Here it is! This week we're back with another familiar character, Eric Latimer, former prince of Huldre and now king. In case you need a wee refresher, Latimer was the incredibly handsome troll prince from Curses. (And also a minor villain.) He made a lot of poor choices and is currently dealing with the consequences.
Happy reading!
--Lish
2024-02-16 17:41:47 +0000 UTC View Post
You know how I said last post that I was having a hard time concentrating and finishing what I was reading? Well, it's worse. So that's fun. I'm about to go to Maine to visit friends and family and freeze my butt off, and I'm hoping that relaxing will get me back on track.
I'm about halfway through One Dark Window by Gillig (Adult, Fantasy) and I'm enjoying that so much that I got the second book at the bookstore last night. It's fantasy on the darker side of things, but not bleak...
2024-02-08 20:39:35 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm behind on the BTLN epilogue because I've been revising another book in the hopes that my agent can sell it. (I'm almost done! Weee!) However, since I didn't want to leave you all high and dry, I sent the first few chapters of Gifts, the follow up to Curses, to Mel the copy editor, so we can start posting that story right away. Yay!
Gifts is very much a working title. There HAS to be a better one out there, I just don't know what it is yet. I posted a cast of characters in the collec...
2024-02-06 20:45:07 +0000 UTC View Post
Cast of Characters from Curses, updated for Gifts (some of these characters may or may not appear, but I thought I'd leave them for now.) Will update as we go.
DuMont Family:
Florencia – mother
Brouchard –father
Tevin - oldest son, gifted, married to Merit Cravan
Amaury – second son, gifted
Kate - only daughter, gifted
Val – (Valencia Tern), second in line for the barony of Ter...
2024-02-06 20:39:55 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been having a hard time reading. Wait, that's not entirely accurate--I've had a hard time reading one book and finishing that book. Basically, I've been all over the place. And for the most part, I can't blame this on the books. I don't think it's their fault? This is very much an, "I'm the problem, it's Me" problem. I've managed to finish a few things, but mostly I've been pinging around, especially in audiobooks.
I started a mystery audio book--Silence for the Dead ...
2024-01-26 22:45:38 +0000 UTC View Post
...We made it to the last chapter? WE MADE IT TO THE LAST CHAPTER! (Except there's an epilogue.) This is a long one for you, too. I'm feeling really weird about closing up Sam's story. Weird, but good. Thanks for going on this journey with me, friends.
--Lish
PS I've been told by Editor Mel that "murderface" isn't technically a word, but I've decided it is, so we left it. Zero regrets.
2024-01-23 01:26:07 +0000 UTC View Post
I like snow--I was hoping for snow. Instead we got freezing rain, so Smalls has been home from school for two days, which has made working difficult. I'm glad the kid is curious and has lots of questions but also I would like to concentrate for more than ten seconds at a time. Last weekend was also hectic since I was tackling the copy edits for Red in Tooth and Claw (turned in Monday! Yaaaaay!) in between dealing with Smalls and running Bigs to urgent care. I had been banking on my mom watchi...
2024-01-19 00:33:10 +0000 UTC View Post
I'm finishing up my copy edits today, which means me fussing over small details but also laughing because I've created a book that makes a copy editor have to put in comments like, "I'm assuming there are two based on the average pulling capacity of a donkey so I'm just going to go ahead and make it plural throughout." More donkeys, more better, I say.
Today's very wee snippet is your first real look at William Speed, my gunslinger character:
The driver, Mr. Cartwright, ...
2024-01-12 21:12:53 +0000 UTC View Post
I dropped it in the chat earlier (I think you can only access chat on the mobile app of Patreon? Which is weird.) but I wanted to share it here, too. We've got a cover for Red in Tooth and Claw, a release date AND a sneak peek! *flailing muppet arms*
So this year we'll have:
Curses in paperback (9/24)
Red in Tooth and Claw (10/24)
And Uncanny #3, Bevy of Trouble...at some point. Not sure yet.
...I'm going to need more coffee.
--Lish
2024-01-11 18:14:03 +0000 UTC View Post
Sometimes I get annoyed with my pace and irritated that I don't get these chapters up as fast as I want. Often, though, something happens to remind me that creativity takes time and those waits are good things. That was really clear this week. I started chapter 40 and had it set back in the dining room. We're wrapping things up, which involves a lot of talking...which can get really boring, really fast. So Saturday as I was running errands I thought, "how can I make the setting more entertain...
2024-01-08 21:54:48 +0000 UTC View Post
I recently signed up for StoryGraph--I'm not one who usually pays attention to how many books they read in a year (I know it's a lot. I don't need hard numbers.) and I never particularly enjoyed Good Reads for my reading use. I've had a few friends speak highly of StoryGraph, though, and I thought I'd give it a go if only so I can keep better track of what I read for the TBR posts. (I'm on there under Lishism if you want to find me.) I don't write reviews on there much--I'm mostly using it to...
2024-01-08 00:58:32 +0000 UTC View Post
Should have had this picture up Friday, but I got into a bit of a funk and then it was Man Friend's birthday. But finally, here it is! The picture above is not mine, but one snagged from the internet so you can see the real build-a-bear that Salty is modeled after. Salty Bear is from a text exchange we did a few years back. It's on here somewhere, but you can also read it 2024-01-01 00:58:53 +0000 UTC View Post
Man Friend dubbed this our "Sad Christmas" not because we are sad, but because our holidays, for various reasons, involved a lot of sad people. It made for a kind of strange holiday, especially when you factor in the fact that it was the first Christmas without Bigs living in our house. I am so happy for him and his girlfriend that they found an apartment and are taking big strides in their lives--though they are, of course, stressed out--but it's weird on our end. Especially with my mo...
