Announcements

Join me in Brooklyn for the Rooftop Reading Series on April 18!

I am super excited to be reading at Barrow’s Intense Tasting Room in Brooklyn on April 18 at 7pm! The Rooftop Readings series — currently indoors and not on a rooftop due to, you know, THE COLD — is organized by the super awesome debut novelist and super-talented entertainment journalist Randee Dawn. This reading will also feature Nadia Uddin, Richie Narvaez, and Katharine Duckett!

Barrow’s is at 86th 34th Street, Brooklyn, NY (D train to 36th Avenue, then about a 5 minute walk). You DO NOT NEED TO PURCHASE A TICKET to attend, but if you’d like a drink while you’re listening, please make sure to snap one up for $10 at Eventbrite. Which honestly? A cocktail in Brooklyn for $10? What a deal! Nevermind the entertainment! Purchase a ticket here: https://buff.ly/3G9ZVEZ and learn more about the Rooftop Reading Series here: https://buff.ly/3Mq63wT

Yes, this is basically my springtime promo blog tour for Wings Unfurled, and I cannot wait to share this sequel with East Coast epic fantasy fans! SF in SF went great, and now NYC will get its own taste of this book. And I’ll get to taste Barrow’s Intense Ginger Liquor, and honestly, I’m probably just as excited for that.

I’m looking forward to raising a glass with you, Brooklynites!

SF in SF with Mia Tsai and Me! Sunday, March 26

Don’t forgot! Tomorrow, I appear at SF in SF for the second time, to celebrate Wings Unfurled! This reading series takes place on Sunday, March 26, at 6:30pm at the American Bookbinders Museum in San Francisco. There’s a $10 entry fee, but no one is turned away for lack of funds.

After our readings, Cliff Winning will interview me and fellow guest, Mia Tsai, who’s promoting her paranormal debut Bitter Medicine. We’ll be taking questions from the audience as well, and Soma FM will be recording the event for their station. Come grab a seat and ask me whatever you’d like. Even what my characters would pick as their favorite cocktails. 🍹 All proceeds from the $10 entry fee and the cash bar are donated to the American Bookbinders Museum.

See you there!

March Events! Readings & A Book Fair in the Bay Area

I’ll be appearing at a few events in the Bay Area, coming up this week and next. Here’s the deets:

The Wizard’s Homecoming Book Launch

I am thrilled to celebrate my friend, the talented Elwin Cotman, and his new speculative poetry collection, The Wizard’s Homecoming, this coming Friday, March 17, at 7:00pm Pacific Time! I’m also thrilled that he asked me to read as part of the celebration.

elwin cotman wizards homecoming speculative poetry

The book launch takes place at Hasta Muerte Coffee in Oakland, and Elwin will also be hosting comic artist Dan McCloskey for the evening. Come on out! More Info.

Strong Women • Strange Worlds Birthday Book Fair

I’ll be taking part on Facebook in Strong Women • Strange Worlds’ Birthday Celebration Book Fair on Saturday, March 18, from 12pm to 1pm PT!

This event intimidates me, to be honest. Why? Because it’s not a reading but twenty minutes of time for me to just talk about my books, my writing process, the publishing industry, and maybe even how my foodie ways influence my fiction. I’m afraid of being a rambling mess….but if you’d be entertained by a rambling Rebecca Gomez Farrell, check it out! SWSW’s birthday festivities will be going on all day, but you should be able to tune in here on Facebook at 12:00pm to find me. Sumiko Saulson and KC Grifant will also be authors on display during that Book Fair hour.

SF in SF

I am delighted to return to SF in SF for my second reading with that great celebration of speculative fiction writers! It takes place on Sunday, March 25, at 6:30pm at the American Bookbinders Museum in San Francisco.

After our readings, Cliff Winning will interview me and fellow guest, Mia Tsai. We’ll be taking questions from the audience as well, and Soma FM will be recording the event for their station. Come grab a seat and ask me whatever you’d like. Even what my characters would pick as their favorite cocktails. 🍹 All proceeds from the $10 entry fee and the cash bar are donated to the American Bookbinders Museum.

Will I see you in March? I hope so! But if not….more April events will be announced soon!

Interview at the Speculative Fiction Showcase!

At the Speculative Fiction Showcase blog, Jessica Rydill shares a nice interview with me on a number of topics, many of them related to Wings Unfurled.

