All the things
Plus, one of my ebooks is on sale
You may have noticed I did not put out a new post last Monday (or you may have noticed but been relieved) or the Monday before. I’m wild and crazy like that.
Today I’m going to take care of some odds and ends.
First, I’d like to do another Q&A post, so if there’s something about me you’d like to know or want my take on something, please post in the comments below. ASK ME ANYTHING.
Signed books make great holiday presents. I will send you signed bookplates if you provide me with a U.S. mailing address. You can send these requests to almakatsubooks2@gmail.com. I have custom bookplates for Red London, Red Widow, and The Fervor. (Someday I will get a general bookplate you can use for any book, I swear.)
Great holiday presents, part 2: I recently got to hold the paperback edition of Christmas and Other Horrors in my little hands and let me tell you, this would make an awesome holiday present. Imagine your favorite bookworm sitting in their jammies with a big steaming mug of cocoa reading this Christmas morning? Bliss.
I’d like to do more contests on Substack but so far none of the winners I chose for a previous contest have gotten back to me. What am I doing wrong??? Not giving those prizes haunts me. TALK TO ME.
You may have heard that people are fleeing Twitter for Bluesky and Threads. Particularly writers. I got nearly 1,000 new followers on Bluesky in mere days. If you’re making the jump, please follow me on either site.
Good things: I’m watching the Martha Stewart documentary on Netflix. I admit to having mixed feelings about Martha over the years. I was in my twenties when she started with the cookbooks and magazine. They were a look inside a world I didn’t know and might as well have been a fairy tale. I come from a family of immigrants. We didn’t know any wealthy WASPs. Martha was a gateway drug to the Silver Palate cookbooks and other lifestyle magazines that gave you glimpses of summers in the Hamptons and autumns in the Adirondacks. Before long, however, it became less interesting and I drifted away long before Martha was convicted of insider trading. Nonetheless, I find the documentary fascinating, how a woman was able to achieve so much in an era when women were still held to a different standard than men (has it ever ended?).
We watched the first episode of the new Dune series on Max. My husband is a huge Dune fan, particularly the recent movies, and so we almost didn’t watch because he was afraid it would be a huge disappointment. What I found most interesting in that the producers decided to center it on the Bene Gesserit, the all-woman religious order that exercises a not-so-invisible hand in the political intrigues of the empire. From a storytelling perspective, it’s a no-brainer but from an audience perspective, it’s risky. While there are legions of female Dune fans, I can’t help but wonder if the producers are afraid of the male fans who (like my husband, alas) are suspicious of the re-centering. From descriptions, it looks like the plan is to quickly widen its scope so that it’s about the war between the great houses of the empire (like Game of Thrones, but in space) but… it’s still a risky move.
Work-in-progress: I’m shakily sharing that I’ve started on my next horror novel, another contemporary. It doesn’t have a title yet, only a placeholder. It’s early days, when the writing is like conducting a seance, trying to coax the characters to come out and make themselves known to me. That’s all I’m going to say about it except that it has to do with technology, something I actually know something about. Will it make me the next Blake Crouch? If only.
That’s all for now! Please please please consider picking up the Red Widow ebook if you haven’t read it yet, or tell your friends who love strong female characters or would like to see what it’s like to work at CIA.
Hi! I can't say for sure why people aren't responding to their contest wins on here, but I do know that I personally often get lost on Substack. I keep getting notifications from people I don't even follow, and when I go to Substack in general, I see posts from people I don't know, and when I try to post comments on what they've shared, I get denied because I'm not a paid subscriber. So maybe this is part of the reason?
I'm not on Bluesky, but I have been on Mastodon/fediverse with a bunch of other speculative fiction writers for a few years. There's a good community on there, and no algorithms. Posts arrive in chronological order, and there are no sponsored ads, so I'm not excited to move to a corporate-run platform which favours monetization.
I enjoy reading your emails and your stories. Thanks for sharing!
Shan
Loved your two "Red" books and still waiting for number 3 (Paris?). As I've told you before, I'm not into horror books but, I read "Werewolf" and was very impressed, So yes, I'm a fan of your writing. However, when it comes to Martha Stewart, keep in mind she is not a WASP (Anglo-Saxon Protestant). She is Polish/Roman Catholic and the reason her first book was published was because her husband was the president of the publishing company, and it was ghost written. Now the ladies of the Silver Palate were truly revolutionary and serious foodies and were icons in NYC in the '70's and '80's. How do I know this, I was born and raised in Manhattan and lived most of my life there (UES). With three major newspaper dailies, nothing could be kept out of the news for long! Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family!