Children of Dreams

Feb

2023

Monday? Why Does It Have To Be Monday?

I was going to ask why it always seems like Monday, then I realized that I blog on Mondays, so of course it always seems like a Monday when I do this. It IS always Monday when I do this!

(pause for more coffee)

It’s been an eventful week, in a good way. Last Monday, I got the cover art for The Chronicles of John Zebedee, and I’ve set up the preorders! Not all the stores are available yet (Barnes and Noble is slow), but most of the big ones are ready, so click the graphic to order!

This one, I actually forgot to post about last week — Children of Dreams has been nominated for a Paranormal Romance Guild Reviewer’s Choice Award! These books are nominated by reviewers, but voted on by the public, so if you’ve read Children of Dreams, please click on the graphic and vote!

I started The Sea Prince back up again, since edits are off my plate for right now. I’m not sure when I’ll get the edits for Morrigan’s Heir, but until I do, I’m going to keep plugging away on Morrigan’s Wrath and on The Sea Prince

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven Duology, Book 2)

36067 / 90000 (40.07%)

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, Book 1)

41188 / 120000 (34.32%)

I’ve started giving some thought to the books that will follow The Swords of Charlemagne and The Chronicles of John Zebedee, because the two will converge in Children of the Swords. I don’t have a fully fleshed out idea just yet as to where the story is going, and there’s some research to be done. So that’s a teaser for you (Another teaser? The first book is tentatively titled Seer.)

And I’m about to roll the Rebel Mage books out wide — meaning that you’ll be able to order the ebooks from places other than Amazon. That will happen Friday, February 10th, so if you’re looking for those books on Apple or Kobo, Friday will be the day to start shopping!

There isn’t much else going on in this neck of the woods. This time of year is usually quiet, so I’m taking advantage of that and making words.

Time to go make the words.

Jan

2023

Preorders and Covers and Pages

And a good Monday to you all! Happy end of January!

Why am I so cheerful? Because I finally got the cover for The Chronicles of John Zebedee squared away!

The preorders are being set up now, and as soon as I have the links, I’ll share them. Look for them in the newsletter on Friday! (Are you not getting my newsletter? It’s only once a month, and there are recipes…)

Children of Dreams is up for an award — the Paranormal Romance Guild’s Reviewers Choice Award. This award is voted on by the reading public, so if you read and enjoyed Children of Dreams, go vote! Voting is open for another few days, and you can find the ballot here. I also had a fun interview, which you can see here.

I’ve been busy with The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath, too. It gives me something to do while I wait for the edits on Morrigan’s Heir.

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven Duology, Book 2)

33415 / 90000 (37.13%)

I’ve seen a lot of talk recently about writing history, and presenting a rosy view of history. Which, I’m not going to lie, I’m totally doing in The White Raven. There are details that are accurate, but the view of Rome… not so much.

The thing is, I know I’m doing it. The White Raven isn’t set at a fixed point in Celtic history. It doesn’t have to be — it’s a fantasy. I do mention Rome in Princes of Air — there’s a comment in Niall’s book about dining while reclining like Romans, and that’s all it was. A throw-away comment that wasn’t meant to do anything more than give the reader an idea of what was going on. To Niall, Rome was a concept, not a place. He’d heard of it, but that’s all.

Lorcan actually experiences Rome as a place. However, the Rome he experiences is only tangentially the Rome that actually existed. There was never an Emperor named Lucanus, for example. This is a fictional Rome set in my fictional universe where Gods walk among men… and sometimes do more than walk. So I can pick and choose what parts of Roman history I want to use, while being relatively accurate to Roman culture and religion.

Which is probably going to get me into all sorts of difficulties with the history people. But it’s fiction, and I’m going to put an author note in the books saying pretty much what I just said to you. That this is my fictional world, that it’s only lightly based on the Rome of our history, and honestly, there are men and women who can turn into ravens in this universe. That doesn’t lend itself to an accurate depiction of Rome…

So we have a fantasy romance, set in a romanticized version of Rome, starring a man who can turn into a raven because reasons.

This absolutely sings historical accuracy, right?

Nov

2022

It’s Still Monday.

So this totally counts as a Monday blog. Right?

Children of Dreams is now out, and I am officially taking a break until the end of the year. I’m holding The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath until January. I intend to spend the next month refilling my creative bucket, planning for next year, working on some edits, and doing some research.

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven, Book 2)

19677 / 90000 (21.86%)

Now, that being said, what am I doing?

Cleaning my house, that’s what. While doing my pre-Thanksgiving prep.

I’m both tired and bonkers. But the house has to be clean before guests arrive, and I have to have something to feed them, so there you go.

