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.

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!

Week 1 of the Wings Unfurled Blog Tour is almost over!

There are no new stops on the tour scheduled over the weekend, but I still have new content for you! But first, don't forget to swing by the Meerkat Press masterpost to enter our $50 giftcard prize drawing! Not quite 100 folks have signed up yet, so you have a nearly 1/100 chance at the moment—that's actually really great for an online prize drawing.

New content? Yes! You can now watch video of me reading the prologue to Wings Unfurled! This was recorded as part of the Strong Women, Strange Worlds reading series, which I appeared in this past November. Head here to YouTube to watch!

On the same YouTube page, you can watch the full video of that First Friday Quick Reads session with Strong Women, Strange Worlds. Six authors in total read, each of us for just 8 minutes, to give you a quick sip of our work. Featured authors beside myself: Sandra Barrett, Ellen Booraem, Jennie Goloboy, Angela Yuriko, and Sylvia Woodham.

I also appeared on Story Hour this past Wednesday, which is a lovely readings series that began with the pandemic and has been running strong weekly ever since. Story Hour focuses on short stories, so I did not read from Wings Unfurled. Instead, I shared "Garbage," a humorous, but as host Laura Blackwell described it, "funny and disturbing," science fiction story. I read with Barbara A. Barnett, who graces the first half hour with a short, sad read and then a longer, funny tale that'll make you think twice before your next bite of salad.

My half starts about 25:00 minutes into the Story Hour. I hope you enjoy the listen!

And let me leave you with another contextless sentence from Wings Unfurled. Place your order by clicking on the vendor of your choice in that right sidebar over there ↗↗↗

“What does the mama snake say to the baby snake?” “Ssssnuggles, ssssnakelet!”

Fogcon 2019 starts tomorrow!

As per usual, I don't feel ready, but do I ever for conventions? This year, I'll be at Fogcon all weekend. Here is my schedule, should you care to join me at any point:

Friday, 4:30 pm, Salon A/B: It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take This--Writer Support Networks in the Bay Area. Panelist.

Scene: The writer types alone, perhaps with a bottle of bourbon for companionship and a cat on the lap. The writing lifestyle is often portrayed as solitary, but as with all careers, writers need support to improve and to get their work seen by the wider world. Come learn what resources are available for speculative fiction writers in the Bay Area, from critique groups, to marketing, to writing classes, to kicking back and talking writer shop with others going through the creative struggle of the written word.

Saturday, 10:00 am, Salon F: Discovering Short Fiction. Panelist.

We live in golden age for short SFF, but there’s so much out there and relatively few reviews and recommendations compared to novels. How are people finding short fiction? What are some techniques the panelist can suggest for those looking to read more short stories? And what can the community do to help showcase the awesome short fiction happening now?

Saturday, noon, Lobby Bar: East Bay Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup Group Craft Klatsch. Host.

Join my East Bay critique group for SF/F writers during Saturday's lunch hour in Fogcon's lobby bar to unwind from the con so far and catch up on what's been great and what folks are looking forward to next.

Saturday, 8:00 pm, Salon F: Small Houses, Big Futures--Publishing SF with Small Presses. Moderator.

While many of us dream of a Big 5 deal, there are numerous Small Press publishers that are taking risks the larger publishers can't, giving more writers access to the market. But that access comes with smaller (or no) advances and a larger proportion of labor on the author. What's different about publishing with a Small Press vs. a big publishing house? How is the experience different, for the editor and for the writer?

Sunday, 1:30 pm, Santa Rosa room: Broad Universe Rapid Fire Reading. Host and Reader.

Broad Universe is one of the oldest organizations supporting female writers of speculative fiction. At conventions nationwide, Broad Universe hosts Rapid Fire Readings to highlight the amazing work of our members. Several members of the group take part by sharing short bursts of fiction that keep the reading lively and exciting.

And from there...home! Is it wrong that I'm looking forward to that last part already?

Join me on Thursday, 1/25/18 at 7 pm at the Octopus Literary Salon for a brand-new Bay Area reading series: Terra Incognita! Sponsored by the Escapery, a Bay Area organization offering adventures for artists and writers of all levels, Terra Incognita is a genre fiction-based reading series that showcases Bay Area authors. Each month, a different genre or hybrid genre will be represented, ideally including a range of authors of varying skills and publication history. And the first month's theme is Speculative Fiction!

That, of course, is fortunate for me, being a speculative fiction writer. I've met Terra Incognita's host, Haldane King, a few times, and I'm thrilled to be a part of his new reading series, especially as genre fiction is underrepresented on the literary scene at large. Though I must say, I've always been warmly welcomed when reading horror, fantasy, or science fiction anywhere I've gone in the East Bay and San Francisco. Thus, I'm mostly excited we'll have one more outlet of creative genre expression for us all.

Nick Mamatas, J Curtis, Jackie Haudek, Samuel Walsh, and myself will be the inaugural Terra Incognita readers. Enticements include a free drawing for Nomadic Press poetry chapbooks, and the great refreshments at the Octopus. Donations are welcome, and I'll have copies of Wings Unseen for sale.

If you'd like, sign up at the Facebook event. Or just show up! I hope to see you there.

Last time I read at the Octopus Literary Salon.

