September Backlist Bonanza: 'The Amaranth Maze' and 'A Murder of Crows'

A new month, a new sale. Cool, cool. Now these two books, the last of the Arcana Europa collection, are special -- but not in the way you think. They were the twin runts of the litter, if you will, and they challenged (not fought, but just challenged) me at every turn. 

I suppose I should refer to them as the twin brats of the litter instead of the runts. That tracks. I do look back at these two with bemused fondness because my experience working on them still hangs in space above California, and it's become part of the state's climate now. 

That's a lot of candor for two books I'm supposed to be advertising for the month, but I'm nothing if not blunt in the best of times (my husband will say "That's because you're an INTJ, which makes you a borderline sociopath" -- but he's an ISFP, so what does he know? 😁 ). I'll touch on these books' creation when I post about each down the line, but yeah.

All writers have their problem children, and these two are mine -- at least in this particular collection. The good thing is that they're nowhere near as problematic as Eidolon (for which I'm still grieving, by the way). As I've said, they're just brats, and if they were human kids, they'd have spent a lot of time in the time out corner. Just saying.

Anyway...

THE AMARANTH MAZE

A legend of a long-dead murderer buried in a mysterious maze. A cruel, childish trick gone wrong. A dangerous vow made in trust by a shy and lonely young boy. And somewhere in the idyllic Swedish countryside, a centuries-old entity is summoned from its thorny grave.

Fourteen years later, twenty-two-year-old Fredrik Niequist returns from his travels, a brilliant financier who intends to break new ground in the Swedish agricultural industry by commercializing local nature magic. He is also newly engaged to a wealthy childhood friend in a cynical and loveless partnership.

Twenty-year-old Lauris Ahlberg, meanwhile, turns his mind to botany as a promising apprentice to an English botanic occultist. As he studies a flower species displaying marks of the night world, he realizes the tainted flowers' sudden appearance near his home and the ominous pattern they form signify a terrifying presence coming from a familiar source.

When Fredrik and Lauris cross paths again, old wounds break open, and promises of forever after ring hollow as the two awkwardly rekindle their friendship. And in the meantime, a creeping threat takes physical shape, breaking past its prison of thorns in order to lay claim to what has long belonged to it.

and then we have

A MURDER OF CROWS

Blessed with the unique talent of Inscriptive magic, twenty-year-old Mathieu Perrault leaves his old life in France and the orphanage that has been his home since his childhood for work as the new tutor to a five-year-old mute girl. His head filled with dreams and endless possibilities, Mathieu soon finds himself in a great house tucked away in the quiet wooded hills of the northern region of Luxembourg.

A house occupied by an ailing Dutch artist, one burdened with a terrible secret, and his charming family. A house shadowed by the sudden death of a well-loved servant. A servant, in fact, whose ghost stirs from its dusky world and seeks out Mathieu in terror. Through echoes of past events in unlit hallways, incoherent messages carved into walls, and the eerie vigilance of crows guarding the family, the ghost does what it can to warn Mathieu of a coming danger.

And in the midst of warmth, laughter, and family, of friendship and magic, of young love blooming against a backdrop of terrible heartache and tragedy, Mathieu searches for answers in a dreamer's bid to give the ghost the peace long denied it. All the while, a twisted shadow from the past creeps forward, inching closer and closer to him, a vicious hunger that leaves ruin and death in its wake.

In that isolated great house among the silent trees and the watchful crows, Mathieu will soon learn that the restoration of balance in a world gone awry doesn't always lie in the sphere of ordinary, mortal men. 

Both books are 50% off through the whole of September, and for a list of online stores where you can purchase copies of the e-books, just click the book titles above. Onward! 

Slowing Down. Slooooowing Dooooown. Also Hints On the Next Book (Plus Elton John!)

Now that I've decided to follow a six-month publishing calendar, it's really freed up so much time literally and in my head. This weekend, though I got up at my usual time to continue my weekday work schedule (best to follow that through the weekend so as not to mess with my sleep cycle), I didn't work on edits or revisions. I just messed around, reading and catching up on some subscriptions online, and it's such a weird, alien feeling. 

I never used to give myself that much space in the past. I never did. And I love it now. Of course, in addition to just messing around, I also dove into planning for Doppelgänger, which is coming out pretty surprisingly since I finally latched on to an unexpected interpretation, if you will, of what a doppelgänger actually is. Other story ideas complicated things too much, and a couple of them were dangerously similar to previous books I've written, so no go with those.

