In slightly under an hour, I'll be hosting SFWA's Weekly Writing Date!

These writing dates are one of the primary ways that a core group of SFWA members and Nebula Conference attendees have kept in touch over the past pandemic years, providing community while taking part in writing sprints together. I've only been able to join a few times, and I'm delighted to host the week of Wings Unfurled's release!

I'm also excited to dive into some freewriting - my skills are rusty these days, and writing dates are a wonderful way to exercise them. For me, freewrites really loosen my imagination, so I can better grasp the stories my psyche wants to tell.

If you're a SFWA member or Nebula Conference participant, come join me from 2pm to 4pm! Details here.

And here's a contextless quote from Wings Unfurled for release week!

Vesperi rarely spoke of her brother, and when she did, it came coupled with a curse.

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!”

Today's Wings Unfurled Book Tour Blog Stop is at TKentWrites.com! I'd like to think them for hosting my short post on "Psychoanalyze This! Please?" in which I talk about my dislike of the idea that all authors' work are autobiographical in some form . . . while also wondering if maybe some of the symbols and images that fascinate me do have deeper meaning for my life and I just don't know it! Read it here:

http://www.tkentwrites.com/psychoanalyze-this-please-by-rebecca-gomez-farrell/

Also be sure to swing by Meerkat Press's Wings Unfurled Blog Tour masterpost to enter their $50 giftcard prize drawing! There are not quite 100 entries yet, so now's a great time to get your name in there. Good luck!

As promised, here is a line from Wings Unfurled, with no context. I'm sharing one each day we have a new blog tour post to feature.

“I wasn’t sure I wanted to come help you folks, but that was a jolly good time.”

See you for tomorrow's blog post feature!

Release Day is here! Or rather, release day has already come and is almost gone and I'm just now getting to a post on my own blog to mark it—it's been busy, y'all! Busy in a good way.

I am thrilled to report that whatever snafu Amazon had going on is now resolved, and you can order both paperback and ebook copies of Wings Unfurled through them again. But of course, they are also availabile at all the usual suspects of online vendors! Here are your options:

Bookshop.org Barnes & Noble Meerkat Press Amazon Apple Books Kobo

And I believe it may be on Google Books now as well. As the author, it does not make a difference to me which one you order from, but ordering straight from my publisher, Meerkat Press, is best for supporting this awardwinning, quality small press!

I would also love to invite you all to my Wings Unfurled Book Launch Party on Sunday, December 18, at 4:30pm Pacific Time! This will be a Zoom-based event, and my husband will present me with AI "art" he has generated from passages in the book, which will be a fun show-and-tell. I'll also be giving away two sets of the Wings Rising duology, so if you do not have Wings Unseen already, this is a great chance to get signed copies of both books for free! After the prize drawing, it'll be a casual hangout time for friends and friendly readers. Register here to join.

Of course, there is also a new port of call on the Wings Unfurled Book Blog Tour today! Head by the Speculative Fiction Showcase to read Chapter 3, the first one from a brand-new character's perspective: Esye, the silver moon. Don't forget to enter the $50 giftcard prize drawing at the end of the piece!

As promised, I'll leave you with a line from the book:

“I’ll be right back, or someone else will, okay, Izzy? Don’t go far.” “Okay,” she said. How far could she go during a right back, she wondered.

And here's how I celebrated Wings Unfurled's publication, with one of my favorite things...a crab roll!

May your successes be as tasty! I look forward to sharing more exciting Wings Unfurled news with you tomorrow.

Along with a new book publication comes a new blog book tour!

I invite you to take a tour of a number of different book-based blogs over the next two works for interviews with me, excerpts from Wings Unfurled, posts on various writerly topics, and book reviews! A new blog will post a new piece each day from now until December 16! And what's more....

Meerkat Press is giving away a $50 gift card at the end of the tour! At any of the featured blog posts or at Meerkat's master schedule of the blog tour, you can find the giveaway form to complete. So far, we only have 26 entries, so your chances are high!

Today's book tour blog post features more book recommendations from me!

Check out "Five Book Series Where Women Wield the Power" at BigIndieBooks.com for recommendations of more recent book series I've read that explore the power of women in the narrative, just like I do in the Wings Rising series. And....enter that $50 gift card raffle while you're there!

I'm going to share a teaser quote from the book with each new post on my own blog these next two weeks. Here's today's:

Once before in her life, Vesperi had felt this thoroughly at sea, when she’d held her father’s corpse, drained of all life and matter.

