News & Updates from USA Today Bestselling Author & Creative Deconstructionist Shannon McRoberts

The Women Weapons Magic Digest

Greetings and salutations friends!  I hope you are doing well since my last newsletter.  I’d like to say I’ve been up to exciting things in my personal life…and I guess I could tell you that…if you count trying to wrangle a teenager to the store to shop for school clothes.  Or working at the day job.  Or playing video games.  Or cleaning up after cats. 

Anyway, enough about my boring day-to-day activities.  I *do* have some exciting news on the book front.  Despite my desire to stay in a bubble safe from plauge9000XT, I am going to have in person appearances in 2022.  They’ll all be in Frankfort, KY for now.  

I’ll be at the Paul Sawyier Library on 8/27/22 from 10AM-2PM selling my books.  I’m so excited, I get to use this awesome new carrying box rolling monstrosity my husband bought me for my shows!     

I’ll be at the Paul Sawyer Library on 10/15/22 from 1PM-3PM to do a reading with other authors sponsored by my writing group Bluegrass Writers Coalition. We hope to make this our first annual community day event.  (You should check out their webpage:  https://www.bluegrasswriterscoalition.com)

I’ll be at the Festival of Books on 12/3/22 from 10AM-3PM at The Foundry on Broadway.  This is another event organized by BWC and you can keep up with the details on their social media and webpage (see the link above).  

Be sure to scroll through the entire email to find your chance to win prizes, get cheap books, and see another announcement on the book front from me!

-Shannon

NEW BOOKS ARE COMING

Did you know I wouldn’t be sitting here today writing this newsletter if I had never had the desire to see my poetry published?  It’s true!  My very first book was a collection of my poems.  Tired of entering contests, I decided I wanted to print my book on my own terms.  

In 2005, the internet was still not quite as robust as it is now.  I had to scavenge a lot of pages to glean any information on how to make a book from scratch.  After a lot of work, I was happy with my first book because I felt like I accomplished something.  

As time rolled on, I would redo my poetry book, adding new content with each edition.  However, with the invention of eBooks, came new challenges.  I didn't like how poetry and eBooks did not get along. Flowable text that eBooks need is sometimes a pain for certain layouts! Eventually, I even stopped buying paper copies of my poetry book to have on hand.  I mean, who buys poetry, right?     

Then something good happened.  Draft2Digital came out with poetry specific formatting for their easy-to-use formatter.  Affinity came out with a rival software to In-Design.  So, spurred on my ADHD brain, I decided I was going to publish a new volume of poetry.  

Requiem For Dead Flowers is maybe my magnum opus as far as poetry.  I came up with the title, designed the cover, and learned how to format a paper book in Affinity Publisher.  This book has poetry no one has ever read and I’ve posted nowhere. The book also showcases some of my art, and the entire book is a work of art in its own right. The eBook differs from the paper book as far as art and decorations, but I'm OK with that. I guess the situation is kinda like buying the MP3 to listen to, but the vinyl record for the true collector and audio connoisseur.   

Of course, not wanting to leave my other book languishing, I commissioned a cover and came up with the title A Symphony of Melancholy. What was simply going to be a re-title and re-cover turned into so much more.  Since I formatted this book later, I was able to add in new poetry written in that very moment.  So, this book also has never before seen poetry.        

My dream was to offer these in hardback.  Unfortunately, the proof Amazon sent me was so mis-made I didn’t want to approve the hardcover.  I am working on finding a better place to publish a hardcover, but I’m out of energy to format anything more right now. 

While you can order a paperback on Amazon, I want to point out I’ve changed most of my paper distribution to be through Draft2Digital.  I feel their quality is better than some of the stuff I’ve gotten from Amazon lately.

PS: I'll have a very limited number of copies of these books at my in person events. The release dates for these books are in November and December; so, you'll have a chance to get these early.

Gut wrenching.  Emotional.  Deep.  Thought provoking.  A powerful expression of a deep human emotion.  Amazing.   