Anyway, as you know, music is one thing I turn to for inspiration -- sometimes on its own, sometimes partnered with other forms of art (literature, visual art, film, etc.) -- and with my increasing focus on music from my childhood and teen years for my work playlist, I found a couple of standouts that I now can't shake off. The ideas both songs (individually and together) trigger in my head are the most promising, and it helps that I can find common threads or connections between two completely different songs given their histories.

The musical collaboration of Elton John and Bernie Taupin was a massive, massive part of my childhood soundtrack. I loved their songs as a child though I naturally didn't understand the meaning of some of them. I was much older when I actually took the time to listen -- really listen -- to the lyrics, and that's why so many of their songs are now an integral part of my work playlist. 

I'm not going to get into my plans for Doppelgänger for now as it's still way too early for that, and I'm not done cleaning up The Twilight Lover. However, as a bit of a tease, here are the two songs that now inspired much of the plot:

God dang, it's a knife to the heart, both of these songs. I actually have visceral responses to the words and the music, and they're like the kind of pain that you don't want to let go. But that's probably me being dramatic? Nah. I love them both, and now that I understand what they're about, I love them even more, and I embrace the hurt.

Another thing about slowing down is that I'm planning to go back to writing stories by hand, which is, of course, a significantly slower method but more fruitful in ways than straight up typing on the computer. I've always loved writing in cursive, which clearly shows my age, but I've grown to appreciate how it forces me to take my time getting the words out -- that is, actually thinking about what I'm writing. I also think it'll be good for me to keep using my hand especially since I had thumb fusion surgery done a few years ago, and I can't hold a pen the same way again.

Oh, I can still do it, of course, but it's a hell of a lot trickier now than ever, and it's definitely a much slower process. I just hate to lose the fluidity of movement involved in writing cursive, especially since any handwritten messages I do at work are in block letters (because no one can read my writing, I guess). 

'The Twilight Lover' Blurb

My birthday gift to myself was to complete the first round of revisions and edits (yesterday), which leaves me time to work out the book blurb this morning. Since today's my last rest day for the summer, I'm going to take it easy and allow myself to be as lazy and unproductive as I can be (though reading isn't unproductive at all, is it?). 

I need to put some space between the recent revisions and the next round of edits, and it's going to be hard as hell to do with me being at home. The temptation is real, yo. Anyway, here's the book blurb:

In the fairy tale-like and colorful town of Glossop lies a small graveyard guarded by an ancient yew. Residents have long resigned themselves to its existence, with the poorer ones forced to trek through its dreary space just to get to work each day. 

For little Rowan Linville, the mysterious graveyard is both a necessary ordeal for his parents and a strange place where something in the shadows whispers after him. Something that might also be behind a number of personal items Rowan’s lost in his occasional walks through the graveyard in his mother’s company. As he grows older, those whispers follow him, and boys his age intent upon courting him suddenly fall victim to all kinds of misfortunes. Illness, broken bones, sprained limbs, and odd accidents plague hopeful suitors until Rowan is saddled with the reputation of a cursed youth.

Hope stirs at the arrival of the Akker family and their younger son, the dashing Tennyson, who is immediately drawn to Rowan. A couple of chance glimpses of the lonely boy stir Tennyson’s artistic muse and lay the foundation for a future courtship that seems to come straight out of a Shakespearean comedy—and tragedy, for that matter. 

That is because the entity that has attached itself to Rowan is not at all pleased with this new suitor, and it will do anything to keep him away. Unfortunately for the ghost of an embittered man, it appears it has met its match in a determined and ridiculously smitten Tennyson.    

I think this is close to the final version of the blurb, but don't hold me to it. I always tweak the blurb as I continue to work on edits, and this one's no exception. At any rate, I'll be sharing the final version (if any) in a future post. 

By the way, I have an update on my upcoming publishing calendar. Recently, I said I'm thinking about spacing out the release dates some more since keeping to a four-month schedule is starting to wear me down especially with my day job holding steady with its volume of work. I gotta take care of myself some more, and that involves easing up on the gas pedal where my writing's concerned. 

I'll be going back to my six-month calendar, which will be a May / November timeline. Pretty easy to remember for all, and it was the schedule I followed in the past when I was still writing full-length novels. I mean, in some places my long novellas actually count as short novels, but I'm still adhering to the label of long novellas. My chosen word count is perfect, anyway, and I love working with it.

Tangent aside, that's my plan, which means that the following will be out next year: Doppelgänger and The Shadow Groom. And in 2027, we'll have Camera Obscura and A House of Profane Gods. I'll likely finish these books well ahead of schedule, but I'll plow through the edits and revisions as I usually do and list each book accordingly. Whether or not the final listing happens a month or two months or even three months before the actual release date is neither here nor there. If my speed puts me way ahead of the game, I'm not going to change the dates. 

