Once in a Blue Muse: Litany For a Broken World

Showing posts with label Litany For a Broken World. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 16, 2026

New release is in pre-order and other news

Cover art by Chris Howard

The long awaited (at least by me!) sequel to LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD is here! EVERY SKY A STRANGER is book 2 of Entangled Realities, a metaphysical science fiction trilogy set in worlds scattered throughout the multiverse where memory can't be trusted and reality itself is being manipulated for political gain.

The ebook is available now for preorder at every major online retailer, and directly from me through Gumroad - links on my website. The print edition will be released when the ebook is published on 9/29/26.

Praise for Every Sky a Stranger:

"A vivid, extraordinary novel. Cohen masterfully depicts a full-bodied cast of characters navigating a chaotic multiverse that strips certainty, revealing who they are and what they're willing to sacrifice to save it. Brava!"

—THERESE WALSH, author of The Moon Sisters and founder of Writer Unboxed

"… hold on. Beyond logic. Beyond sense. If there is a single future where hope wins, fight for it."

When an EMT with PTSD falls through a portal into an alternate version of Boston, three friends from different realities in the multiverse, each of whom owe him a debt, attempt a rescue before conflicting memories of a life he never led destroy his mind. But Traveling through the world walls is unpredictable and the three – a doctor, a truthscryer, and the daughter of Travelers - become separated, each ending up where they least wish to be, powerless to aid their companion.

The doctor contends with an alternate timeline where her drinking jeopardizes her medical license, the truthscryer faces a life of rejection and despair because of his gift of seeing, and the young girl is trapped at the secret agency which engineered her father's death. All become enmeshed in a struggle within that agency which risks destabilizing the fragile fabric of reality and isolating the lost travelers far from home. If they are to survive, they must hold faith in one another across all time and space.

In other news...

The audiobook for LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD will be released shortly! Stay tuned for links to where it will be available!

And even more news

I'm healed enough from my tree pruning injury and subsequent hand surgery in July to be back on the potters wheel, back to knitting, and almost back to my regular speed touch typing. Let my experience be a cautionary tale—never ever rush when using power tools. I was extremely lucky and should have a full recovery.

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Tuesday, May 19, 2026

What would your Focus be?

Several stitch markers I use in my knitting and crochet

In the world of Entangled Realities, there are those who can move between worlds of the multiverse. These Travelers are taught to use a small item, called a focus, to keep them grounded so they don't lose themselves in transit.

One of my characters - Reina - is a young girl who is the daughter of two Travelers. When she faces her first journey, she needs to choose an item for her focus and remembers her father asking her what represents home.

She chooses a beach stone. It has special significance to her past, as revealed in the story.

I wondered what I would choose. What represents home to me? I've lived in many places across my 62 years on the planet. I've moved through many phases of my life, each with different identities: child, student, wife, professional, mother, writer, farmer, crafter. Which of these is "home". Not in a literal place, but in a sense of core being. What small item could I carry that would always lead me back to myself?

Reina's parents both choose their wedding rings as their focus. While my spouse is definitely home base for me, I don't wear a wedding ring. We both have them, but life as a farmer and a potter is not conducive to wearing jewelry of any kind.

A pottery tool was under consideration, but that is just part of who I am. Same thing for a fancy pen to symbolize my life as a writer. But I don't typically write with a pen and a computer would be too awkward to carry.

Then I glanced at my knitting project bag and the box of stitch markers.

Perfect.

They are small, light, easy to connect to a piece of clothing. And while they do the literal work of keeping me on track in a knitting or crochet pattern, they represent something more. Of holding my place in the fabric of the world. Marking where I am and giving me the sense of where I need to go.

Plus - and amusingly - they seem to shift in and out of phase, getting lost in the multiverse of the sofa cushions and randomly getting found again.

So that's my focus sorted out. Stitch markers. Something that wouldn't be noticed or commented on. Something that has personal and metaphorical meaning. Something to anchor me to myself in the swirling confusion of the multiverse.

How about you? What's your focus?

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Thursday, May 07, 2026

Why Poplar is the Best Dog and A Kickstarter Update

As of Day 1 of the campaign!

I didn't set out to write a story with a telepathic dog. In fact, I didn't plan on any dog at all. But when I was working on the early drafts of what would become LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD, Poplar showed up.

Yes, characters do appear like that. A gift from the subconscious that any writer worth her salt doesn't turn away. So Poplar stayed. Even as the story morphed and changed. Even as other characters got cut and never returned to the manuscript.

