New Book!

So, it’s been a while. And I’m still not here to talk about fairy tales; sorry. I have a website now. www.jennyprater.com

And. I own a publishing company called Wax Heart Press (www.waxheartpress.com), which I’m using for self publishing right now, but I want to publish books for other people too, eventually.

 My new poetry book is out! Here’s the announcement from my press!

Small Scars is available today in print and for Kindle! There was a slight glitch with Barnes and Noble, but the Nook edition should be available within 72 hours.
While the print edition is available through most major retailers, we would encourage you to order directly from our website, as this will yield the highest profits for the author.
However, in light of COVID-19, we would recommend ordering the digital version at this time, as we do not know if the printer will choose or be required to shut down temporarily.

Wax Heart Press

It's been a while, and this isn't about fairy tales, but I officially own a publishing company! Wax Heart Press is currently selling three chapbooks.

thin is about eating disorders and recovery, Dear Somebody is about asexuality, and Lord is about faith. All are available starting tonight!

https://www.waxheartpress.com/

Announcement

Hello! As most of you know, I now own a small publishing company, Wax Heart Press, which will begin releasing books in 2020. This means some changes in my currently available books.

My current books are Goodbye and Other Words I Should Have Said, Avalanche: A Self Portrait in Verse, thin, Dear Somebody (print and digital), and And He Became a Handsome Prince (digital only).

As of today, all print book prices will be reduced by $1. This deal is valid through December 31, 2019. Beginning on January 1, 2020, all print books will no longer be available.. The digital versions will still be available. thin and Dear Somebody will be re-released in 2020. At this time, a date has not been set to re-release Avalanche and Goodbye; if you intend to purchase these books, I would recommend you do so in 2019.

https://www.jennyprater.com/

New Book Out Thursday!

It's another week without the promised "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" update; sorry! Been very busy prepping "Dear Somebody," which is what happens when one decides to create and release a book in the space of less than two weeks.

I discovered this afternoon that I was out of colored ink, so I had to go to an office supply store for ink and a fabric store for thread, but I have eight copies printed, bound, and ready to go.

 You can pre-order "Dear Somebody" from Amazon here.

You can pre-order "Dear Somebody" from Barnes and Noble here.

And you can order "Dear Somebody" from Etsy here!

(I figure it will take at least until Valentine's Day to get books shipped and delivered, so ordering starts now on Etsy; if you order yet tonight they'll go out on Monday, and if you order them tomorrow they'll go out on Tuesday, assuming of course that my somewhat lackluster postman succeeds in actually collecting the mail.)

Dear Somebody

So last week was supposed to (finally) be the second half of my "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" post. And it wasn't. Well, neither is tonight. Hopefully we'll be back on track by next week, but in the meantime I have an exciting announcement.

Dear Somebody is a chapbook consisting of 12 poems about asexuality. It comes out on Valentine's Day. The physical copy will be available on Etsy, hand-bound like thin, and the digital copy will be available for Kindle and Nook. More details, including pricing, coming soon!

Edited 2/4/19 to add:

Pricing update! Digital copies from Amazon and Barnes and Noble will be $1.99. Hard copies from Etsy will be $3.00.

April Sales!

Hey, guys! So we're going to be having a special promotion through the month of April: if you buy any of my books in April 2017, you'll also get a free copy of thin. Digital or physical, your choice.

This applies to hard copies, Nook books, Kindle editions. If you buy a copy of thin, you'll get a second copy free.

Shipping is also free.

So if you buy anything during April, send a copy of your receipt to jennynprater@gmail.com, along with whether you'd like digital or physical, and a shipping address if applicable.

Books you can purchase:

Goodbye
Amazon
Barnes and Noble

Avalanche
Amazon
Barnes and Noble (1)
Barnes and Noble (2)

thin
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Etsy

And He Became a Handsome Prince
Amazon
Barnes and Noble


Happy April!

Quality, Quantity, Ramblings

I guess I've just never really understood the quality over quantity thing. Because, like, you can't have quality without a little quantity. You spend forty years working on one book, one play, one painting, whatever, chances are it's gonna be crap. You get bogged down, you know? And there's no room to grow.

Like, sometimes I'll have a week where I just write, like, thirty poems. And probably half of them are gonna be crap. I know they're gonna be crap. I don't care. Sometimes that's kind of the point of them. I'll be on my third poem, and it'll be completely worthless. But then on my twenty-third, maybe I'll try something weird with the line breaks, something I wouldn't have thought of before, and maybe that'll somehow make poem number three salvageable.

