I had tried to write blog post last week and I was getting on my own nerves so never posted it. I’m not sleeping, which is partly my personality and partly stress because I’m so behind with everything due to events this spring, and it’s harder to watch what I’m saying with my outside voice. I have tried, again, multiple times to post this and I keep deleting paragraphs.

A couple of us have been watching the StoryBundle stats update every morning, hoping for a miracle. It jumped up eleven sold overnight, so we’re hoping the Fear of Missing Out will give it a kick with just two days left.

I have been…frustrated, to say the least, by the High School Group Project Dynamic present here. I have a very small following but worked hard to hustle and promote everyone. Others…could not even be bothered to tell their followers about it. 🙃

I have had to cut a lot out of this post because my frustrations are better expressed in DMs. A lot of us really tried to promote everyone and have fun. Others did try to boost. And then there were dismissive remarks from other quadrants, and dragged heels at being asked to mention it at all, and it’s just heaped on more stress the past few weeks.

We’ve sold far less than the other bundle I was in, and I know this is very much first-world problems with everything going on in the world, but after rent/utilities, taxes, business expenses, private health insurance, and pet needs, on average I have about $120-$150/month to live on (sometimes more, sometimes a lot less). For groceries, for non-covered medication, for buying the odd movie on sale, for donating to charity (outside the $10/month I give to Amnesty International), for paying back taxes. Book sales have tanked the last several months; patrons are cancelling (largely due to their own job losses–I get it). I’m really scared about how things will look a year from now.

I needed this to do better. Especially coming off how demoralizing April’s new release was, when all but one friend could not even be bothered to acknowledge the book that day. I am disappointed for others, too, but yeah, I really needed something.

I have just deleted another paragraph here as I’m struggling with balancing honesty vs whining. This is far more negative than I intended but, you know, this is my blog–very few people read it and I’m allowed to be negative here after I’ve tried to be fun and enthusiastic everywhere else. (I have thoughts about not being passive aggressive when talking about our work as creatives or treating it like a chore/thing we’re ashamed of, and I am not ashamed at all of this bundle–I am just disappointed in people.)

I have tremendous respect for the curator, who not only put together a stellar lineup of books but actually read them all, which I understand not all curators even bother to do, and promoted the hell out of this despite so much stress she had this spring. She runs a quality small press and has just launched her first Kickstarter to help fund an upcoming anthology, so please have a look at this wintery gothic project Hauntings & Hoarfrost and consider backing (I did!).

I have sworn off group projects, yes, but I will do another if she asks me, because she’s just one of those people.

There are just two days left to get SO MUCH MURDER at StoryBundle.

Here’s hoping for that final FOMO boost. 🤞

Amidst all the terrible (seriously, Shawn was sick, Ninja was at the emergency vet on Monday–it just never ends) there is something pretty cool I can show you!

I’m part of a new StoryBundle collection of supernatural detective stories, curated by one of my favourite people, Margaret Curelas at Tyche Books. I have read several of these books–I have worked on some as an editor, some as an artist, some as both, and I count some of these folks among my friends. I’m thrilled to bits to have Waverly in such good company.

This is a pay-what-you-want situation–pay at least $5 and get four books. I’m in the bonus list, so drop $20 or more, decide how much is going to us and how much to StoryBundle, and you’ll get all eleven books including mine.

Here’s Margaret:

I love detective stories. Reluctant detectives, cynical detectives, detectives who drown their sorrows in a bottle of cheap whiskey. I also love ghost stories and all things uncanny, which means some of my favorite books feature supernatural detectives—those lucky few who investigate flickering lights and strange noises in supposedly empty houses. Those who make deals with trickster gods. Those who navigate multiple worlds and realities.

The Supernatural Detective Bundle contains several stories about ghosts and their unfinished business—some sad, some creepy, and some malevolent. Others are about otherworldly creatures like vampires and gods and their intricate machinations. All the stories are about the people called upon to risk their lives and sanity to solve that strange death, protecting their family, friends, and, incidentally, the world.

To find out more about the eleven books in this bundle, click here, and make sure to click on each cover for a synopsis, reviews and preview of each book!

Margaret has been a huge supporter of the Waverly Jones series, so when she invited me to this, I could not say no. Is Waverly a supernatural series? That depends on your perspective. Waverly is certainly haunted. And I know some folks interpret her hallucination of Meadow as an actual ghost–which is an interpretation I’m quite fine with. Waverly is written very close first person, which leaves a lot of room for readers to see things she doesn’t.

But I was not content to leave it at that, so in addition to The Killing Beach, I’ve included a bonus novella I wrote specifically for this release, called Haunting at Hayward House. It’s about 23K words, set after Silent All These Years (although I kept spoilers to a minimum), and will not be available digitally elsewhere, although I plan to include it in the next hardcover.

Next to The Crossroads Butcher—the serial killer who murdered her sister—Waverly Jones’s greatest foe might be the local Heritage Advisory Committee.

While she hasn’t directly run afoul of them, they’ve long tried to get on her good side in the hopes of going through her to gain the good graces of her mother, the descendent of Port Milton’s oldest family and owner of the Milton Estate. Even though she hates everyone anyway, Waverly particularly hates the committee—but their money spends the same as anyone else’s, so when they ask her to look into the supposed haunting of a local murder house, she tacks on a lot of extra fees for the irritation and then agrees. As soon as the cheque clears.

It isn’t only ghosts she’s alone with at the house: a group of twentysomething true-crime podcasters are also staying in the hopes of finding evidence of a haunting. Waverly is certain there’s a more mundane explanation, but when one of the kids goes missing in the middle of the night, she considers revising that assessment. Because the doors and windows are all latched from the inside, yet there is no trace of the missing person—nor is there an easy explanation for lost items appearing in unexpected places, humanoid shadows that disappear when Waverly looks directly at them, or for the rising certainty that they are not the only ones in this haunted house…

This is available for a limited time only at StoryBundle.com. If you could share with your various networks, that would be greatly appreciated by all involved!