This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 435th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors podcast.

I finished up all my pre-publication work on Wayfair for the time being.

Final proofs await the final cover.

I've just sent off to my usual cover designers at Damanza and should start getting designs

back within the next couple of weeks.

This is always a fun part of the process, but I'm especially

stoked about the possibilities this time. While researching keywords and

competition for the book, I realize that what I've been calling a

superhero historical is actually in the

Gas Lamp fantasy genre. If you're unfamiliar with Gas Lamp, it's a kissing

cousin of steampunk, while steampunk is usually set in an alternate version of the

Victorian era, one with an emphasis on advanced steam-powered technology.

Gas lamp takes the same setting but puts more of an emphasis on magic and or mad science than tech.

So perfect for Wayfair with its quote-unquote scientifically created super-humans. Anyway, the cover aesthetic for Gaslam

Fantasy is gorgeous. So I'm especially excited to see how Wayfair's cover will turn out.

And now I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.

Judge yourself less, trust yourself more, and write better stories.

When we think of creativity, we usually think of light and color, happiness and freedom. That's the upside of living the creative life of a writer. But there's a dark

side too, one we don't always like to talk about and that dark slide can be

encapsulated in two words, judgment and perfectionism. There's a controversial

running joke in the writing community about grammar thugs. The joke is a denigration of those among us who feel compelled to point out other

writers, or sometimes poor hapless non-writers, spelling and grammar mistakes. The controversy of course enters in that it seems

...