This…was not what I originally had planned for this month. Or, actually, this side of the summer. I was intending this for much later in the year, but as I’ve mentioned before, plans have this funny way of biting you on the behind. So here we are!
This is a little scene that’s been in and out of various projects over the years without ever quite finding a good fit so I thought I would share it here as a little light relief.
A traveller and a brigand meet and talk. Sort of…
Happy reading 🙂
So here we are. This was originally intended as February’s Friday Fiction, in the spirit of Valentine’s Day. It’s also a sequel to the August Friday Fiction piece, Waking Up, picking up six months after the end of that story (so if you haven’t ready it yet, now’s a good opportunity!).
I always planned to do a second story in that particular little universe and when I was casting around for something that would be suitable for a Valentinesy story, this seemed to fit the bill. It’s not a romance, just two people learning to find their way – one a little more literally than the other!
Whether or not there will be any more to Davide’s story remains to be seen – I have no plans at the moment, but that’s always subject to change and inspiration!
Read In A French Café
Happy Reading 🙂
Slightly delayed due to a work crisis and a migraine attack…
As mentioned, this is a sort of tease for Ved’ma. One of the questions I had to ask myself about the plot of Ved’ma was: why does all this happen? I walked literal miles pondering it, and then around about this time last year, I got it. As much as Ved’ma is the story of a young woman learning how to be so much more than she was born to be, it’s also a story of folly.
Of people making very much the wrong choices.
Of people reacting out of desparation rather than reason.
And that starts here. With a man driven to a terrible choice.
Read A Hard Bargain
Happy reading 🙂
As promised (and just about in time!) this month’s Friday Fiction is here and it’s another of the scenelets that lurk around in the recesses of my file store.
This is another piece that ties to the Mirna project, listed on the projects page, but unlike On The Marshes, this represents an idea that’s been cut completely as the project has moved in a different direction from where this would have gone.
Read Midnight Escape
Happy reading!
For this month’s short fiction, another of the building blocks for Paradise Falls. This time, it’s Weiland Fell. He’s a member of the Galactic Alliance Peace Keepers and, specifically, a specialist in hostage negotiation and search-and-rescue ops. He’s got a streak of daredevil in him and a willingness to put himself in harm’s way to protect others.
He also happens to come from Malchiar, a non-Alliance world with a bad reputation that Weiland feels he has to try and make up for.
Of course, not all rescues have a happy ending…as Weiland is about to be reminded of.
Happy (or maybe not, this time) reading 🙂
For this month’s (main!) Friday Fiction piece, a spot of historical fantasy. Set in Greece, during the Peloponnesian war, it’s both a chance to dust off parts of my degree (roughly a sixth of my degree was about this period!) and an opportunity to fill in a little of the history in the Elsehere universe.
In my original plan for Sekhmet, some of the flashbacks/dreams were intended to feature Greece in this period. However, as Sekhmet took shape, they ceased to make sense in the context of a story very much more rooted in Egyptian history, but just because they didn’t make it into the book, it doesn’t mean I forgot about the idea and that’s led both to this short story and to something that will be happening in Sage. (Note: no spoilers in here for Sage!)
You don’t have to have read any of the Elsehere books to understand this. You also don’t have to have studied Greek history – I have tried to keep the history references to a minimum, but there are a few. Ultimately, this is a story of a seer who knows she’s living in interesting times but who’s about to learn just how interesting.
And, in case you missed it in last week’s update, this month’s other Friday Fiction is a 100 word drabble entitled the Book of Bob.
Read The Book of Bob
Okay; that’s it for this month. Happy reading 🙂
After a delightfully quiet August, it is fair to say that September has exploded in all sorts of directions, some expected, some not so much; some very public and some very personal. All of which is to say: what in the heck has just happened this week?!
So, was August as productive as I hoped? Well, yes and no. On the yes front, I’ve got not one but two pieces of Friday Fiction ready for this month (more on that in a moment). On the no front, I’m still drafting Ved’ma and I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiight be starting to think I’m not going to make my intended publication date. At this point, I have the first third of the book ready to go off for editing, but the other two thirds still need good chunks of work, so I have two weeks to get my head down and crack this before I definitely say publication moves. If it does move, it will be into January of 2023 (as I think I’ve said before, I’m not doing another December release!).
As a knock on to all of this, Sage is definitely moving back from next January to next April. The January date was always predicated on me getting Ved’ma finished in a more timely fashion. If I do move Ved’ma to January then Sage may get moved again, but that will very much depend on how Ved’ma is actually going. So watch this space…
What does this mean for book 6? Well, I’m still planning on drafting book 6 in November and I would like to get book 6 out into the world to complete the Elsehere series (for now!) towards the end of next year, but that is definitely going to depend on getting Ved’ma and Sage finished and out, as intended (can’t publish book 6 if book 5 isn’t out…!) and equally it depends on getting a nearly-complete first draft in November. And, uh, also finding a final title, too. That’s quite important! On that front, I have had a few thoughts over the summer, but nothing ready to announce yet, so it’s another watch this space item. Sorry!
