available for pre-orders: Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled!

The book is out! I sent out the official announcement this morning, as you can read below :).

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Dear friends,

Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled is now available for pre-order! You can purchase your copy of Tales at www.littledozen.com/thh.html. Pre-orders close June 30. As a special thank-you to those who order before June 30, we are offering a free Ebook Edition of Theodore Pharris Saves the Universe, the novel Rachel wrote when she was 13!

Pre-orders help us cover the costs of publishing--and they get the book into your hands early! Your books will be ordered and sent to you in the first week of July, when the book is just becoming available to the world at large.

When we started writing Tales as a series of emails to each other, we didn't really imagine how much you'd share with us! We thank you for your friendship, encouragement, and support as we've worked to bring Tales to print. It's been a marvelous journey!

Blessings,
Rachel and Carolyn

authors, Tales of the Heartily Homeschooled
www.littledozen.com/thh.html

Shipping Rates Are Down - Finally!

As anyone who's ordered from LittleDozen.com (aka me) knows, the shipping rates on my books have been exorbitant. (That's not hyerbole... more than half the price of the book is exorbitant!) Many kind readers have ordered directly from me anyway, which I appreciate more than I can say. However, as of this afternoon I'm pleased to say that the rates have come way down.

The change? We're now drop-shipping from the States instead of shipping books across the Canadian border!

I can't do autographed copies this way, so if anyone's still interested in those, you'll have to contact me directly and pay the old high shipping.

I'm very pleased about this :).

congratulations to us

Fellowship With Jesus: A 365 Day Devotional by Kris Thayer won a bronze Ippy Award (that's Independent Publishers award) in the Inspirational/Spiritual category this year. I couldn't be more thrilled, as I helped develop and edit the book, as well as writing the follow-up questions after each devotional.

The press release had this to say:

"In her new book, Fellowship with Jesus: A 365 Day Devotional, author Kris Thayer lays out a daily how-to for asking Him into our hearts and confessing our sin.

"The gorgeous, easy-to-read devotional touches on topics ranging from healing, Satan, the purpose of God, living graciously, and the power of prayer. Each devotional follows with a “Ponder, Pray, and Pursue” section that has meaningful, pointed questions to help reflect on our purpose in God’s world.

"Originally a journal that paraphrased her pastor’s scripturally-based sermons, Thayer has collected a veritable treasure trove of spiritual wisdom gleaned from the visionary missionary, the Apostle Paul."

Congratulations, Kris, and all the other Ippy winners this year.

Passing Days and Paper Routes

I have a date tonight. YES, it's with a boy. Stop snorting. You can put your eyebrow back down, too. And, er, yes, my mother's coming along. Not to chaperone--he asked her, too.

The boy in question is in fact my eleven-year-old brother Jonathan. He's taking us to Canada's watering hole (coffeeing hole?), Tim Horton's, for a treat because we help him with his paper route.

We actually help a lot of people with their paper routes. At the moment I believe we have six Pennysaver routes to our family name, which makes for a whole lot of stacking and rolling and stuffing and carrying. Our living room turns into a paper processing factory every Thursday as the route owners prepare to ready, set, deliver. A few of us, including Mom and I, help out with delivery on Friday because it's good exercise and it's nice to pull together.

In the past, my family of fourteen did everything together. Now that we older ones are getting older, that doesn't happen quite so much. We have a lot of different interests and goals we're pursuing, besides relationships and commitments and what not else. So it's a peculiar joy, every Friday, to look at the people walking down both sides of the street and know that they're mine. All of them, from the tall ones striding along like they own the world to the little one struggling to keep up; from my mother, who looks amazing at fifty, to my brother Jim who astounds me at almost-fifteen.

When we got home today, three of the little girls were holding hands and dancing around the purple amaryllis that's blooming in the front yard. Just before we reached them, they let go and fell around each other in the grass. Then Tabithah, who's almost four and not-a-baby, jumped up and came running for me, heavy winter boots clomping beneath her short-sleeved purple dress, arms open wide. She grabbed me around the knees and hugged tight.

Life keeps changing as the days go by. Babies turn into four-year-old in winter boots, "middle kids" become strapping young men, eleven-year-old brothers take mothers and sisters out for donuts and coffee. As much as my busy schedule and sprouting writing career dictate that I spend a lot of time apart, I'm trying to keep my heart at home. To pay attention. To "catch the moments as they run."

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P.S.

In case you didn't know, the book my cousin and I wrote on big family life is due for release next year.

Letters to a Samuel Generation is finished!

Letters to a Samuel Generation: The Collection is available! It's a beautiful hardbound book (blue cloth), weighing in at a very satisfying 216 pages. Becky did a gorgeous job with the layout. You can purchase it from Little Dozen or from Amazon.com.

So Much for Vocabillary

or, Why Your Friends Should Always Read Your Work First

I'm rewriting an old short story for hopeful publication, and I asked my Wayside girls to read it over yesterday. Apparently, "laconic" does NOT mean something like "sluggish; uncaring."

It means "using or involving the use of a minimum of words : concise to the point of seeming rude or mysterious."

My vocabulary bubble has been burst.

Thanks, Rach ;).

a long and happy sigh of relief

The files for Letters to a Samuel Generation have gone to the printer. I hope to have the proof in hand by next week, after which the book will be available for sale.

Feels good.

why should today be any different?

My eyes feel like they've been staring at a computer screen all day. Likely because they have been :).

