Shutting it down. Kind of.

 

Guys, I’m shutting down The Garrett.  (That’s what this blog used to be called.) Or, at least, I’m changing it.

When I put this blog together in 2009, back when people were still naming their blogs, it was an appropriate piece of my online platform. Seven years ago blogs were something writers  – especially unpublished writers – were expected to have. It was a way of building an audience, publishing essays, clearing my head before writing fiction and writing online diary entries. And I loved it. I blogged regularly.

That’s no longer true, for the Internet in general, or for me personally. Social media has taken over a lot of the territory once occupied by blogs, and as a freelance writer, I’m less willing to self-publish the essays I could be pitching elsewhere. (Also, now that I have a family and have seen lots of female writers get shouted or threatened off the web, I’m not as willing to write personal diary entries for the world to see. I’m getting old, kids.)

So what happens to the old posts?

What’s going to happen to this space? Well, I’ve already disentangled this blog from my domain name, ajoconnell dot com.

That said, my current plan is to keep the old content, so if you feel the need to discuss Harry Willson Watrous’s painting The Drop Sinister (many visitors do, amazingly) or if you too were a Catholic child plagued by fears of Immaculate Conception, you should still be able to read those posts.

My current plan is to keep all my old content and incorporate it into a new site as a sort of “What I’m Doing Right Now” section. That section probably won’t be the front page, as it is on this site, but it will be an area I can update.

In the meantime, while I’m building, everything should remain as it was and then, one day, when you least expect it: hey presto! New site!

Yeah, but…

“But A.J.,” you may be saying. “That means everything will be pretty much the same, right? Why are you getting so maudlin about it?”

Well, invisible reader in Internetland, let me tell you. Things ARE changing. When this site is reborn — sticky and squalling — as part of a bigger professional writing site, it will lose some of the personal flavor it’s had since 2009. For me, an era will end. A good era.

This blog has been my only website for seven years, and it’s been a part of a community, and although I haven’t blogged regularly in a while, I’ve come to enjoy my interactions with my readers and the informal blogging style I could use here.

So, hey, guys. I don’t know if any of my original readers will see this, but you made The Garrett what it was. Thank you.

 

From today until Thanksgiving, ‘Final Statements’ is free on Amazon

Hello everyone!

Thanksgiving is coming up in the U.S., and to celebrate, I’m offering my short story, Final Statements for free on Amazon, from today until Wednesday, the day when we will all be cooking, traveling, or frantically screaming that company is coming and why isn’t this house clean already.

Just go to the link for the free short story. (It is an e-book, so you will need a reader or an app to read it.)

After all, Thanksgiving is a family holiday, and Final Statements is a story about family. Maybe not a great family, but hey, let’s celebrate all families.

 

I signed books this weekend in the college bookstore where I once bought a lot of books.

Alumni and faculty book signing at Trinity College.

And now from the department of Hey, Guess What I Forgot to Announce:
I was part of a book signing at Trinity College’s Reunion Weekend on Saturday. I loved it, but not gonna lie: it was also very strange. (I never thought I’d be signing books in the store I spent so much money in as an undergrad.)

I’m just posting one photo here, but the rest are over on my Facebook page.

I was there with A.J. Kohlhepp, Todd Coopee, Peter Swanson, Jennifer Prescott, Paul Sullivan, Paul Assaiante, and Lucy Ferriss, Trinity’s writer-in-residence. It was a good mix of veteran writers, new writers, fiction, nonfiction, YA, adult, New York Times best-sellers, self-published and indie writers. You should obviously check them all out.

Read ‘Undertow’ for free on your Kindle this week

Hello everyone. Happy Easter week! To celebrate the alleged start of spring, I’m making my short story “Undertow” free on Amazon this week.

The promotion starts tomorrow, March 31, and ends Saturday, April 4.

What’s the story about? It’s a supernatural horror story about a young woman who falls in love with the ocean. But then the ocean loves her back, and that’s kind of a problem. There are mythological creatures in it, and it’s creepy. But then, most of my fiction is on the creepy side. It’s part of my charm.

If you like supernatural horror, please check it out. Here is the link.

This totally made my afternoon: Books & Insomnia’s review of Beware the Hawk

Just a quick post to tell everyone that Julie over at Books and Insomnia reviewed Beware the Hawk. It’s a really good review. I might have danced around the kitchen when I read it. Check it out. Then check out the rest of Julie’s blog. It’s a really great site, and she must read constantly, because there is always new content up over there.

Thank you, Julie! And have a good weekend, everyone. I definitely will.

DinoLand has been reposted, and it’s better-looking and more navigable than ever.

Good news! John, the editor over at Geek Eccentric, saw my post from a few days ago about DinoLand getting taken down for the holidays and, because he’s awesome, gave me a present: even though the rest of his site is dark for a while, he put my chapters back up.

Not only that, but he tarted them up and made them easier to navigate; you can now click from chapter to chapter by using the links on the left. My fiction has rarely looked so good.