Wings Unseen, my debut epic fantasy novel, is now available at bookstores and libraries and everywhere online! Here's a perspective you don't see of the cover often, the full front and back:

If you'd like to see it in paperback near you, request to have Wings Unseen ordered at your favorite store. Such requests are much appreciated! And so are online orders. You can get it from any of these retailers in paperback or ebook forms:

I would absolutely love it if you would rate and/or review the book after reading as well - ratings are life for authors! We all know we are swayed by them. ;) So a big virtual hug from Mazu for those of you able to do so.

To celebrate the release of Wings Unseen yesterday, I thought I'd do a reading on Facebook Live...but I have a ton of Wings Unseen readings coming up, so I thought it'd be more fun to share some of my earliest short stories instead. And by early, I meant second to fifth grade. You can watch the video by clicking through to Facebook or click the video to play below:

Ah, elementary school storytelling. I was so precocious. You can also follow the Wings Unseen Blog Tour--full of interviews, guest posts, excerpts, and reviews of Wings Unseen from book blogs--over the next three weeks! Find the full schedule of tour stops here at the Xpresso Books tour page.

Upcoming Readings and Appearances To promote and celebrate the publication of Wings Unseen, I'll be reading at or participating in several events over the next few months, and hopefully, one of those will be near you! Here's the list of where you can find me coming up, including 4 Bay Area appearances in the next two weeks:

• 8/25, 8 pm, Feminist Spec Fic night at the Liminal Center, Oakland, CA
• 8/26, 4 pm, Wings Unseen Book Launch, the Octopus Literary Salon, Oakland, CA
• 8/27, 3 pm, A Trilogy of Shivers, Adventures, and Fantasy, Borderlands Books, San Francisco, CA
• 9/2, 1 pm, A Reading from the East Bay Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Meetup Group, Mad Monks Center for Anachronistic Media, Berkeley, CA
• 9/10, TBD, SF in SF, Location TBD, San Francisco, CA
• 9/16, TBD, Shades and Shadows Podcast, The Mystic Museum, Burbank, CA
• 9/19, 7 pm, An Evening of Speculative Fiction and Fantasy, the Regulator, Durham, NC
• 9/23, 2 pm, Barnes and Noble, Cary, NC
• 10/20, 3 pm, interview with the Speculative Fiction Cantina
• 10/20, 7 pm, At the Inkwell Short Fiction Night, Alley Cat Books, CA
• 10/24, 7 pm, Liminal Series, Flywheel Press, San Mateo, CA
• 10/26-10/29, SirensCon, Veil, CO

Events with more information available online are linked - I'll be adding links as I get more details ironed out as well! I would love to see you in the crowd, and of course, to sign your book! I think I'll also be posting some musings about the process of book publication once I get the chance to breath...which may not be until October. 😅

Thank you for your support, dear readers, and I hope to see you in the world of Lansera soon!

Tomorrow, I fly out for my first WisCon experience.

I'm super excited because I've heard so many great things about this conference from other writers. It has a heavy concentration on the craft of writing, which is the #1 reason I'm choosing it as my first con in years. I love the speculative fiction genre, but I love writing it more than I love the fannish activities that go along with it. Nothing wrong with going wild, Fandom! It's just not how I engage with the works that spark my passion.

And I am thrilled that I will get to share some of my passion with you! I am one-third of the superpowered trio in the Triple the Strength! Triple the Power! reading with fellow writers Sally Wiener Grotta and Laura Lis Scott on Sunday at 1:00 pm in Conference Room 2 at the main hotel.

Thanks to Sally for our flyer! Unfortunately, Laura won't be with us in the flesh, but I'm delighted to read a selection from her novella, Half the Sky, on her behalf. I'll also be reading "Thlush-A-Lum", my most recently published horror short story, and if time allows (it should), the first chapter of my epic fantasy novel, Wings Unseen.

But that's not all! On Monday morning, in the waning hours of WisCon, I'll be on the Worldbuilding Through Food panel in Senate B at 10:00 am. Writing about food has been a huge part of my career over the past six years, and food has always been an honored guest in my fiction as well, so this panel's topic spoke to me on many levels. Ty Blauersouth is our moderator, and my fellow panelists will be Nino Cipri and Amy Thomson. The official description:

The food crops and domestic animals an author uses in a fictional world shape underlying presumptions about where and when a story is set…or "not set," in the case of not-quite-our-world-but-just-barely worlds. Medievaloid Europeish taverns with potatoes and tomatoes in their stew. Cultures that spice heavily, or lightly, or eat a wide range of animals; even if crops and livestock are all named with new words they often trace back to our-Earth models. How can one thoughtfully use food in your worldbuilding in ways that support themes and characters, without falling into shallow sloppiness? What SFF authors do food description particularly well? What's good about it?

I'm especially excited to talk about how food choices can reveal character and ways food can be more central to the plot than just a lush description of a feasting table. Turkish delight, anyone?

Of course, I'll be out and about all over the place during the rest of WisCon 39, but I haven't had the chance to pick which sessions I'll attend just yet. I'll update you all on those plans as I make the decisions! Meanwhile, I always love meeting new people, so if you'd like to join me for coffee or a cocktail or a meal, just drop me a line at becca at thegourmez dot com or through Twitter @thegourmez. I arrive Wednesday evening and leave Monday afternoon.

See you soon, Wisconsin! It'll be lovely to make your acquaintance.