Happy New Year

Dec

2025

Merry Everything and Happy Always

I’m calling it — this is my last blog post of 2025. I’m officially taking that break I mentioned last week, and I’m doing it right this time. So today is when I get to wish you a merry everything and happy always.

I’m currently starting the wrap up of 2025. Planning for 2026 happens this week and next, and I’ll close the book on 2025 on the 21st, after the Ravenflight signing at Spellbound (info on that is below.) I can honestly say that it’s been an excellent year. I tried some new things, and they worked very well, and I’ve already got events set up for 2026, with more in process that will be added to the calendar as they are confirmed.

It was a very good year for releases, too. 2025 saw the release of The Sea Prince, Ravenfall and Ravenflight, and there’s still a chance of at least one more release (I haven’t been given a date for either Hidden Things rerelease or Witchmas.)

What’s on the publishing schedule for 2026? The only thing I can say for certain is that The Coral Throne will be out late winter/early spring. The manuscript went off to the sensitivity reader Sunday, and I don’t expect to get those edits back until after the holidays, so I’ll work on them in January. On the traditional publishing side? I’m going to get King of Swords finished, and send it and Dead Man’s Hand off to the publisher. There will be some or all of Swords of Charlemagne coming out. And we’ll see what else — there are several manuscripts in limbo that may get the nod, and what happens with those will determine what I work on after I finish King of Swords.

But wait… it’s the holidays. Where are the cookies, Liz?

Cookiepocalypse starts Wednesday over in Instagram.

So there we are. Merry Everything. Happy Always. See you in 2026.

Promotions

Smashwords End of the Year Sale!

My collection of ebooks is available as part of the Smashwords 2025 End of Year Sale! Find your next favorite book this month at http://smashwords.com/sale and follow @smashwords for more promos like this! You can find my books here!

Now Available!

A hero. A son of Eire. A reckoning long overdue.

Lorcan never asked for glory. Crowned a noble and hailed as a savior after crushing rebellion, he walks the marble halls adored by all—except himself. Haunted by prophetic visions, he sees not triumph, but torment: his family caged, his homeland threatened, and his cousin’s dark ambitions on the rise.

He knows where he must go.

Leaving behind the splendor of Empire, Lorcan returns to the emerald wilds of Eire, where ancient magic stirs and old loyalties are tested. Beside him stand his mates and his chosen kin—fierce, loyal, and willing to follow him into the heart of danger. But the blood that binds can also betray, and the most dangerous enemy may not be on the battlefield… but seated at his own family’s table.

Now Available!

Stories of Love and Desire

Join us on THEOReads, where you can find stories that celebrate love in all forms, and in all heat levels. Check out the December curated recommendations! (Click the graphics!)

Work in Progress

Tales from the Arena: King of Swords
(Tales from the Arena, book 4)

35962 / 90000 (39.96%)

Appearances

Ravenflight Signing!
Spellbound Books
December 20th, 2025
12:00PM – 2:00 PM
Sanford, FL

2026 Appearances

Galentine’s Day Sip and Shop
Native Home Marketplace
February 5th, 2026
6:00pm – 9:00 pm

***

ICFA
March 18-21th, 2026
Orlando, FL

***

Storyteller Summit
April 11th, 2026
11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Oviedo, FL.

***

Summer Lovin’ Book Festival
June 6th, 2026
11:00 AM – 5:00 PM
Oviedo, FL.

***

Tanoshii Con
August 22nd – 23rd, 2026
Ocean Center Arena, Daytona Beach.

***

Smut Lovers Conference
September 16th – 20th, 2026
Orlando, FL

***

Page and Pen Festival
October 3rd, 2026
11:00 AM – 5:00 PM

Jan

2025

We’re All Gonna Be Safe…

There’s a Youtube personality named Ranboo, who made up a little song while playing Five Nights at Freddy’s. It starts “we’re all gonna be safe…”

This, I think, is the most accurate reaction to 2025 so far. Don’t you think?

Today is technically my first day back at the keyboard, even though I was doing some business related things last week. Inventory of books on hand, repacking boxes, reconciling accounts, paying taxes and filing copyright. I’m waiting for page proofs on Morrigan’s Heir, which might make an appearance in late January (cross your crossables! As soon as I have a date, I’ll let you know!) The Sea Prince is back from the sensitivity editor, with surprisingly few suggestions! I’ll be getting those done and running them past the editor again, and then we’ll work on getting it out into the world. Looking at maybe April? It’ll depend on when Morrigan’s Heir drops.

I finally really looked at King of Swords and realized that yes, it was two books. So Tales from the Arena: Dead Man’s Hand is currently marinating and I’ll print it off for edits next week. Tales from the Arena: King of Swords already has a wordcount already because I moved two chapters out of Dead Man’s Hand. I also plan on starting The Coral Throne (The Sea Prince, book 2), but right now, I haven’t even set up the file in Scrivener. Maybe later tonight.

