From the turkey and stuffing to the golden-brown hue outside my window, I can’t help but love this time of year. That’s why I scheduled Nora’s final book to release on the 28th.
Well, technically it should have been released for Halloween but life had other plans.
At any rate, the Nora Grayson Adventures have concluded, Advanced Readers have the novel, and pretty soon everyone else who wants it will be able to snag it from Amazon.
I am deeply grateful to those Readers who have followed Nora’s journey from the beginning and whose comments and encouragements helped push me to the finish line. For the record, I know some questions have been left unanswered – not the MAJOR questions, mind you, but some of the littler things – and that is by design because I intend to return to this world.
It just won’t be Nora Grayson leading the fray.
I want to do a separate standalone with Derrick and Vessa that deals with Derrick’s mother and those known as the Lost.
I also have plans for Eucilla. She’s a dracken and can outlive everyone else, so I imagine that novel taking place a century or so later.
Also (mild spoiler alert), the romantic in me can’t help wondering what the Atlas Court will be like for Nora when she finally steps into that role, but insofar as the storyline of Nora’s family is concerned, we have an ending.
For now, I have several novels that have been sitting on the back burner while I finished up Nora’s books, and it’s time I gave them the attention they deserve. (More on that in a later post.)
So what am I thankful for this year?
I have a home. Food in my pantry. Pets who adore me. My book is complete and I have a group of amazing readers who are ready to get their hands on it.
I have a son who is also a creative and I know he is working on his own writing and worlds. He’ll be 18 in January, which hurts my heart in weird ways and terrifies me at the same time because he’s about to get his license.
I have a loving husband who believes in me and works hard so that I can continue to live my dream.
And I have family and friends who remind me every day that I am loved and appreciated.
Thank you. All of you. Whether you’re friend, family, or reader, I hope your day is amazing and that you are equally blessed.
I’ve been watching the Bookish/Author community for a while now and I can’t help but notice some trends that are cropping up. Or at least a certain cycle of events that keep circling.
It has become the popular thing to do to draw lines in the sand or find hills to die on. Some of these are in good fun, told in a tone of voice that proves the creator is merely claiming their opinion on something silly.
Things like which Book Boyfriend is the best or which magic system they would prefer to live in. Things like this I have no problem with, they are meant in a joking manner and are both entertaining and fun.
But then there’s the other type of Hill to Die On.
Said with capitol letters.
Things like, First Person POV is the best POV.
Which, hey, if you love First Person and that’s where you go to relax and enjoy a book then hey… You do you! I’m so glad you enjoy those. I do too.
However, there seems to be this trend that says “If you don’t die on this hill with me, then you’re wrong and you’re awful and we’re going to throw bricks at you until you come around to our viewpoint.”
These Hills to Die On are everywhere.
Audiobooks don’t count as real reading!
Em-Dashes mean it was written by AI! (Reminder, this is utterly false and AI learned to write based on all of us authors, using tools we often use, so OF COURSE AI learned how to use the em-dash.)
Clean romance versus spicy romance!
Romantasy is killing literature!
Now… because I am a human being, I have opinions on these things, but I have them with the understanding that my opinions and tastes are going to change as I grow. So, why would I want to die on a hill here?
Further, why would I want to alienate people by deciding to plant my flag on that hill and start shouting it?
Again, when it is all in a joking manner there’s no issue but these days it seems were are hunting for ways to divide ourselves. Instead of a Reading Community that is welcoming, we start congregating in subsects and ganging up on anyone who likes different things.
I’ve watched it get super ugly.
And I can’t help but wonder why.
Why do we do this?
Why can’t we say – Hey! You read? That’s amazing! What are you reading right now?
And then, you know, NOT JUDGE THEM for what they choose to read?
There doesn’t need to be a war here. If someone reads a book you don’t like, why does it matter to you? For the love of God, stop trying to control other people. Their decisions are not up to you.
Yes, you can have an opinion, but don’t cross the line into – You are so stupid for liking that book.
Or
That book is ruining literature by merely existing.
