My October newsletter has just gone out to subscribers! If you’re curious, you can read it for yourself at this link.
If you’d like to subscribe and have my newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, please click here. I’d love to have you!
My latest story, The Girl with Starlight Hair, is now available in Kaleidotrope’s Autumn issue. You can read it by clicking here.
I first drafted this story when I challenged myself to write fairy tales that involved space and space travel. That challenge was borne of reading a comment that fairy tales don’t belong in space. I’m not the sort of person who has interest in arguing, but I will go home and write a story, dammit.
Very threatening, I know.
One of these fairy tales I wrote to claim space for myself in, um, space, is The Girl with Starlight Hair. The girl in question hasn’t always been a girl. She used to be a planet, and over her shoulder, she carries her dying sun. I pulled inspiration from folklore, daydreams, and the softness of my heart and I hope that she sparks something in you like she did for me.
This month’s issue of my newsletter, Enchanted Side Quests, marks one year of its existence, huzzah! It’s grown a lot, changed a lot, and it’s provided me with a rather fascinating look at a writer’s life. I enjoy writing it, and I hope my readers enjoy it as much. You can read this month’s issue here and, as always, you are cordially invited to subscribe (click here for that).
In the year ahead, I hope to grow this newsletter. I’m working on a reader magnet novella to pair with my latest romantasy novel work-in-progress and with that I’ll be able to join newsletter campaigns in Story Origin and Bookfunnel that will allow me to provide you with lots of free books. And, of course, that novella will also be gifted to my newsletter subscribers. It’s going to be a wild ride!
My story, Forest Season for the Sometimes Tree, is now up at Small Wonders magazine. You can read it by clicking on this link.
This is one of those stories that starts out as a daydream and then just sort of shifts into something more. I hope you like it!
The re-release of my book The Incredibly Truthful Diary of Nature Girl is now available everywhere fine books are sold. This re-release has been updated, stuffed with fresh stories, and she’s got a gorgeous new look:
No re-release would be complete without a blurb overhaul as well, so here’s what I came up with after reading waaaaaaaay too many books about writing the things, and consulting several author groups:
Eleven-year-old Nature Girl’s backyard is an enchanted forest.
Ever since a talking tree saved her life, she’s explored every leaf and shadow. She’s named her favorite spots, frolicked with fairies, and even rescued an orphaned porcupine. And she’s written it all down in her trusty diary.
But everything’s about to change. And when the forest needs her help, Nature Girl and her diary are ready. Will she be able to keep her promise to the tree that started everything?
The Incredibly Truthful Diary of Nature Girl is a cozy middle-grade fantasy that will ignite your sense of wonder.
“If Anne of Green Gables kept a nature diary, this would be it” – Trilby O’Quinn
“Whimsical and delightful” – Rural Delivery
Buy The Incredibly Truthful Diary of Nature Girl to get lost in an enchanted forest today!
This is also Nature Girl’s first time EVER in ebook form. How exciting! Here’s a quick link to find her on the mighty river, but you can also order through your preferred bookstore as well.
This re-release is coming ahead of a middle-grade series I’m planning, also as J. D. Shelby (this way my kidlit adventures won’t get confused with my adult stories). More on that coming this fall.
Wishing all of you a beautiful summer!
My February newsletter is now live! You can read it by clicking here.
It’s been a YEAR. I got invited to send a collection of short stories to the Moon with the Lunar Codex, which kickstarted my newsletter (which is still very humble, but if you’d like to sign up, you can click here). My first ever poem publication came out in Issue 5.2 of Augur Magazine, entitled Mother/Murder.
And somewhere around the finishes touches of my Borrowed Wings and other Stories collection for Lunar Codex, I decided it was time to apply for artist’s grant from artsnb (Arts New Brunswick of Canada). The main reason for this was because the Lunar Codex had given me a boost of confidence that temporarily quieted my raging imposter syndrome. I had an idea for a novel that was timely, that fascinated me, and seemed like it would be an appropriate project.
Off I went, deciphering the mysterious ins and outs of the application process with a LOT of help from my writer friends Julian M. Smith, Peter J. Foote, Matthew Ledrew, and artist Bella McBride. I’m confident in saying that I could not have done this on my own.
This application ate up most of September and then it was off. I told myself that if all that work gave me was the knowledge of the process to try again next time, that was fine, but I kept this secret longing to write that book. It was hard to wait, but soon I was lost in the first draft of Book 1 of my fantasy trilogy idea, my imposter syndrome came back, and I tried not to worry about that grant too much.
I started writing freelance fiction, which started out as a strange new world, but then I quickly landed a decent and steady contract writing fiction full time (albeit temporarily). This introduced a whole new level of discipline into my routine, and made me pinch myself more than once. A writer, getting paid by THE HOUR. What sorcery is this?
Like I said, it’s been a year. The last six months have been amazing.
And I’m a little sad to see a good year close because the last few before this one? Yikes. But, as this year started winding down, I heard back about that grant:
So 2023? That’s going to be the year I take a deep dive into this wild Fae book I’m so glad I get to write. Inside these pages, I’m going to be exploring connections between recent technology and fairy folklore and this is going to be such a wild ride. I’m thrilled and humbled by the writers and artists who helped me with my application and with the artsnb jury who believed in my story idea and also me as a writer.
This project, The Fae in the Machine, is going to figure greatly in my upcoming newsletters. If you’d like to join me in this journey, I’d love to have you. You can sign up here and you’ll get an e-copy of my Lunar Codex collection, Borrowed Wings and other Stories, to read at your leisure.
Happy New Year everybody, make it a wonderful one.