And when I look at the story, she is its heart and soul.

I'd like to say I created Poplar as an amalgamation of all the dogs I've owned throughout my adult life, but I think she really created herself out of my memories and relationships with our canine companions.

Let me introduce you to them.

Maxwell Smart

I didn't grow up with pets of any kind. The night before my wedding in 1988, my sister asked if she could bring over our gift as 'it was fragile' and she didn't want to risk bringing it the wedding.

Sure, we said, come on over.

And she walked in with a 12 week old puppy. A Lhasa Apso aka a white ball of fluff.

Maxwell Smart Dog, age 6 with our first born kiddo, circa 1994

Unfortunately, all our photos of Max as a puppy are somewhere in photo albums in a storage unit. He was a clown of a dog and set himself as the protector and best friend of our son pretty much from the start.

Max was a great first dog to have. He was patient and gentle and playful. Would hop in any car ready for adventure. Max was also something of a Houdini and found many ways to escape our fenced in yard to ride shotgun for the day with our town's animal control officer.

Tigger

Tigger with her favorite thing in the world: A tennis ball

Max lived to be almost 17! When he passed in December of 2004, we weren't going to look for another dog for a little while. It was winter. I had 2 young children to care for. But my youngest (8 at the time) held me to my promise that we would look for a dog once there was no longer snow on the ground.

In March of 2005, Tigger found us. When we got her records from the dog rescue, we discovered she'd been born the day Max died. The kids ever after believed that Max sent her to us so we could stop being sad.

Tigger was a hound/lab mix and one of the most responsive dogs I've known. She loved to learn tricks and when she was old enough, she and I passed the tests to become a therapy dog team. We spent many years visiting hospitals, nursing homes, and adolescent psychiatry facilities. She was a natural. Always knew the exact person who needed her love.

Dustin

I swear, this photo was not staged.

When our kids got older and busier, it was clear that Tigger needed a canine friend. So we adopted Dustin. Then we found out that he was part Jack Russel Terrier. AKA terror.

Terriers are a special breed of intense. And Dustin had a lot of trauma from being a feral stray. But Tigger loved him. He became her puppy and she civilized him. Dustin was definitely a challenge, but over time, he became a very sweet cuddler, albeit a menace to other dogs.

Mya

Gigi

Thursday, April 23, 2026

Being Vulnerable

I did the thing.

I put together a kickstarter campaign to help fund the audiobook production of LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

Can I tell you how much I struggled just to consider doing this? How hard it is for me to ask for friends, readers, and strangers to pledge money to my project? It was difficult enough to write my story (as KS defines it) and be clear on what I needed and to put together rewards for backers that would be something interesting and unique that I could offer. The hardest part? The video.

Kickstarter encourages creators to add a short video to their campaign. Fine, I thought, I'll do a slide deck. But best practice seems to be for the creator to talk directly to potential backers.

AARGH.

I'm a writer. And a neurospicy one at that. I work in a little room, at my computer, alone (maybe Gigi curled up at my feet), usually dressed in torn jeans and flannel and with major bed head. Being seen is uncomfortable.

So I split the difference - created a few slides to introduce my video, did the voice over, added about 90 seconds of me talking about the project and myself.

Total time to put together and record that roughly 2 minute video? Four days. Four full days. Maybe 40 hours of work and at least 20 takes. Video is *hard*. Kudos to creators who work in that medium. I know I couldn't.

After getting really wonderful feedback on the campaign and making some important changes, I sent it off to the powers that be at Kickstarter for approval.

If they give me the green light, I'll set the campaign to officially begin by mid May.

Stay tuned! If you'd like updates, please consider subscribing to my email newsletter Bluemusings.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Tuesday, April 07, 2026

And done

Screenshot of the chapter and scene info. The overarching reminder for me as I was writing the story is that everyone is where they need to be, not necessarily where they want to be.

I completed the manuscript for EVERY SKY A STRANGER this week.

Here are some metrics:

Total words: 82,000

Number of POV characters: 9

Chapters: 17

Scenes: 53

Writing progress:

18,000 words between January 2024 and December 2024

I had recently finished LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD and was preparing for its February 2025 release. After working on book 1 for close to six years, I was worried that I would have the same problem with book 2. I spent a lot of time reviewing my half-baked notes early in 2024. While I had had a plan for where book 2 was going to begin, once I got into the first few chapters, I realized the story wasn't really moving forward. I had all these characters standing around waiting for stage direction. Not good. I quickly shifted the entire plot plan (such as I had) and made life harder for my characters. Much better.