I'd much rather publish twelve pretty good books, and maybe they're not perfect, but maybe someone will read them and they'll Matter to that person, than spend a decade writing an amazing literary masterpiece that no one outside of an English class is ever going to care about. Because sometimes, maybe most times, it's not even about all of the perfection you put into something you've dedicated your life to. Sometimes it's a completely random throwaway line that catches readers, that makes them care, that ends up meaning something. And I figure you've got a better chance of giving someone that thing that Matters if you have a bunch of things out there in the world.

You produce enough quantity, and some of it's bound to be quality. And the more you do the better you get. Better is a side-effect of more. And stories die, sometimes. Paintings, songs. You spend so much time trying to make this one thing better, and all the heart leaks out.

Impossible Tasks

You all know the drill, right? Standard element in a lot of stories. Chop down the forest with an ax made of glass. Sort out the different kinds of seeds. Empty a lake with a spoon.

This isn't actually a post about folklore. Sorry. I'm here to talk about impossible tasks in real life. That's right: it's another Shameless Self Promotion post. Sorry again. But only kind of.

Today I'm here to talk about the impossible task - the many impossible tasks - of being a writer. See, first you have to sift through all the different words, all the ideas, all the stories, and pick the right ones. Then you have to actually put them on paper, which is harder. They change, see, on the way from your brain to your hand, even when you've got them all thought out just right. It's like sorting out flour and powdered sugar. Like herding cats.

(Someday I will successfully herd my cat. But that's a challenge for another day.)

After you get things on paper, you still have to change the paper, again and again until it comes close, at least, to being the kind of thing you thought in was when it only existed in your head. It's weird, and it's hard. When I'm still in the process of writing, I tend to get scenes and fragments sort of stuck in my head, just running in an endless loop until I finally get down the whole story they belong to, just right. Sometimes it's nice, comforting, having a good scene as a background to your life. Sometimes I put off writing so I can keep a good scene.

But sometimes you get a bad scene, and it follows you everywhere for hours, and it's terrifying. Once, in high school, I nearly started crying in science class because in the back of my head, I'd been watching a character die over and over again for hours.

I got a few weird looks.

And here's the important thing: all of that is just the beginning. The easy stuff. You've gotten the words from your head to your paper. Now you've got to get them to other people. That's the hard part. Because it takes time, and it takes energy, and money, and a certain belief in yourself that can be hard to maintain. Forget emptying the lake with a spoon. This is where you walk into hell to get Persephone's beauty in a box. This is the final test.

And this, this is me asking all of you to be the ants that help sort seeds. This is me asking you to help me level a forest, to help me drain the sea.

I like writing poems, and I love that people like reading them, too. And the blog posts about fairy tales? Well, there are few things I enjoy more in life than screaming into the void about fictional people being idiots.

But I want to do more. I am doing more, actually, and I would love to get to a point where it can be a bigger part of my life.

I write novels. Writing novels has been the main thing I've done with myself, I guess, since I was about sixteen. And I'm not going to send these novels out to agents and publishers and the whole shebang. I love the publishing industry. I mean, I really love it. My big goal in life, since I was eighteen, has been to be a publisher, to have my own small press and to share stories with the world. My own stories, of course, but also everyone else's.

So here's the deal: I currently have three poetry collections out. One without an ISBN, two using ISBNs from Createspace. That means that when I sell a book, Amazon gets money too. And that's kind of where things need to be in my writing career right now. But I don't like it. I think that Amazon is pretty bad for the publishing industry, and I don't want to support that long term.

So as much as I want to write more, to publish more, I'm waiting. ISBNs cost a lot. But once you have them, you're in control. You aren't being published by Createspace or Lulu or whoever. You're really, entirely, being published by you. And that's important to me.

So I'm here, asking you to help me drain the sea. Because it's not the kind of thing you do alone. Help me to become an author and a publisher. Help me to publish my own books, help me to publish other people's books, and help me to achieve the financial security to devote as much time and energy to these things as I can.

I have three books out. Goodbye and Avalanche are available on barnesandnoble.com. And on Amazon, but if you can, I would appreciate you using Barnes and Noble instead. thin is available on Etsy. All three are available for Kindle, but I'm currently in the process of getting Nook versions too, and I'll let you know when that happens. I know a lot of people don't have Nooks, but if you do have any compatible device, the Nook versions will cost you less, and pay me more, than the Kindle versions.

Next, I have a Redbubble account. I haven't entirely gotten the hang of it yet, so it might be kind of lame, but if you want to see something, I'm definitely up for suggestions.

And then there's the big one. Patreon. And this is the simplest one for you guys, by far. It doesn't take a lot. Just a dollar a month, and you'll be helping and supporting me so much.