What I'll expect to do in that case is to work on the next book even if its release date ends up a year out. All that extra time will be spent planning upcoming books, anyway, so there's no lost time at all. Plus self-care. Can't forget about that.

My Book News Page has been updated with the new calendar. 

Oh, Look, a Holiday

Wow. I'm finally enjoying a five-day break from work, which is something I haven't done since the lockdowns. There's a really long story behind the significant lack of PTO hours accrued since 2020, and I'm not going to start. Suffice it to say, I reached a milestone at my current job and am finally (FINALLY) reaping the benefits. I'm expected back next Thursday, and this holiday-of-sorts was planned specifically to fall on my birthday, which is Tuesday (Aug. 26).

I originally requested all of next week off, but I changed it as I wanted to allow myself one last hurrah in November before the holidays come, and the company goes into black out mode till after New Year's. 

So what's been up with me? Well, writing, of course -- or more specifically, revising and editing The Twilight Lover. It's also giving me lots of room to think more and more about the book that comes after (Doppelgänger) and how best to approach it. I've been significantly enjoying writing and revising + editing The Twilight Lover that I'm again being swayed into turning Doppelgänger into a dark comedy, but I'm trying to rein my impulses in. Until I settle down on a plot since there are so many paths to take with the idea (so what else is new?), the tone can be considered afterwards. 

The Shadow Groom, which comes after Doppelgänger, is a comedy, though, while Camera Obscura and A House of Profane Gods are both drama, so at least I've got some kind of balance going by way of tone. But as always, that's looking too far ahead, and I need to zero in on one thing at a time. 

In other news, my library card's been getting a wild workout lately. I've been checking out two or even three books at a time, and then there's also Hoopla, where I can check out digital books or audio books or even films and series. That said, I'm reverting back to print books when it comes to library loans, but as for purchasing books I want to own, I'm still a heavy e-book user. This is the only "vice" I now have as I get older, and what used to excite me in my twenties or even thirties no longer raise my interest. 

My eyesight needing extra help with font size adjustments aside, a quieter and more solitary pursuit has always been my thing. As a kid, I've frustrated people by pointedly ignoring them because I'd rather read my book than be with them (Dad absolutely loved seeing me read, though, so thank you, Dad). 

I recently reset my e-book library by updating old Kindle collections and turning them into .epub files, which I then re-uploaded while removing other books that are either one-time reads or DNFs. At the moment my e-book library's reached that sweet spot of containing only my favorite books (which I do reread when the mood strikes) and new titles. And so between that and my jaunts to the public library, my reading addiction's nicely satisfied while I'm also able to keep a close tab on my spending.

So you can guess what I'll be doing through Wednesday, eh? SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME! I mean, really, that'd be the best kind of dilemma to have as far as I'm concerned.  

'Helleville' and Road Trips

And not to mention Beetlejuice. 😀 

It's been a century since I last enjoyed a road trip, and that includes my favorite destination of the Sierra Nevada mountain range -- well, specifically Mammoth Lakes, Yosemite, and all the incredible places east of the mountains. And it's this glorious mountain range and its surrounding landscape that shaped Helleville's otherworldly nature. 

One of my favorite movies (ever!), Beetlejuice, got me worked up about writing an environment and its residents that were specifically designed to frighten people back into the straight and narrow but ultimately failed. And, largely, because it was so convenient not to have to pay for anything and also so much fun living in a literal ghost town with your own house ghost. 

What I love about Beetlejuice was how much more interesting the world of the dead seemed compared to the living even though bureaucracy is just as bad as that in the world of the living. Still infinitely funnier and interesting, but you get my drift. It's echoed in another Tim Burton classic, The Corpse Bride, which I also adore. In that movie, the world of the dead is a thousand times more colorful and fun than the drab and dreary world of the living. 

Anyway, I ran with that idea while locating Helleville in a desert-like area that mirrors the Sierras. And as much as I didn't want any of the residents to leave (go me!), of course I needed to demonstrate that the punishment doled out to sinners is stupidly short-sighted (which isn't even the worst thing about the machinations behind Noah and Dot's inter-dimensional trip). I do highly regret them leaving their house ghosts behind, but that can be a plot bunny for another book entirely. 

This song helped me along not so much because of the music itself but because of the video and its celebration of untamed nature. The location chosen also accurately captures the gorgeous and awe-inspiring sights I enjoyed when I went to those road trips.

Helleville is currently 50% off through the end of this month. Go here for the book page and the links to all online stores where you can get a copy.