I am a little worried, though. My turkey has been in the refrigerator since last Wednesday, and it’s still a 16lb block of ice. I need to it thawed by the day after tomorrow so I can brine it. So… ummm… that’s a thing. And the guest of honor for Thursday’s dinner may need to have a long soak in the bathtub tomorrow.

I’m very pleased with the reception that Children of Dreams has had over the past week — the first review hit two days after the book released, and the reviewer loved it! It is, I think, a satisfying ending to the series, to know that readers are loving it.

It’s a good way to end the year.

Now, Cookiepocalypse is coming, so I will still be blogging. But the writing year is over for 2022. And it was a good one. Weird, but good.

On to 2023?

Nov

2022

Worlds Begin. Worlds End.

And tomorrow, the world of Adavar ends. At least for now. I can’t think of any other stories that will be told in the world of Heir to the Firstborn, but that might change. I don’t think they will involve any of the current characters, though. Their story wraps tomorrow.

(click the graphic to go to the Amazon series page)

It’s strange. When I first started this series, it was supposed to be four books. If you’ve been with me long enough, you’ll remember me talking about how there was too much story for four books, so I was going to add a fifth one. And… yeah. Six books. Characters who REALLY got under my skin — I still say Owyn is my favorite out of all the characters that have walked out of my subconscious.

And it’s all over tomorrow. My part in it, anyway. Now it’s your turn, oh Reader.

(I will say that there’s one character who’s sort of poking at me, but I don’t know what they want yet. If they tell me, then there might be some more Adavar. But until they start doing more than a mental “I’m not touching you!” I’m going to ignore them and focus on Lorcan.)

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Heir
(The White Raven, Book 1)

18418 / 90000 (20.46%)

Now here’s an amusing tidbit. I wrote The White Raven: Morrigan’s Heir a few years before I started Heir to the Firstborn. And there’s a character in Morrigan’s Heir who I now need to give a new name.

That was the first time I used the name Owyn. And he’s nothing like Heir’s Owyn, who is so much of a strong character and strong voice in my brain that the name Owyn is now being retired.

So when you finally meet Bran in Morrigan’s Heir, his name was originally Owyn.

And, with the Heir to the Firstborn coming to a close, I’ve made an executive decision.

I’m taking the rest of the year off. I need to reset and recover from what’s been a heck of a year, so I’m taking some time off. I have books that are piling up to read, research I want to do, movies I want to watch, and my house needs cleaning. I need to plan for 2023, and set my goals. Oh, and Cookiepocalypse is right around the corner! So I’ll be taking my winter break early, and I’ll pick up Morrigan’s Wrath in January.

You may now open book on if I can actually make it to January without writing new words.

Nov

2022

Civic Duty or Something.

And today, I’m writing this blog in the jury room of my county courthouse. It’s slowly filling up with people (mostly unmasked people because… well… Florida).

Yes, Dear Reader, I’ve been summoned for jury duty.

I’ve been summoned before in Florida, but the last time, I was a homeschooling mom of a child under ten, so I was excused. No excuses here. So welcome to the jury pool.

The last time I was in a jury pool, I lived in New York, where I had the interesting situation of being chosen for a jury, then having to be excused because the opposing counsel was the husband of my Weight Watchers leader. Which had apparently never been brought up as a reason for excusing a juror before because I clearly remember the looks of abject confusion on the faces of the judge and the lawyers. “Wait, you… what? Does that count? I… okay.”

I’m not sure how long I’m going to be here today. Or how many days this week I’ll have to report. But they have wifi, and I can bring my laptop, so there will be words.

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven, Book 2)

14424 / 90000 (16.03%)

Visions in Smoke drops tomorrow, and Children of Dreams next week. There’s still time to get those preorders in!

And that’s about all I’ve got today. This room is now packed, and it’s 8AM. Time to go be a responsible member of society.

Oct

2022

This is Halloween.

Sitting here today in my witchy tights, wearing a tarot card t-shirt. There are pumpkins in the living room, and a metric ton of candy that I can’t eat. The soundtrack for today includes Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, and my son went to school today wearing a colander on his head….

Yup. It’s Halloween.

I really do feel for the teachers today and tomorrow. Today they have excited kids looking forward to tonight (assuming that they didn’t do one of the many trunk-or-treat events this past weekend.) Tomorrow they’ll have exhausted, sugar-buzzed kids who will NOT want to do a durn thing.

Tonight, we’ll get the table set up in the driveway, and for the first time in two years, I’ll dress and go sit outside to give out candy. (Yes, I will be masked.) I need to put new batteries in my lightsaber.

Boy, that’s a string of words that I never before thought about putting together in that order.

For now, though, I’ve done my usual Monday things. Yoga. PT. Done the dishes. Need to put together a grocery order, but that’s for once I’m done with the blog post. And then there will be words. Hopefully, all the words before I have to head out to school, because I doubt I’ll get much done outside.

