One day in the depths of winter, I saw a tweet from my friend Rhonda Parrish asking for psychopomp story submissions for a StoryBundle she was curating, and my virtual ears perked up. Sirens, which I’ve incorporated into my concept of undines, are psychopomps—meaning, a being who helps spirits cross over to the land of the dead and can return (and historically can even bring messages back and forth).

I didn’t actually respond until Rhonda asked me directly. After all, while my undines are kind of psychopomps, that ability does not become crystal clear until book 2, The Sphinx’s Heart, which I haven’t published yet.

However, Rhonda relaxed the definition somewhat to include beings who could cross the veil into the land of the dead and return. Plus, she asked me. So I sent her a copy of my book, and she accepted it into her bundle.

Why is this a big deal?

Well, first of all, Rhonda is an accomplished editor and anthologist with a keen eye and taste. She wouldn’t accept just any book into her bundle. This bundle is curated in the best sense of the word—it’s been put together for people who want to read a specific kind of story but might be feeling a bit adventurous to try new things by someone who has standards of excellence for storytelling.

Second of all, StoryBundle is one of the coolest concepts available for both writers and readers to participate in a feel-good economy. Why?

StoryBundle allows curators to put together bundles of high-quality content on a theme to allow authors to benefit from signal boost and readers to get fantastic deals on books while also supporting the authors and—get this—a charity at the same time!

And the best part—you decide how much to pay. :-)

Yep, while there’s a very rock-bottom minimum price, there’s no maximum. If you want these authors and the charity to all benefit a lot, then pay a lot. If you can only afford the minimum, no biggie—you get a deal and the authors and charity still benefit.

So, What’s in the Crossing the Veil StoryBundle?

I’m so glad you asked.

The Undine’s Tear, obviously.

Besides this, there are eleven other excellent books. Rhonda has already explained it well, so I’m just going to quote her, here:

For $5 (or more, if you're feeling generous), you'll get the basic bundle of four books in any ebook format—WORLDWIDE.

• The Illuminated Heart by Thea van Diepen

• Hollow by Rhonda Parrish

• Archivist Wasp by Nicole Kornher-Stace

• The Spirit Caller Series - Books 1-3 by Krista D. Ball

If you pay at least the bonus price of just $15, you get all four of the regular books, plus eight more more books, for a total of twelve!

• The Undine's Tear by Talena Winters

• Soulless by Skyla Dawn Cameron

• The Blood Queen by October Weeks

• Latchkey by Nicole Kornher-Stace

• The Marked by Lilith Saintcrow

• Seeing the Light by E.C. Bell

• Bone Swans by C. S. E. Cooney

• Red Dust and Dancing Horses by Beth Cato

In case you didn't notice that means for $15 you can get twelve books which include Archivist Wasp and its sequel Latchkey! And you can donate 10% of your purchase price to our charities, Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now, which aim to help foster the writers of tomorrow.

Out of these books, I’ve read Seeing the Light, a cozy paranormal mystery set in Edmonton, and highly recommend it! (Very funny and full of heart.) I’m looking forward to diving into more of these, though.

The deal goes for two more weeks, so pop on over there and check it out.

And if you read any of these books and love them, let me know where to start! (So. Many. Choices!)

In a perfect world where I didn’t need to sleep, I’d have time to update this blog almost every day, or at least once a week. That world doesn’t exist, and apparently, neither does that time-turner that Hermione Granger used to double her productivity, so that’s not how it’s been working out. Like, ever. But I still have dreams.

So, while I’m posting, I’m just going to double up purposes. I mean, this is my personal blog, after all. So here’s a bit more of what’s been going on:

• Rain. So much rain. And mosquitoes. Bazillions of mosquitoes. Arg!

• Also, today we got hail.

• My hubby bought a new strategic tabletop game called Hive. He and the kids, especially Jabin, have been playing it constantly. I look forward to trying it out this weekend. Great portable two-player game!

The kids are officially done school. Jude has officially graduated. There was even a motorcade and group grad photos, which we participated in last-minute. We also got to have lunch with his buddy and fellow graduate, David Magnusson (since the Magnussons occasionally adopt us as family, yay!).

Here’s a grad photo I took of Kiddo #1:

In my so-called “spare time,” I’ve been learning how to use Adobe InDesign so I can format my own book interiors. As practice, I’ve been reworking The Friday Night Date Dress (which needed it badly). And then, since I was cringing eighteen times a page at all the writing mistakes, I did a full revision, which I’ve kind of wanted to do for a few years.

That means that this book got better, a little longer (though still well within “novella” range), and it now lives up to the standards I’ve come to expect of myself this far into my writing journey.

While I was at it, I updated the cover again to fit better into the rom-com/humorous women’s fiction genre. (None of these updates are live yet, but they will be soon!)

AND! I have more exciting news coming about this book soon. (I’m not saying yet.)

I’ve got some exciting book news in the works for a few other titles, too, but I’m also going to just tease you with that for now until I’m a little further along in the process…

Other than that, I’ve been working my eyeballs out. So at least it’s been rainy and I don’t have to feel bad about missing a beautiful summer while parked in front of my computer, because that summer hasn’t appeared yet.

Anyway. That’s it for now. I’ll be back again… whenever I can squeeze it in.

Happy Thursday!