Jennifer Brozek | All posts tagged 'review of me'

Bubble and Squeek for 29 Jan 2013

This one is all interviews and reviews:

An interview with Firbolg Publishing. Pacific Northwest Haunts: Jennifer Brozek comes in out of the rain!

I was interviewed by Cat Rambo for the SFWA blog.

Shock Totem reviewer Sherri White gave DANGERS UNTOLD a very nice review.

I found out via Apocalypse Ink Productions that I have a couple of new (to me) short reviews of my books:

INDUSTRY TALK - five stars
"This book contains a number of essays about two specific fields: Role-Playing Game Freelance Writing and Editing Anthologies. It was though the author had been looking over my shoulder and decided to help me out by giving advice for all of my pending projects. If you are interested in either topic, I highly recommend this book." -Jason Andrew

CALLER UNKNOWN - five stars
"I was surprised at how well this was written. It was complete in and of itself while fitting into a series (or so it is advertised -- I plan to find out by reading the series). You can read more than enough about the plot or the setting. I just wanted to confirm it is carried off well without gratuitous sex or other miscellaneous material. Two thumbs up." -S. Marsh

A New Beginning

A day late and not a bit sorry. I’ve had family here for New Year’s and it was fabulous. We went to Pike’s Place Market, the Space Needle for brunch, the Chihuly exhibit, drove out to Ocean Shores (and got to see sun, clouds, rain, and snow along the way) where the ocean almost ate our car at high tide. Introduced them to the BBC series Sherlock, and generally had a mighty fine time. But now, it’s time to get back to my writerholic routine.

I’m very much of the opinion that if you don’t know where you’ve been, you don’t know where you’re going. I also believe that if you don’t have a plan, you won’t get to where you want to go. As I am an author, I think of these things in terms of writing. Especially since I’m my own boss. I need something to hold up to myself and say… I did good!

Looking back at 2012

  • New short stories written: 10; 8 sold, 2 pending
  • Total short story subs made:  17; 9 sold, 5 rejected, 2 pending
  • New articles written/published: 6
  • RPG contracts: 8
  • Anthologies edited: 3 (Dangers Untold, Beast Within 3, Coins of Chaos)
  • Total new words written: just over 146,000
  • Things published: 3 fiction books, 10 episodes of the Nellus Academy Incident, 3 RPG products, 4 short stories.


Looking at 2013 (turned in or contracted)

  • Short stories to be published: 5
  • Nellus Academy Incident episodes to be published: 15
  • Anthologies to be published: 2
  • Fiction books to be published: 2
  • RPG books to be published: 2


Goals for 2013

  • Short stories to write: 13 (Book 4 of the Karen Wilson Chronicles)
  • Novelette to write: 1 (“Dreams of a Thousand Young” for Jazz Age Cthulhu, Innsmouth Free Press)
  • Novel to write: 1 (YA book #2)
  • RPG projects: 2 (Colonial Gothic: Roanoke, GRUNTZ fiction ebook)
  • Books to edit: 3 (AIP projects #1, #2, #3)
  • Anthologies to be edited: 2 (Project #1, Project #2)


Not bad for 2012 or for projected 2013. Of course, I’m not all writing, editing, game design, and publishing. No. I’ve got some travel in the mix. Projected conventions: 7. I don’t know for sure if I will make them all but this is what I have planned.

  1. Rainforest Village Writers Retreat, WA – Feb 27 - March 3 (Session 1 attendee)
  2. GothCon, Sweden – March 28-Apr 1 (GoH)
  3. Origins, OH – June 12-16 (Panelist, Dealer)
  4. WesterCon 66, CA – July 4-7 (Panelist, Dealer)
  5. Cascade Writers Workshop, OR – July 25-28  (Guest Speaker)
  6. GenCon, IN – August 15-18 (Panelist)
  7. Convolution, CA – Nov 2-4 (Panelist, Dealer)


Bubble and Squeek for 18 Dec 2012

I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that I will not be at Norwescon 2013. The good news is that’s because I will be one of the Guests of Honor at GothCon in Gothenberg, Sweden. I will miss going to Norwescon but… Sweden!

More good news is that I will be one of the guest speakers at the Cascade Writers Retreat in Portland, OR in July 2013. I will be on four panels. One group and three solos. There are spots open. This is going to be a great workshop. Lots of industry talent there.

