Children give penalties for saving throwsIt's funny that Lewis and Clark get credit for being such grand adventurers when Sacajawea did the same thing they did but with a baby strapped to her back. Wyvern's Curse, Kit Melbourne's tenth book, brings o...

Sometimes life imitates artMy work in progress, Kit Melbourne Book Ten, is taking longer than expected because I moved house this month. The ironic thing is that Kit also moved house in the new book, and when I had her do that I did not yet have a pl...

As much fun as a Molotov cocktail.An evening last week I told myself I was going to do something productive like working on Kit Melbourne book ten. (I’m moving house this autumn so finishing the novel is taking longer than anticipated.) Instead I pic...

And what are their stories?You may have noticed in the last newsletter that I created footers with links to all my works. Mostly I promote the Kit Melbourne series because it’s the longest and the one I’m currently working on. But I do have other nov...

Not a lot of money in the revenge businessI loved The Three Musketeers, but I could not get into The Count of Monte Cristo even though that’s considered to be Alexander Dumas’ masterpiece. I have a hard time empathizing with people who are hellbent o...

Would you leave this world for love?Have you ever been so in love with someone you would have risked anything in the world for them? I’m talking Orpheus and Eurydice kind of devotion. You have? Were you young? This kind of love seems more natural whe...

Even fantasy heroines get excited about new jobsI saw a great TikTok recently where @dnlfoxx pretends to be an evil supervillain’s charming gay assistant. I love the juxtaposition of something dreadfully serious like an evil madman designing a rocket...

Natural inspires supernaturalI do a lot of research for my novels, but one of the things that’s hard to research is how to do spells. To be fair, I have done research on witchcraft as well, but lifting spells from online feels like plagarism in a way...

Newsletter bonus round: Book giveaway edition!Win lots of books and a chance to get an eReader too.I'm sending out an extra newsletter this week because I'm taking part in a Booksweeps promo. I've entered a couple of these. I didn't win an eReader, b...

Does writing stories longhand change your genre?Book reviewers are the best people in the world.Last night I had a sudden memory of a short story I’d done at Clarion. Jeff VanderMeer was our teacher, and he gave us the characters and basic outline of...