I’ve also set up a number of in-person events for this year — I’m trying to have at least one a month, because when I sat down to do my accounting for 2024, I found that most of my income came from in person sales. Which proves once again something I learned when I was still making jewelry — no one can sell your product better than you yourself. The list is below — I’ll be all around the Central Florida area, so if you’re in the area on one of those dates, come check out the show! (Note: I will not be selling at ICFA. I’ll be moderating a panel entitled Reimagining the Night: New Faces of Old Terrors.)

Right now, we’re bracing for winter weather here in Florida (I just saw they’re projecting the temperature to be in the high 20s for tomorrow morning) while friends and family are seeing snow into the double digits. So everyone be careful out there, and stay warm.

Catch you next week!

Work in Progress

Tales from the Arena: King of Swords
(Tales from the Arena, book 4)

5018 / 90000 (5.58%)

The Coral Throne
(The Sea Prince, book 2)

0 / 100000 (0.00%)

Promotions

It’s Bookmas! Well, okay, it’s ALMOST Bookmas. Starting January 10th, and running the rest of the month, you can get free ebooks and free tools for writers, with a new book or tool every day! Sign up for the daily emails here.

Appearances

6th Annual Love is in the Air
February 8th, 2025
Lakeside Community Center
Port Orange, FL

***

ICFA
March 19 – 22nd, 2025
Orlando, FL

***

3rd Annual Spring is in the Air
April 13th, 2025
Venetian Center,
Leesburg, FL

***

6th Annual Mother’s Day Bazaar
May 10th, 2025
Ormond Beach Elks Lodge
Ormond Beach, FL

***

3rd Annual Summer Artisan Market
June 29th, 2025
Brannon Center
New Smyrna Beach, FL

***

Smut Lovers: The Conference
September 17th – 21st, 2025
Orlando, FL

Jan

2024

Rabbit, Rabbit!

Welcome to 2024!! Saying Rabbit Rabbit at the new year is supposed to bring good luck. No, I’m not sure where it came from, but rabbit rabbit all the same.

It’s been a lovely, relaxing holiday, but it’s time to start ramping up to get back to work. I’m not going to get back to writing for another week — well, not back to writing The Sea Prince, at any rate. There’s something that popped into my head yesterday that I need to write down so I can see if I need to chase it or bank it for later. But when a really compelling voice waltzes into your head and makes you stop to listen, it’s something that need to be written down. We’ll see where it goes.

That story seed wasn’t the only thing to waltz into my head this holiday season. I had a character start talking to me, and I thought it was for something new. Nope… he’s one of the big bads for the Children of the Sword series, and I think the reason that it wasn’t coming together was that I was looking one way, and the story was really over there. What does that mean? It means that, while Swords of Charlemagne and The Chronicles of John Zebedee all exist in the same universe, the convergence of those two series isn’t happening where I thought it was.

Now, I’m not saying I’m going to run out and start writing Children of the Swords tomorrow. There’s too much research to be done — I know nothing about Edwardian England or WWI. That’s currently being addressed, so I’ll say that we can plan to see The Seer (Children of the Sword, book 1) at some point in the next few years.

What am I going to work on this year? Well, edits for Morrigan’s Heir will be coming this month, and then I have to read and revise Morrigan’s Wrath and send that in. Edits for Bonds of Blood and Steel will be along sometime later this year, and I’ll be turning those around as quick as I can. I plan to have The Sea Prince done no later than April 30th, because I’m taking May off entirely (why? High school graduation, that’s why!) Then, come July or August, I’ll be diving into Tales from the Arena: Dead Man’s Hand, because it is time to wrap up that series.

But that all starts next week. This week? I’m still on vacation. Still reading, still researching, still resting my brain.

Preorders

Coming January 30th to all your favorite bookstores — Valley of Shadows (Heir to the Firstborn, Book 7)

The print preorder will be set up sometime this week — I am waiting on the wraparound cover art.

Works in Progress

The Sea Prince
(The Coral Throne, Book 1)

63623 / 120000 (53.02%)

Appearances!

For ONE DAY ONLY, I’ll be having a Meet and Greet at the Spellbound Bookstore in Sanford, Florida! I will be there for 3PM to 4PM on January 21st, 2024. Come out and support small business!

Jan

2023

Rabbit, Rabbit!

So… here’s 2023. Let’s see how this goes. Here’s hoping for better than the previous three years.

Back to work for me today. There was a little noodling around with words over my break — it’s hard to stop. But on the whole, I really took time off for the first time in ages, and I feel so much better for it.

What’s in the cards for 2023? Well, I’m back to working on The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath.