I’m thrilled to write that my story, Teeth of the Lion, has been published in the latest issue of Abyss and Apex. You can click here to read it now, along with many other wonderful stories.
This market is one of my favorites and I’m so pleased to finally place a story with them. Granted, Teeth of the Lion is a bit of a weirdling, possibly of a genre I might call ‘dandelionpunk,’ and I may have jokingly referred to it as ‘dandelion erotica’ when I shared it with my critique partners. I’m exaggerating, but I’ll let you be the final judge. Give it a read here.
Today’s the day! The first issue of my new newsletter Enchanted Side Quests is aliiiiiiiiive and the only place where you can read how I accidentally started creating faerie glamours. If you’d like to check it out without subscribing, you can now do so by clicking here. And if you’d like to subscribe, well, you can do that too! Just click here.
Everything has been confirmed, so it’s finally time to tell you my big news. I’ve been invited to archive a collection of my published short stories in a time capsule on the Moon!! My collection is going to be included in the Polaris Capsule sent to the Moon by Lunar Codex as part of the Astrobotic Griffin Mission 1 to the Lunar South Pole planned for late 2024.
The Lunar Codex is the first project where work by women is archived on the Moon, the Polaris Capsule is the third of the Lunar Codex capsules, and I am the first recorded New Brunswick author to be included in the Lunar Codex. Eek!! I’m so pleased to introduce you to Borrowed Wings and Other Stories:
There is a tonne of time consuming work involved with sending a capsule to the Moon, so I’ve been busy getting my collection together before the August 31st (2022) deadline. Yes, that’s a long wait till launch. I plan to release a Terrestrial Edition in print and ebook with extra stories and a special novelette closer to the late 2024 launch, but for now I’ve decided to offer the Lunar Edition of Borrowed Wings and Other Stories as a free ebook to anyone who signs up for my new monthly newsletter about magic and wonder: Enchanted Side Quests. That’s right, I finally got my newsletter up and running. Feel free to make jokes that it took the Moon to make it happen, I deserve them.
Click here to sign up and get your copy.
Once you’re signed up, you’ll get your ebook download links right away. I won’t use your email for anything except for the monthly newsletters and the Mailerlite system I’m using has a good reputation.
Needless to say, it’s been a wild month around here. When I first got the Lunar Codex invite I sat around in shock for a bit, not really believing any of this was real. Then I started getting excited about what stories I would choose to send the Moon (there’s more on that in the Introduction to Borrowed Wings). I ordered a cover. Someone recommended Scrivener to me and that seemed like a good interface to arrange the stories into some sort of order, so I started learning that program. Then… came compile.
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to compile something in Scrivener, or had a friend that warned you off of it, but. It did not go well. Part of me wonders if it had been September when I tried this, and it wasn’t me trying to learn software in between getting snacks and fetching toys for the kids, it might have gone better. I blew my (non-existent) budget for this project on the cover, so buying Atticus or Vellum at this point wasn’t an option. Someone had already offered to use their Atticus to do it for me, but I, a fool, wanted to figure this out for myself, at least once.
Nine days later, the book was finally compiled. I’ll spare you the details, except to say I reached a determined, calm state of plodding through one issue at a time that surprised me. My author friend and crit partner Peter J. Foote is a damn saint for the help he offered. My grand plans of turning my book in early were all smashed, but I’m so very glad I had that extra time before the deadline.
The cover situation wasn’t going the way I thought, mainly because I got bored one day, played around with making my own cover, and fell in love with it. Which made the cover I ordered look pretty dull in comparison. Apparently the only thing to do in this situation was to download Krita and watch a thousand youtube videos to figure out how to make passable typography. Because that’s logical? The thing is, I had so much fun working on the cover that it was a decent foil for the compile stress and – I want to learn more. For what it’s worth, I did pay for the cover that I ordered, the artist did the work I asked of them and it’s not their fault I have a weakness for pretty moths.
By the time the book was compiled, I’d pretty much made up my mind that it was time to launch the newsletter I’ve been putting off. Here was a ready-made reader magnet and a decent marketing strategy all laid out for me. It was time.
This I couldn’t have done without Peter, either. I was burnt out juggling summer activities and new-to-me software, and somehow in a flurry of bored kids I lost the instruction page for the newsletter software and was left wading through search engines without any of the jargon I needed to know to find what I needed. A week off might have helped, but in lieu of that Peter demystified everything and helped me find my way. I’ll make it up to him someday, somehow.
Today Enchanted Side Quests is launched and I’m excited about it. I have several ideas for fun ways to incorporate my latest non-writing obsessions (hence the Side Quests part of the name) into the newsletter and I’ve got this newfound confidence in myself as a capable human being from this past month’s experience.
I’m blown away by the amount of resources available for indie authors today as well – when I self-pubbed The Incredibly Truthful Diary of Nature Girl more than a decade ago, I had a word processor and photo editing program that google gave up on years back. Maybe there was more, but it wasn’t visible to me back then, just a few back alleys in the NaNoWriMo forums and some blogger dot com sites. Things have changed and I’m glad I had this chance to discover what’s out there and re-evaluate what’s possible. I think I have more adventures ahead with these tools.
Anyway, this blog post is quickly turning into a novel, so I should probably wrap this up. I hope you sign up for Enchanted Side Quests because I’d love to send you the ebook of Borrowed Wings and Other Stories. This site isn’t going anywhere, though it probably will pick up one of those sign-up pop-up windows over the next month; they kind of annoy me but I do see their function.
Okay, one more silly promo image for the road:
To the next adventure!
Jennifer Shelby 