Finally, on the long-form stuff, I will be working with my cover artist (my inner 13yo is quietly squealling with joy that I can say that!) later on this month to sort out the cover for Ved’ma so that will be something that gets revealled regardless of the publication date.
On the short-form side of things, as I’ve already mentioned, I have this month’s Friday Fiction written. In fact, I have two pieces for this month. The main piece will go up next week, but today I’ve posted The Book of Bob – it’s a 100 word drabble that accurately reflects an issue I’ve been having lately…which may play at least a small role in what’s taking me so long with Ved’ma!
Music Monday is now back on hiatus after the summer series. It will either start back up when Ved’ma is published, or in December for another special series. (Note: I’ll only be doing one series of Music Monday posts at a time, so if Ved’ma’s out as planned, the special series will be kept back – as much as I enjoy writing Music Monday posts, I don’t want to be writing two lots at the same time…and I don’t want to run the risk of boring people, either!)
And finally, only a year late (!), I now have author-related social media set up:
Neither is exactly overburdened with content just at the moment, but I am working on that and you will find that my blog posts (like this one!) will show up on both. There will also be regular Trivia Tuesday posts (on both – cross-posting for the win!) – over the last three years, I’ve reseached some weird and wonderful stuff, so my trivia banks are primed and ready for that one, starting from next Tuesday! Twitter will also be a place where I pass on book recs. So take a look and give me a follow!
And that’s it for now. Next Friday will be the main Friday Fiction of the month and then the Friday after will be decision day on Ved’ma.
Until then, happy reading 🙂
And we’re back with the short story writing (finally!) and we’re back in the same universe as Human Touch. As I mentioned when I posted that, it’s a part of a much larger universe and this is another of the building blocks for that universe – it also won’t be the last one of these I post!
When I first started working on the sprawling space opera, I started (as I usually do) with the characters. Who they are at the point you first meet them and who they were prior to that point. In the case of my four central characters (you get to meet the first one in this story) that meant a lot of backstory. Some of that came in the form of notes while some of it – the interesting bits! – came in the form of short stories or scenelets.
And I looked at what I ended up with and went: “I’m missing something.” That was a large part of the reason why the project got shelved. And then Human Touch happened. When that was originally conceived it was just a random sci-fiish story, but working on it last year I could see how it worked with what I’d been working on. It gave the universe reasons as to why things are the way they are and it gave things a bigger sense of history.
I love it when this sort of thing happens!
Once Human Touch was posted, I started looking at my other building blocks and began pulling them together so that they could be shared and this is the first one off the shelf. Meet Jellena Batrice. She wants to be a Special Investigator but the training is proving to be nothing like she was expecting…
Read Finding a Pond
Happy reading 🙂
Publishing is quite the learning curve. Publishing while working a day job that has a nasty tendency to go from zero (last summer/autumn) to I-need-a-clone (since Christmas) is even more so, particularly when you throw in my complete inability to stop editing (sorry J!)
The net result is that the eBook is out today, but the paperback is still pending. I’m hoping that will be fixed later on this week, but Amazon moves as Amazon moves… As soon as I have a more solid update, I’ll let you know.
You can order it here from all good eBook shops.
In the mean time, happy reading 🙂
It has been a crazy month and somehow it’s time for another Friday Fiction post.
This month, in preparation for the launch of Cambiante, an Elsehere short story. It’s the Trickster’s story, of what happened to him and of his motivations and intentions. (Hint: the road to hell is definitely paved with good intentions!)
Warning: Myth geeking ahead..
I’ve always had a bit of a soft spot for Loki in the Norse myths – he’s complex, troublemaking, morally grey and brutally honest. He’s also a slightly tragic character, in the sense that you can draw a straight line from the dwarf sewing his lips together to his role in the death of Baldr and if Odin had only stood up for his blood brother, perhaps things would have been different.
I’m also fascinated by the fact that there are so many different trickster characters throughout the world. Virtually every culture seems to have at least one take on the archtype and while they’re all different, there are also plenty of similarities.
So my Trickster character isn’t, specifically, Loki, but an amalgam of several Trickster gods – though it’s the Norse parts that have been more front-and-centre to this point, and particularly in this short story, which does borrow heavily from the Norse myth…
There is a bit of overlap between this story and Valkyrie (so if you haven’t read that one yet, be aware: here be potential spoilers!)
Happy reading 🙂
Grace and Fiction 