

More markets for your short fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry and for your sci-fi stories, novellas and novels

Note: You can hang out and chat with quick brown foxes and vixens on my Facebook page (here). Just send a friend request to Brian Henry.

Also, if you’re not yet on my newsletter, send me an email, including your locale, to: brianhenry@sympatico.ca ~ Brian

 

The New Quarterly publishes short fiction, poetry and nonfiction. The New Quarterly limits the number of submissions it reads for each of its reading periods. The reading periods run Sept 1 – Feb 28 and March 1 – Aug 31. So if the closer you submit to the start of either reading period, the better the chance of your piece being read. 

The New Quarterly pays $275 for fiction and nonfiction; $50 for poems and postscripts.

The New Quarterly also runs three annual writing contests: The Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest (deadline end of February), The Edna StaeblerPersonal Essay Contest (deadline end of March), and The Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award (deadline end of May). 

Full submission guidelines here.

 

Yolk is a Montreal-based literary journal with a print edition (open to residents of Canada only) and a digital publication (open to international submissions) for digital publication. Yolk publishes fiction, art, and poetry. 

Theme for the 3.2 print publication: Solastalgia: Tightening at the smell of smoke. Recoiling at the sight of receding glaciers. Close the news app. Shudder in a foreign home. I’m sorry for the heat. I’m sorry for the mercury. This is a new kind of grief, with a nascent voice. Speak to it. 

Pays: $100CAD honorarium for digital publication. For print, $30 per page, regardless of genre, up to a maximum of $200. $200 for print cover art. 

Deadline: August 14, 2023 for print publication. In the subject line include: “3.2 Print Publication Submission.” International contributors should include “Digital Publication Submission” in the subject line. Guidelines here.

 

Carte Blanche is a Quebec-based online literary magazine publishes poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, translations. comics, and photography, with a focus on Quebec-based artists. 

Pays but "modestly." 

Deadline: August 21, 2023. Guidelines here.

 

Pseudopod is a horror magazine in audio format. If you have a horror story you’d like to hear narrated, send it to them. They looking for flash fiction under 1,500 words, preferably 500–1,000 words, and short stories 1,500–6,000 words, preferably about 4,500 words. Pseudopod wants everything from grim realism or crime drama, to magic-realism, to blatantly supernatural dark fantasy.

“We publish highly literary stories reminiscent of Poe or Lovecraft as well as vulgar shock-value pulp fiction. We don’t split hairs about genre definitions, and we do not observe any taboos about what kind of content can appear in our stories. Originality demands that you’re better off avoiding vampires, zombies, and other recognizable horror tropes unless you have put a very unique spin on them. What matters most is that the stories are dark and compelling.”

Pays $0.08 US per word for original fiction. $100 US per story for reprint fiction and $20 US for reprints of flash fiction (under 1,500 words). 

Deadline: August 21, 2023. Guidelines here.  

 

Analog Science Fiction and Fact magazine is a long-established market for science fiction stories and serialized novellas and novels, nonfiction pieces, and poetry, with both print and digital editions.

Pays 8–10 cents US per word for short fiction (up to 20,000 words), 6 cents US per word for serials (40,000–80,000 words) 9 cents US per word for fact articles, and $1 US per line for poetry.

Pays $1,200 US for color cove art and $125 US for black and whiter interiors.

Fact articles should be about 4,000 words and should deal with topics at the present frontiers of research whose likely future developments have implications of wide interest.

{Unlike almost all literary journals} Analog considers material submitted by any writer solely on the basis of merit.

Submission guidelines here.

 

Quick Brown Fox welcomes your short stories, poems, and essays about reading, writing, favourite books, and libraries. Read a few essays on the blog to get a taste of what other writers have done (see here and scroll down).

Quick Brown Fox also welcomes reviews of any kind and of anything, anywhere or anybody. If you want to review your favourite coffee shops or libraries, babysitters or lovers (no real names please), go for it. See examples of book reviews here (and scroll down); other reviews here (and scroll down).

Submit to: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

Include a short bio at the end of your piece and attach a photo of yourself.

 See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.

 

“My Magic Pen” by Jo Anne Wilson

Today writing is difficult 

Words will not come

Ideas blocked

I can feel the effort in my brain

Thoughts crash against each other

Or hit a wall and die

I doodle on my page

My pen making marks

But none turn into words

I wish for the perfect pen

One that could pull the raw beginnings of a story from my brain

Down through my arm where muscle and sinews

shape them with their strength

Blood filled veins give them warmth and feeling

Through the delicate bones of my wrist and hand

that finely sculpt them

Until they flow from the nib of my magic pen

Onto the page in beautifully crafted words

That sing of life and tell great tales. …

In the morning when the world is quiet, I sit at a small table that looks out my sliding glass windows to the river and the gardens on its bank. Most mornings start like this. It’s my sacred time.  A time in the day without demands. I share it only with other waking creatures and the slowly lightening sky. The harshness of our demanding modern world hasn’t reached me yet. Some days, I can open the door to the river and listen to its quiet flow, smell the earth, hear the rustle of leaves on the trees and listen to the birds tuning up their voices. I can sip my morning coffee and let my mind drift from sleep to quiet contemplation, a slow drifting like the river, steady and organic.