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

20875 / 90000 (23.19%)

I have edits to work on for The Chronicles of John Zebedee, which should be coming out in March, and edits for The White Raven: Morrigan’s Heir will be coming in at some point. I’m keeping a list of things that I’m noticing need to be updated in Book 1 as I work on Book 2. Things like… I wrote Morrigan’s Heir before I wrote Heir to the Firstborn. Now that Morrigan’s Heir is going to be published, I really need to change the name of that one character… Lorcan has a friend in book one named Owyn. Nope. Can’t use that name again. Needs to be retired. So once those edits come in, I’ll make the changes. I found some stock photography that I loved for the cover, and sent it on to the designer. His mockups look amazing and I can’t wait to see the finished cover!

In other news, I’m still working on Imaginative Anthropology, reading through various anthropology and folklore texts. The outline is slowly coalescing, and at some point, I’ll actually start writing the book instead of just researching. Rebel Mage will be published wide next month — I’m taking the ebooks out of Kindle Unlimited and putting them up everywhere. That should happen sometime around February 10th or thereabouts. And I’m still working on figuring out what’s going to happen with my Patreon, and if I’m keeping it open or shifting my serialization over to Kindle Vella. I should check in with my Patrons about that. I’m still not sure what the next serial will be — maybe I should serialize The Sea Prince? I don’t know. I have to get back to poking away at that one. It was moving when I put it to the side again. I need to open the file again. But not yet. I’ll wait until John Zebedee edits are done before starting back in on The Sea Prince.

What else in in the cards? ICFA in March, and I’m not sure what else. I haven’t heard anything from Boskone about being a virtual guest, and it’s too early to plan Necronomicon. We will be doing some traveling this year because Teen Boy has college on the horizon, and there are some colleges that we should tour. And at some point, I should really decide what I’m doing about going back for my MFA (the two real questions are If? and When?) I should nail that down this year.

And that’s my 2023 in a nutshell.

Dec

2021

C is for Cookie. That’s Good Enough for Me!

Cookiepocalypse 2021 is done, and because my website is being a bit strange today (to go with everything else!) I can’t load the pictures to show you. But I can link to the Instagram hashtag, so you can see all the cookies in their carby goodness!

Writing also happened last week, in and around cookies. I’m now just about at the halfway mark for Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home, and it’s coming along nicely.

Heir to the Firstborn: The Way Home
(Heir to the Firstborn, book 6)

72587 / 150000 (48.39%)

Tomorrow is the day that Table of Stone goes wide — it’s out of KU already, but I give it a day to make sure that Amazon doesn’t get grumpy at me because I had the temerity to put something that’s coming out of KY up before they release it. Not all the bookstores are up in that link yet, but the book will be in ALL the bookstores. Which reminds me — I need to add it to Eden Books.

And it’s either a good thing or a bad thing that there were so many cookies in the house, because last week, in the midst of baking, I made the very difficult decision to walk away from the Romance Writers of America.

No, I’m not talking about it. I’m still processing. I probably will be for a while. But I know that the work I started will go on — I’ve passed all my notes, and all my contacts on, and I’ll be sitting down with my replacement tomorrow. The Romance Education Initiative will go on, so there’s some comfort in that.

But 2022 is going to be an interesting year.

I may not blog next week. We’ll see. If I don’t, then I wish you all the happiest of New Years.

Jan

2020

Rabbit, Rabbit!

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2020!

It’s been an interesting end of the year in Romancelandia. If you’re following me on Twitter, you know what I mean — you’ve possibly heard or seen something about the current disaster in the RWA.

However, I’m not going to discuss that here. For one thing, it’s changing by the minute, and anything I write now will be out of date tomorrow. For another… not what I want to talk about right now!

Last night, I sat down to do something I’d seen a lot of other writers doing on social media — a round-up of my decade in publishing. By the time I was done, I had 20 tweets, most of them at maximum characters, and I’d realized that this past decade in publishing was my entire HISTORY of romance publishing. I made my first sales in 2009. Those were short story sales. I didn’t sell my first novel until 2011.

In 8 years, I’ve sold or self-published 15 novels. 14 of those are available, and that last one is coming from Circlet eventually. According to my spreadsheet, I have seven more finished, ready to either sell or self-publish. Two of those are in slush at Circlet, and the others are the Swords of Charlemagne books and Blood Bound (which is finished but still raw.) I have one novel in process, and one that I’m about to start. Oh, and that’s not counting at all the two novels that I started and set aside, and that I’ll get back to eventually.

So, all in all, for this past decade in publishing? I’ve been busy.

So, what’s on the plan for 2020 and beyond?

An agent would be nice. I should try that sometime. I’ll start shopping Blood Bound around once the initial beta-reading is done.