34,000 words between January 2025 and December 2025

I made steady progress through the story's middle in 2025, though I knew it would need to be stronger. And until fall of 2025 when I attended the Writer Unboxed Unconference in New Mexico, I wasn't sure how I was going to fix it. I took dozens of pages of notes that week and in the margins, I had this note to myself: Each major character needs to have a "trolley problem" moment. Once I figured this out (and it took me until the end of 2025), I was able to see the entire structure of the story, as well as the overarching structure for all three books of the series.

30,000 words between January 2026 and March 2026

This is where my fingers flew over the keyboard, but it wasn't without work. In early 2026, I was working up to the book's climax when I stumbled and didn't know how to proceed. So I assembled each of the major plot threads separately as if they were their own books and read through them one at a time. (I do not recommend working with a complex structure like this. It was the only way to tell the story, but it tested me as a writer.) This allowed me to see where the writing needed to be smoothed or expanded or changed and set me up to create a cohesive whole.

In the final month of writing, I drafted the entire last 25% of the story.

At this point, the first half is at least on its 3rd revision. The middle at 2nd revision and the last 25% has been revised once. This is typical for my process. By the time I get to the last sections of the book, my writing is much bolder and more confident. Those last few chapters typically need the least amount of revision.

I've sent it out to a handful of trusted readers - trusted in that I can trust them to be honest with me to help the story be its best before it goes off to the editor.

The metrics only tell part of the process. More importantly is how I feel about this story. And how I feel having finished it.

I am quite pleased with the shape of it. The characters - despite how well I know them, despite the fact that I created them - still have the power to surprise me. Their voices have become distinct in my mind and on the page. I found an ending that is both surprising and inevitable (and, I hope, satisfying). Certainly it sets up the starting place and conflicts for book 3.

Sitting here, I feel as if my brain has been hollowed out. For the past 2 years or so, I've been living with this story and these characters in my mind. This was especially true in those last writing months. And now that it's finished, the sense of their company is gone. I know they haven't gone far and they will return when I start drafting the final book in the trilogy, but for now I feel empty.

EVERY SKY A STRANGER will be my 10th published novel. I'd like to say the process gets easier with each book, but that's not really true. Each book is a universe of difficult in its own way. Honestly? I welcome that. It means I'm stretching and growing with every piece I write.

Each story changes me. And that alone is reason to write.

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Friday, March 06, 2026

"Despite Everything, Create"

Button a gift from ZZ Claybourne

Being a writer, I meet a lot of other writers in the virtual confines of social media. Others, I meet on the rare occasions we gather in meat space. One of the writers I met physically before we connected virtually is ZZ Claybourne, AKA Zig Zag, AKA C.E. Young, C. Young, Clarence Young, and Thor MF Jones.

He was wearing the most amazing and lush purple great coat and had a fabulous presence and smile. Of course I had to talk to him and buy a copy of the book he was debuting at the time THE BROTHERS JETSTREAM: LEVIATHAN. (which I absolutely loved!)

I enjoyed the hell out of meeting him and have gone on to enjoy the hell out of all his subsequent books.

But that is not the point of this blogpost.

The button in the photo above is from Clarence and I have looked at it every day since he gifted it to me.

The one thing in this life that belongs to me is my creative imagination. For me, that looks like a few different things: but mainly knitting and crochet, ceramics, and writing. And what the pin's motto means shifts depending on the context.

One day, it may mean create the hell out of things, no matter who is watching/reading/participating. One day it may mean create your weird-ass corner of the world so you have something that belongs only to you, where you can dance badly and joyfully. Another day it means create your big old fuck you to the universe.

I'm crawling toward the finish line for the sequel to LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD. Some days it's a handful of words at a time. 'Cause if you don't know, creating is hard. And when the world is showing its cruelest face, it's even harder.

Sometimes, the thing you're trying to create is like a mean old bass on a line, refusing to be reeled in.

And sometimes it's both.

That's where I've been lately. Stunned nearly mute by the cruelty our species is capable of. And struggling with a story that is just plain difficult.

So at the beginning of the week, I deleted some social media apps from my phone and programmed in a hard limit of 30 minutes a day for others. What I noticed, almost immediately, was my head was full of story instead of dread or static.