The latest chapter was posted last week, so check it out.

Thank you John!

Quick note about Geek Eccentric

UPDATE: John, over at Geek Eccentric, has reposted the chapters, and they are better formatted and more navigable than ever. (So no PDF Party.) Thank you John!

I have a bunch of posts that link to Geek Eccentric on this page. Some are to articles, and most are to my serial novel, DinoLand, which has been running there for almost all of 2014. Well, Geek Eccentric has gone dark until 2015 because the site is reinventing itself and the published chapters are currently unavailable, so I’m temporarily taking down the link to DinoLand.

To any readers, I am very sorry for the interruption. If there is an interest in reading any of the chapters during the hiatus, please contact me. I’ll hook you up.

DinoLand news and even bigger news.

Just a brief post to tell you that the second chapter of DinoLand goes live at Geek Eccentric tomorrow. (Update: Click here to read it.)

Quite frankly, I’m proud as can be to be posting the chapter as scheduled, especially because of my second piece of news: On Tuesday, my husband and I became parents to T.W., a little boy.

We know next to nothing about babies, so there’s been a big learning curve here. Fortunately, the baby knows nothing about human society, so for all he knows, we’re doing everything right. And bonus: he speaks no English, so he doesn’t understand us when we say things like “He’s been quiet for a long time. Is he still breathing?” or “Oh no. I just realized the last time I changed a diaper was in 1994.”

Not that I mind any of this.
As terrified as I’ve been of motherhood my whole life (and that terror is not entirely gone), T.W. is the most excellent, most natural addition to our household. I’m just really happy he’s here.

Mommy’s little writer’s block.

 

 

Writing after the MFA: The Book

Yeah. Now what?

After I graduated from my MFA program in 2011, I wrote about how it can be a struggle to keep writing after getting a Masters of Fine Arts degree in fiction: you leave a ready-made community of writers and a system of built-in deadlines and head back out into the world, where life is waiting in the shadows, twirling its proverbial mustache and rubbing its hands together with wicked glee, just waiting to get in the way of your good writing habits.

So what do you do? I’ve tried to answer that question for myself on this blog a few times, but now I can share a project I’ve been working on with several other writers, which answers the question in much greater depth.

Allow me to introduce Now What? The Creative Writer’s Guide to Success after the MFA. It’s a non-fiction book containing essays by 46 contributors who all attempt to answer that very question: Now what?

The book’s electronic edition is being launched this very evening at the AWP conference, so if you’re out in Seattle right now, you should definitely head to the swanky launch party at the Seattle Art Museum tonight at 6:30 p.m. I won’t be there — I’m too close to my due date for travel —  but all sorts of fun people who are still allowed to drink will in attendance.

I worked as a chapter editor on this book for a little more than a year, so I can say with authority (because I’ve read my two chapters over and over and discussed other chapters with other editors) that although the book is aimed at MFA grads, you don’t need to be one to benefit from the book.

There are essays about finding agents, about the publishing industry, about working with writing groups and there’s one chapter, which I think will be very popular because it addresses the question of how to make ends meet while working on your masterpiece.

Definitely check it out if you’re at AWP this week. (I mean, there’s a party and you’re right there – why wouldn’t you go?) If you’re not there, check it out on Amazon, and if you’re more interested in a physical book, no worries; the paperback edition will be released in July. (Did I mention that the book also includes an article about e-books vs. physical books? Guess who contributed that one.)

 

One of my novels is being published as serial fiction! (And there are dinosaurs.)

photo credit: Thomas Hawk via photopin cc

I have some pretty awesome publishing news. Are you ready? Get ready.

Geek Eccentric, a site I’ve been working with for a year now, will be serializing a novel of mine, DinoLand, starting on Sunday, March 2, and running the first Sunday of each month.

I’ve been working with an artist, the fabulous Max Farinato, on this project, and I am excited to be able to finally share this news with you all.

DinoLand is a book I started working on several years ago, as a National Novel Writing Month project. I’d planned it as a novel, but after Margaret Atwood’s success with the webserial Positron, I’ve been interested in trying that route myself.

What’s DinoLand about?
DinoLand is set in a sprawling, Disney World-like amusement park which has introduced live dinosaurs as an attraction. The park saved a dying mill town and its leader is revered as a genius and a hero for his work. However, a new attraction is being planned, one that may not be as beloved as the herd of Brachiosaurs.

We need to talk about Jurassic Park.
Let’s address the pink Tricerotops in the room. This theme park hasn’t got much to do with Michael Crichton’s Costa Rican Island, or even with Velociraptors. The park in this book is very different from the one in Jurassic Park. Let me put it this way: the real monsters in this book aren’t the big lizards.

Rawr.
Have I mentioned that I’m excited about this? Because I am. So. Excited. I’m a little nervous about starting a webserial around the same time that I have a baby, but this is a project I’ve wanted to do for a long time, and I hope you’ll be interested too. So stay tuned for more announcements, links and posts. Let’s get prehistoric!