It’s been a busy six weeks or so since last I wrote. I attended the third NO KINGS march and wrote more to my reps (tell yours to vote against the bigoted HR 7661!). I also got a root canal (I’m still sore) and rode the Acela for the first time.

The Glass Garden has earned out

Every once in a while, someone asks me, “How’s your book doing?” And my hackles rise and my eyes narrow, because this is such a broad question with no real answer on the one hand, and on the other it is a pretty specific one to which I, eleven months out of the year, have no answer.

Well, my friends, this is the month where I know. So I am going to tell you, and in the process give you a peek at how publishing works, at least in the independent corner wherein my books reside.

In April I got my royalty statement from my publisher, Lanternfish Press. I get such once a year along with, if all goes to plan, a royalty check. This was the first statement for The Glass Garden, which came out almost a year ago in May 2025. With this I learned that the book has earned out.

What does “earned out” mean? Here’s how it works. Contracts vary, but usually an author gets paid royalties, a percentage of the sale price of every copy of her book someone buys. If you’re lucky like me, you get an advance against those royalties. The royalties are tallied and once they’ve accumulated to be equal to the amount of the advance, the book has “earned out.” This means that enough people bought The Glass Garden (thank you thank you thank you thank you) that I will start seeing those percentages come to me in a check.

Not all at once, of course. See, the publisher holds some of my royalties in reserve against copies being returned. That money, minus what came from returned copies, will come to me next year. So when you take the royalties the book earned, subtract the advance I already received, and the reserve that I have to wait for, I got paid… about $30. Yeah.

Still, earning out is a big deal. My book is doing respectably well. It’s something to celebrate and believe me, I did.

Encounters with Cryptids is available in paperback

Some more good publishing news! My latest story, a bit of dark mermaid fantasy, appeared in an anthology back in March. Well, after a few weeks of back-and-forth, it has finally been released on good old-fashioned paper, if that’s your poison. Thanks to everyone who picked it up. I hope you like my little tail.

I saw The Lost Boys on Broadway!

Sometimes you just gotta book yourself a round-trip train ticket and a hotel room so you can see rock star vampires on Broadway, right? And given the generally cursed nature of vampire musicals on the Great White Way, I figured I had to move quickly before the damn thing closed. So this past Thursday I got to see The Lost Boys. Here are my thoughts, in no particular order:

• The stagecraft is amazing. There’s flying. There’s multiple levels of sets. There’s spfx. That alone is worth seeing.

• The performers are wonderful.

• The songs are still in my head.

• The merch is… uninspired.

• The audience was HERE. FOR. IT. Some people have seen it multiple times! (It’s kind of a bummer that plenty of them would love Sternendach, but I had no way to tell them all about it.)

• He looked at me. He looks at everyone, of course. But he looked at me.

Well, that was a lot of excitement, but it isn’t over. I have to get ready to see Bat out of Hell: The Musical tonight. We all know I love Steinman, and his music continues the themes of youth, sex, drums and rock ‘n’ roll I’ve been swimming in since Tuesday.

I’ll let the cast of The Lost Boys play me out. Have a good one, everybody!