Testing, 1,2,3…testing 1,2,3…*taptaptap* Is this thing on?

Oh my stars and garters, my dear friends, how long has it been since you’ve received a missive from my keyboard? It has been many, many moons. Life has been life-ing really hard, and for some reason things like newsletters fall waaaay to the bottom of the to-do list!

But enough is enough. I have news, and I wish to share it with you! So here goes:

1. I won another award through the Writer’s Digest’s national poetry contest! I was awarded third place for my poem “Seed Corn Must Not be Ground”, out of over 1,100 entries. To say I am pleased as punch would be an understatement!

2. The same poem won grand prize in our local library’s writing contest earlier this year. My short story “Cold” also won grand prize. Man, winning stuff is so dang cool.

3. Thirdly, I published another book! Yes!! Saving Mabel began as a very short novella called Make Me Disappear. It was 27k words and was published in a literary journal called Storylandia a decade ago. I decided to turn her into a full-fledged novel and so, some 60k additional words later, with only a little groaning and wailing, Saving Mabel was birthed. Here’s the story:

Mabel Banner, fifteen years old, isn’t going down without a fight. Pushed beyond her limits by her abusive foster mother, she commits a violent crime that forces her to flee Oklahoma and find a place to hide. A young man on a Greyhound bus offers her shelter in Pensacola, Florida, but when his mercurial moods reveal themselves, Mabel must run again, pursued now not only by him and the FBI, but the spectral corpse of her former foster mother, who seems determined to destroy her even from beyond the grave.

Mabel makes Key West her goal, feeling the Southernmost Point in the Continental U.S. pull her heart like the tip of a compass needle. The journey once again requires her quick wits and steady courage, but two weeks after her arrival, she is homeless, hungry, and teetering upon hopelessness. The affable widower Jake Ennis (48), captain of the Stella Luna, finds her dumpster diving in an alley and offers her a job: first mate aboard his sailboat. Lying about her name and age while helping Jake run a charter business is the easy part. Escaping the fear that dogs her heels and haunts her dreams is harder.

When Mabel bonds with a local boy named Carl over a shared enjoyment of Ernest Hemingway’s writing, she finds that her aching heart may still have room for friendship, joy, and even love, if she can only let down her guard long enough to trust the new family she has found. Each day, the fake backstory she has invented becomes harder to maintain. A fateful night watching a meteor shower over the ocean turns harrowing when Jake and Mabel answer a distress call from a foundering ship, and when danger rears its head once more, who will save Mabel if she cannot save herself?

Sounds like a ripping good yarn, doesn’t it? I can promise you that it is, but why not find out for yourself!

4. I have a book coming out in November! What? J-dub, you just said you have a book coming out in October. How can you have one coming out in November as well? You silly-billies, because I’m AMAZING, that’s how.

*author’s note: it is essential that authors maintain spectacular egos in order to deal with All The Rejection that is inherent in the business.

Seriously, yes, I do have another novel coming out. This one has been a long time in coming and I’ve mentioned it in other newsletters, but this time it’s REALLY getting published. My fantasy romance adventure The Oracle’s Choice, will be released the second half of November. Huzzah! What’s more, it is set to be the first book in a trilogy, so if you love fantasy adventures set in mystical lands populated by strange creatures with plenty of intrigue and maps and evil sorceresses and smoldering glances and kissing, by golly, it’s time to get excited. Stay tuned for my next newsletter for details regarding the premise.

5. “J.W.” you may be asking. “J.W., with two books coming out, what are you working on now?”

What an excellent question, dear reader. And I have an excellent answer: three things, actually. The first would be the second book in the Oracle’s Choice trilogy. The second would be a supernatural thriller called Phantom Limb (more about that later, ooh, you’re going to love it). The third would be another revamp of an earlier work that was published under the name Jennifer Wilson. Noah Knows was an absolute mess of a story when I threw it up on Amazon twelve years ago as a neophyte author desperate to see my name in print. It was not professionally edited, nor did it have a professional cover, formatting, etc. So I’m going back through it and will be republishing it in a much more polished form, as J.W. Rose, early next year.

Whew. This is getting long, and if you’ve read this far, I am grateful. You’re a trooper!

If you’re new here, welcome! I’m so grateful for your interest in my writing life. Stick around for more updates, coming soon (I promise).

Stay groovy,

J.W. Rose