Hey awesome,

How's March going for you? We've had a stretch of beautiful weather - March is pretty spring-like in Louisiana, and we're staying with family that definitely knows how to welcome spring.

It's been years since I've had a real crawfish boil, and this was so, so good. It's also much better these days, when I don't have to take my contacts out at night and worry that the ninety-five times I washed my hands were enough to save my eyes from burning...

Besides good food, these last few weeks have been a mishmash of writing, editing, and travel-prepping.

Writing, because I'm hoping to finish my Fallen World novel, Salt in the Wound, in the next month or so. Edting, because I have received fourteen incredible stories for the Hit World: Valkyries anthology...y'all. WOW. We have funny, heart-breaking, salty, anguished, brilliant, badass ladies engaged in so many different shenanigans and I canNOT wait to introduce you to them.

So then, travel-prepping: Jeremy and I get back on the road this weekend, which is bittersweet to say the least. We're making our way north and east to go to FantaSci (amazing convention in North Carolina, if you want to come hang out!), which is exciting, and will get to see wonderful family on the way, which is also wonderful. But we're leaving our Louisiana family, so...oof. Yeah. Bittersweet.

If you, like me, prefer to bury your emotions in good stories, then you'll understand this segue. ;)

CKP has two great new stories for you this week. First up, a deeply fantastic fantasy from my soon-to-be-coauthor, creator of the Hit World universe, William Alan Webb.

The Demon in the Jewel, is an amazing story from a man who can't write a bad one. What's it about? Well:

What would you do for your brother and best friend? What wouldn’t you?

War is coming to Corland, but when Alden Havenwulf’s brother and sister track him across a continent to call him home, they are attacked by slavers, and only the intercession of Alden’s axe-wielding best friend, Dexter Reedman, saves his sister Arika.

In the fight, however, Dexter and Alden’s brother are captured and thrown into a dungeon in the most well-protected keep on Toran, that of the slaver Sumbarrah Bey. An army couldn’t breach their prison—its walls are over one hundred feet high—but an army might not be the only way.

When an illusion-casting were-bear named Setvan reveals that a demon is imprisoned inside the world’s most fabled diamond, Alden launches a desperate scheme to release the demon and save his friend and brother.

The only flaw, of course, is that, once released, demons aren’t so easily controlled.

Are you looking for a little sci fi, instead or (better) in addition? How about this one, the completion of an absolutely delightful trilogy, by Mike Jack Stoumbos?

Seed in the Sky is book three of the 'This Fine Crew' and an awesome completion:

The sins of the father return…

The Interstellar Initiative didn’t have an easy start. Tensions between species complicated even the simplest tasks, not to mention the perils created by an unstable extra-dimensional entity named Wallace.

Then, just as the alliance began to figure out how to work together effectively, Humanity’s first interstellar sin came back to haunt them. What first appears to be an extra star in Earth’s night sky is—something else—and it’s ready to rain destruction on the planet if the Initiative doesn’t figure out how to communicate or counter it.

The best hope of saving humanity may once again rest in the hands of four cadets and the starship Endeavor.

I'm going to go soak up my last few days with our fabulous family here, so that's all from me this time. Let me know what you're up to this spring - even if it's still cold, that pretty weather is on its way!

Til next time,

Marisa