Heir to the Firstborn

Apr

2023

Sniffle

I have no idea what this virus was that hit me like a ton of lead-coated bricks. It wasn’t the flu, and it wasn’t Covid — the tests for both came back negative. If it was a cold, it was a much beefier cold than I have ever experienced before, because it’s been over a week and I’m still dragging. I’m better than I was, but still… the brain fog is real. And the fatigue. There was a lot of sleep last week. And surprisingly, there was a decent amount of words. I can’t remember what I wrote for most of them, but my word counter says I did actually write.

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

64046 / 90000 (71.16%)

I have a month and a half to finish this up before the end of the school year. And Camp Nanowrimo started on the 1st, so I’m observing National Novel Finishing month, and I’m going to get as much of this done in April as I can.

Once this book is in, I’ll be done for the summer, at least until edits on Morrigan’s Heir come in. So I’ll be working on the worldbuilding for The Sea Prince, so I can get a better handle on that book, as well as the synopsis for the book I didn’t think I was going to write — Heir to the Firstborn, book SEVEN. I remember distinctly telling someone that I was done with Adavar. There were no more stories to be told in that universe. And then the main character walked out of my subconscious mind and said “Really? What about me?” His name is Kaspin and he’s just as much of a brat as Owyn. Once I have a story and a title, I’ll start writing and putting this up a chapter at a time on Patreon, the same as the original books. I don’t anticipate starting back with either The Sea Prince or this unnamed Heir to the Firstborn book until fall, but we’ll see how it goes over the summer.

I’ll also be working on putting together an outline for Imaginative Anthropology over the summer, so I can start planning out more targeted research and reading. That’s something I can do while traveling, which we have planned for the summer. This way to the college tours!

Mar

2023

AHHHH-chooo!!!!

I went to a conference that had confirmed COVID cases, and came home to catch a cold.

It is just a cold — I tested at home, then went to urgent care for a flu test this morning and they also ran a COVID test. Both came back negative, so it’s just a cold. And I’m sure that I caught it at home because both my husband and son got sick last week and shared it with me. We have no idea where they caught it.

I haven’t been this sick in nearly two years (we all got Disney crud when we went right before the Delta wave hit in 2021). I’ve forgotten what it was like!

Now, this means that my brains are soup, and my focus is nonexistent. But I have two-thirds of a manuscript and more words to write, so here we are.

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

59593 / 90000 (66.21%)

I have just over a month and a half, and I’m fairly confident that I’ll have this done on time. Assuming that my brains stop feeling like soup.

I realized something the other day. June will be the tenth anniversary of the publication of my modern erotic classic* House of Sable Locks. I went and talked to the publisher, and there might be a little something in the works for the anniversary. More as I know more. But ten year anniversary of what may arguably be the best book I have ever written is something I hadn’t expected to get away from me.

It’s a little daunting, to think that your best book ever was your second book, and that every book since then has been trying to reach those heights. I think I came really close with Written in Water. But I’m also the worst person in the world to rank my own books. I love them all! Same with characters (although Owyn will always be my absolute favorite.)

Speaking of Owyn, I got bonked by a plot bunny last week, and there’s more than likely going to be a seventh book set in the same world as Heir to the Firstborn. One of the main characters waltzed out of my subconscious and wants his own book, thank you very much. He’s going to be as much of a brat as Owyn. I can tell already. No title yet, but once I know, and once I get started writing, those will go up on Patreon in the same way that Heir to the Firstborn did.

It’s getting late, and there’s dinner than needs to be made. I discovered a vegan Tikka Masala sauce, and I haven’t had Tikka Masala in a year and a half. Time to go see if I like it! (I hope I do. I bought four jars!)

*House of Sable Locks was named a modern erotic classic by the now-defunct Cliterati magazine, and I found out while on a field trip to Legoland with a bunch of fourth graders!

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.

Oct

2022

Cover Reveal!

