Last month, Anuci Press acquired my novella Daughters of the Blue Moon. I had had my eyes on this publisher for a while, and am so happy I had a story that Tony Anuci loved and wanted to publish. The book will be released in early 2025, with the exact date to be confirmed as we get closer to the end of the year.
Daughters of the Blue Moon is a dark fantasy retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, but make it sapphic, horrific, and with adult themes around bodily autonomy and independence. It is the shortest of my novellas: 20,000 words, which should translate to approximately 70 pages. A quick read with still enough substance to satisfy readers who like a good balance between solid world-building and character growth, and efficiency.
The story was pitched with the following blurb, which may change as I work with my publisher on the manuscript:
Despite being a seasoned huntress protected from wolves by a powerful spell, Carmine barely escapes a violent encounter with a furious she-wolf determined to kill her.
As she recovers from her injuries and makes plans to restore the broken magic, she experiences eerie dreams of a singing wolf. It could be a mere dream, she knows, but the singing wolf looks exactly like the she-wolf that almost killed her, and the last time she had such dreams, a talking wolf tricked and almost devoured her.
Soon she realizes the spell her grandmother had put on her back to protect her isn’t what it seems to be, and her loved ones know more about herself than she does.
The experience writing and querying this book was very different from my previous manuscripts. I outlined the story in only a couple of days, then wrote it in six weeks between mid-November and December 2023. The words came easily and the final draft was one of the most polished I ever wrote, and required minimal self-editing.
I started querying it to indie presses in late January, and got a pleasantly high number of requests and personal rejections praising the manuscript. I knew it was only a matter of time to find the right home for this story. It still took five months and 27 submissions for this story to finds it, and at times the personal rejections were difficult to swallow, because even if the editors enjoyed my story, it was still a “no” in the end. Thankfully, it received a “yes” from Anuci Press! In this industry, persistence is key.
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