When I wake tomorrow, I will be the author of two published books! Life goals achieved! I hope you enjoy following Vesperi, Serra, and Janto as they pursue they own in this next stage of our Lansera adventure.

Join me on Wednesday, when I’ll be appearing at Story Hour, for the third time! Story Hour is a weekly speculative fiction reading hosted by authors Daniel Marcus and Laura Blackwell. I'll be reading with Barbara A. Barnett.

Story Hour focuses on the short form, preferring that stories be read in full during each author’s half of the show. This means that I will not be reading from my new book, Wings Unfurled. But I will be sharing a humorous science fiction tale, "Garbage," that was published a few years back. This story's about a pair of immature teenagers playing a prank on the neighbor, but it's also about opinions on immigration and assimilation.

I hope to see you Wednesday, 12/7/2022, at 7pm PT! You can join Story Hour either through Zoom or through Facebook Live. Links to both are here at their website.

Over at Shepherd, which is a newish website to help shepherd readers toward their next favorite books, I compiled a list of books that impress me with their sometimes poetic, sometimes beautifully figurative, prose: The Best Speculative Fiction Books with Lyrical Prose.

My choices:

This list is heavily informed by my love of African American literature (this was my Modern Literature focus in college) and my willingness to follow gorgeous imagery anywhere, anytime. Feel free to ask me more about any of my choices; I'm happy to gush.

I also mention in the article that I'm preceded by THREE GENERATIONS(!) of poets on my mother's side. Thanks to my mom, my grandfather William Parker, and my great-grandfather William Lee Popham for that legacy!

Wishing you some great new lyrical prose favorites! If you like my work, you may also want to check out the Shepherd list of Ominously Atmospheric Stories for Winter's Night for suggestons, as Wings Unfurled does have a good share of its own haunting. Also take a gander at their new Magicians (Fantasy) shelf on their bookshelves.

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.

I am delighted to share that you can now pre-order Wings Unfurled. Officially Book 2 of the Wings Rising series, Wings Unfurled releases on December 6, just a little over a month from now. Just in time for those holiday gifts, right? *wink wink nudge nudge*

The print version is $18.95 and the ebook is $8.95.

At the Meerkat Press listing page for the book, you can see all the ordering options. But if there’s one thing authors know, it’s that we should give you direct ordering links to your favorite service whenever possible! So here they are:

• Amazon Print
• Amazon Ebook
• Barnes & Noble Print
• Barnes & Noble Ebook
• Kobo
• Meerkat Press

You can also order it from your fave local bookstore!

Now, the first question you’re going to ask me is which vendor should you buy it from so that I get the most royalties? The answer is honestly that I get the same royalties no matter where you buy it from. But if you’d like to support my publisher, then ordering directly from Meerkat Press is best.

The second question is “So, what's it about, Becca?” Well, here’s the backcover blurb!

The vicious claren that used to plague the reunited countries of Medua and Lansera are long gone. So what are the new dark patches appearing in Lady Serra's second sight?

She rushes to King Albrecht to report the danger, only to discover that he's ailing and Vesperi, Prince Janto's wife, has fled far to the north to grieve her disappeared daughter.

Vesperi still wields the silver flame, possesses all the authority she's ever wanted, but nothing can heal the wound of a missing child. When the silver moon Esye begins to fade, a gnawing fear preys on her for the first time since she escaped her father's cold rule.

Ominous creatures once thought mythical are now rampaging through the countryside. Janto sends Serra to investigate. But without her friendship and Vesperi's love, he fears he cannot slay this challenge. He failed to find his own daughter, after all.

To save the Lanserim, the legendary bird with three heads must fly again. Will Janto, Vesperi, and Serra find the strength to raise it? Or will this menace, with the might to drain a moon, devour them first?

I hope that gets you excited to read about the new adventures and challenges Vesperi, Janto, and Serra face, six years after the events of Wings Unseen. I also shared a geeky writer note on book structure with my newsletter subscribers this past weekend, so I'm going ot share it with everyone now: I didn’t know that Wings Unfurled’s organization would so closely follow Wing Unseen’s when I started writing it, but I’m delighted that it worked out that way. Wings Unseen is laid out in two parts: The Breeding Season and The Culling. Wings Unfurled also has two parts: Moonfall and Moonrise. Two stanzas of prophetic prophesy are also very important to both plots! Here’s a teaser of the first two lines of the new prophecy from Wings Unfurled:

When leaps the mighty cantalere the dark brother drains his foes.

Uncover the rest of that prophecy and what it portends for the Lanserim by preordering now!

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!

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. 😉