So here are the links:

Patreon

Redbubble

Etsy

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

And finally, thank you for anything you can do to help. The thing about all the most impossible tasks in folklore is that they are possible, as long as you don't do them alone. And I believe that's true for the real world, too.  Together we can do great things.

Cinderella Girl

One of the poems from my new book, thin. Check out the rest here!

cinderella girl

it’s not just a shoe you have to fit

one quick cut at the heel or toe

no, it’s all of you

a whole damn body of too big,

of nothing right, of second place

you cut a thick slab from each side

but it only makes your hips look too wide

but heels are not made of fat—

you’ve cut through bone before

stop eating—you’ll get dizzy and hear

those singing birds

be beautiful as you faint at his feet

cindy, sweetie, you don’t need

to be this way

your stepmother loves you

she never meant to be mean

when she called it a mistake

falling for that boy

who remembered your dress size

but forgot your face

Product/Project Updates and Stuff!

Patreon Account

Redbubble

 thin

 Avalanche: A Self Portrait in Verse

 Goodbye and Other Words I Should Have Said

thin

So here's the deal. It's here. The book is here and ready to go. I'm still in the process of setting it up on Etsy, so that'll be a few more days. In the meantime, if you're local or expecting to see me in the near future, just send me a message, on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, whatever, and I can get it to you without the whole Etsy thing.

The cost is going to be $5.00, and you'll have to allow a week or so for me to get your copy printed and bound, as I'm doing them all by hand, one at a time.

As a reminder, the information I posted about the book earlier this month:

thin will be a collection of 21 poems, some new, some previously published elsewhere, about living with an eating disorder. These are poems that I've written in the year and a half or so that I've been struggling with this, from a few months before my diagnosis to about a year after I left treatment, and I'm publishing them primarily in the hopes that they can help others understand and process their feelings as they deal with similar issues. The books will be saddle stitched, all hand-bound by me, and will most likely be available mainly on Etsy.

Oh, and I turn 23 on Monday. Help me celebrate by buying a copy of my brand new book!

Writing Update

This has been a terrible month for blogging, but a really great one for all the other writing I do. I've just finished going through the final, final draft of my second novel this month - the last run-through to catch spelling mistakes and awkward wording, things like that. So I've got two books ready to go, though I don't intend for them to go anywhere anytime soon; more details about that coming eventually. But I'm also fairly certain I've finally worked out the formatting glitches in the chapbook I am releasing soon.

It will be a couple more weeks before it's actually available for purchase, but I figure it's about time to start telling people about it. thin will be a collection of 21 poems, some new, some previously published elsewhere, about living with an eating disorder. These are poems that I've written in the year and a half or so that I've been struggling with this, from a few months before my diagnosis to about a year after I left treatment, and I'm publishing them primarily in the hopes that they can help others understand and process their feelings as they deal with similar issues. The books will be saddle stitched, all hand-bound by me, and will most likely be available mainly on Etsy.

I hope that this book will be able to help a few people, and if it does well, I look forward to releasing more chapbooks in the future.

In the meantime, I need a bit of a break before I launch into my next major revision project, so let me know if there's anything in particular you'd like to see on this blog in the near future. Questions, comments, fairy tales you want to hear me complain about.

The Night the Mermaid Reclaimed Her Voice

The night her prince said yes to another woman

The mermaid sat at the edge of the motel pool

Frozen by a late fall chill

The night he left her

The mermaid screamed into the burnt out streetlights

Testing the voice he’d once tried to steal

The night her prince said yes

She danced on broken ankles

Thinking how he never listened

All those days she used to yell

The night he left her

She plunged a knife in the pool to shatter the ice

She shucked off the trappings of the life he led

And dived naked into the ice cold chlorine

When the prince left the mermaid behind

The mermaid left man

With prayers for another soon-to-be-broken girl

When the prince said yes, the mermaid swam home

My Books Are at Barnes and Noble!!!!

I'm not sure if you're aware of this, because I somehow wasn't, but both of my books are available through Barnes and Noble! BN is way cooler than Amazon, and also it's where I work when I'm not writing, so you should totally order it here. 

Book News

My first book, Goodbye and Other Words I Should Have Said, has been re-released. Hard copies available here, Kindle edition coming soon.


Fifty one poems on love and loss, and a gorgeous new matte cover, perfect for Valentine’s Day this year.

My second book, Avalanche, is also matte now, and can still be purchased on Amazon.

And as long as we’re here, let’s not forget Beast, the short story collection I worked on with author Iona Gale. Seven great fairy tale retellings you don’t want to miss, also available on Amazon. And keep an eye out for more news from Io; she’s been working on an exciting new project this winter.