Spun
As some of you know, Corbin and his Beast are my personal indulgence project (PIP). They first appeared in an anthology put out by REUTS. A few years later I gave them a larger story in BEASTLY MANOR, a very off-the-rails retelling of BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.
SPUN—or RUMPELSTILTSKIN but not quite—was meant to come out summer of 2019. But then I contracted out EARNEST INK, and was diagnosed with cancer, and landed another contract-on-proposal for my as yet untitled Horse Story. Time, as the Beast might say, got twisty.
The problem with my PIPs are that they must take second fiddle to ‘paying’ work. And then they wait until a free-lance editor has room to take them on, or a cover artist is intrigued, etc.
But I don’t mind. Because writing a PIP allows me a freedom I rarely get anywhere else—the freedom to write a slow-burn polyamorous relationship the way I want to write it, the freedom to go just a little overboard with the self-indulgent prose, the freedom to turn the Seven Dwarves into man-eating vermin, the freedom to use as many commas or em-dashes as I like.
I do feel very badly that SPUN is running behind. I’ve had several wonderful people ask after it. And I hate disappointing readers.
So. The first half of the novel, having mostly met my exacting standards (I haven’t paid for the pre-publishing edit, but I have gone through it at least seventy-seven times), is downloadable below. At no cost. In PDF, EPUB, or Kindle MOBI. It’s roughly 150 pages, depending on your reader. And it’s the same 150 pages you’ll read when the novel is published in its final form a few months down the line.
Thank you for your patience. 2019 was wild. Let’s hope 2020 is a wee bit more doable. Happy Holidays!
Sarah