First of all, the hubris on that last accusation is so high that maybe you should take a few moments of genuine self-reflection. Literature existed long before you were born and it’ll survive long after you’re gone. Further, literature is a reflection of the culture and times in which it lives.
I digress.
And I suppose I have found my own Hill to Die On.
Stop the division. Stop finding reasons to hate each other. Stop attacking people who have taken the time to read and stop trying to control people.
You’re allowed your opinions. You can write them in your reviews and give your stars, one through five, but at the end of the day it is nothing more than your opinion. It is not something to foist on other people and demand they agree with you.
We’re beautifully diverse. It’s alright to compromise here. It’s alright to be different. You live, you laugh, you love, you matter. And so does the person sitting next to you.
Or at least, it has a way of kicking ME in the pants, but I’m old enough to know this is the norm for a lot of people.
I was hard at work, prepping marketing things for Blood of the Witch Heir’s release – which is in FOUR DAYS – and drafting up Nora’s final book when suddenly…
My computer stopped working.
As in, the thing would not power on.
This was frustrating since the warranty ran out the month prior and I’m afraid extending warranties/insuring items like this has never been in the finances for me.
Budgets be budgets, you know?
Anyway, there I was, stuck with no computer for a couple of days. We did try to unearth an older laptop lingering in the house but the thing was from the days of antiquity, too slow to load anything and running an outdated operating system.
What did I do with no computer for days on end?
Well, I read a lot. (I rated them on Goodreads as I went because I will not be trying to type out an entire review on my tiny iPhone Mini.) This means I not only caught up to y 50 books in 2025 goal, I went a little over and am now a book ahead of schedule.
I also received some happy packages! I got my author copies of Blood of the Witch Heir and new copies of the Nora books whose covers have been upgraded.
Nora and the Siren Song still has to be updated, but we are in the works for that! As soon as I have them all in hand, I’ll do a happy little post to display them all because they are GORGEOUS and I love them to pieces.
And finally, I enjoyed time with my husband and watched my animals be crazy. Which means I took a lot of pictures, which I am going to share here because why not?
Brief note: the goats are not mine. We stumbled on them at the Old Sturbirdge Village and that boy goat went and posed for me on the rock. It was too cute not to include.
Anyway, the OTHER thing I did was make a schedule with altered deadlines and now I probably should get back to it.
Warning, this conversation may make some uncomfortable. But you know what, sometimes the hardest conversations to have are the ones that help us grow the most, so let us go ahead and dive in.
Let me start by stating that not all books are for all audiences. Only you can decide what you like and dislike, so my job here is not to sway you one way or another in that argument.
If you like spice, good for you.
If you DON’T like spice, also good for you.
You know yourself and that is a great place to begin.
Now then, do you know what ELSE is not my job? Judging other people for what they like to read.
The beautiful thing about humanity is that we are all different. Our tastes sometimes align, but then vary in the next instant, and that’s GOOD. What isn’t so good is deciding that because someone’s tastes are different from yours, that they are somehow lesser human beings and unworthy of respect and space.
I beg of you, stop doing this.
You breathe, you live, you laugh, you matter. And so does everyone else. Give people the space to live differently from you because, at the end of the day, the only choices you are held accountable for are your own.
Now that we’re on the same page, I am going to admit that Blood of the Witch Heir gets a little racy. I still close the door/fade to black, but the intimate scenes are more noticeable in this book than in many of my other works, and this was on purpose.
Trigger Warning – The book does deal with SA. The actual event is not shown on the page, but it is relevant to the characters and has to be dealt with, which means that the intimacy between our two main characters was as much a part of the story as the grander plot.
Why?
Because intimacy after SA is difficult. It can also be either a detriment or a healing moment for the survivor. This is a sensitive subject, I know, and I suppose I am risking a lot in how I have done things in the book, but I believe the message is important.
Spice in books is not inherently bad. You either enjoy it, or you don’t, but please don’t shame the people around you who do because, quite frankly, it is none of your business. Not to mention the fact that books are a safe space where survivors often find healing.
No, sincerely, this is a thing.