Caller Unknown is out and getting good reviews. I just received a very nice blurb, "Brozek gives us the world the way it should be - full of hidden pockets of magic, ancient evils, and supernatural creatures - along with a heroine fully capable of dealing with all of the above."  - Cat Rambo, author of Near + Far and A Seed Upon the Wind

Ya’ll know that me and the Husband own Apocalypse Ink Productions. We now have an announcement-only Googlegroup. Sign up and hear what all we are doing.

Finally, I was interviewed by The Geek Girl Project. I do a lot of talking about The Lady of Seeking in the City of Waiting.

Bubble and Squeek for 26 October 2012

The first review for my RPG supplement Colonial Gothic: Locations has come in from RPG Resource and it’s a good one!

Alliteration Ink hosted a six part roundtable interviews with me and many of the Dangers Untold anthology authors: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six.

I sold my science fiction western short story, “Dust Angels,” to the Beyond the Sun anthology. This was a successful kickstarter anthology and already has some fabulous headliners.

My forthcoming collection of linked stories, Caller Unknown, has snuck out the door at Amazon a bit early and already has a five star review. The official release date is November 15th and that is when all of the electronic versions of the book will be available. Amanda Pillar reviewed it at her blog and really liked it.


 

Bubble and Squeek for 25 Sep 2012

Just a reminder, I have openings for my "Tell Me" blog posts for November and December.

***

There are two kickstarters I'm involved with:

Beyond the Sun - a sci-fi anthology about exploration. We need more sci-fi anthologies. Seriously.

One-Shot - I'm part of the stretch goals for this RPG product that is designed to be played with two people. It looks wonderful.

***

And then there are a number of reviews involving me. All of them pretty good. Really. I am grateful for the reviews and their positive tone.

Genre Reviews has a lovely review of my @dawbooks anthology, Human for a Day.

The Geek Girl Project reviews The Lady of Seeking in the City of Waiting and really likes it.

To the bone gives a four star review for Dangers Untold, one of my newest anthologies.

A reader reviews The Beast Within 2: Predator and Prey and likes it for the most part.

Bubble and Squeek for 30 July 2012

Here are some very cool odds and ends.

I've seen the new Shane Tyree cover for The Beast Within 3: Oceans Unleashed from Graveside Tales and it is to die for. Were-shark for the win!


I have a new review of Industry Talk: An Insider's Look at Writing RPGs and Editing Anthologies by the esteemed Richard Dansky. He liked it and that makes me happy.


Danielle of Dark Quest Books emailed me a new review of Human Tales anthology on the Billion Light-Year Bookshelf by Liegh Kimmel. Liegh had a very interesting point of view of the dark stories within this anthology.


If you like Battletech fiction, my new episodic gritty YA story, The Nellus Academy Incident, has begun on Battlecorps.com. You need a subscription to the site to read the story. Here is the announcement about it.


That's it for me. I hope all is going well with you.

Awesomeness Happening

July has been kind of a crazy month. Between Westercon and catching up on all sorts of things that I was behind on, I have barely time to breath but such cool things are happening.

I have turned in my Gruntz fiction.

Alliteration Ink has posted the TOC for Dangers Untold.

Lily’s kickstarter for the Guidebook to Village by the Sea has funded and as of today has 7 days to go. I am cheering my little heart out for her.

Stoneskin Press has funded its anthology kickstarter and is in the process of funding stretch goals. This one is close to me because I have a story in The New Hero II anthology set in my weird west Mowry universe. The story called “Iron Achilles Heel” is about the first known weakness in my spirit hero, Joseph Lamb. I wrote this story because I think perfect or invulnerable heroes are boring. Joseph needed to be knocked down a peg so that his host, Eric Hamblin, could step up and show that he is a hero, too.

The Lady of Seeking in the City of Waiting received a really nice review from Curled Up reviewer Douglas R. Cobb.

My non-fiction book, Industry Talk: An Insider's Look at Writing RPGs and Editing Anthologies, has been sitting in the top 100 on Amazon’s Authorship list for a week now. I’d love to see it continue on like that. It is available in Kindle and paperback form.

I also had an article on Booklife Now go live. On Mentoring is my take on why being a mentor is such a good thing for both the mentor and the mentee.

