What a Whirlwind! One Month of AKMARAL

plus WISDOM & WORDS, a pre-Viking ship burial, and a creative writing prompt at the end.

Achievements, Updates, Observations

It’s a Major Award!

I can now call myself an award-winning author! AKMARAL was a finalist in this year’s Next Generation Indie Book Awards. (Scroll down the long list to GENERAL FICTION/NOVEL OVER 100,000 WORDS.) I’m particularly pleased that it won in the General Fiction category, which means that it was competing with a broader range of novels and still rose to the top. I am also pleased to find another Regal House author, Leah Angstman, whose novel, FALCON IN THE DIVE, placed in the same category.

I’m still waiting to hear results from several other awards, so please send your positive thoughts out to the universe for me and AKMARAL.

Some Sweet Fruits from All My Labors

Getting attention for a small press novel is no small feat. But my efforts (and those of my beloved publicist Laura Marie) have been surprisingly fruitful. From New Jersey Monthly’s Summer Beach Reads Roundup to podcasts and interviews with some truly insightful hosts and writers, I’ve been amazed and utterly grateful. While I won’t bore you with the entire list (which I’m trying desperately to keep up-to-date), here are a few highlights:

My all-time favorite literary podcaster Caroline Donahue and I chatted on her fabulous The Secret Library Podcast: Moving from a Big 5 Publisher to an Indie Publisher with Judith Lindbergh.

I am thrilled that Maggie Freeman of the Nomads, Past and Present podcast on the New Books Network, invited me for an academic deep dive into my research.

It was super cool to be featured in the Friends & Fiction newsletter. There’s a paywall to read 5 Questions with Judith Lindbergh, but they have a huge reach and many loyal readers. I hope a few of them picked up AKMARAL!

This interview was published in a small, local news site, but it’s one of my favorites. Interviewer Kristin Wald asked some wonderful questions that challenged me to think harder about my own work. Check out Judith Lindbergh’s ‘Akmaral’ Takes Readers on a Journey Back in Time.

I also published a few pieces of my own this month, all in service to getting the word out about AKMARAL, but I believe they are valuable in their own right. Check out From Slave to Warrior: Discovering Myself Through Writing Historical Fiction, in Writer’s Digest, about the internal growth that is reflected in, and sometimes evolves from, writing fiction.

And, because the literary economy is all about giving back, I wrote a quick roundup featuring some of my own book recommendations: The best books of historical fiction with unfamiliar eponymous titles on Shepherd.com. Yes, my dear friend Laurie Lico Albanese’s HESTER tops the list.

The Reviews Have Been Seriously Stellar!

I made this review recap video a week or so ago, but my numbers are holding steady even as the reviews and ratings pile up. Whew! I really do love the first comment below: Akmaral has an essence similar to nature. It’s a wild, brutal, beautiful and magical thing. Whoever you are, Netgalley Reviewer, you completely got it. Thank you!

For an author, these enthusiastic responses are invaluable treasures, because there will inevitably be readers who feel differently. No work of art or entertainment can please everyone. Writers have to develop a thick skin very early on—from the first gentle critique to the countless, heartless rejections. But we are still human beings with sensitive souls. So when you share your thoughts about any book you read, please phrase them with as much honesty as compassion!

That said, please feel free to share your honest review of AKMARAL on Goodreads, Amazon, or wherever you share your bookish thoughts. Every review helps trigger the algorithm and lifts AKMARAL out of the shadows and into the light!

Supporting Writers and Friends Through WISDOM & WORDS

My dear friend and occasional hiking buddy, Darcey Gohring, just launched a terrific new Substack, WISDOM & WORDS. Her goal: “In this algorithm-driven culture we live in, a story can’t find an outlet because it isn’t based on a trending topic or it doesn’t fit a certain formula. I wanted to give writers and readers a space where well-told stories could have a home.” Darcey is a wise midwife to many writers in our community and beyond through her memoir classes at The Writers Circle and through her role in Zibby Owen’s Writing Community.

WISDOM & WORDS features one essay a week and the stories I’ve read so far are beautiful. If you’re writing (and I know many of you are because you came into my life through The Writers Circle), consider supporting Darcey’s wonderful new project and submitting your own words. If your story is accepted, please reach out so I can cheer for you!

ARTIFACT of the Month: The Herlaugshaugen Ship Burial

This week, The New York Times published an article about an ancient ship burial discovered in Norway. No, I am not harking back to my Viking Age roots. This one goes back even farther.

The storied Herlaugshaugen burial mound was supposedly the scene of a mass suicide, and artifacts uncovered in the 18th century included, among other things, animal bones, a bronze cauldron, and a skeleton, seated and holding a sword. New evidence places the ship in the Merovingian period, from 550 to 793, give or take, which connects it to the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial (Watch the wonderful movie about its discovery, The Dig.) and provides continuity to later ship burials like the Gokstad and beautiful Oseberg—my favorite!—from the Viking Age.

All this is to say that, while history is in the past, our understanding of it is ever unfolding. New discoveries, and new techniques to analyze and interpret them, are constantly shifting and deepening our understanding.

The joy and challenge of writing fiction about the ancient past is in imagining what we don’t yet know while respecting what we do. When we are successful, novelists create a vivid window into times and lives long gone with as much authenticity as possible.

One last intriguing fact that makes my novelist’s mind start to churn: the artifacts originally dug up in the 1700s went missing in the early 1920s, including the seated skeleton. And rumor has it that the bronze cauldron was melted down to make shoe buckles. That sounds like a great premise for a mystery!

Creative Writing Prompt: Time

There is so much of it, and then it is gone. Time stretches and shrinks. Time is relative.

Humans have been taking note of time since earliest pre-history, as evidenced by ancient Egyptian sundials, Greek clepsydra or water clocks, Mayan calendar stones, and Neolithic European stone circles that align with the solstices. We are obsessed with time—with using it well or wasting it. And truly is there ever enough time?

Check out the Deep Time interactive infographic.

Human life, even at its most generous, is fleeting on an astronomical scale. Remember that if the history of earth were represented as a twelve-hour clock, human evolution would take up only the last nineteen seconds.

Write about time—how you feel about it right now. Are you squeezing in your writing time? Or are you blessed with the luxury of hours to create? Do you long for days gone by or obsess about the future? And how hard is it to be present, in the here and now, and just be?

Thank you, everyone, for your support. And to my paid subscribers, you are ANGELS!

AKMARAL: a nomad woman warrior of the ancient Central Asian steppes must make peace with making war

“A crackling novel”—Publishers Weekly

“A gripping saga”— #1 bestselling author Christina Baker Kline

AKMARAL - Available wherever books are sold.

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