July 29, 2022

live from the forest, it's e.m. anderson! - impasta syndrome

say hi to grandpa

it's july, so I have spent most of the month remembering more than usual one of my favorite people who ever existed. here is a painting I did of him back in may.

mmm, delicious impasta syndrome

another helping, please

jk, jk. no more impasta syndrome. it's not even called impasta syndrome, it's called impostor syndrome, which is far less delicious.

at any rate, impostor syndrome can catch any author at any point. even big-five-published, nyt-bestselling authors can get impostor syndrome. sure, their book was published by a major company. sure, their book made the nyt bestsellers list. but maybe they simply managed to trick everyone, and they actually completely suck!!!

as an unagented author being published by a small, fairly new indie press, I'm no stranger to impostor syndrome. in april I had the opportunity to work the inaugural northwest ohio teen book festival. it was a fantastic event that made me lowkey wish I wrote for teens instead of adults, and it was wild sitting in a teacher's lounge at a high school listening to people in real life talk about agents and editors and cover reveals and release dates.

it also made me feel like the impostoriest of impostors. because here were all these Real Authors™ talking about Industry Things. and here I was, an unagented author with no book deal, running around showing people to their next panel or grabbing water bottles for them.

that feeling hasn't gone away just because I have a book coming out.

most recently, a call went out asking authors to contribute prizes to a donation drive. not having ARCs or book merch at this point, I wanted to donate a query critique.

but I was unagented. so what right did I have to help someone revise a query when I couldn't even get an agent???

and then it occurred to me: that was a pretty fucking stupid reason not to donate.

okay, fine. I'm unagented. but my query letter got me a decent request rate - which is its whole job! - not to mention the full request that landed me a book deal.

so why on earth do I think I'm not qualified to help someone revise a query?

this realization - that my query letter did its job, even if the end result wasn't exactly what I was going for when I started out - helped me get over myself and donate.

will I internalize this lesson going forward and talk myself through whatever impostor syndrome I ever feel again? lol no almost certainly not.

but it was nice that it happened this one time.

book things

the remarkable retirement of edna fisher

I yeeted info about my debut into the twitterverse during #selfpitch, a new event for indie/small-press/self-pub authors to connect with readers, and it went well! thanks to this event, I got a bunch of new adds on goodreads and a bunch of new followers. I'm looking forward to the next one, which is in december. I'll have a cover and hopefully more preorder links to yeet by then.

it was a fun event, but it was a lil funky seeing edna out there among a sea of like. sexy, high-heat romance novels.

I realize it's 100% because this event was geared toward indie and self-pub. high-heat romance novels are common in the self-pub space in particular, and they do very well there!

but when you're used to agent/editor-focused pitch parties, where you're wading through a sea of YA fantasy, it's bizarre to have your lil 83yo grandma who can't even swear* surrounded by smutty romance novels.

anyway, edna is now over 250 goodreads adds, which is phenomenal considering I'm using a spaghetti marketing method because I have no clue what I'm doing and don't have a salesperson's bone in my body.

*edna's go-to in stressful situations is a violent "snickerdoodles!" although one of these days she'd really like to learn some good cuss words

add edna on goodreads or storygraph today! preorder her in hardcover or paperback. more buy links to come!

the many buried things of peter shaughnessy

the query trenches are,,,surprisingly responsive? this far into querying two years ago, I'd heard nothing. preparing to query this time around, I kept hearing people go, "querying is worse than it's ever been! response times are so much longer than they were last year!" which just had me like

because, y'know. response times were absolutely forever when I was in the trenches with edna. at one point I had fulls out with like five different agents who had all had the manuscript for close to a year, or a full year, or more than a year. but I digress.

at any rate, a little less than a month into querying two years ago, I had crickets in my inbox and was panicking about it (ha! ha ha! ha ha ha!) because the friends I had started with were getting requests and rejections left and right. a little less than a month into querying now, I have a couple requests and a few rejections.

in the course of just one month, I've also sent about a third as many queries as I sent total in two years for the last book. which isn't really good or bad, just kinda funky to think about.

I've also been working on some cover art, because I like designing fake covers for myself, so maybe in august you'll see a cover mockup with original art for buried things.

want to see a bunch of shitposts & shares about this manuscript? check out #GroundskeeperWIP on twitter!

writing & whatnot

if you want a taste of my writing before edna's release in april, good news! you can read my short stories in these books.

“something witchy this way comes," in SJ Whitby’s Awakenings: A Cute Mutants Anthology, available through bookdepository, indiebound, barnes & noble, and amazon.

Prudence Jones finds an unexpected friend and ally in a grumpy old witch when she runs into the sentient forest on the edge of town to escape her abusive uncle.

read if you like: found family, plant magic, sapphic witches, grump x sunshine, carnivorous trees, fantasy with horror elements

content tags: physical abuse

“the raising of hester macrae,” in Dark Horses Magazine, Issue 4, available through amazon, barnes & noble, and apple books.

When a young boy survives a terrible accident, the townsfolk suspect a local witch of necromancy. Only the witch’s wife, Hester, knows the truth.

read if you like: plant magic, sapphic witches, genteel x feral, necromancy, fantasy with horror elements

content tags: brief animal death

and keep an eye out for GutSlut Press's anthology Suicidaliens, which will feature my story about a girl, a secret, and vaguely monstrous mermaids. the anthology was delayed, so no release date yet, but it's happening!

obligatory new york pictures

more pictures from the central park zoo, because for the first two days of my trip that's basically all I took pictures of. sorry not sorry, animals are awesome.

on the plus side, we've moved out of the tropics room now. so the august newsletter is looking pretty good for pictures from not-the-zoo.

last but not least...

if you want to do something about the overturning of roe v. wade but don't know where to start, here's a link to a pdf I put together. the pdf includes a summary of some basic information and conversations surrounding the issue, safety tips for protesting, and ways you can help from home. at the end is information the current status of abortion state-by-state (including puerto rico and guam), but state laws about abortion have been going wild in the aftermath of this scotus decision. so please, please, please double-check state laws if you or someone you know needs an abortion, particularly if your state is marked as "legal for now," "potentially illegal," or "limited." stay safe <3

when you first click, it'll say "0 of 0 pages," but it just takes a minute to load. all links should be live. however, the document is set to private on the hosting site I used to upload it, so let me know if you can't see it.

PDF Host read free online - basic information & resources for reproductive rights.pdf - anonymous