Books permit us to explore in a safe, private manner and (at least one hopes) showcases healthy relationships on the page. I know that often there are unhealthy relationships (codependency/ jealousy/ etcetera) in these books and we end up swooning anyway but they are FICTION and still a safe space.
So whether you want no spice, low spice, closed door, open door, or the spiciest of the spice, please respect the rights of other readers to be different from you.
In response to the Chicago Sun Times debacle where they have printed an AI generated list of books for Summer Reading, which includes books that DO NOT exist, I thought I would be a little cheeky and send out a REAL Summer Reading List.
Or at least, MY Summer Reading List, which is curated by my personal tastes and some of them are literally waiting on my TBR pile. I lean heavily Fantasy / Romantasy / and Science Fiction in my reading.
FIRST UP – Broken Souls and Bones by LJ Andrews.
This is for my Romantasy friends. It is a happy blend of Vikings and Magic following Roark Ashwood and Lyra Bien and you can bet it has all the yummy Romantasy elements we open these books to find.
I devoured this book in a day and a half. It is new and I enjoyed the world the author built. This is also a Romantasy (hey, I like what I like) but its pacing alone is impeccable and the characters on the page were absolutely vibrant.
Admittedly, this one is on my TBR. I have enjoyed this author before, particularly her novel Future Tense and the amazing Halcyone Space Series, so I am excited to see what loveliness is in store for me with her newest novel.
FOURTH – The Maya Bust (Boneguard 4) by E. Chris Ambrose
Again, this is from my TBR pile and now that I’m looking I see I have SO MANY to catch up on with the Boneguard series. I loved Indiana Jones when I was growing up, so of course I’m going to love Grant Casey and the thrillers that Ambrose writes. We get history and action and a whole lot of fun in these novels.
FIFTH – The Crimson Moth series by Kristen Circcarelli
I read the first novel, Heartless Hunter, and love the mix of magic and Scarlett Pimpernel that was presented, so its second book, Rebel Witch, is patiently waiting for its turn on my TBR pile. I’m putting them both on here because, if you haven’t read the first one then you’re seriously missing out.
Actually, now that I’m looking at my TBR pile it is starting to grow teeth and I fear for my life. I have a lot of reading to do!
But hey, Chicago Sun Times… There are at least 5 actual, real life novels by actual real life people you could have put in your list instead of consulting a robot. Please hear the creatives in the room when we say that Art, and the consumption of Art, is a purely HUMAN experience. Stop trying to cut the humanity out of it.
(P.S. My own novel, Blood of the Witch Heir, debuts in June, so it could ALSO count as a Summer Reading Book. If, you know, you like fantasy. And romance. And witches kicking some serious butt.)
I am going to admit that this is the area I have grown the most in as an author.
Having just gone through a major revision of an older work, I can see that back in my twenty’s I focused a lot on building neat worlds and having neat stuff as opposed to the more compelling conflicts that come from people.
It’s not about earning that throne back when it has been stolen, it’s about why the character would bother. Who actually wants a throne in the first place?
Even the power-hungry villain has a reason behind his actions. If the quest is only for power, then that quest is boring. True conflict, the stuff that we can sink our teeth into, pits characters against one another.
It is far more interesting to know the villain wants the throne because they have a vengeance stake involved. A previous ruler rampaged through their childhood village and killed everyone they loved.
Now our hero has the dilemma of family drama, because SHOULD they retake the throne if they are descendent of such brutal behavior?
What it all boils down to is character.
If the characters on the page aren’t that interesting to begin with, then we are not going to care how or why they achieve their goals. The conflict comes from within. It comes from WHO they are as people.
Compelling conflict shows the struggle these characters have with the decisions they must make on the page. Their growth comes from that struggle.
That said, the struggles on the page will also help define those characters. We know Frodo and Sam for who they are because of the struggle they went through to get the ring to Mount Doom. Plot and Character go hand in hand. If you skim on one, the narrative will be lacking and you won’t have a compelling conflict.
So!
What do I do to help create compelling conflict in my works?
On a PLOT level, I follow “Yes, but” / “No, and”
This is where you ask the question for each scene – Does your character achieve their goal?