I love when interviews actually focus on the books themselves – most folks want to know more about the writing process than the story, so it was refreshing to take a deeper dive into the world on the page. Learn what headspaces the characters are in at the beginning of the work, my future writing plans, and even why my replicator order is “Absinthe verte, one cube.”

Be sure to read it here! Thanks to Jessica for the opportunity.

Cover Reveal for Wings Unfurled!

Last week, Meerkat Press revealed the cover art for Wings Unfurled, the sequel to my epic fantasy novel Wings Unseen!

There it is! I especially love how beautiful the silver stag is and the vivid color scheme. It’s quite a different style of fantasy cover from Wings Unseen, and that’s because we’re embracing the fact that my writing style is more adult epic fantasy than it is YA. As Wings Unfurled takes place six years after the events of Wings Unseen, Serra, Janto, and Vesperi are all firmly now into adulthood as well. Thus, the cover art has been redesigned with more of a mass market fantasy appeal.

Obviously, the silver stag is familiar iconography for fans of the first book, but there are other aspects of the cover, especially when you compare it with the new cover art for Wings Unfurled, that’ll gain more resonance as you read the story.

What’s that? New cover art for Wings Unseen, too? That’s right!

Branding is an important part of book sales, so to keep the brand recognition strong between Wings Unseen and Wings Unfurled, Meerkat Press has redesigned the cover for Book 1 as well. I do miss the little claren bugs dotting the font, but I think the two new designs go smashingly together. And now, I have two editions of the same book—that’s honestly a really fun thing as a writer. But if you still want to pick up the first edition of Wings Unseen with the original cover, act fast!

wings unseen rebecca gomez farrell meerkat press cover fantasy

For the time being, you can still purchase Wings Unseen with this cover from Amazon, Meerkat Press, and Bookshop . The change will be made closer to Wings Unfurled release date of December 5, 2022, when the Wings Rising series takes to the sky!

This is publishing in the time of COVID, so there is always a chance that date may change, but I should have pre-order details available next month. 🤞And with its publication, I’ll officially be the proud creator of a published series! Will it become a trilogy? The faintest of ideas are jangling around in my head, but I do have some other manuscripts for other series that I’ve been meaning to shape up for a while…

I hope you like the cover art for both books! Want me to explain what the other significant differences are in the covers between the books? TOO BAD. You’ll have to read it to figure it out in full. 😉

Listen to “Submission Caws” at the Centropic Oracle!

In the madness of moving, I haven’t had time to share this news: “Submission Caws” received an audio production by the Centropic Oracle!

The recording was released on January 29, which was the day we were originally scheduled for escrow to close. The release of “Submission Caws” stayed on schedule, though our escrow took a few days longer…

…but that’s another story! This story is a fictional rant about the process of submitting manuscripts out for publication. It is funny and silly, particularly if you are also a writer undertaking this process on a regular basis. It’s a fantasy take on the concept, with recipes for magic spells subbed in for manuscripts themselves. It ends with a dare that the editors at the Centropic Oracle took, just like Defenestration did before them when the story was first published in 2019.

Jill Raymond performed the audio version, and I quite enjoy her take on the story — the character of Betty, a bubbly and annoyingly successful composer of magical recipes, comes through loud and clear. To listen to or read “Submission Caws,” head to the Centropic Oracle’s website here.

Or of course, you can read “Submission Caws” at its original home at Defenestration, right here.

The first few lines to entice you onward:

A black crow swoops onto the open window ledge, and yearning gushes from deep within me. I tamp down the emotion swifter than the crow can deliver its charge: a rolled parchment that bangs against the bookshelves as it flips toward the floor. The crow musses its feathers and launches into the air, off to retrieve its next assignment. Soon, someone else will receive fresh misery. I retrieve the parchment, find it quaint that the Gate Keepers use it for correspondence when they could just place a call by sandspelling. The parchment’s seal displays a sentinel guarding a mountain of scrolls piled behind an ornate, locked gate.

And some photographic inspiration:

My 2020 Awards Eligible Short Stories

It’s award nomination season in the speculative fiction world, which means it’s time for me to roll out my annual review of my publications for the previous year! And by annual, I mean, I haven’t done one since…2018? Oh wait, 2018 was the only year I’ve ever done one? Um…oops? But I am recently inspired by Rosemary Claire Smith’s “Reason to Publicize Your Award-Eligible Works” article to to give it a go. So here goes!