If I don’t have a solid bite on Swords of Charlemagne by the end of May, I’ll look in to starting the self-publishing process with that series.

Finishing up Heir to the Firstborn, and coming up with something else for the Patreon.

Writing John Zebedee and the Elf-King’s Son for the Wild West Paranormal box set project. I’m looking forward to that one.

Starting either Blood Brothers or The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath. Which depends on which I sell first — Blood Bound or The White Raven: Morrigan’s Heir.

If I keep at this pace, and if there’s still an RWA to award the pin, then by the time Nationals rolls around in 2021, I’ll be wearing a 25 romances published pin.

Considering that our current (questionable) President of the RWA only has five published novels in the same amount of time? Yeah, that’s kind of a big deal.

I still have a couple of days of holiday left. Monday morning, people go back to work and school, and I start making words again!

Jan

2018

Work in Progress: The White Raven, week 11 and 2017 wrap up

Here it is, only a few minutes to midnight on December 31st. The end of 2017.

Not a bad year. I sold six books between September and June, which is a new personal record. I wrapped up the Rebel Mage series. I got to attend RWA Nationals, won a major award, participated in my first RWA Literacy Signing, and celebrated 20 years of marriage all in the same week.

I’m a little behind on where I want to be on The White Raven, but not terrible so. I’m just a hair over 2K words off my planned wordcount, so I’m still on target to finish on time. I’m going to add a bit to my daily words in January to make up the difference.

The White Raven
Week Eleven Total Wordcount

And this post has wrapped the years. It’s now 2018 in Florida, and I wish everyone a happy and healthy new year.

Dec

2015

Congratulations! It's a draft!

Total words on Burden of Truth: Book Two of The Rebel Mage

I’m calling it done. I’ll compile it and send it off to the beta readers and to the editor tomorrow. It’s rough, but it’s DONE.

Jan

2014

Another sale!

The short story Infernal Machine, which originally appeared in the anthology Carnal Machines, has been accepted into the 2014 Best Men’s Erotica from Burning Book Press!

Infernal Machine was written by my close personal friend Elias A. St. James. (wink)

Dec

2012

2012 in review, and 2013 plans.

I posted this to Facebook a few hours ago:

“Hello, is this 2013? Yes, I’m happy to say that we’ve had an opening, and we’re going to be offering you a contract, if you’re available to start immediately. Oh, good. Thank you, and welcome aboard.

“What? Oh, the previous contractor? Well, I shouldn’t say this, but he had to be let go. Perhaps… fired with extreme prejudice is a better way of putting it.

“I’m sure we won’t have the same issues with YOU!”

In a nutshell? 2012 sucked rocks on a personal level. Professionally, though? Not bad!

Sold:

To Market to Forbidden Fiction (reprint)
O, Promise Me! to Circlet Press (THIS is the one I’m most proud of selling!)
Kidnapped by Pirates to Forbidden Fiction
Fools Rush In to Forbidden Fiction (reprint)

Still under consideration:

Sapphires and Gold to Circlet Press
Heart’s Master to Circlet Press
Holy Palmer’s Kiss to Forbidden Fiction

Can’t sell, but FUN to write (aka fanfiction)

On His Brother in Law’s Secret Service.

I had rejections, too. It wouldn’t be publishing if I didn’t!

Now. Plans for 2013!

To Finish (all started — these are my primary tasks until I get the page proofs for House of Sable Locks!):

From Dusk til Dawn
Tales from the Arena
Sea Prince (To be written with Danielle Jones)
The Willow Sword

To Outline (in order)

Holy Orders ( Sequel to Heart’s Master)
Hidden Things (Mystere Book 1)
Steam and Screw
The School
Temple of the Mysteries
The White Raven (sequel to Princes of Air)
Color Wars (that YA)
Coral Throne (sequel to Sea Prince)
The Lady and the Sword (Mystere Book 2)
Ashes and Light (Mystere Book 3)
Tablets of Stone (Mystere Book 4)

To Sell

Nomad’s Moon (currently being revised)
Exile’s Moon

On Hiatus

Wanderer’s Moon

And of course there will be the random short stories thrown in for good measure.

Happy New Year, everyone! See you next year!

Happy New Year

Merry Everything and Happy Always

Promotions

Smashwords End of the Year Sale!

Now Available!

Stories of Love and Desire

Work in Progress

Appearances

2026 Appearances

We’re All Gonna Be Safe…

Work in Progress

Promotions

Appearances

Rabbit, Rabbit!

Preorders

Works in Progress

Appearances!

Rabbit, Rabbit!

C is for Cookie. That’s Good Enough for Me!

Rabbit, Rabbit!

Work in Progress: The White Raven, week 11 and 2017 wrap up

Congratulations! It's a draft!

Another sale!

2012 in review, and 2013 plans.

Works in Progress

Appearances

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