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Traveling While Standing Still – Monsters of Cairo
I have been doing a great deal of traveling this year. I’ve seen the Swiss Alps, cruised down through the Swedish fjords, and strolled down my favorite city streets in London. I love to travel. I always have. I am a very lucky person. But in fiction, it’s a little harder. Sure, I get glimpses of times gone by. But I don’t get the whole picture, no matter how many miles I fly. I’m currently working on Masks & Malevolence, the followup to Frost & Filigree, and it takes place in Cairo in 1924. So much has changed in that great city, that it’s pretty easy to get lost in the weeds…
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Frost & Filigree is Born!
I’m so happy to announce that Frost & Filigree is officially available. This little labor of love came together this winter, and is quite appropriately named. If you know me, you’ll know that I’m a woman of contrasts. I love a knock down, drag out fight as much as I love the detail on Edwardian costumes. Appropriately, this book features both. The premise is fairly simple. Vivienne du Lac and Nerissa Waldemar have been living among the Tarrytown elite for two years. It is 1912 now. They are taking care of the Lyndhurst mansion. And they are good neighbors for the most part, if not a little odd. The truth is…
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Frost & Filigree is available for pre-order!
Holy cow, y’all. It’s been a busy few months over here. New house, new job, and traveling have kept me from updating the blog. But, just in time for my birthday, I’m happy to announce that Frost & Filigree is hitting Kindles worldwide. Like Wothwood, Frost & Filigree is a novella, but that’s about where the similarities end. For me, this story is a love letter to some of my favorite authors of the Edwardian and Victorian periods, tempered with a bit of a bizarre sense of humor. Imagine if the Dowager Countess told House of Mirth, for example. The two main protagonists are Vivienne, la belle dame sans merci, and Nerissa, the lamia. Of course…
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Wothwood is Available for Pre-Order!
That’s right. If you head over to Amazon, you’ll see that WOTHWOOD is ready for pre-orders. As it’s digital first, that means for a mere $2.99 (can you even get a cup of coffee for that price?) you get 50,000 words of heroic fantasy with a Weird twist. Sure, technically it’s a novel. But, given the genre, 50K is practically a prologue. I actually loved writing the novella at that length. It’s back to my roots — multiple POV, secondary world — but with some curious detours. It’s a sister novella to Michelle Muenzler’s The Hills of Meat the Forest of Bone, and while on first glance the books couldn’t be more different,…
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Announcing The Frost & Filigree Quartet
I love making happy announcements, especially in these times, and today I’ve got a really good one. I’m thrilled to announce that I just inked an upcoming quartet of novellas from Falstaff Press, building on John Hartness’s already established Harker series. His pitch included words like “League of Extraordinary gentlemen” and “dark fantasy” and “heroes” and “whenever you want” and I immediately got excited. Okay, more specifically he said: “group of shadowy folk heroes that span the globe fighting evil” but you get the gist. Anyway, my contribution is the Frost & Filigree quartet, four novels releasing this year, following two heroines — Vivienne du Lac (aka La Belle Dame Sans…
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The Wothwood Book Trailer is Here
I’m very excited to share the book trailer for Wothwood. It’s definitely a challenge to boil down the book in a short story, but I’m hoping to at least pique a little bit of interest. What to expect? Heroes, battles, revenge, strange lands and strange people. What might be unexpected? The monsters are beyond your garden variety fantasy. I joke, but it’s true: I’m allergic to dwarves and elves and orcs, so you won’t be seeing any of that sort of thing. You will also have a narrative dominated by two women. There’s a lot this novel has to say about masculinity in fantasy, but I’ll leave that to another post…
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Falling in love with the novella, and thoughts on story structure
Ever since I first put pen to paper, I’ve thought in novels. I never set out to write short stories. No, from the get-go, I wanted to produce mighty, expansive, world-sweeping novels. And for the majority of the last ten years, what you might consider my professional publishing career, novels have made up the bulk of my work, at least in term of time investment. The process has changed considerably, because my life has changed considerably. For the most I think I’ve figured it out. I thought I’d cracked the nut of novel production, and though it takes more time than it used to, the end product is considerably stronger. Then I…
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I Wrote My Way Out Until I Couldn’t: A #HoldOnToTheLight Post
Let's get real about mental health.
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Work, Write: How to Nurture Your Writing and Still Get a Paycheck
Working is a reality in my life, and it will be for a very long time. I mean the 9-5 variety, specifically. There’s plenty of other work, too. But that’s the work that takes up the big bulk of my time and my brain. I’ve been working full time and writing for a long while, now. Before it was a traditional job, it was working retail and going to graduate school. Then it was freelancing and raising a baby. But regardless of what the job title was, the work was there. But so was the writing. I’ve written before about how you’ve got to change your process sometimes to make things…
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Writing with Outlines and Making Room for Unexpected Monsters
Glassmere marks my second real foray into a planned novel. The outline isn’t terribly strict, and it’s always changing and morphing. But it’s like this bright backbone I’m building around. For a seasoned pantser, this is a huge departure. What I like most about the outline, though, is that it’s not as rigid as I thought it’d be. Sure, there are some writers who do a far more strict version than I do, where every scene and beat is painstakingly draw out in detail. Others use a detailed synopsis. Just different strokes, y’know? But for me, having this backbone means that, even in times of crunch (which, let’s be honest,…
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Moving My Brain and My Stories, Too
Now that the office is finally set up in the new house, writing has begun again on Glassmere. Frustrating to take a break from something I’m enjoying so much, but there’re lessons to be learned there, too. The older I get, the more I realize that writing is… well, it’s about the writing. The other extraneous chaff is part of it (the publishing, reception, etc.) — but on the most simple level, the most selfish level, I suppose, there is just the writing. And me. And I need it, and it makes me who I am. And I’m getting better at it every time I sit down to write because that’s…
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Do You Want to be my Alpha Reader?
If you follow me on social media, or anywhere really, you’ll note that I’m currently writing a magical realism novel called Glassmere. The elevator pitch is that it’s Downton Abbey meets Narnia. It’s set in the spring and summer 1914, and is the story of two generations of sisters (Eleanor and Julia who are in their late teens, and Alice and Lucy who are in their late seventies) and their connection to a place called the Other Country. If you want an aesthetic feel, my Pinterest board on the subject is quite comprehensive. Typically when I’m writing it’s behind very closed doors. Once the whole thing is written, taken apart, put…
