What happens when gods wane, retire, or just decide they need a change of employment?
13 writers took up the challenge and let their imaginations run wild in this anthology that is nearly-always amusing, somewhat insightful, and completely irreverent as we imagine the gods of yore in retirement. Volume 1.
Meet The Author of Pan
Pan by Vanessa Wells: Gwen Henson is a witch trainee with a nose for trouble; when she gets into something deeper than her mentor can help her with, they are forced to contact a cantankerous former god for help…help that he is willing to give, for a price.
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Grumpy Old Gods Volume 1
Vanessa Wells
Vanessa Wells lives with her family deep in an enchanted forest (in Texas). Her hobbies include writing, drinking tea and coffee, reading, writing some more, and cooking. She battles daily infestations of plot bunnies…and dust bunnies, but that’s another matter entirely.
Vanessa is the author of the Seventeen Stones Trilogy and the Topeka, TX Chronicles, and the AREA 52 short series.
Amazon Author Page
You can connect with her on Website ~ Facebook –Storm Dance Publications
When did you know that you could be a professional writer?
It’s a funny question. My kindergarten teacher took a look at one of my first stories and said, “You know, if you’d learn to spell, you could be a writer.”
That was probably where I got the idea. I wrote stories from the time I could read…. maybe three years old. And I made my parents watch plays I put together before that.
I’ve loved stories all of my life.
That doesn’t mean that writing good fiction came naturally or easily. I love Renaissance paintings as well, and I certainly can’t reproduce any of those. Loving something doesn’t mean that you are actually good at it.
But I always had ideas for stories. Big ideas. Small ideas. Characters that wouldn’t leave me alone. Dreams that begged to be converted into story form.
For many years, I’d write furiously so that I could get the story out of my head, and then I’d toss the things into a box in my closet.
Eventually, I buckled down and wrote my first book.
That sentence makes it sound so much easier than it was.
That book was three years in the making, and I nearly killed it in revision.
I eventually sent it to my dream publisher, and, as was the way of things at the time, resigned myself to a year-long wait. I wrote my second book while I waited.
Eventually, the book came back with a very nice rejection letter; one that had a few useful tips in it.
I had no idea how rare that was.
I was crushed.
I certainly didn’t know, at that point that I could be a professional. I wasn’t even sure that I could write something that was good enough to be published at all.
I started hunting up information about writing. I found a course that I thought would help, but it was expensive. I put it on my wish list and left it at that.
I bought one of the author’s cheaper courses and was delighted by what I found inside.
When my birthday came that year, I’d mentioned the course to my parents, but never expected them to purchase it. It was expensive. And my parents are known for favoring gifts that are useful. Clothes, tools, how-to books, that kind of thing.
My parents surprised me with that course. How to Revise Your Novel. They saw that as a tool. Mytool.
That was the moment that I finally felt like I might be able – really able- to write for a living one day.
I took my first two books through the course, and, during the same time, started writing publishable short fiction that actually started selling.
But the first moment that I really thought, deep down in my soul, that I could do this? That was the day my parents gave me permission to simply be myself. They told me that they believed that I could do it…not in words, but with action.
Vanessa has a bonus for you. Three of her books that you can download now. Seventeen Stones, Trick or Treat, and Magic and Other Disasters.
Seventeen Stones
Blurb: Mia Rusticov is focused on testing into the College, the sole training program for young wand wielders: for one shining moment, as she raises all seventeen of the testing stones, it appears that her path is set. Fate has other plans for the gifted young wand wielder and Mia quickly discovers that all is not as it seems within the walls of the City. The well-known costs of wielding a wand (inevitable infertility, body changes, madness, and occasional calcification leading to death) are just the tip of the iceberg. Mia must decide who to trust before someone uses her talents for their own dark purposes…
Trick or Treat
Blurb: Trick? Or Treat? Tempting tales of with just the right amount of bite to enliven any Halloween. In KILL FM, a young woman drives along a cursed highway, her only ally a voice on the radio. In All Night Diner, a waitress tries to survive a sudden influx of ravenous undead. In Human Resources, Dale Flanagan slowly realizes that there is something wickedly wrong with his new job. Stories of the supernatural in all its forms to make you laugh and shiver…sometimes in the same tale.
Magic and Other Disasters
Blurb: When Gwen Henson finds out that her family is moving again right before her senior year, she’s less than pleased with the situation. Just another Podunk-Junction town in the middle of nowhere. Been there, done that.
But this isn’t just another town. Strange things happen in Topeka, and it doesn’t take long for Gwen to find herself in the middle of it and in way over her head.
13 days of fun as we meet the authors of Grumpy Old Gods Volume 1 releasing March 30th, 2019.
We are adding an author a day to this meet the author series starting March 23-April 4th as a kick off to our launch. Grumpy Old Gods vol. 1 releasing March 30th. So be sure to check back and read about the other authors too. We have all kinds of surprises that show up randomly. Don’t miss them. You can read about the other authors HERE.