With the release of my next Celia Roman novel A Witch and Her Familiar (Vanessa Kinley, Witch PI, Book 2) a few days past, I’m already anticipating the release of the next book in the series. Mostly, that means the writing end of things. When the manuscript for A Witch and Her Familiar was finalized, I took a couple of weeks off from writing to brainstorm the next book, Black Witch Rising. This is the first novel I’ve brainstormed since…
I read a ton more than normal this month and ranged across a wide variety of genres, from classic SciFi to Southern Magical Realism to Horror. So, let’s get to it. I’m trying to work a little more classic Science Fiction and Fantasy into my reading, especially authors I haven’t read a lot of, like Arthur C. Clarke. Rendezvous with Rama is one of his more well-known and recommended novels, so when I spotted it at City Lights Bookstore in…
It’s fairly common knowledge among my readers that I write under multiple pen names. What isn’t so common knowledge is that some of my stories across those pen names share the same story world, in this case the Sunshine Walkingstick Series (Celia Roman) and the Cullowhee Witches Series (Lucy Varna). The Cullowhee Witches Series came first and began life as the Witches of Cullowhee Series, which never generated much enthusiasm. I rebranded the covers for both books and republished them…
The year in books is off to a slow if interesting start, beginning with some short stories. “The Endless Lives of Kama” by William Delman at Daily Science Fiction explores the consequences of prescience. It can be enjoyed with or without pondering the deeper layers within the story, but those who enjoy oracle type stories will surely delve more deeply. “ILU-486” by Amanda Ching is predicated on the notion that there is a war on women coming from the right. Don’t…
September was an interesting month, book wise. The coming of autumn, coupled with the writing projects I’m working on, inspired a not-so-brief spurt of interest in Urban and Contemporary Fantasy, plus I continued chipping away at my humongously large pile of non-fiction. I didn’t read any short fiction in September, which is a first, though I do keep up with several blogs. One of those blogs lead me to “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt,…