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven Duology, Book 1)

11204 / 90000 (12.45%)

***

The Sea Prince
(The Sea Prince, Book 1)

39892 / 120000 (33.24%)

Preorders are still open for Visions in Smoke and Children of Dreams. Visions in Smoke comes out November 8th, and Children of Dreams on November 15th. The paperback for Children of Dreams in also available for preorder wherever you buy print books. And I’m still trying to get my brain around the series being complete. It’s still very strange.

John Zebedee is still ongoing over on Vella, and if you’re a Prime member, they’re giving away tokens. Today is the last day to claim 200 tokens to use to read anything in the Vella library (since I told you, I hope you’d read mine! But it’s cool if you don’t.) I haven’t started the process on getting a cover for The Chronicles of John Zebedee, but that will be soon, and I’ll have the collected works up in March of 2023. That’s about all I know for the 2023 publishing schedule at the moment.

That’s about it for this week. See you next time!

(And for those who were curious? Yes, witchy tights. They’re sparkly. Got them from Snag.)

Oct

2022

Slightly Domesticated. But Only Slightly.

Every so often, I take some time off from writing to do something homey and domestic and… well, things that make people say things like “You actually DO that?”

I make and can my own preserves. I think I’ve talked about The Peach Truck in the blog — where I can get 20 pounds of fresh Georgia peaches delivered to Central Florida. In July, which is not my favorite time for canning, to be honest. But I get my box, and I make peach butter and peach jam, and peach chutney and cobbler and all sorts of goodies.

Saturday I discovered the existence of The Apple Truck. Same deal, only I kinda went a little wild, and we now have 32 lbs of fresh Michigan apples (that were picked a week ago!).

Which means that yesterday, there was baking. (there was also an apple crisp and a very unphotogenic strudel. The picture of the crisp doesn’t want to load.)

The pies are now in the freezer for Thanksgiving.

Today, there is apple butter, and the race is on! Will the apple butter be done in the canner before I have to leave to go get into carline?

(The answer to that question, by the way, is yes. Right after I wrote it, I got up to check on the apple butter. Ten minutes later, it’s in the canner. It has to stay at a rolling boil for 15 minutes, which means I’ll be turning off the burner and leaving.)

There has been some writing this past week, but my focus really was on getting Children of Dreams wrapped up. Which… Children of Dreams is wrapped up, and it’s now available for pre-order almost everywhere! (More places are being added daily — for some reason, some vendors are dragging their feet.) I’m still waiting on the final cover art for the print edition (because they needed the page count), so paperback preorders will be up sometime later this week. For the record? 598 pages. It’s a BEAST.

It’s also oddly sad, in a way. I’ve been living with this particular set of voices in my head for four and a half years. Owyn especially — he tends to take over any scene he’s in, and when I say that the hardest part of writing this series was keeping it from becoming The Owyn Show? That’s the honest truth.

So now I need to clear my head and start looking at other characters. Lorcan is a good one, and telling the rest of his story is going to be fun. I had a good week on this book. And I mostly ignored The Sea Prince, and we’ll see if he’s got his nose out of joint over it when I look at the file again.

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven, Book 2)

8314 / 90000 (9.24%)

***

The Sea Prince
(The Sea Prince, Book 1)

39892 / 120000 (33.24%)

We’re coming up on Halloween, and I’m still not sure if I’m going to set up a self-service grab your candy bowl (which we’ve done the past two years because pandemic), or if I’m going to set up the table and dress up and hand out candy while getting eaten by mosquitos. We’ll see.

And… I still have to go get candy!

Timer is going off. Off to carline! Then on to writing!

Oct

2022

Time is a concept and I don’t believe in it!

That title is a phrase my son has started saying, usually when we remind him that something has to be done by a certain date or time. At this moment, I’m pretty certain that time is a purely theoretical concept. If it was actually a thing, I wouldn’t have this much to do in a day, and I’d be getting a heck of a lot more sleep!

Preorders are live on Amazon for Visions in Smoke and Children of Dreams. They’re live everywhere else for Visions in Smoke, but I’m only halfway done with final edits on Children of Dreams, so it won’t be live in preorder anywhere but Amazon until next week (I can use a placeholder file on Amazon. I can’t do that anywhere else.)

I realized something this morning. The first four books of Heir to the Firstborn were updated in such a way that people who bought the books could just download the updates. You can’t do that with Visions in Smoke, because it’s NOT Heir to the Firstborn: The Crossroads. It’s a whole new book, with some major changes. But there are people who bought Crossroads, and who shouldn’t have to buy it again because I edited things.

SOOOO…. what I’m going to do is take care of you. If you bought Heir to the Firstborn: The Crossroads, email me via the contact me page. Answer two questions, and I’ll send a copy of Visions in Smoke to you. What two questions?