Yes, I had seven publications to my name in the last year! That’s my highest total yet in terms of sheer numbers – I’m around a 15% acceptance rate at the moment, which is pretty gosh-darn good. Writing is a rejection grind, so anytime my acceptance rate is above 10% for stories I’ve sent out to be considered for publication, I’m feeling darn good. And I do feel good about the quality of my work published in 2020! Unfortunately, of those seven publications, only a couple are actually eligible for nomination for the Nebula, Hugo, Locus, or other awards of your nominating choice. Those are….

“It’s Only Vampire” – A humorous horror tale released in FARK in the Time of COVID: The 2020 Fark Fiction Anthology. The anthology was released in December 2020. What I most enjoyed about writing this one was finally capturing a bit of the humor in the generational battles we humans so often undertake – think, “OK, Boomer,” but for the fang and crypt crew.
“An Inconvenient Quest” – A flash fantasy quest in A Quiet Afternoon: Lo-Fi Speculative Fiction for a Peaceful Break from a Stressful World, released in July 2020. I wrote the first draft of this short story several years ago, when I wanted to really dig into using senses other than sight more often in my fiction. The result of focusing on smells? A synesthetic union of scent, emotion, and color for a lonely sprite who must find a way to save his ailing queen.
“Wishing for More” – Oh, oh wait. This urban fantasy romance about graduates of the Jinn school trying to make their way in world came out in December 2019. I just didn’t learn that it had been published until a few weeks into 2020. Now that’s a story for another time. You can read “Wishing for More” in Helios Quarterly Magazine 4.4, but unfortunately, you cannot nominate it this year.
“Some Who Wander” – Oh, no, nope. Not that one either. Because it’s not fiction at all, but a fun little whirl of micro nonfiction about a bad choice I made one day while hiking through my neighborhood. “Some Who Wander” can be stumbled upon at Intrinsick.
Consider “Hobgoblin” instead! Except you can’t because it’s a reprint, found in Whigmaleeries & Wives Tales.
“What Scattered in the Wind”? Nope, also a reprint, this time in the ACCOLADES anthology.
Surely, “Thlush-A-Lum” is up for some nominating fun? Assuredly not, as it enjoyed its fourth printing this year, in It Calls From the Sky. Clearly, I believe in the power of making your words work for you again…and again…and again. Reprints are great! But they are not eligible for nominations…unless I put them together into my own collection someday! A girl can dream.

So I guess those first two stories really are the only ones I have eligible for nominations this awards season despite my great publishing year. With seven publications added to my grand total of thirty-one, I’m not at all upset about that. If you read either “It’s Only Vampire” or “An Inconvenient Quest” and liked them enough to give them a nomination, then you have my thanks.

And if not…more Stories by Rebecca Gomez Farrell are certainly coming your way in 2021. In fact, a new recording of my “Submission Caws” is up now at the Centropic Oracle here! More on that soon. One of my earliest stories, “She Could be Me,” will make its way into Bards & Sages Quarterly in the spring. My brand-new “Fresh Catch of the Day” is coming out in A Quiet Afternoon 2 as well. And more new things that I can’t quite speak about yet…but soon, very soon.

That’s it for my second-ever awards eligibility post! Maybe next year, I’ll have three pieces that’ll qualify. Fingers crossed – or rather – poised over the keyboard, ready to write.

Join me for Story Hour on 7/22!

This coming Wednesday, I’ll be appearing at Story Hour, a weekly reading of speculative fiction hosted by authors Daniel Marcus and Laura Blackwell. Story Hour has only been in existence since April, but already, this reading series has included a ton of great authors in our field, and I am delighted to join their ranks. I’ll be reading with Laura Davy, who’s a friend and a lovely person and author.

Story Hour focuses on the short form, preferring that stories can be read in full during each author’s half of the show. Luckily, I already have a handful of short stories recently published to share! Definitely, “An Inconvenient Quest” from the A Quiet Afternoon anthology will make an appearance. Likely, my 100-word non-fiction tale, “Some Who Wander,” will round out my reading. And perhaps I’ll have time to fit in another story that’ll be reprinted soon…

I hope to see you Wednesday at 7pm PT! You can join Story Hour either through Zoom or through Facebook Live. Links to both are here at their website.