These are a few descriptions Shannon's poetry has received over the years.  A Symphony of Melancholy is a revamped and re-edited collection of her poetry books published prior to Requiem For Dead Flowers.  This new volume includes previously unpublished poetry as well as old favorites.

Pre-order Requiem here:

https://books2read.com/deadpoetry

&

Pre-order Symphony here:

https://books2read.com/musicpoetry

BOOK FAIR!

Every great once in a while I will participate in an online book fair.  This year I’m taking part in a Fantasy & Sci-Fi Book Fair.  I’m sure if you love fantasy or sci-fi you can find something to pick up for a deep discount!  Here are some of the categories they have up for offer.  

• FEATURED READS   
• URBAN FANTASY & PNR    
• YA FANTASY & SCI-FI  
• FANTASY & ADVENTURE
• FANTASY & SCI-FI ROMANCE   
• SPACE & TIME TRAVEL  
• MYTHS & LEGENDS 
• CYBERPUNK, GAMELIT, POST APOCALYPTIC 
• MILITARY, GENETICS, & DYSTOPIAN 

Other Shenanigans 

Did you know I have a TIKTOK?  I haven’t posted much, because I’m still trying to figure out how to best make the videos.  Also, videos with my face and me having to talk?  Uhh.  Eww.  I hate videos LOL.      

https://www.tiktok.com/@shannonmcroberts?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc

OK, so I do hate videos, but if you really want to see me attempting to read an excerpt from a book in less than 2 minutes, then check out this Kentucky Arts Council’s celebration for Kentucky Arts’ Day submission is for you.  

https://fb.watch/erR1kSZQmb/

Goodbye, Facebook.  Hello, Discord.

So, I am tired of Facebook and all it's BSness. I'm tired of Blogger slapping weird blocks on my content I wrote over 10 years ago and saying it's "adult content" (even though I deleted that blog when I moved elsewhere). The post in question was a book review link for MY very non-adult related fantasy book on Goodreads. Yeah, no.

I'm tired of these big companies doing all this weird "PC" stuff when they won't do anything about the actual problems. I've turned in hundreds of posts that were inappropriate, full of downright hate and bad stuff, and FB is like, well, that doesn't go against our standards. But, FB will flag me because of a post I shared about herbs? Like what the fuck is wrong with your robots? FB seems to have a grudge against entrepreneurs and is now less social connection and more about how much money they can squeeze out of their users.

Corporate conglomerates don't give a shit about their customers anymore. It's exhausting. I miss the time where customers and their happiness mattered. I guess once you are a billion dollar company, you no longer need to care about anything outside of profit margins.

Did you know I beta tested Facebook in my senior year of college? I hated it. It didn't work right. I thought the platform was lackluster. But somehow FB became the end all be all for social networking. Until it wasn't. The things these bots do to your accounts are real PIAs sometimes. I would have been happier if the world had stuck to ICQ. (If you know, you know...ah-oh)

Anyway, I've started moving my group activities to Discord. Trust me, it's not a big scary gamer platform. These are private channels. Kinda like AOL chat rooms only better. You can get to Discord on a web browser, PC app, or a phone app. You don't need to install anything. I also feel Discord chats are in a better order than FB. Plus, it's FREE. And has a voice chat! So, hop on over here to my discord channel with this invite and test it out if you'd like.

https://discord.com/invite/xTDK5rQQRp

To keep your tabs on me & all my stuff, visit here:

https://sleek.bio/shannonmcroberts

To buy my art on things like magnets, stickers, journals, and more, visit my Redbubble store here: https://www.redbubble.com/people/shannonsuzanne/shop

To buy prints of things that may not be in my Redbubble, you can jog over to Deviant:

https://www.deviantart.com/shannonmcroberts/shop

I'm learning how to hand-letter to make word art. This was my only project. 100% all drawn by me!

(If you like the art, there are several variations available in my Redbubble store)

Come connect with me! I'd love to interact with you. Step right up!