“How’s life, Deshipley? :D”
Um. Yeah. About that…
The Bad News
So, the other week, I was in a car accident. Not convenient, not fun (not the sort of thing that tends to happen to me on the road, thank God), and… alarmingly, not an isolated enough incident, because then I was in another car accident. Like, a week-and-a-half later.
Zero car wrecks for some 15 years of driving, then two of them in less than two weeks?? I. Was. (Am.) SHOOK. Physically fine … but SHOOK. As in, eating is hard, sleeping is harder, and getting on the road for work and errands requires an excessive amount of courage.
Plus, I’ve been stressed out to the max about how much $$$ all this nonsense is gonna cost – especially in light of the fact that I’ve got an upcoming picture book to pay for – “The Princess and the Moon”! – and for whatever combination of reasons, I haven’t yet been able to gain traction on the GoFundMe campaign to help produce it.
(Full series of pics on display here)
Psychologically, this has been one of the most painful bouts of anxiety I’ve been through in my adult history – second only, perhaps, to the nightmare that was The End of Germany. But hey, on a related note…
The Good News
Once upon a time, an author was temporarily stuck in a traumatizing situation. To help herself process and cope, she started writing a story – a fairytale version of what she was going through, in hope that she could thereby find her way to a happy ending.
And that author – *solemn nods* – was me.
And that happy ending was a long time coming – (there are ways in which I’m only just starting to recover from that Nocturne of the Soul) – and it was a while ere I was able to look at and finish that fairy tale begun before the darkest part of the night.
But that fairy tale is now not only finished, it’s going to be published alongside another short story in an e-book only (for now) little artwork I’ve titled:
Beyond Her Infinity: Tales from Across Wilderhark’s Great Sea
Once upon a time, you knew tales of Wilderhark’s Great Land.
But what of the Isles to the Far East?
In “Beyond Her Infinity”, Wilderhark Tales author Danielle E. Shipley spins two short stories with leading roles from the fairytale world’s minority culture.
“The Queen’s Lady” – Three gallant royal guardsmen learn just how far one Islander will go for the sake of her friend: Into a strange land. Into a cruel exile. Even into the hands of a darkly dangerous power.
“To Walk the Storm” – With his country falling to ruin, a king sends his heirs in search of foreign aid. But the favor of the Isles’ supernatural patron is not so easily won.
Tales of loyalty. Tales of passion. Most of all, tales of true love.
When is the e-book releasing? Next week! (Though it’s available for pre-order right now! Just 99 cents!)
Why so soon? Because there’s no time like the present!
Why the title “Beyond Her Infinity”? Two reasons.
For one, Her Infinity is (I discovered while writing “To Walk the Storm”) the Far Eastern Islanders’ name for the Great Sea. For the other, there’s just something about pairing that name with ‘beyond’ that sounds like some She is living past her limits – or, at the least, where she thought her limits lay – which is very much in the spirit of the fairytale I first spoke of, “The Queen’s Lady”.
That years-ago Germany incident and these recent car crashes have in common a particular effect on my core confidence. They forced into my face the fact that I am not invincible. I am not invulnerable. I am not, in fact, anything like infinite. And my poor brain’s reaction to being so harshly confronted with finitude is to fill with fear and self-doubt and self-blame and depression. It makes hope feel too heavy to carry, and stretches the world into a place too big and cruel for one small She to survive.
And yet, survive I do.
The silence surrounding my GoFundMe – and, frankly, just about anything I try to put out into the world, lately – is a similar drag on my confidence. But you know me, dearies. I don’t know how to give up.
So next week, I’m releasing “Beyond Her Infinity” – which, speaking of my picture book, features a special guest appearance from the Wilderhark Tales’ moon himself! And I’m making myself carry the hope, no matter how heavy, that it will in some way contribute to the promotion and funding of “The Princess and the Moon”.
You, too, are very much invited to contribute, with your shares and dollars and word of mouth. It’s not that I can’t do this on my own. I can do just about anything I’ve determined I must. But I and the Fairytale Me in “The Queen’s Lady” know that while going it alone is doable, getting through with friends to lean upon can make an infinite difference. ❤
Ever On Word 