I was able to sit with the characters when the writing felt hard instead of looking for an easy dopamine hit.

It feels a lot like magic when the words find their path to the page and snick together in just the right way.

This is me creating. Despite anything. Despite everything.

Come join me. Let's dance.

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Wednesday, February 11, 2026

One Year Ago and Today: Why Bother Writing?

Happy 1 year book birthday to Litany

I was starting to make a packing list for this upcoming weekend's Boskone science fiction and fantasy convention in Boston when I realized it's been one full year since LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD was released.

Getting the manuscript from idea to finished novel was a long journey - over six years, in fact. While staying with a project that long can be frustrating, I don't regret the time and effort that went into its creation. Working on this book was, at times, so difficult I tried to abandon it. At other moments, the joy of telling these characters' stories was intoxicating. Ultimately, it challenged me to grow as a writer in ways I had not anticipated.

The story, itself, shifted and morphed in ways I hadn't planned. My initial notes have almost nothing in common with the completed story. They way I see it, this is not a bug, but a feature of the creative process.

This week, the writing internet was rife with critiques and hot takes about AI generated novels. (There was a story in the NYT business section about a romance writer using LLM/Generative AI to write whole novels in under an hour.) My feeling about LLM/generative AI is clear: No. Absolutely not.

As in no, I won't use it. Not in any part of my writing process. I won't reiterate all the ways the tech is energy and water wasting, the way it has been trained on stolen work (my own included), the way it cannot be trusted to output correct and factual information to queries, and many many more arguments you probably have already read hundreds of times.

Could I use LLM/Generative AI tools to write hundreds of novels in the time it took me to complete LITANY? Probably. Aside from any discussion of quality (a loaded word, and one nearly impossible to define), I can honestly say that no LLM could have produced a book as layered and complex as LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

Why not? Because this wasn't a story that could have emerged from prompts. Even the questions I grappled with didn't start to become clear until after I had written, deleted, and rewritten the beginning of the story nearly a half dozen times. They continued to deepen and expand all through the drafting process. I literally had to write the book before I could have crafted a prompt to capture even the smallest part of it.

No sophisticated mad-libs program could have found a short cut to that destination.

My main reason for writing is to discover the heart of a story. Sure, having my work sell, win awards, be read, be appreciated and enjoyed is all great, but none of that is possible or even of interest to me without the journey.

And if that journey takes longer than I planned? Well, that's where the journey gets fascinating. That's where all the best adventures and stories come from.

If you are looking for a very human tale, filled with emotion and hope, with earnest characters coping with loss and searching for connection, please give LITANY a try. I have always written the books I needed to read. Perhaps you need this story too.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Monday, January 05, 2026

Nurturing Creativity: looking ahead to 2026

You are not obligated to complete the work of perfecting the world, but neither are you free to abandon it.
—Rabbi Tarfon, Pirkei Avot

“…give us the vision to see that the world is now too dangerous for anything but truth, too small for anything but love.”
—William Sloane Coffin, from Memorial Day: A Prayer*

When I look back on my creative life in 2025, I am so very proud of this book. Over 6 years in the drafting, revising (and revising), editing, and production. This was the book that almost broke me as a writer. The story that wouldn't let me abandon it, no matter how many times I tried to walk away.

It's a different kind of story than I had written before - still in the realm of speculative fiction (it is a multiverse story, after all), but it's set in the real world of current day Boston, primarily in a makeshift homeless encampment. Not the usual fare of science fiction or fantasy.

I honestly believe it's the best thing I've ever written. And while it was hard to write, and I promised myself the next project I tackled would be lighter and have fewer points of view and storylines, I realized the story arc wasn't complete. So I'm back in this complex world and 2/3 through the sequel. The provisional title is EVERY SKY A STRANGER and my timeline is to have it published by summer of 2026.

The landscape is hard for writers now. Especially for ones like me who are indie published. I would love to see this story find a wider readership. If you've enjoyed any of my work, please give this one a try. If you've read it, please leave a review and recommend it to a friend. If you have a book blog and would like a free ebook copy for review, let me know.

And not only is the business of writing difficult, but the landscape of creativity is as well. There are some artists who are able to use their creativity as a way to push through the chaos of the world. And there were times in my life when I could use my hyperfocus to write, despite (to spite?) the difficulties I encountered. For me, that led to massive burnout which was another reason LITANY took so long to write.

