Now on the Short List!

"Luck of the Draw" has gone on to the next level. This has really made me happy. This is a great little story.

There are are 447 worthy stories on this list. "Luck" is about #421 on the list. Some stories have thousands of votes and hundreds of thousands of views.

Not sure what this means. I don't know how the site works and I don't know if winning will have any impact on my other work. However, it's another step in the right direction.

I've been working on Maizie's Diner and I'm ready to finish up. It was cute to begin with, now it's much longer and more detailed.

So stay tuned, we'll see what happens at the end of the month when The 2018 Wattys are announced.

Luck of the Draw and Other Stories

There's been so much going on with Icy Road Publishing! The last two months things have been ticking along, very quietly, as I make up my mind on how to proceed.

Back in July, when I was miserable with a bunch of bad teeth, I made up my mind that 2019 was going to be a record year. So when I had about 50% of "Luck of the Draw" finished, I up-loaded it to WattPad, just to see if I could get some eyeballs and some feedback.

Well -- "Luck of the Draw" got a lot of attention, and got on the Long List for the 2018 Watty Awards. I'm still not sure how that happened, but I'm sure glad it did. Now, 800 other works have been on that list all year, so there's little chance that "LotD" will make any headway, but getting some interest has really perked me up.

With that bit of encouragement, I finished up "Luck of the Draw" (set in Andover, Ohio) and sent out other I. C. Talbot stories to a family member for Beta reads. Also on the list for 2018 is "Maizie's Diner" (set in Ashtabula Harbor), and "A Little Stimulation" (set in Cleveland, Ohio) and "A Ride in the Park" (set in Victorian England).

I picked up the rest of the Volume 3 and Volume 4 short stories and added them to the que. So now, there is a list of 36 of Mom's short stories to be worked on this year and published in 2019.

WattPad.com is a nice place to get some feedback, but the website itself is slow and quirky. Like just an hour ago, all my covers were changed to the cover of "Luck of the Draw" and I had to change them all back.

The site is a lot like Authonomy, but seems to have missed all the foolishness that turned Authonomy from a serious site for writers into a playground for Trolls looking for LULZ.

So stay tuned. The family has banded together and if we can keep this ball rolling we should have a great 2018 and 2019 here at Icy Road.

Worse for Wear - Goes Wide Today

Today --after being exclusive to Amazon Kindle Unlimited for two years -- Worse for Wear is available at Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Scribed and iTunes once again.

The reason for this change is that I'm taking all the K. A. Jordan e-books 'wide' for the 2019 Winter Reading Season.

The first time I did this, 2010, I only had one e-book. Now there are 9 e-books with my by-line, and some of them started out as I. C. Talbot stories.

Since I. C. Talbot does well on Kindle Unlimited, there's no reason to move her short stories. My own work has always done better on Barnes & Noble and iBooks. "Impressive Bravado" has been read over a thousand times on iBooks.

Behind the scenes - I've decided to publish as many I. C. Talbot short stories and novellas as I can in the next two years. Most lack enough detail, backstory and, unfortunately, conflict, to be little more than synopsis. I've given my sister the green light to edit and update as many as she likes. I'll make sure her by-line is on any of them that she edits.

But I've posted a few to WattPad - here - and they are being very well received. "Luck of the Draw" has been included in the 2018 WattPad Watty Awards Long List. (There's 800 works on the Long List. I'm not sure how it works.)

Meanwhile, I've been looking into putting several short stories together by genre. There are a couple Westerns, Victorians, two diner stories and a few 'He Done Her Wrong' tales that might go together in an anthology.

Stay tuned.

Hello Patreon! We're Live

Hello! We've been hard at work this summer. Icy Road is taking the next steps to put this micro-publisher on the map.

To this end, we've launched a Patreon Page: Icy Road Publishing so now you can donate up to $5 per month to help keep the e-books coming.

Every writer and publisher has to pay editors and cover artists. We have two editors that we use, and a cover artist that we use when we launch a novel. But for the most part, Icy Road is a 1-woman show.

This reading season, we have a couple different projects in the que.

Luck of the Draw is scheduled to come out in December 2018 or January 2019. You can get a sneak peak at it on Wattpad.com: Luck of the Draw. This short story is currently trending on the Literary charts of Wattpad. We aren't sure what that means, but we're tickled to see it.

This short story is also scheduled to come out in 2018, this one will be exclusive to Amazon, part of Kindle Unlimited. We don't have a target date. But it's going up on our Wattpad page: "A Little Stimulation"

This is a longer work than the usual 2,000 words. It's a charming Regency that's also available on Wattpad.com: "Ride in the Park"

August 2018 News

First and foremost, we have a new I. C. Talbot story coming out for release this winter! 'The Luck of the Draw' was just 9k words when I started editing it, now it's a whopping 35k and will be released as a paperback!

This is the story of Stella and her four children who have lived in a 20 foot camper for five years. Stella's husband Rolf is a gambler, a professional poker player who comes home just long enough to give Stella the deed to an abandoned house on Pymatuming Lake before he leaves to follow the game.

Because I've added so many words to this manuscript, it's carries the K. A. Jordan by-line as well as I. C. Talbot.

In addition, I've decided to take most of the K. A. Jordan e-books 'wide' which means they will go out on Draft2Digital starting September 1, 2018. But, because I. C. Talbot is doing VERY well in the Kindle Unlimited program, the works carrying only her by-line will remain in KU for now.

Also in the works is the LONG awaited Doyle Road Bridge collection of short stories by I. C. Talbot, which will replace "Tales from the Bascule Bridge" and be released in paperback as well.

All this is possible because I bought a copy of Indesign software, so I can format and publish paperbacks.

Digging Out - Revised

I revised "Digging Out" last week. Then I republished it to Kindle Unlimited.

It was a cute little story, and I liked it, but there was one character who didn't get a fair shake, so I decided to break her out.

"Divorced mother of two, Abby lives with her grandmother and twins, Jed and Jill, on a farm so cluttered there is hardly room to move. One day she snaps, and decides to clean up decades of mess. 

To her surprise, people will pay good money for old junk. Even more surprising is someone is after the one thing she values more anything else. 

Octogenarian I. C. Talbot wrote pulp fiction from her hill-top home deep in the Kentucky bluegrass region. She published her collection of short stories with the help of her daughter K. A. Jordan. 

This short story is 6.5k words."