Accidentally Yours Available as Ebook

Accidentally Yours, a collection of short stories, poems, and essays, by Joan H. Young is now available as an eBook from Amazon and Smashwords. It should appear on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks, and Overdrive in just a few days. The paperback edition will also be ready in a few days.

The volume contains 30 poems, 16 short stories (several of which are micro-fiction), and 9 non-fiction essays. Thematically, they are all over the map. That will keep you from getting bored. It also gives you a glimpse into my chaotic mind. Enter if you dare. All this for $3.99 in the eBook format!

Diana Kathryn Wolfe-Plopa, founder of Pages Promotions, LLC, and an author in her own right, says, "This collection of short stories, essays, and poetry feels like a Literary Advent Calendar. Each time I turned the page, I was given a little gift of story, perspective, and art. It was impossible to take it slowly. Remarkable in this writing is the flash fiction pieces sprinkled throughout. The art of writing a complete story in just a few short lines is a difficult skill to master. Joan does it here with an acumen and comfort that reveals the true nature of her outstanding writing gifts. The balance between shorter and longer pieces creates a natural ebb and flow to the writing."

And Jean Davis, author of speculative fiction writes, "A delightful collection of poetry and prose that will make you gasp, laugh out loud, and fondly appreciate days gone by."

After a frustrating day of formatting woes (I usually don't have many problems, but the issues probably stemmed from culling the pieces from many different files, created in various versions of several different software packages), both major platforms (Amazon and Smashwords) have approved the files, and they look pretty clean. I don't see a bunch of formatting oddities in the previews.

You can find Accidentally Yours at Amazon and Smashwords.

Accidentally Yours Anthology

One of my goals for the year was to bring out an anthology of my varied short writings-- stories, essays and poems. However, the amount of effort required to finish North Country Quest has put all of my other goals into a tail spin.

Getting a collection of my short works together really doesn't require a lot of effort. Everything is written. Some final editing is needed, compiling things and maybe adding a little text about some of the stories, but most of the work is simply formatting the book.

So, this week, I got my act together and tried to come up with a title for the book. I read some articles about how long an anthology should be. While researching that, I learned that anthologies are often given the same title as the lead story.

I'm not usually one to ask what other people think about titles and cover art. In this case, it's probably a good thing I did. I came up with six possible titles, and my first choice only got one other vote, from an engineering friend.

The overwhelming choice of the people who participated was Accidentally Yours, which is also the first story. I'd really like to have this title and cover be appealing enough to attract people to buy it, so I'm taking the advice I've received.

One person said, "Accidentally Yours reflects a mystery of a first encounter." That said a lot to me. The collection will be eclectic, to say the least. Themes are all over the map-- very much like my brain. That first story is set on the frozen North Sea, so I went looking for a royalty-free photo I could use and put together a possible cover. What you see above is only tweaked a bit from that first effort. I like it! Others seem to like it!

This could be a winner. One author friend of mine says her short story collection is her best selling book. Maybe I can have this ready to go in a month... in time for Christmas. That's not out of the question, without taking away from the time I'm working on North Country Quest.

So far, it includes flash fiction, literary fiction, entertaining short stories, essays, and quite a few poems. The list includes, at this point, nine stories, five essays, 14 poems and a few two-sentence stories. I'm aiming for about 200 pages. Formatting has begun.

If you helped in the title decision, thank you!

"Salmon Sea" Selected for a Broadside

Ludington Art Fair (photo by JHY)

Have you ever heard of a broadside? Neither had I, except in the obsolete sense of a newspaper-like poster used to disseminate news or advertising in pre-Civil War times. However, I guess they have really caught on some places as a way to get art and writing out to the general public.

One of the West Side Gang leaders thought they would be a good offering to have at the Ludington Art Fair. We had to submit poems for inclusion, and I had one make the cut. They had art work added, and were printed on good quality paper.

The poem of mine that was chosen is named "Salmon Sea." I'll be sending it to everyone on my Mail Chimp List for free, when I reach 50 subscribers. Have you signed up?

Elements of Life Kindle Version Available

Elements of Life is now available in digital form from Amazon. The paperback copy should also be ready for sale in just a few days.

I have one poem in this anthology, "Now Then When." It's from the darker side of my nature, but just as real as more upbeat writings.

There are interesting short stories and more poems in Elements of Life. This book is not really literary fiction, rather, the stories are written for enjoyment.

Kindle

Paperback