BRoP Year in Review: A Decade of Mostly Harmless Insanity

As 2012 comes to a close, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on some of the joys and triumphs of the year. To that end, we bring you the 2012 Blog Ring of Power in Review! We’ve teamed up with this years’ BRoP interviewees to bring you eleven days worth of “year in review” guest posts and ten fabulous giveaway prizes! Each day a new guest post will be shared and you’ll have another opportunity to enter the giveaway—so get hopping! And be sure to enter the giveaway at the end of this post!

Today Danielle has returned with a few more words.

A Decade of Mostly Harmless Insanity

By Danielle Ackley-McPhail

Wow…hard to believe I have in fact been doing this for a decade. Conventions, book releases, editing anthologies…There is a lot to look back on. And to think it all started with one book. Just one. Yesterday's Dreams, a tale of music, myth, magic and ultimately, self-discovery, for both myself and my poor, beleaguered heroine, Kara O'Keefe.

Now I'm sure you are asking yourself right now…what the heck does this have to do with a final look at 2012? Well, let me tell you! Thanks to the wonderful people at Dark Quest Books (Neal Levin, Jess Novesteras, Elektra Hammond, Keith R.A. DeCandido, and Wrenn Simms) and my wonderful beta readers (David Goldstein, Halla Fleischer, L. Jagi Lamplighter, and Jeffrey Lyman) not only has Yesterday's Dreams grown up into a beauty of a book I am more than proud of, but the trilogy it began is now complete. In 2012 all three books in the Eternal Cycle trilogy--Yesterday's Dreams, Tomorrow's Memories, and Today's Promise--were released by Dark Quest Books. To celebrate the release paranormal folk musician Jonah Knight (www.jonahofthesea.com) composed and performed three songs based on each book in the series. That was at the Dark Quest Books Launch party at Balticon (www.balticon.org) which I consider my home convention.

To tell you something about the books, think immortal elven warriors fighting evil demigods…in New York City. Kara O'Keefe is a first-generation Irish-American. She is also a prodigy on the violin and a dutiful daughter. To safeguard her family's home she pawns her heirloom--and enchanted--violin and in the process becomes the prize in a battle between ancient enemies, the forces of good against the forces of evil. In the course of learning she is magical and not altogether human, Kara must save the world. Can she do it? You bet! After all, she is a New Yorker, but the journey is in finding out how.

 If that wasn't excitement enough for the first half of my year, I look back and I am grateful for a number of releases including my work, such as Spells and Swashbucklers (Dragon Moon Press), Mermaid 13 (Padwolf Publishing), and Telling Tales of Terror (Damnation Books), not to mention my first ever solo collection, A Legacy of Stars (Dark Quest Books) where my science fiction fans can find all of my sf short stories all in one place. The collection includes introduction to each story by such authors as Jack Campbell, Jody Lynn Nye, David Sherman, Jack McDevitt, Michael Z. Williamson, Steve White, Bud Sparhawk and many more.

(You know, for someone who started off the year recovering from major surgery, I seem to have managed to get an awful lot done!)

And finally, an announcement that is both gratifying and frustrating all at once…Our steampunk anthology, In an Iron Cage (Dark Quest Books), edited by myself, Elektra Hammond, and Neal Levin, was selected as a finalist for the 2013 EPIC Award for Best Anthology. That is the gratifying part. The frustration? We don't find out who won until March!

As I wrap up my post and my year, I wanted to thank The Blog Ring of Power and its readers s for letting me share my news so many times over this year. Writers write, but the readers make the magic each time they pick up our books and allow our worlds to come alive for them. To give a little something back, myself and Dark Quest Books are offering up a collection of PDF ebooks of each Dark Quest title mentioned in this blog post to two lucky winners. Just post your comments here for a chance to win.

Entering is easy – just use the Rafflecopter below. Winners will be chosen from among eligible Rafflecopter entries (chosen by Rafflecopter) and receive a prize of our choice. We’ll do our best to give the print books to those that don’t have an e-reader, but we can’t make any guarantees, so please be aware when entering that you are most likely going to win an e-book.



Be sure to stop to check out each of the stops on the Year In Review – new chances to enter the giveaway each day!

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