What the Heck is Heather Doing These Days?

Other than my fairly rigid schedule of LHMP posts and the Bingo series, my blog spreadsheet tells me I haven't posted much in the last couple of weeks. Sometimes all the overlapping deadlines and commitments conspire to knock out the time I'd normally spend brainstorming blogs. In the present case, it's been a combination of scrambling to get some LHMP material together, all of my investigations at work going from "waiting on someone else to do something" to "you need to get this turned around right now," and spending half of last week serving my jury duty--the first time in my life I've actually been selected for a trial that went to completion. The jury duty was a fascinating experience. I was satisfied with our verdict, though left angry by some of the events we needed to rule on. And I was unprepared for how exhausting it was to alternate between waiting around for things to happen with paying very intense concentration to the testimony. Most exhausting was the hour or so spent in deliberations (especially since I sort of volunteered/was volunteered to be foreman). I've blogged in detail about the experience on my Dreamwidth account, but I'm afraid it's only accessible if we're mutuals there. (I don't lock Dreamwidth posts very often, but I wanted a layer of privacy for some of what I was talking about.)

So since I don't have new and interesting thoughts to post here today, I figured I'd cheerlead about some recent and upcoming stuff, just as a reminder:

• Lace and Blade 4 is out! With a new Alpennia story about Jeanne de Cherdillac! Anthologies often get overlooked in the flood of great new books coming out, so if you enjoy the stories (and especially if you enjoy mine), it would mean a lot if you dropped a review on Goodreads and/or Amazon.
• The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast's brand new original fiction series will debut this month! I'm so excited about this new venture and I've lined up a really great story to kick it off. The fiction series is a massive experiment, not only for the podcast, but for lesbian historical fiction in general. There's been a lot of buzz recently on twitter contrasting all the people who say they're looking for good lesbian historicals with the experiences of those of us who write them. The biggest hurdle is simply getting the word out about where to find the stories. So I hope that, if people enjoy the story--or even simply enjoy the idea of lesbian historical podcast fiction--you'll spread the word and encourage others to listen. Can we get a wave going here that can help lift up the field in general?
• My 2018 Lesbian Book Bingo Challenge story series is up to five episodes so far! Although I'm doing the series in part to have a more interesting way of promoting the Book Bingo event, there's a certain satisfaction loosing an actual new piece of fiction into the world every two weeks. Follow the intertwined adventures of what will be a fairly extensive cast of characters navigating their lives and loves in the chaotic world of late 17th century Europe.
• Getting back to The Lesbian Historic Motif Podcast: One of the great things about a podcast is that it's "sticky" -- people can pop in and listen to past episodes whenever they want to. In my automated social media postings, I have a rotating schedule of pointers to past episodes, though as always it's hard to know whether people are clicking through to listen to them. If one of the postings reminds you of a favorite episode, it would be wonderful if you shared it to your followers with a comment on why you liked it. The LHMP blog and podcast are a labor of love, but they're also meant to be a resource in a field where information can be hard to find. In 2018, the blog will come up on its 4th anniversary, and the podcast on its 2nd and it finally feels like knowledge of their existence is starting to trickle out past the "first circle" of people who found out about them directly from knowing me. I queried an author who specializes in lesbian historicals about doing an interview and was a bit dismayed to find out that she'd never heard of the podcast. So don't assume that the people you know you might enjoy the blog and podcast already know about them.