Jan S. Gephardt reading, by Judith Bemis

It’s time to start practicing. A new season of readings approaches rapidly. That means I need to find scenes or chapters from my work that are relatively self-contained and appropriate lengths (usually 20-30 minutes), then start practicing, so I can read smoothly and clearly, and also build up my voice so it will last 20-30 minutes.

In addition to the conventions I’ll attend (I already know I’ll be scheduled for a full hour of reading at DemiCon 29, and I’ve requested to do readings at other conventions through the summer), I’ll also be participating in a panel discussion about writers’ groups, and doing a short reading at a meeting of the Kansas City Science Fiction and Fantasy Society (KaCSFFS), April 21.

That’s Saturday, April 21, 7:00 p.m., at The Writers Place, 3607 Pennsylvania Ave., Kansas City, MO 64111.

At the KaCSFFS meeting, I’ll share the “reading chair” in the Library at The Writers Place with two friends who also are writers.

Holly Messinger

One is Holly Messinger, author of The Curse of Jacob Tracy (2015 from Thomas Dunne Books) and the upcoming sequel, Curious Weather (due in 2019 from St. Martin’s Press). Holly plans to read from Curious Weather:

“When Jacob Tracy—Civil War veteran, ex-seminarian, and reluctant psychic—agrees to move into Miss Fairweather’s St. Louis mansion and study magic with her, he has one purpose in mind: to hunt down and destroy the necromancer Mereck, a predatory madman who has twice tried to make a meal of Trace and trapped Trace’s partner Boz in a monstrous half-life.

“Sabine Fairweather has her own grievance with Mereck, though Trace doesn’t know the details and doesn’t particularly want to. The woman may be a brilliant scientist and a powerful witch in her own right, but there is darkness in her and bitter secrets that threaten the tenuous faith Trace has in her.

“With Mereck’s minions circling ever closer, and old allies posing unexpected threats, Trace knows he and Sabine have no choice but to trust each other. But for that to happen, he will have to lay bare all the deepest secrets of her soul…and quite possibly her heart.”

Lynette M. Burrows

The other is Lynette M. Burrows, author of My Soul to Keep, an alternate-history thriller set for release from Rocket Dog Publishing this summer (stay tuned to her website for details). She will choose a reading from My Soul to Keep:

“Miranda Clarke lives a charmed life . . . until she breaks the rules.

“It is 1961 but the world isn’t the one you know. The Prophet Josiah Shepherd, backed by billionaire J. D. Wagner and the Isolationist movement, kept the United States of America from entering World War II. The Nazis control Great Britain, Europe, and Northern Africa. Unopposed, Japan rules the east. America is a theocracy, a land of righteous repression led by the Fellowship and its council of greedy white men.

A concept drawing of one of the deadly Azrael, by Lynette’s husband, artist Robert Burrows.

“Miranda’s parents are part of the Fellowship’s elite, the inner circle. Her father, the nation’s premier preacher-politician, is on his way to the presidency. And Miranda’s hope of living a quiet, private life vanishes. But when Miranda makes a break for freedom, she learns everything she thought she knew is a lie:

“Her vengeance-seeking aunt isn’t dead.

“Her parents and the supposedly benevolent Fellowship Council aren’t benevolent.

“And the terrifying tales of the angel-assassins called Azrael aren’t just stories.

“Miranda must escape a religious re-education prison, discover the truth behind her horrifying nightmares, outwit her mother’s deadly ambitions, and destroy the ruthless, cloned angel-assassins who pursue her—or die.”

I promise–having seen advance peeks of both books–they will be delightful reads.

Jan S. Gephardt, by Colette Waters

But wait. What about that third woman on the program? What’s her book about? Yeah, well, that would be me. My book is called What’s Bred in the Bone. It’s a space opera/mystery set in a future when Humans have found or created other habitats in the reaches of space. If all goes well, it’ll be available in summer or early fall 2018:

“XK9 Rex is a dog who thinks too much.

“When a spaceship blows up among the docks at the Hub of Rana Habitat Space Station, the implications reach to the highest levels of the tiny sovereignty. But Rex is sidelined by a rookie mistake that puts his Human partner Charlie in the ICU.

“Now he’s on the outside looking in: worried, lonely, desperate to get back to his Pack and his life’s-work. He and his Packmates have been engineered and cyber-enhanced to be the most advanced forensic tools available to law enforcement, by a famous genetics lab—underwritten by the military intelligence of Transmondia, the Chayko System’s dominant power.

Rex in a happier moment: giving Charlie’s niece Sophie a doggie-back ride, as envisioned by Lucy A. Synk.

“But the XK9s are more than forensic tools, and more than their owners, the Ranan Orangeboro Police Department, ever bargained for. When Rex strives to prove just how capable he and his Packmates truly are, he unmasks a secret that could destabilize the entire System—and places all XK9s everywhere in mortal peril.”

I hope you’ll join us–we’ll also conduct a short panel discussion about writers’ groups, possibly with Dora Furlong and Rob Chilson joining the panel. Remember, that’s April 21, 7:00 p.m., at The Writers Place in Kansas City.

IMAGES: Many thanks to Judith Bemis for the photo of me at the NASFiC last year (reading an announcement of Chesley Award winner–but it’s the best “reading” photo I have!); to Holly Messinger for the photo of her; to Macmillans for the Curious Weather cover image; to Lynette M. Burrows for the photo of her, as well as the photo of the Azrael by her artist husband Robert Burrows; to Colette Waters Photography for my head shot; and to Lucy A. Synk for the whimsical vision of XK9 doggie-back riding.