Winter Blackthorne

 What even is time. So! I wrote a book last year! It's a fantasy romance and it was supposed to be a fun little novella based on a tumblr joke. I thought I needed something quick and silly to help me crawl out of the depression hole and actually start writing again. And then it turned into a full length novel. You know. These things happen. I'm revising the ending on it right now, and then I'll need to sort out a cover. Maybe I'll publish it this summer??? We'll see! I'm currently back to writing the second book in the Harrowing Tales trilogy. I am not promising anything to anyone anymore, so all I'll say about that is that it's moving in a forward-ish direction. There are more words on it today than there were yesterday, and there were more yesterday than there were the day before that. My goal for 2024 is "Publish something this year, dammit." I think it's going pretty well so far!

I've been having too many issues going on in my personal life to get any creative work done for over a month now. Stress, grief, and writing don't mix well together. I thought about canceling the preorder, but I've decided to try pushing it back to the end of March and seeing if I can get it together by then. If not, I'll have to cancel and try to release it over the summer instead. I'm very sorry about this. I pinky promise I'm going to get this book done, even if it takes more time than anticipated. 

Dru trudged down the dirt road, her leather jerkin pinching her sides. She’d been hoping to finally have a restful few days, but then she’d been called out to deal with a monster stealing young people from a village near the Dread Forest. All this hero business was getting old. It was all, go fight a dragon, Dru, and, save a hamlet from pirates, Dru . And everybody clapped and cheered, then expected her to do it all over again. She was tired . It didn’t help that everywhere she went, people called her a ‘lady hero’ and then asked if a man was available.   She kicked a pebble lying innocently in the road with her steel toed boots. “Maybe I’ll just let the hydra eat you next time, see if you like that,” she mumbled to herself. The fields around her fell away, and the road curved gently as it met the Dread Forest. As scary as the name was, it looked like any other forest, and a pretty one at that. Pine trees coated the forest floor in needles and ancient redwoods towered overhead. Dru squ

 With July now ending, I think it's safe to say I've failed pretty spectacularly at my writing goals for the year. I've decided I'm going to admit that I'm simply a slow writer and stop thinking I can write ALL THE THINGS, because I end up getting so overwhelmed that I write none of the things. I'm almost done with the rough draft of my 1920s mafia style romance, so I should be digging into editing that soon, but not sure when I'll release it. It's the first book in a planned trilogy, and I don't want to publish it until I'm a good way into the second book because, yeah. Slow.  I got really muddled on the plot to Match Made in London, but I opened it for the first time in seven months and was like, OH, that's how to fix the plot! Going back through it reminded me how much I like the meet cute, so I thought I'd posted it here. This is the rough rough draft of chapter three of Match Made in London. [spoilers?] Ettie was running late, which

  (Return to  Part One ) Georgiana checked for the fifth time in a row to make sure her bonnet strings were tied correctly. It wasn’t that she was stalling. She never would have stalled going to see Frances before… The Kiss. She’d hardly spoken two words to Frances after that confused moment of passion, and she needed to set their friendship back to rights.  Frances hadn’t even sent a note when she returned to London, and that stung. Georgiana had found out through a stray bit of gossip that Frances was back, and that no one was going to see her. There were whispers that Frances’ husband was in fits over her behavior, and everyone wanted to be clear that they were taking his side.   None of the fallout had hit Georgiana, mostly because everyone seemed to have forgotten that Georgiana had gone along as well.  People typically forgot Georgiana. She was plain, soft spoken, and good at fading into the background. She was firmly on the shelf now, but even when she had been considered eligib

London, 1816 Lady Frances was exceptionally good at doing the correct thing. Not the right thing; the correct one. She had acted extremely correctly growing up, obeying first her nurse maid, then her governess, and finally her chaperone. She had correctly married the youngest son of a marquees instead of eloping to Gretna Green with the blacksmith’s apprentice. She’d been a perfectly correct wife even when her husband was absent, managing his affairs and keeping up appearances socially as she was expected to do. No one had ever said a bad word about Frances, and not a whisper of scandal had ever touched her name. That was, until she’d run away to the continent with a traveling companion, ignoring communication from her parents and husband for months. She’d thrown herself a Grand Tour and gone to see the sights with her friend Georgiana Torchia in tow. They’d gone to Portugal, Spain and even France, once the war had ended and things had settled out. They’d made it all the way to Rome,