The answer is always either “Yes, but now (she has a stowaway on board her ship/he got gravely injured and is leaking vital fluids)” OR “No, and (her attempt has left the ship without power, so they’re floating dead in space with only 4 hours of air left/he accidently struck the prince so now there’s going to be a price on his head)
See how that works?
That’s on the plot level.
On a CHARACTER level, I have the major players in a scene noted off to the side of my screen with their core motivations for that scene highlighted. This just helps me to remember what is ultimately at stake for that character.
Example:
Chapter Three – Blood of the Witch Heir – NOTES
Dorian Feverrette arrives at Delgora Court. He is hunting the Bedim assassins who recently tried to take his life (see Chapter One). If he doesn’t succeed in locating them soon, it is quite likely that he will be assassinated.
Elsie Delgora is hiding in plain sight at Delgora Court. She is keeping tabs on the Vicaress who murdered her family. She needs the Vicaress to stay happy and oblivious to Elsie’s machinations.
Now we enter “Yes, but” /”No, and”
Does Dorian succeed in his goals for this chapter? No, and he has stumbled into a bigger plot revolving around the Delgoran throne.
Does Elsie succeed in keeping tabs on the Vicaress? Yes, but now this stupid noble boy has shown up and is making the Vicaress suspicious.
Anyway, that’s what I do. Many thanks to both the late David Farland for his book Million Dollar Outlines, and the Writing Excuses Podcast… Because that’s definitely where I learned this from.
Check out what my fellow authors do to help create compelling conflict in their works!
Last month we discussed settings in the real world and how we transport them onto the page. This month we’re looking at fictional settings, or settings that don’t exist OR are so far in the past that you couldn’t possibly have been there.
Since the majority of my writing takes place in fantastical worlds, or in the case of Tapped, other planets in our solar system, this is where I have the most experience. Obviously I have never been to Mars or Pluto or Europa, and I won’t lie, writing those places was a challenge.
It was a lot of FUN, but it was challenging fun.
So here’s my process, grown over the course of a couple decades of practice.
First, the rough draft is always bare bones. I can’t allow myself to get hung up on describing the setting too much or I’ll never finish the book. The rough draft is also where I spent an alarming amount of time researching/staring out the window/worldbuilding.
However, worldbuilding is its own topic. I want to get into the act of making that setting come alive on the page. And to do that, we have to skip forward to the editing process. Everything I’m about to detail is used during the Second Draft.
The KAVS Cycle
The late great David Farland taught a class on settings and in it he discusses what he calls KAVS. You can still access it through the Apex Writers Group online, which you will have to pay for but I highly recommend. I have been part of Apex (off and on when I could afford it) for years now.
Anyway.
I have my rough draft and I make 4 passes through each chapter focused on a different aspect of the KAVS cycle.
KAVS stands for Kinetic, Audio, Visual, Smell.
First pass, Visual. This is literally everything my character can see in their setting. Often when I am doing this pass I also have DeviantArt/Pinterest up in another screen because I need the inspiration. Sometimes I’ll even go so far as to build a mood board in Canva, but admittedly this is rare and I reserve it for settings that I circle back to often.
Also, here’s the mood board for Nora’s family home.
Alright, some important things to note. Not everything has to be exact in these mood boards. I’m just going for the feel of a place. For example, Nora’s office is in the round room of a Victorian House, though the picture shown is obviously square. What’s important about the image isn’t the shape of the room, but the style.
You can see that it’s more masculine in nature, which brings me to the next element in the KAVS cycle: Kinetics.
Kinetics is anything tactile (touch, taste), any movement in the scene (swish of a cuckoo clock’s pendulum as an example) AND the emotions.
Nora’s study is still masculine because it was her father’s office. It evokes a slew of memories for her. SO my second pass is going through how this setting makes my character FEEL and WHY.
The why is so very important, not only for character development but because showing the history of a place is one of the easiest ways to make a setting real for the reader.
The third pass that I do is the Audio pass. Which is self-explanatory, but let’s go ahead and get into it. We tend to react to sound in our environments.