I am learning how to be kinder to myself, to nurture my creativity rather than see it as something to be consumed. If that means the writing will be slower and more deliberate, I will accept that. Because the alternative is to quench the spark that ignites my stories.

I have to quiet the inner voices of fear that try to convince me if I don't publish more and faster, my work will be irrelevant, neglected, unread. First of all, I write because it's how I navigate and comprehend the world. Second, (here comes my snarky self) who am I to believe I'm owed an audience? That's ego talking. (Yes, yes, I know I spent the first part of this post complaining about a lack of readership. I'm human. I embrace my contradictions.) And third, (something I know and have to remind myself of over and over) there are seasons of plenty and seasons of lying fallow. This is as true in growing a garden as it is in living a creative life.

My intention going forward is to practice compassion and patience, both for myself and in my community and live according to the principals in the quotes that begin this post.

May 2026 bring creativity, light, and joy to you.

*These quotes are the epigraphs that begin LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Anatomy of a Scam

One of two similar emails I received from the same scammer 1 day apart.

Several times a week, I get solicitations from email marketers, book bloggers, and other writing service industry people wanting my money in return for some promised promotional outcome.

Most of the time, I delete them out of hand. They are nearly always generic, clearly mail merge letters. Sometimes they will have something that tries to be personal, but that's rare.

This one was the rarest of the rare: it references the title and themes of my most recent novel. My curiosity led me to first search the internet for the company and the person. A combination of "Book Niche Alliance" and "Rachel Key" found nothing. Which got me even more curious.

So I fired up a private browser and copied/pasted the website link. That's where things got interesting. This is from their testimonials page.

If this company is good enough for John Grisham and David Baldacci, it's good enough for me...right?

Why on earth would a spammer use such well known author names/photos for such generic praise? But that wasn't my first clue. No, the first clue was a wix address. And the wix banner still over the home page.

The URL - with a ".wixsite.com" address and the banner says amateur.

Then I looked at the so-called staff looking for Rachel. And here she is...


She looks like a lovely person. Too bad she's a model in a corporate headshot gallery

Perhaps Rachel is one of a set of triplets who dress identically, because I found her in a reverse image search in a lot of other places.

How much do you want to bet none of the team members are real?

But here's the thing: the pitch was personalized and relevant to my book. The why is easy to understand - who doesn't want to be flattered by someone who seemingly read and loved your novel?

The how is a little harder. My 2 theories are:

Someone posted a review with this information in it or
(and worse/more creepy) the book was fed into a LLM and this was its summation.

The first email had this subject heading and content:

A multiverse story with emotional depth — let’s help it travel further

"We recently discovered Entangled Realities and were struck by its beautifully layered exploration of the multiverse. But what truly stayed with us was its emotional heartbeat the way it speaks to grief, displacement, and healing with such care and resonance."

From the second email, screenshotted at the top of the post:

"I recently came across your novel Litany for a Broken World while browsing visionary and metaphysical sci-fi in the Kindle Store, and I was immediately drawn to your layered, emotionally intelligent premise. A young girl lost in the multiverse, a grief-stricken doctor, a lonely seer and the convergence of their brokenness across dimensions this is the kind of story that not only entertains, but resonates on a deeply human level."

So, would I have liked this to be a real human being so deeply moved by my book? Yes. Absolutely. And indeed, I have had readers tell me how meaningful and powerful they found it. Perhaps as it wends its way into the world, others will be profoundly moved by the story. But it will have to manage without the help of the equally fictional Book Niche Alliance.

Have you received a similarly weirdly personalized pitch? Let me know!

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Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Feeling at loose ends

The author, cosplaying confidence at the Boskone Book Release Party

I'm home from Boskone.

Litany For A Broken World is officially out and will take on a life of its own. There will be people who are moved by it. There will be people who don't enjoy it. And some will actively dislike it. That is the case for every piece of art, literature, music, and craft in existence.

My job as a creator is to let go of what I have made and move on to the next thing. If only this was easy.

I am feeling uncertain and restless. To be a creator is to know the curse of dissatisfaction - the more you work in your chosen space, the sharper your critical facilities get and the harder you are on your own output.

The positive aspect of this is it drives you to get better; to avoid complacency. The negative? You get so mired in self-doubt and self-loathing you are sure the work is worse than worthless.

I have been in this place before. I will most assuredly be there again. That is the dubious blessing of having completed the cycle of creative work more than once: it teaches you that it is a cycle.