1. The Progress meets a group on the road the day they leave the Palace. What’s the name of the headman?

2. What’s the name of Othi’s horse?

You also have to tell me what format you want. So, three questions.

I’m working slowly on The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath, and procrastinating on The Sea Prince.

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath
(The White Raven, Book 2)

4909 / 90000 (5.45%)

***

The Sea Prince
(The Sea Prince, Book 1)

39892 / 120000 (33.24%)

Now, it’s still slow going, but that brings us back to the whole “if time were real, I’d have more of it…” There aren’t enough hours in the day for me to do everything that needs to be done.

What? So maybe do less?

Yeah, that’ll never work.

I’m tossing around the idea of a writing retreat for the beginning of 2023, so I can do a hard reset. Go off for a weekend so I can do nothing BUT write. And sleep. (Oh, and let’s be wild and maybe get a massage!)

It’s a lovely idea.

Sep

2022

I Have An Excite!!!

Why am I excited? Because Friday, this happened:

I had NO idea that the release date was Friday, or I’d have said something sooner!

Now, this new edition contains two bits of new material. The first is old new — I wrote The Ice Raven for the Princes of Air launch ten years ago, and it was serialized on the Circlet Livejournal. It’s never before been available for sale.

The second new bit of material is an exciting announcement, because you get a sneak peak at the first chapter of The White Raven: Morrigan’s Heir… coming in 2023 from Riverdale Avenue Books!

Lorcan finally gets his own books! Two of them — I’m starting The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath today. (That was the mystery synopsis I was working on a few weeks back.)

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath

0 / 90000 (0.00%)

***

The Sea Prince
(The Sea Prince, book 1)

37782 / 120000 (31.49%)

Yes, I am still going to be working on The Sea Prince.

In other writing news, I finished the rewrite of Children of Dreams, and I’ll be setting up a preorder for that and Visions in Smoke this week. I’ll post links to those on all the social media once they’re up. Bones of Earth went live last week, and is updating everywhere. Not sure what’s happening with the paperbacks — they’re listed as publishing, but Amazon hasn’t updated to the new information, and Barnes and Noble is still listing the old prices. Remember, if you find books with the old covers, it’s the old content.

Not much else to share, and I need to get on getting on to writing.

Have a great week!!!

Sep

2022

This Is Getting to Be a Habit

I used to post this blog early on Monday. Maybe one of these weeks, I’ll get back to doing that again.

This is not that week. Today has been a very Monday-ish Monday, and about midday, I hit the “No spoons, ONLY KNIVES!!!” point. I’m a little less frazzled now, but I still have this blog post to write and two more chapters of Children of Dreams to rewrite.

Speaking of that, I’m about halfway complete with the rewrite on Children of Dreams. I still think it will be ready for the November sale date. but I’m not setting up the preorder until I hand the book off to Darling Editor. Which I hope will be sometime next week.

The new edition of Forged in Fire went up for sale this week, and the ebooks look like they’re available almost everywhere. Paperbacks appear to be rolling out, too — Barnes and Noble says they have the new paperbacks, and Amazon has the new cover but the old book blurb. If you order and get a copy with the old cover, that’s the old content, too. Same with Written in Water.

I should have Bones of Earth ready to go sometime late this week or early next.

I love these covers, but you won’t get to see my FAVORITE until we hit book 5. Which I’m not showing you yet.

John Zebedee and the Monstrous Town is starting to wind down — there are two chapters left to go in this middle part of The Chronicles of John Zebedee. Then we hit the final portion — John Zebedee Meets the Witch-Queen of the Elvenlands, which will take us through to the end of the year. And at some point I have to give all of these images to a cover designer for the collected Chronicles of John Zebedee. Which may include bonus material, but I haven’t decided yet. I’d have to write it, and writing brain is still not entirely functional.

Proof that I’m LOUSY at marketing is that I’ve been completely forgetting to promote the collected Rebel Mage ebook, which will be coming out on October 4th! This will be Amazon only, and includes Counsel of the Wicked, Haven’s Fall and Where Home Lies.

There are still eleven days to go grab the updated Written in Water for FREE through the Fantasy Frenzy. Click the image and grab a pile of free books. Did I mention they’re free?

Back to the revision grindstone. Catch you all next week, with hopefully some new news to share!

Children of Dreams

Monday? Why Does It Have To Be Monday?

Preorders and Covers and Pages

It’s Still Monday.

Worlds Begin. Worlds End.

Civic Duty or Something.

This is Halloween.

Slightly Domesticated. But Only Slightly.

Time is a concept and I don’t believe in it!

I Have An Excite!!!

This Is Getting to Be a Habit

Works in Progress

Appearances

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