If you’re subscribed to my newsletter, you saw these on Friday. (If you’re not… well, you could be. There’s a sign-up widget either to the right, or down below this post, depending on if you’re using an laptop or a mobile device.)

Anyway… Patreon patrons saw these first, newsletter subscribers got them Monday, and now here’s the big, wide reveal of the final two covers of the Heir to the Firstborn series!

I think Visions in Smoke is my new favorite of my covers. Preorders for both books are open now on Amazon, and will be coming shortly everywhere else. Click the covers to be taken to the preorder.

The other big announcement that went out on Friday was that Riverdale Avenue Books has acquired The White Raven: Morrigan’s Heir! Okay, blog readers knew that two weeks ago — sometimes, there is a benefit to following both the blog and the newsletter, since the blog is weekly and the newsletter is once a month.

As usual with me and writing historical fantasy, I have to look things up. A lot. So this week, my topics have been Roman medicine, surgical techniques (including the use of fibulae to close wounds!) and what would Cretic wine have tasted like (Cretic wine being wine laced with opium.) And I’m not even done with chapter one!

(Yeah, I’m not done with chapter one after two weeks. The writing has been slow.)

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath

2859 / 90000 (3.18%)

***

The Sea Prince
(The Sea Prince, book 1)

39655 / 120000 (33.05%)

In other news, the final part of the Chronicles of John Zebedee went live on Kindle Vella this morning. John Zebedee Meets the Witch Queen of the Elvenlands is a long one, and will run until the end of January. Amazon is currently running a promotion where you can read 100 episodes a day for free. It ends tomorrow, so if you want to read the first two parts of John Zebedee, you can find Heir to the Elvenlands here, and Monstrous Town here.

Oh, me, will you look at the time? It’s right at this moment 1:30 PM and I have to leave in twenty minutes. That’s all for this week. Stay safe, everyone.

Oct

2022

Recovery

It’s been a long week, and one that didn’t involve nearly as many words as I’d have liked.

Last Tuesday, we settled in for what promised to be two days of storm. Schools were cancelled for Wednesday, because Ian was bearing down on Tampa Bay. Now, we’re two hours from Tampa, and we were already starting to see the initial rains on Tuesday as we got home. The storm was MASSIVE.

You’ve probably seen the news at this point. We were extremely lucky — we didn’t flood. We didn’t even lose power. Yard cleanup took two days, and I have the roof guys coming next week to check and see if the roof made it through the winds. We were relatively unscathed.

But I also did next to no writing last week, because I had next to no focus, and very little sleep (hurricanes are LOUD!)

The White Raven: Morrigan’s Wrath

1316 / 90000 (1.46%)

***

The Sea Prince
(The Sea Prince, book 1)

38914 / 120000 (32.43%)

What I did do was work on incorporating edits into the Heir to the Firstborn books, and the first three are up. Wings of Air will go up later this week, and the preorders for Visions in Smoke and Children of Dreams will be up later this week as well. I am not quite sure what the heck is going on with the paperbacks — they’re supposed to be available, but no one seems to have them yet. I’m about ready to order them myself and list them on my website — I’ll have an exclusive!

Hrm…might not be the worst idea…

You all did know that I have a bookstore link on the website, didn’t you? The new books aren’t listed there yet — I don’t have any stock on hand, but copies are on the way.

The final chapter of John Zebedee and the Monstrous Town went live this morning, and next week, the first three chapters of John Zebedee Meets the Witch-Queen of the Elvenlands go live. I’ll have that link next Monday, so watch for the blog next week. It’s a long one — it’ll run until January.

The box set for Rebel Mage drops tomorrow, too. I’ve been very lax in my marketing, so this has basically flown under the radar. It’s Amazon exclusive and on Kindle Unlimited.

Something to look forward to next week? The cover reveals for Visions in Smoke and Children of Dreams! In the meantime, check out Wings of Air, which should go live this week.