What I am feeling now isn't what I will feel forever. If I allow myself to name these emotions and accept them as part of the process, it's easier for me to keep moving forward.

Today, I added 500 words to book 2 of Entangled Realities. Are they good words? I have no idea. But I showed up to do some work. A little bit of writing and some quick research. It took me several hours to even get that far. I kept working even though I felt like a fraud, or worse, a poser - a writer wanna-be.

This is my lizard-brain getting mired in fear.

This is my autonomic nervous system pushing me to fight, flee, or freeze.

But there are other options.

I can take those emotions and use them as fuel.

May you find your creative rocket-fuel today and in the days that follow.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Thursday, February 13, 2025

Dealing with Vulnerability

The author in her preferred state

So, I have a book out this week.

Which means I've been talking and writing and otherwise interacting with a whole lot of people in support of the release. And it's exhausting. Not just because I am -- like so many of my fellow authors -- an introvert, but because being noticed means I make myself vulnerable.

I had been prepared for the energy cost of the intense social interactions of back to back appearances: Arisia, a group reading in Brooklyn, Boskone. I had not counted on the deep fear that has come along for the ride.

Those that know me would never describe me as fearful. I've spent my life advocating and speaking out for what I believe in. If I were to pick a single word to represent my personality, it would probably be determined. (A more polite way to say stubborn, ornery, unyielding...just ask my spouse and my children.)

But fearful?

Yeah.

Give me a cause to rally around, and I am all in. Put a bully in front of me? I'm all "you shall not pass". But have me stand up and promote myself? My work? I'd rather face that Balrog.

Tomorrow, I will be traveling to Boskone in Boston and celebrating the release of LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD with my science fiction/fantasy community. I will need to cosplay a confident, functional adult author. All the while, my insides will be squirming and I will have to work to keep my hands from flailing around in distress. (One of the reasons I'm usually knitting at cons.)

If I didn't care so passionately about this story, it would be easy. And while I know I am not my book and my book is not me, it is still the deepest expression of my innermost self. So, in a way, it represents me. It's important to me and as an artist, I believe the work can't reach its true potential until it's experienced by the reader.

Truly, most creators I know are -- like me -- balls of anxiety wrapped in a human suit. So if you encounter me at Boskone, please be gentle. Approach as if you were nearing a feral kitten because I will be torn between wanting to flee to hide under a table and needing to be (metaphorically) petted.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Monday, January 27, 2025

Where to Find Me: Book release edition


Photo of me with one of my fellow readers, Donald Maass at Brooklyn Booze and Books	.

Two weeks from today, LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD will be released. (!!!!!) It's been a long road from original idea to finished novel and it doesn't quite feel real to me yet.

The work of being an author isn't only in writing the book. It also includes doing what you can to help it find its readership. But authors are notoriously shy creatures (many of us, anyway) and self-promotion is a terrifying process.

So we do what we can, hoping that the readings, the interviews, the cover art reveal, the convention panel appearances all conspire to pique a reader's curiosity.

To that end, I was a guest participant at Arisia in Boston last weekend, then took a train to NYC Tuesday morning to participate in a group reading at Barrow's Intense tasting room in Industry City in Brooklyn. The reading was to celebrate an anthology series (Of Gods and Globes) that the readers had contributed to. I had the opportunity to show off the ARC of Litany (yay!) and read a short story from volume 1 of the anthology series that I hadn't ever read aloud to an audience before. ("Perpetual Silence").

It's a story I wrote B-C (Before Covid) and one that I haven't really looked at in quite some time. I was happy to see that it held up and for 20 minutes, I was able to capture the attention of everyone in the room. (It's a powerful story. I'm so glad Past-LJ wrote it.)

I was recently a guest on Max Bowen's CityWide Bytes YouTube interviews. You can watch the short video here, where we talk about Litany and its influences.

An early review of Litany is up here, as well.

If you're going to be at Boskone this February, I'll be reading from Litany during the Broad Universe Rapid-fire Reading and participating in the Boskone Book Release party, where you can snag a copy/get your copy signed.

As a reminder, ebook pre-orders are live and print orders will be open on release day (Feb 10). If you are considering buying the book, pre-orders are really helpful for a book's visibility. If buying the book isn't in your budget, spreading the word about it and marking it as 'want to read' on Goodreads can be the boost a book needs to get noticed.

Many thanks!

