Announcements

Featured on NPR

/ Rebecca Demarest / Leave a comment

Since I became the local expert in Elsie Olmstead, I’ve had a few folks reach out to chat, but this might be the most fun one yet. KUOW reporter Kate Walters contacted me as she was working on a small feature about Elsie for the 90th anniversary of the fall of Prohibition and we had a lovely long conversation. You can listen to the story here on the KUOW site, or on their app!

Elsie posing in front of a 1926 microphone, holding a book of fairy tales. Her hair is in tight waves against her head and she is wearing a drop-waist 1920 flapper dress.

It definitely inspired me to keep working on the projects involving her stories, including a play she features in, a historical fiction novel, and an essay about the facts we can solidly identify about the rumors surrounding her. I hope to have some updates about those soon!

I’m in a new collection!

/ Rebecca Demarest / 1 Comment

Hey all! One of my absolute favorite stories got picked up for a YA Collection called Paradoxical Pets, which features stories about weird and unusual pets, with a definite sci-fi or fantasy setting. My story is Redgie’s origin story, a super smart octopus sidekick in a longer work I’ve been puttering around for a long time. Right now, they’re doing a pre-order of the collection through Kickstarter, and you should totally order your copy now! Don’t worry, the collection gets published whether they reach their goal or not, this just helps defray the cost of the brilliant illustrator they got who put together wonderful images of our pets. I can’t wait to see mine!

And look at this cover! How can you say no to that…

http://kck.st/3ehlLeP

Belated Updates

/ Rebecca Demarest / Leave a comment

Hello all! So sorry I haven’t been communicative the last little bit, but whoo boy have I been dealing with a lot! I’ll make a post following up on these things individually, but here’s the summary:

First, Less Than Charming launched in May, and the party was fabulous. And I went to the National Storytelling Festival to promote it, which was a ton of fun.

Second, Zosozo in Oz, the second of the Ozite Cycle novellas, is done and live! You can get your copy now from the usual sources.

Third, I am now teaching classes at the Bureau of Fearless Ideas, a wonderful writing center for grade-school aged kids in Seattle. This October and November I will be teaching a NaNoWriMo bootcamp, and I’ll be posting the course materials and lessons here at the same time to help anyone who wants some pointers for writing 50,000 words in a month.

Fourth, a large part of the reason I’ve not been updating my website much is because I’ve been dealing with a lot of health stuff over the last few years, and it had gotten particularly difficult to keep doing everything, but I finally have a diagnosis! After 5 years of specialist visits and non answers, I have a few diagnoses that explain *gestures to all of me.* I’ll have more details down the way because I think some people might benefit from education on these topics.