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Le CafÉ de Nuit ~*~ Vincent
van Gogh, 1888
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Looking at Jellyfish Day blog posts, you'd think the only thing going on around here is pre-publication activity for The Contest & Other Stories at Tootie-Do Press.
Alas, not so! April and May were hectic months! So hectic that two months dissolved in a blur.
After thinking about leaving urban Southern California for several years, including applying to PhD programs I was accepted into, but was not able to get sufficient funding to attend, I finally felt the undeniable urge to put the rubber to the road! There's always a way to turn life's lemons into lemonade . . .
In the last few days of April, I boxed up my books and household goods, emptied the storage shed, rented a cargo van, and hightailed it at long last to a more natural and rural location. I couldn't be more pleased to now live in a fairy-tale cottage in a redwood glade in Northern California!
It was a huge and time-consuming undertaking, and I'm still living amongst a few boxes and dealing with all the ramifications of changing ISPs and other technicalities. I couldn't keep up with my freelance work while moving, so my first month in the new place (once wi-fi was up and running) has been devoted to catching up to freelance editing and PR work for various authors, as well as getting acclimated to the new, cooler climate, and enjoying a bit of touring around Humboldt County to appreciate the incredible beauty. I've now given up my old gasoline engine truck and am getting around by bicycle and on foot.
Meanwhile, the second Indiegogo campaign for Tootie-Do Press went relatively unmonitored, so it recently closed without fanfare. I've just opened The Contest and Other Stories, Phase III campaign and am peddling hard to get pre-orders for the collection of quirky short stories back on track.
Our $5 early bird PDF has proved to be the most popular item so far (unfortunately, none of the old donations for Phase I and II show up on the new campaign page), so the Phase III is shiny new with nary a donor. You can pre-order from the campaign page (there are many perks available there for various prices). You can also Paypal $5 to katerwriter @ gmail dot com for the early bird PDF, which is basically the full-color interior of the print book. A ganga bargain! Because of the color interior, the print color book will be a special edition retailing at $50, but the early bird PDF is the same file, viewable on any device with Adobe Reader. And the reason for using Indiegogo to pre-order is because of the extra and unusual publication expenses associated with color print and enhanced ebooks.
We
are grateful to each and every potential reader of this fun and
thought-provoking project. Five of the short stories inspired by
paintings are previously published in journals, and at least one of
them, “Night Café” , inspired by the 1888 van Gogh painting of the same name, still appears at Jerry Jazz Musician online since winning a New Short Fiction Award in 2012 .
::~Preview~::
“Cheater” first appeared in Western Weird, Volume 4, Manifest West Series, (Western Press Books - Western State Colorado University, 2015).
“Night Café” won the quarterly New Short Fiction Award (Jerry Jazz Musician, 2012).
“Lost Memories” first appeared in The Memory Eaters anthology (CP Anthologies, 2012).
“A Twisted Garden” first appeared as “The Yellow House” in Say Goodnight to the Bad Guy (May December Publications, 2011).
You can read full details about the authors (me and my old crit group writing buddy, Joe DiBuduo) and the collection at The Contest and Other Stories, Phase III or at Tootie-Do Press.
Thank you for your patience and your support!
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| Authors Joe DiBuduo and Kate Robinson |