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Sunday, January 05, 2025

Litany For A Broken World

Cover* for Litany For A Broken World

After six years of work ...

After 3 (or maybe 4) false starts where I discarded 20,000 words and began again ...

After multiple crises of faith in my ability to write ...

After the help and encouragement of my family, writing friends, and communities ...

After a writing residency at the Eagle Hill School ...

After a computer meltdown and repair ...

I give you Litany For A Broken World.

A modern adult reworking of/homage to The Wizard of Oz that takes place in a Boston homeless encampment.

A young girl's disastrous first foray through the multiverse cleaves her from her family and abandons her in a homeless encampment, adrift in a world and a body not her own.

A doctor struggling with grief volunteers for the annual Boston homeless census and is confronted by the impossible and her deeply buried childhood trauma.

A lonely, disaffected seer rejected by those he seeks to help is drawn from his home by a desperate call across the world walls.

When the three strangers, each broken in some way, are drawn together in a conflict between those with the ability to travel the multiverse and the organization seeking to exploit them, they must risk everything that matters to heal the fractured places in themselves and throughout reality.

Coming February 10, 2025

Pre-orders are now live for the ebook version. (Available at all retailers). Print is forthcoming.

______________

This is the book that nearly broke me as a writer. One that wouldn't let me go once the characters took hold in my subconscious.

As frustrating as my slow writing process was over the past 6 years, I don't regret the work this book required to reach the finish line. It was an ambitious story. 6 years ago, I didn't have the skills to do it justice. None of what I wrote and discarded was ultimately wasted, even as it wasn't used in the novel. Those words, those attempts, were all part of what I needed to level up in my writing ability.

And isn't leveling up critical to the creative process? I'm not in competition with any other author or book out there in the world. I'm here to work harder and write better than my past self. To grow as a creator. To fail better in the immortal words of Samuel Beckett.

I hope I have failed better with Litany. And I will continue to work and stretch as I complete book 2 in the Entangled Realities series, Every Sky A Stranger. I'm currently just shy of the 25% mark in drafting and making good progress.

_______________

If you are a reviewer/book blogger and would like a complimentary ebook copy to review, please email me: lisa@ljcohen.net

*Cover art created by the lovely and talented Chris Howard

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Wednesday, September 25, 2024

What gets in the way

Mya, soaking up the sun

There was a time when I was able to write 1000 words a day/5000 words a week on whatever project I was working on. I did this for years, writing a novel a year from 2004 until 2016 or thereabouts.

Somewhere, after writing and publishing A STAR IN THE VOID, the 5th and final of the Halcyone Space novels, I hit a wall. I started projects, ground to a halt, abandoned them. Every day, I would dutifully sit at my laptop, stare at a blank page, and then click away to facebook or twitter and fritter away hours. When I look back at that time, I can see that there were a number of things at play. The political landscape was such that I felt I had to be hyper-vigilant at all times just to feel any sort of control over my life. I know it doesn't make sense - immersing myself in the constant churn of news only increased my anxiety, which is not conducive to creativity.

And then covid hit. My physician spouse sent me away to our farm in Central Massachusetts while he stayed in Boston on the front lines of treating ICU patients. I was isolated and depressed. Desperately worried about my spouse's health, physical and mental. Also not conducive to creativity.

I know a lot of my writer friends were able to channel their anxiety into their work. I was not one of them.

What I did instead was a lot of yarn work - knitting and crocheting baby blankets to donate to a hospital - while watching a lot of television. When I did write, it was mainly poetry. I had an idea for a novel, but it seemed I was only able to write myself into dead ends. Several years worth of them. I think I discarded at least as many words as I kept for what became LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

Ultimately, with the help of my writing community and several zoom sessions a week of co-writing, I was able to finish the draft of LITANY after more than 5 years of struggling. That manuscript is in the hands of my editor now and I'm working on the sequel.

I'm almost ashamed to say that I'm only working on it once a week. I have a scheduled zoom write-in with Broad Universe on Tuesday mornings. When I write, the writing is going well - I have a solid sense of the conflicts in the story and a hazy view of the ending. But writing 500-1000 words a week is less than optimal. Not only because drafting the novel is going to take a long time, but also because I lose momentum and have to backtrack every time I sit down to write.

I realize my hyperfocus on wordcount in the past may have generated a lot of writing, but it wasn't great for my mental health and life balance. Writing only once a week isn't great for my sense of identity as a writer or my goals. So I need to find a middle ground.