Finally, I wanted to mention that a friend of mine emailed me a couple of days ago to rave about my non-fiction finance book called The Little Finance Book that Could. This is my story and daily rules that helped me get out of debt and to stay out of debt. They told me that I helped them pay of their credit cards—more than $7000—in two years. This is a great book for grads and those people going back to school. Debt sucks. Especially in this economy. It makes me pretty darned happy when someone says I helped them.

Now that I’ve shared all my good news, what’s yours? I’d love to hear about it.


Guest Post by Lily Cohen-Moore

We Can't Stop. This is Book Country.

I met Jennifer in 2007. We were vampires at the time. It’s a perfectly reversible condition: we were playing in a live-action role-playing games.

 

First impressions! There was a reason for the spikes.


As many LARP friendships start with a chance meeting at an event and grow while bitching in the sign-in line, so did ours. By 2010, Jennifer was a friend of mine. She was also—and still is—someone I looked up to for setting her sights on her goals and taking every difficult step to get to them.

In 2010, she put out an all-call for editorial interns, I applied. She turned me down, which I took in stride. Then she said she had a different position she wanted to talk to me about, I bit my nails and dithered and generally annoyed my roommates.

It turned out that she wanted to offer me a job as her assistant. Two years ago today, I said yes. I did not, as she told me to, take the weekend to think about it. I said yes on a Sunday.

Jenn had me selling books and working a booth at a convention before the end of the month.

 

Crypticon, 2010. Our zombies are cute!


I met Keffy Kehrli and Nick Mamatas at that con. I was blessed by a serene wandering voodoo lady and met a tiny zombie girl. I met a ton of editors and writers. I sold a lot of books. I introduced Jenn to Lemoncello. She kicked Keffy and Nick and I out of the room at midnight so she could sleep, but told me to keep hanging out. She said it was okay to hang out.

That's something Jenn does a lot of: tell me things are okay.


I'd work NWC with her at the Apex table in 2011, selling books by day and following her to publishing parties at night.

The fiercest of book sellers!


I'd work a booth with her at GenCon. I'd get teary as I heard her sharp intake of breath and exclamation of joy when she won an ENnie. I'd spend part of the pre-show flitting between my date and trying to get Jenn to breathe. I spent the entirety of GenCon high on caffeine because she'd feed me nixie stix daily to make up for early mornings working the booth.

The student continues to learn from the master. And eat nixie stix.


But what else have I been doing the past two years?

I've gone on latte runs. I've done data entry. I've sat side by side with her in meetings that would result in book deals. I have gleefully used neon pens to address her correspondence. I’m forever imprinted by the FedEx guy as the chick addicted to stationary supplies. I know her drinks and coffee orders. I've helped decorate at her surprise birthday party. I've taken copious notes and done "in person days" where I've sat up my laptop, and played with her cats while sorting paperwork. We've had more meals together than I can count, derailed tabletop games by talking about work, and could deforest a small continent if I printed all our e-mails.

When I said I wanted to do slush reading or editing or learn something about publishing, she’d either teach me or find me a mentor. When I found mentors on my own, she encouraged me to learn from those people. In two years, I can trace back so many of my decisions and gains to working for her. I Know My Shit, or so I am told, and Jenn taught me a lot of those lessons.

I could write a book, just off the past few years. I have never been so happy about saying yes to a job offer, and I'm hoping I have twice as many ridiculous stories and photos in another few years. Jenn spoils the crap out of me, and the gifts she's given me go far beyond stationary. Jenn gave me the surprise birthday party I'd never had, the mentorship I needed, and an introduction to the man I love.

If you have met in journalism, editing, games or writing, since June 6th of 2010, thank Jennifer Brozek. If you met me on twitter? Thank Jenn for convincing me to use and unlock my account.

Thank you, Jenn, for the past two years. I'm excited for the years to come.

Human for a Day SFRevu

http://www.sfrevu.com/php/Review-id.php?id=12890

 

"...Greenberg and Brozek have put together a nice balanced mix of happy, sad, funny and bittersweet stories. Also, unlike many themed anthologies, in Human For A Day, the theme of the title is consistently carried out in all sixteen stories. For readers who enjoyed the stories and want to read more by authors with whom they may previously have been unfamiliar, the anthology helpfully includes contributor bios that reference websites and other stories and books by the authors. Human For A Day is definitely worth reading. Highly recommended."

 

Ian Tregellis, Seanan McGuire, Laura Resnick, Jody Lynn Nye, and Tanith Lee called out.