Example, my cat just made a chirping noise, so I turned to look at her. She’s perched on the window sill, her tail flicking, white body coiled as though she might pounce through the windowpane to get to the bird outside.
Characters in a setting will also react to sounds in their environment, so let them. Honestly, I might do this too much sometimes, but having a sound draw the character out of an internal dialogue is a legitimate storytelling tool.
The fourth and final pass that I do is Smell.
Of all the senses we put into our books, I feel like smell really solidifies an environment. Foul, sweet, musky, we all have references in our minds that we can immediately draw upon when a writer says, The room smelled like pencils and leather.
Or
The scent of cinnamon was heavy in the air.
Or
The back of her throat tickled at the heavy pepper. (That one you get Kinetics and Smell all in one go.)
The reader picks up on the smell, has a reference, and suddenly it’s real.
Generally speaking, I do a chapter a day during my second pass at a manuscript. I know I’m not winning any races here, but by the time I’m done with that second pass I am confident enough in my story that I can send it out to my editor.
Take a look at what some of my fellow authors do to craft believable fictional settings in their work!
Today Nora and the Siren Song has officially been released, and I am so excited for people to get to read it. Nora’s story has grown, and so has her character. I am neck-deep in drafting the fourth and final book for her series, which is due to release in October, so fans of her story will be happy to know that by the end of this year, they will have the WHOLE THING.
No more waiting for another installment.
No more cliffhangers. (cough, ahem, sorry/not sorry)
Nora’s story has been a pure joy to write and I sincerely hope all of you have enjoyed it as much as I have. To celebrate this newest release, here are all of the pretty promotional things I’ve shoved on Instagram/Threads/X/FB.
Because using them all just ONCE after spending 2 hours creating them feels like a waste and I want my money’s worth of Canva now that they raised their prices. Again.
In just 7 days, Nora and the Siren Song will be available to the world. Hurray! Throw confetti!
Which means I’ve officially been alerted that I have 48 hours to make certain all those files are the right files and that I don’t have any further changes I want to make to the book. Which, honestly, induces a mild panic attack and forces me to re-read everything.
Even though I have literally read this book over a dozen times from first draft to finished product.
Nora has come a long way since her inception.
I first got the idea for her books from a conversation on social media where myself and another author were fangirling over the show Lucifer. We both found it deeply amusing that Lucifer had a therapist in the show, and the conversation stretched to… What if all these paranormal romances we read about with vampires and werewolves and other said shifters/magic user suddenly had to go to couples therapy?
What would that therapists life look like?
Enter Nora Grayson, an empathic wizard living in Boston whose private home study sees couples from the typical vampires and elves, to the more exotic creatures hiding in plain sight of humanity.
I made her an empath for two reasons.
First, I love Deanna Troi from Star Trek the Next Generation. You can say what you want about me being a Trekkie or whatever, I really don’t mind. Star Trek was my mother’s favorite show when I was growing up, so I come by my geekery honestly.
Second, because I am an empathetic person myself and I feel like this trait isn’t given center stage a lot. The ability to listen and identify the emotional state of the people around you, and then genuinely understand, feels like a skill that is undervalued in the world today.
We’re too busy.
We have our own problems.
Or worse, we’re scared of people.
I mean, who wouldn’t be given what we see plastered over the news?
I digress.
Nora’s first book, Nora and the Werewolf Wedding has a simple design. It’s basically Clue, but with magic and werewolves. And yes, I learned to embrace my Pantser in that book.
Or, well, this whole series.
Don’t know what a Pantser is?
A Pantser is someone who writes without an outline. There is a vague idea – in this case, empathic wizard stuck negotiating a socialite wedding where at least one of the guests is murdered – and you build from there.
Which means literally everything that happened in that first book came as a surprise.
True story, I honestly thought Derrick’s grandfather would be the big bad guy on the page. Spoilers! He isn’t.
There are pros and cons to embracing the Pantser side of my muse.