Part of finding that balance was getting away from social media and returning to somewhat regular blogging. Sitting down to create a blogpost is the equivalent of morning pages - it primes the pump for my other writing. I've also tentatively scheduled two additional writing times in my week. I'm hoping that as I find my discipline again, it will be self reinforcing.

But life does keep intruding. The political scene is still fraught. And on a personal note, one of my dogs has a developing and as yet undiagnosed medical problem. I'm a person with very porous emotional filters. It's part of who I am and if I could change it, I'm not sure I would. But it does make it difficult to set all the external worries aside and focus. (Which is what I did for years. Until I experienced burn-out.)

So now, I'm trying another path. Where I acknowledge the outside concerns instead of cutting myself off from them, using them as fuel/energy to do creative work.

Life and art are messy. I'm not sure there's any way around that.

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Thursday, July 25, 2024

It's been a minute


The view from my office window

It's honestly been a lot longer than a minute. There was a time this blog served as my virtual journal, where I wrote without thought to who might be reading it. Then somewhere along the way, I got suckered into the clicks, the metrics, the shares and spent my time boosting posts into my social media timelines. It suddenly became more important to be noticed than to be creating.

Which wasn't good for my mental health or my writing.

Creativity is a tiny flame in the darkness, vulnerable to wind and weather. I had forgotten how carefully it needs to be tended.

It doesn't not slip my notice that my endless scrolling on social media and craving for the external validation it sometimes provided coincided with the long slow slog of my current manuscript. I've said this before and I'll repeat it here - if only to hammer it home in my mind - to write means being able to sit with the discomfort when it gets difficult. Having social media as a crutch meant I had a ready exit from the work.

Not only that, but the rapid fire nature of a social media feed seemed to obliterate my ability to focus my attention on long form work - both reading and writing.

If anything is the death knell for a writer it's the inability to read and think deeply.

It's also been a year full of radical changes in my personal life. In 2023, my spouse left a toxic job and is now semi-retired. We sold a house and moved fully to our homestead farm in Central Massachusetts. (We still have a storage unit full of unpacked boxes to prove it.) I won't even mention the cataclysmic changes in the world at large.

Everything culminated in my decision to step away from most of my social media streams. I haven't checked my personal Facebook feed in 2 weeks.* And in just those weeks, feel like my mind and thoughts have room to grow. I've engaged with my writing more fully and more deeply than I have in a long time.

I'm letting myself be bored instead of reaching for my phone.

I'm emailing long letters to friends. I have a bunch of cards I'm planning to mail as well.

And most remarkably, the days feel longer. Story is swirling around my mind again. I spent several intense days doing a final read through and light edit to LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD ahead of sending it to my editor. After all the time struggling to write it, rewrite it, multiple revisions and changes, it finally says what I wanted and needed it to say.

Whether or not it finds its readership isn't up to me. I can't make that happen through social media or promotion. I will be releasing it just after the new year. What happens after, happens. There will be a book 2 (Working title EVERY SKY A STRANGER). There are other stories tickling my back brain.

There will be plums to harvest in a week or so. And blackberries. The kale and chard are taking over the garden. Everything grows and matures in its own time. The garden, the orchard, stories. Our lives are a process. Not a destination.

I'm still here. I hope you are, too. Wherever you are in your process, I hope you find the breath and time to simply be.

With fondness,

*You may still see me posting on IG, because there's never a bad time to add beauty to the world. Most of what I post there are photos of StarField Farm, knitting, pottery, food, and of course, my dogs.

Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

Thursday, June 08, 2023

Litany for a Broken World

I am still here, though you might not know that by looking at my (sorely neglected) blog or my spotty social media presence. Finally, after 5 years of word-wrangling, I have finished my latest manuscript.

A young girl's disastrous first foray through the multiverse cleaves her from her family and abandons her in a homeless encampment, adrift in a body not her own.

A doctor struggling with grief volunteers for the annual Boston homeless census and is confronted by the impossible and her deeply buried childhood trauma.

A lonely, disaffected seer rejected by those he seeks to help is drawn from his home by a desperate call across the world walls.
Three strangers, each broken in some way, become targets of an organization exploiting those with the ability to travel the multiverse.
Drawn together into a conflict that has already destroyed generations of multiverse Travelers and damaged countless worlds, the three must risk everything that matters to heal the fractured places in themselves and across reality.

This is Litany For a Broken World.

I'd like to share the first chapter with you.