March Flash Sale + a quick response

I’m celebrating the launch of the latest Yarn Spinner Story+Pattern with a Flash sale!

 20% off all my patterns until March 17 (ends midnight CT) with the coupon code:
MarchFlash

So, what's this story about?
Can knitting connect women across commuter trains, generations and avert a terror attack?

Knitting for Mother Earth Cowl, the second story in the series, catches a young woman on her daily commuter train to New York. She follows her gut, alerting a fellow passenger to what seems dangerous…and, to get beyond the experience, builds a strong bond through knitting.

This story pairs with an enormous cowl design. Prepare for some sumptuous knitting with super bulky luxury yarn.

I was happy to get a blog comment yesterday from a friend!  While I wrote her separately, I wanted to mention something here in response, too.  Here's an excerpt from what I wrote, with a few modifications for the blog:

Thanks for your encouraging words!  I've been trying hard to optimize the small amount of time I have these days for work.  (probably about 15 hours a week, on a good week, when there are no kid viruses, household emergencies or medical appointments...)  One way I have found to do this is to go back into my files and try to use things that I wrote long ago, but could not sell.  For a while I was writing a lot of fiction.  Some of it sold, some of it got close, but honestly I never found a good market for it.  I think it is particularly because I often write short stories about women, about fiber arts, and they don't all have to be terribly depressing at the end.  (contrary to the New Yorker's fiction style!) This did not fit into a "cool literary magazine" model, as you can imagine.

 Anyhow, it has always seemed to me that a lot of my writing doesn't sell because of luck, or bad timing, or lack of market.  As best I can tell (and the occasional friend/colleague who reads the stuff), it is not as if the stuff that does not sell is terrible and the other stuff is magically good in terms of writing or content.  It's not that clear, like a lot of things in life...alas, I wish it were!

 So, now that we're in this digital age where things don't have to be sold as conventional books, it seems like the perfect time to try some hybrid approaches and see what works.  My first story+pattern has sold enough so far to cover the tech editing costs.  Hurray!  Just got to throw it up on a wall and see what sticks. :)

 PS: I also realized recently that nearly ten years ago, I submitted an essay to a program associated with NPR called This I Believe....and it got published.  (Yup, I just figured it out.)  In some ways, when I started freelancing, I was also "throwing it up and seeing what stuck."  Apparently, this one did. This is about religious tolerance and the lack of it, and equality under law.  Seems like a particularly relevant topic these days.  

Here it is: 

This I Believe: by Joanne Seiff, 2005