First, I’ve had a blast writing. That’s a huge PRO. I sit at the computer, stare out the window for a little as the scene starts to show itself, and then the narrative tends to flow. (Assuming I’m not interrupted. Interruptions are a part of life. I do have pets, a teenage son, a husband, and general biological needs like eating.)
However, that PRO is often checked by the CON where I literally had to build Fairy from the ground up whilst on the go. I have a handwritten notebook with all of my world building notes, many of which required that I flesh out the rules during the editing process of the book.
I mention this as a CON because I know the world is bigger than what has been displayed on the pages and I feel like I can do better.
Another PRO is that I am genuinely surprised by the endings when I get there. Or… things like the surprise wedding in Book 2, which is still one of my favorite moments.
Writing this way has made it feel like this is Nora’s story and she is telling it, first to me, and then to the rest of the world. All my other books, where outlines have been heavily utilized, I was directing things more than the characters on the page.
Sure, Jorry and Trenna both had a huge say in what happened in their stories, but it was still ME telling those stories.
Maybe one day I’ll go back and revise their books from this new, Pantser-loving lens, but don’t hold your breath for it. Nora’s final book is still in the works. It will be out in October of this year. And I have several others novels in various stages of complete or near-to-complete that will get to see publication first.
In the meantime, here is me, embracing my Pantser. It’s difficult, but apparently well worth the editing time I have to spend after that first draft is done.
We of the Indie Community read the recent Atlantic article and tested our names in the LibGen search bar and most of us are on there. For a quick run down, Meta used LibGen in order to download many, many, MANY books and feed those books into its AI system known as Llama. To train that AI on how to write in an engaging manner.
Yes, it has the Nora Grayson series on there too. Not the third book, as it hasn’t reached shelves yet, but the first two are in there. I’d show you the screen shot but it’s not the best quality. You can test it out yourself at the link provided if you don’t believe me.
So, what is LibGen?
Library Genesis, or LibGen for short, calls itself a shadow library.
In short, it is a pirate site. It takes data files (aka eBooks) and offers them out for free. I know a lot of people decried Amazon for taking away the ability to download eBooks onto their computers because they think they should own the book and be able to access it on any device they want but…
BUT this is how pirate sites get our work. And no, letting someone borrow your personal copy, or even giving it away to whomever you want, isn’t the same for an eBook because an eBook file can be copied. It can be copied INFINITELY. So I support Amazon’s move here. Because it protects ME. And maybe my books wouldn’t be on these sites if those protections had been in place from the beginning.
Why does this matter? Don’t I let real libraries have my books to loan out? Don’t I leave physical copies of my book in random places sometimes so that someone might pick it up?
Well, it matters on two fronts.
First and foremost, people who have my physical copies can’t download the content into an AI system so that it can learn how to write in an engaging manner. Yes, we know AI is here and it’s not going anywhere. The technology will continue to grow no matter how hard we kick and scream and scoff at it, but that does not mean we want to help it grow. And we most certainly do not want our work stolen in order to feed that machine.
Second, pirated eBooks don’t just steal royalties from the author, they steal our ability to be seen in the marketplace. Algorithms work based on engagement. The more people click on my books, the more that algorithm shares those same books with new potential readers. The more people who SEE, the more likely it is for someone else to click on the book and investigate.
So it does matter. Because it directly affects my ability to reach new readers.
Before you ask, there are already lawsuits in progress regarding this. If you are an author and this is the first you’re hearing about this (unlikely, the rage is everywhere at this point) then you will want to take a look at the Author’s Guild. They have a lot of information and even a form letter you can sign if you find your books on the LibGen site.
For those of you who read my Blog and are NOT authors, but you want to help support us, the easiest and best way to support your favorite authors has not changed.
Buy their books – yes, even when on sale for free on Amazon, that algorithm helps boost us, so don’t be ashamed if you get the novels for free that way.
Tell people about the books you love.
Review the books on Goodreads and Amazon and Barnes & Noble, if you have the time. We all know that can be a hassle. Just clicking on the Star rating will do. I promise.
Remember that you, as a Reader, are amazing. We love you. We are here directly BECAUSE of you, and your thoughts and support mean the world to us.