Some days are for quiet reflection only. On others, I write what my pen wants to write. My magic pen that takes the images surfacing in my mind, pulls them down through the blood, flesh and sinew of my arm and hand and like an alchemist turns them into words, small swirls, dots, lines that appear on a snowy page, gathering together to form sentences. 

Some days there’s a torrent of words spilling from my pen. They help me untangle small kinks that have formed in my thinking, straightening out ideas so I can move more easily through the world, find words to tell my stories. 

Other days, there’s a mere trickle. The whiteness of the page is barely broken by black markings that seemingly have no meaning. My pen is not so magic then – my brain filled with knots, not kinks, that stick in my head and grow ever bigger, a block to answers, a dam to creativity. Knots too big to make the journey through arm and hand. Complex questions I seek answers to as I see a world I understand less and less. That is happening today.

I take the few words that appear this morning and I try to use them as picks to push into the knots in my head and loosen them, or as blades to cut the stubborn threads of these knotted images, cut them down to size.  I want the flow, but the weak words that appeared today do nothing. No answers to troubling questions today, no dams breached.

My wizard pen has failed me and I must face the ever encroaching, demanding day as I am right this moment, knotty brain and all. Or have I failed my pen? Been afraid to delve deeper, face troubling truths and persevere in the search for answers? Is it me that hasn’t cut those knots down to size? Tomorrow morning, I’ll return to my table, with faith in my pen, in my sacred quiet time, in my determination to dissolve the knots, trusting that the words will flow again helping me find answers, so I can sing of life and tell great tales. 

***

Jo Anne Wilson was Director of Marketing for Tourism for three years in the early 1990s, working for the Government of The Northwest Territories (at the time, Nunavut had not been established as a separate territory). She and her staff promoted tourism to the NWT throughout North America, Europe and Japan and assisted local tourism businesses with their marketing. She is now a retired college professor who enjoys theatre, art exhibits, travel and writing. 

See Brian Henry’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.

Writing Kid Lit – the Next Level, Monday evenings, Oct 2 – Dec 11

Writing Kid Lit – the Next Level

Picture Books to Young Adult Novels

Online: Monday evenings, 6:30 – 8:30 p.m.
October 2 – December 11, 2023, {0r to Dec 18 if the course fills up} N0 class Oct 9 or 23.
Offered through Zoom and accessible from anywhere there's internet 

This course is for adults {or teens} interested in writing picture books, Chapter Books, Middle Grade books, or Young Adult novels. It’s meant for people who have previously taken a kid lit course or who otherwise know the basics of the contemporary market for children’s literature. 

The focus of the class will be on your work – picture book manuscripts or chapters of novels or nonfiction books for young people that you’ll present to the class for feedback as to how to make them even better. We’ll also have discussions, talks from the instructor, and two children’s authors as guest speakers:

Lana Button has eleven children’s books, with Orca, Kids Can Press, Owlkids, Tundra, and Pajama Press, including her latest, Stay My Baby (Orca ) Percy’s Perfect Friend, (Pajama Press – see here) Tayra’s NOT Talking (Kids Can Press – see here), The Cow Said Boo (Pajama Press – see here), and Tough Like Mum (Tundra / Penguin Random House – see here). 

Lana has four picture books scheduled for publication in 2024, which include books with Scholastic and Nimbus. Lana is also excited about her 2025 Groundwood picture book, co-written with Eric Walters.

Lana has been awarded the Crystal Kite Award. Her picture books have been shortlisted for The Blue Spruce, The Shining Willow, the Jean Throop IODE Award and the Rainforest of Reading, and have been recognized as Canadian Children’s Book Centre’s Best Bets and the IBBY Outstanding Book for Young Children.

Find out more about Lana and her books at www.lanabutton.com and connect with her on social media @LanaButton 

Erin Silver is a children’s author and freelance writer with nearly 20 years of professional industry experience. Her work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, Today's Parent, Chatelaine, and The Washington Post, among others.

Erin has six books out, most recently: Good Food, Bad Waste (Orca Books – see here) a nonfiction book for kids about reducing food waste, Sitting Shiva (Orca Books – see here), a picture book about a child grieving his mother, and Rush Hour: Navigating Our Global Traffic Jam (Orca – see here), a nonfiction book for kids 9–12. 

Erin is also the author of Just Watch Me (Common Deer Press – see here), a middle grade novel about the perils of the online age; What Kids Did: Stories of Kindness and Invention in the Time of COVID-19 (Second Story Press – see here), a nonfiction picture book about the amazing ways kids around the world helped during the pandemic; and Proud to Play (Lorimor – see here), featuring outstanding Canadian LGBTQ+ athletes and allies who have made a difference.

Plus, she has several more kids' books on the way.

Erin has a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction from King's College in Halifax, a postgraduate journalism degree from Ryerson University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Toronto. She's a member of IBBY, The Writers Union of Canada, CANSCAIP and SCBWI. Visit her at erinsilver.ca

Instructor Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada's most popular blog for writers, taught creative writing at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Sarnia to Saint John. Brian is the author of a children's version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Tribute Publishing). But his proudest boast is that he has helped many of his students get published.  

Read reviews of Brian's various courses and workshops here (and scroll down).

Fee: $220.35 plus 13% hst = $259

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

 See all of Brian’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.