It's been fiery and smoky for most of July. Fortunately it hasn't been too horrific but still...between smoke, heat, and water drop planes, I'm ready for the summer to be DONE. There's been several days where the steady flights have been reminiscent of a World War Two movie, with the scooper-dumpers droning in formation to scoop up water out of the lake. All the same, the firefighters have been getting the fires under control. A big storm blew through on Wednesday, with trees down and lots of lightning (it blew all the way through to Missoula and took out power and trees there). We had 33 starts in 7 days, but 25 are contained, controlled, or OUT. That's a relief.

Meanwhile, things are happening on the writer front. I have two virtual panels at the World Science Fiction Convention at Glasgow, both on Friday, August 9th. One is "Finding Story in the Landscape," the other is "I Would Not Be Queen For All the World: The Lure of Monarchy." I'm moderating that one.

And, of course, the release of The Cost of Power trilogy starts this month! Preorders are now open for the ebooks at both Amazon and other vendors (here's the Books2Read link). The paperback version will go up shortly.

But that's not all! Mike Martiniere from The Heritage of Michael Martiniere has a role to play in books two and three of The Cost of Power. Heritage is on sale at Amazon and elsewhere through Books2Read until August 15th.

And, finally, there's a new, free snippet available from The Cost of Power. This one is an outtake from close to the end of the second book, Crucible.

As always, the horses are providing entertainment. Marker pulled the grooming caddy off of the pickup tailgate the other day, and oh did he get scolded for that. The next day he didn't even look at the caddy. But he got to chase cows when we found some naughty calves who had slipped out of their field. He doesn't possess the same instinctual drive to herd cows as Mocha does, but he does all right.

I'm still mulling over what to write next. Somehow a story involving Alice Clarissa Whitman...but we shall see.

Stay safe and cool.