Nebula and Hugo Award Eligible Fiction for 2018

It’s award nomination season among science fiction and fantasy writers! As is the custom, I’m offering a list of my short stories and novel publications from 2017 that are eligible for nomination–yes, that includes nearly all my 2017 publications. Qualifying isn’t that difficult. 😉

If you are a member of SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America professional guild, then you may nominate works until February 15, 2018 for the Nebula Awards. Here’s how to vote. If you attended WorldCon 75 and/or registered as a supporting or attending member of WorldCons 76 or 77 by January 1, 2018, keep your eyes on this page, as nominations are bound to open soon and will likely run through March. WorldCon awards the Hugos every year.

I’m planning to attend both conferences, and gosh, it’d be awfully sweet to have an extra special reason to go. 😉 But seriously, the Nebula Weekend is a fantastic professional conference for speculative fiction writers, and well worth your time and money–and you do not need to be a member of SFWA or even a writer to attend. I have never been to WorldCon before, but I am hoping to get on paneling or in a reading session for this one, and I think it’ll be great fun.

Thank you for considering my 2017 published works for nomination!

Here they are:

For the Best Novel category for the Nebulas or the Hugos and/or the Andre Norton Award (Best YA Novel, which appears on the Nebula ballot)

Wings Unseen

Wings Unseen is a YA classic epic fantasy told with modern sensibilities. To fight an invisible foe, three young adults must first fight through their own expectations, beliefs, and shattered dreams to save their shared world. For full information and accolades, head to its page at Meerkat Press.

For the Best Short Story Category for the Nebulas and/or the Hugos

“Treasure”

“Treasure” appears in the Dark Luminous Wings anthology from Pole to Pole Publishing, published October 2017. It’s a fantasy fable that features a thief thrust into a culture very different from her own, so different she has a difficult time believing such a culture is real…. and is under threat of a flying sea monster and the lure of a rock pillar that manifests jewels. More info here.

“Garbage”

“Garbage” is a humorous sci-fi tale about crazy old ladies, immature teenagers, and aliens with an unusual appetite. It has a fair bit to say about what it means to be native and how that shifts over time and with new waves of immigration. “Garbage” appeared in Through A Scanner Farkly: The 2017 Fark Fiction Anthology, which was published in July 2017. More info here.

“Holiday Invasion Trilogy”

I’ve barely had to the chance to tell folks this flash fiction series even exists since its publication in the Holiday Hell issue of Black Heart Magazine. Exist it does, and I’m proud of these one-shot explorations of what a holiday invasion might mean in three very different situations: a morning full of death and poinsettia, a Thankgiving dinner of new dishes and newly embodied relations, and the chaos of Christmas day for one very anxious, superpowered mom. More info here.

Finally,

“What Scattered in the Wind”

This piece of horror flash fiction, done in a poetic prose style, tells of a woman struggling with her biggest regret in life and sentenced to forever re-remember it. It appears in the August 2017 chapbook collection, Little Letters on the Skin, from Cleave: Bay Area Writers and the Liminal Center. More info here.

Best of luck to all the authors out there with eligible work for 2017! May the best of our work get on those ballots.

Order Your Autographed Gifts of Wings Unseen by 12/16!

We’re only 20 days out from Christmas, and thus the time for gift giving is upon us! For $15, you can send a signed, personalized copy of my epic fantasy, Wings Unseen, to anyone you love – heck, it’s cool if you send it to someone you only kind of like, too. 😉

My friends, Paul and Ann, whom I kind of like, I guess, getting their signed copies at my book launch.

$15 includes the book, and my signature and a personal message, filled out from your instructions on whom I should address that message too. It also includes shipping costs! What is Wings Unseen? Here’s my full page on it.

This price is only available until 12/16. After that, I won’t be able to ship via media mail in time for Christmas. But I am happy to use a more expensive shipping option to get it to your loved one for opening under the tree!

Loki guaranteed for good cuddling.

How to order? You can contact me via direct message on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram or just email me at becca@thegourmez.com. We’ll discuss payment and shipping methods – either Paypal, Square, or Venmo will work, and I am amenable to other shipping options, but the price will reflect those other options.

Or you can just order Wings Unseen off Amazon! It’s only $12 currently, which is a deal! But that doesn’t include author signature…

Happy holidays, dear readers, friends, and family!

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