Before man came to blow it right
The wind once blew itself untaught
And did its loudest day and night
In any rough place where it caught.Man came to tell it what was wrong:
It hadn’t found the place to blow;
It blew too hard–the aim was song.
And listen–how it ought to go!–From Robert Frost, “The Aim Was Song”
Writers are in the position of taking the rough wind of the world and shaping it into song; sometimes that requires sitting back out of the public eye a bit while we shape our word-songs. So it is this month: during June, Mercury Retrograde Press writers are mainly whistling to themselves.
Larissa Niec is tucking herself away into a three week writing retreat in New Mexico to finish Cael’s Shadow, the long-awaited sequel to her debut novel, Shorn.
Danielle L. Parker is steadily working along on her third Minuet James novel, Knight of Faith; she is also celebrating a sale to Pulp Empire of a piece to be included in a planned anthology–more details on that as they develop.
Zachary Steele is still ambling along with his preparations for Flutter: An Epic of Mass Distraction, his YA piece The Storyteller, and various other projects; next month, he says, he’ll have more to report.
Edward Morris and Barbara Friend Ish are likewise quietly busy with their own ongoing projects and have nothing new to report.
Leona Wisoker has just completed the first draft of the fourth book in her Children of the Desert series and is turning her attention to a series of short stories she’s been meaning to finish for some time now. She’s had two spec pieces accepted into small-press anthologies, one through Sparkito Press (a spinoff of Dark Quest Books) and the other through Soylent Publications (run by Jhada “Rogue” Addams), and might be approved into a third anthology in the near future. She will be at BaltiCon over Memorial Day weekend, and has a book signing at the College of William and Mary Bookstore on June 10, from 2-6 pm. Other than that, June’s looking pretty quiet for her as well!
(Editor’s note: “Other than that…” Ha.)
Check back with us in July to see how we’ve been teaching the wind to blow. . . .