The official release date for Letters to Samuel Generation: The Collection is tomorrow. It's not going to happen. The usual unaccountable delays have stacked themselves up against me and my deadlines. However, I should be able to release it within the next two weeks. I shall not complain. In the meantime, you can read all the chapters here.

Coaching is going very well and I'm actually ahead in marking papers. As a result, I had an extra forty-five minutes to work on Taerith. I finished a chapter and posted it.

Other excellent news is that I've begun work as a copy editor for Home School Enrichment Magazine. I'm very excited about it and greatly enjoying the work thus far.

my publishing life in links

I sent out another pre-release email for Letters to a Samuel Generation today. Got the introduction written last week. This week it's final editing/proofreading, then I'll pass it along to my whiz kid sister for formatting, get all of the information registered in official places, and gear up for honest-to-goodness publication in March. Who says publishing has to be slow? ;)

In all honesty, most books cannot be published anything close to this quickly, especially if they're going to be successful. It doesn't matter much for this book for a few unique reasons.

On another plain, my fellow Romany author Libby Russell just finished a freehand sketch of Lilia, one of the main characters in Taerith. She's beautiful and I'll make sure you all get to see her as soon as Libby's finished making artistically obsessive alterations. Libby's also doing sketches for me to illustrate the eBook version of Worlds Unseen (sorry, no link yet) which I plan to come out with (FREE!) this summer. I'm very grateful for all the work she's putting into it, because she's got a lot of talent and she's not charging me anything. Yet.

ARCs and Laughter

The Family Review Copies (variation on the traditional "Advanced Reading Copies") for our temporarily titled big family/homeschool humour book came in today. Since it mentions various siblings by name, we thought it would be best to have our families "approve" them before going to press.

My sister Naomi, quite the gratifying giggler, got stuck on the Table of Contents and kept reading them over and laughing at the one-liners. Being a typically insecure author, I'm going to be hovering around over eggshells until everyone's read and approved the whole thing.

Still: they're here. Yay!

Little Dozen update

There are, as always, various projects on the go: including a couple of new ones. Here's what's going on right now with Little Dozen Press:

1. The Web site is being updated! Things are changing every day, so come check it out.

2. Letters to a Samuel Generation, my old devotional ezine, is being posted in pieces on LittleDozen.com under "Devotional Articles." Access to the articles is totally free. At the same time, I'm gathering the articles, along with some personal notes and the quotes and poetry that originally accompanied them in the ezines, into a hardbound book which should be available in the next few months. This is for everyone who would rather have Letters sitting on their shelf than on their hard drive, and it will make a great gift item. The ISBN for it came in this morning, so look for it to be available soon!

3. New prayer guide for small group leaders (and pastors, fathers, mothers, good friends... anyone who has a hand in discipling). This will be a booklet or ebook that will be offered FREE to small group leaders with a purchase of Heart to Heart: Meeting With God in the Lord's Prayer. It's based on a study I did last year on Paul's prayers for the churches. It's in development right now... my major project for this morning, actually.

4. The temporarily titled Tales of the Hopelessly Homeschooled is in pre-publication approval stages. Proofs are in the mail and I'm excited about getting this one on the road :).

On the fiction front...

1. Taerith has been updated with its fifth chapter. Be sure to leave me a comment and tell me what you think!

2. My old Seventh World Trilogy (Worlds Unseen, Burning Light, and The Advent) is in for an exciting revamp. Worlds Unseen will be released as a free ebook (available in paperback as well). Burning Light will be coming out in paperback. As for The Advent--well, I have plans to develop it as a subscription-based serial.

Looking over this makes me realize again how much there is to do, so fare thee well! Back into the wonderful world of words I plunge...


Technorati: Little Dozen Press, books, small press, self-publishing, ebooks

Tales of the Hopelessly Homeschooled

Just thought I'd give y'all a sneak peek at the book I'm currently lining up for publication. My cousin Carolyn and I started writing it years ago--finishing it's a little scary, but it feels good :). It is a collection of short, humourous essays reflecting on life in large homeschooled families, and it's currently titled Tales of the Hopelessly Homeschooled. I don't care for the title and plan to do something ingenius to fix it (involving YOU, O highly unaware world of homeschool families).

I had fun putting the Tables of Contents together with quotes from the chapters yesterday, so here's a look at them:

Table of Contents

Introduction

Part One: Make Way for Livin'

1. Ontario: The Journey Begins

The peace was quickly shattered by a loud bellow, "Are there any more small stuffables? Last call for small stuffables! No? All right, then... EVERYBODY IN!"

2. We Wish You a Currey Christmas

No sooner was the tree decorated than it fell over, flooding the living room with the contents of the tree-bucket and breaking several ornaments. Oh, did I neglect to mention that my father was stuck underneath the tree?

3. Freezing At Eighty-Five Degrees

Polar bears, seals, and naked mole rats are suited to their environments. People are not.

4. Hobbits Shall Not Suffer Alone

It is a frightening thing to realize that one's cousins and sisters do not need a wake up call. It makes one think of plots being hatched.

5. Can I Have...?

Babysitting is like playing tennis. The kids stand on one side of the net and fire requests, and the babysitter leaps, dives, and swishes to throw the answers right back before something unfortunate happens.

6. The Rutabaga Fest
We Thomsons descended on the world of trade shows like Attila the Hun with a sales pitch.

There is, of course, much more to come. I'll be posting actual book excerpts here shortly, so check back or, better yet, subscribe to this blog (the link is on the right).

In other news, I'm thinking of moving this blog.

Technorati: homeschooling, family, children, humor, publishing