2023-12-26 20:38:45 +0000 UTC View PostI'm working on the next Sam chapter, but the holidays have hit hard and my MIL broke her spine, which has thrown a wrench in a lot of things. (She's doing great--had surgery to fuse her spine, is in rehab, but obviously we've been handling a lot of stuff for her.)
I thought now might be a good time to remind some of you that we have some fun holiday text exchanges from various characters if you're looking for a laugh.
It's the holidays, which means I'n buying books for other people (and okay, maybe a few for myself because no one buys me books anymore). Since all I've been reading is Alice Coldbreath's medieval romance books and listening to the Mercy Thompson series (still. I'm on Smoke Bitten), my TBR would have been really short this week if I just stuck to what I've been reading in. So I thought I'd share some of the cool books I've found for others!
For wee little folks--I got my friend's baby t...
2023-12-15 02:16:45 +0000 UTC View Post
This image has literally nothing to do with the chapter. However, if you put "possum cowboy" or "opossum cowboy" into shutter stock, you get almost nothing. If you put "raccoon cowboy" for some reason you have many, many choices. *sighs*
Enjoy the chapter!
--Lish
2023-12-15 00:37:24 +0000 UTC View Post
I don't have a fun theme for this one. Mostly, it's just been great for my brain to be recovering from it's the extended period where it was impersonating a bowl of overcooked pasta. I've been watching more TV than I have been--I'm not knocking TV. I just haven't been watching much of it. But I've spent a few nights on the couch catching up on Great British Bake Off with Smalls, which hasn't been as restful as it should have been, mostly because Smalls has 1,000 questions in his head right no...
2023-12-03 00:23:14 +0000 UTC View Post
FINALLY. This chapter took a long time for some reason, and I had to ask Editor Mel if it made any sense when I was done. (I had to edit another thing HAHAHA my brain is tired, friends.) We still have a few chapters left in this beast because there's a lot to tie up. Enjoy!
--Lish
2023-12-02 22:46:52 +0000 UTC View Post
(Fair warning, I ramble a lot in this post.)
I write about death a lot. I mean, my first two books were literally about people who could bring them back. Red in Tooth in Claw is a lot about grief. I think it's something that people think about in general, but I think I was always a bit fixated on the underworld and all of that. My parents never kept death from me, and I grew up in a fairly rural area with a lot of animals and my stepmom did animal rescue. My family fished, I had a stepd...
2023-11-22 23:58:18 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been pecking away at the next Sam chapter but words have been either slow or nonexistent. I think I killed my brain in October. The last six-seven weeks have been, frankly, brutal. I keep forgetting words, using the wrong words, and last night at trivia, said the wrong numbers like three times while reading the questions aloud and repeatedly used the wrong name for the movie Dead Alive while talking to a friend. My brain is, apparently, a bowl of pasta. I feel pretty bad about how long i...
2023-11-22 22:39:58 +0000 UTC View Post
Editor Mel actually got this back to me on Saturday and usually I get it out the same day, but I got sick for the first time in like four years. Mel has also stated that, with the schedule and workload I kept the last month, me getting sick wasn't a total surprise. I agreed. I totally dug that hole. So I spent this weekend doing almost nothing but napping and watching three seasons of Shetland. Now I had to decide which show to watch next.
BTLN is now sliding into the tie up chapters. (...
2023-11-06 23:20:31 +0000 UTC View Post
Last week was honestly the busiest week ever. It looked like this:
Monday: Edit 80 pages, go see Suzie Izzard with my mom (our birthday presents to ourselves)
Tuesday: Edit 120 pages, turn in Red in Tooth in Claw in some sort of fugue state, write trivia questions, and then host trivia night at Hemlock State Brewing.
Wednesday: Catch up on email, house stuff, therapy, and then book event.
Thursday: write, house stuff, get my kid to soccer, and then do a halloween event...
2023-11-02 23:39:18 +0000 UTC View Post
Editing is eating my brain and I'm still super behind. Wee? Wee. But I needed to write something fun to get my brain back on track, and since I didn't feel up to working on a whole chapter, I figured a text exchange might be fun. It's been a minute since I did Team Firebug, so here you go!
Also, Patreon has been rolling out a new chat feature. Would that be interesting for anyone? I'm happy to chat books and things on there and maybe it would feel like less pressure for any of you to ch...
2023-10-20 20:10:53 +0000 UTC View Post
I've been deep in the edits for my next YA, Red in Tooth and Claw which are due in...nine days. *winces*
I'm trying really hard not to think about it. It's a tight turn around deadline-wise, and we're not doing anything major. At this stage of editing, we're cutting away the stuff that's slowing down the narrative, adding in details, and in general bringing the story into focus. I thought it might be fun for you to see what that looks like. How similar, and yet how different, these pass...
2023-10-10 00:50:10 +0000 UTC View Post
This last week involved me driving a lot (12 hours en toto, I think?) to visit friends and get to my book event in Portland, which was a lot of fun. (Special shout out to Patron Kat, who came to see me at Powell's! If any of you ever see me in the wild, please let me know you're a patron so I can thank you in person!) Between that and being in the throws of an edit that's due in...*checks notes* ten days, I haven't been reading as much as usual. Then again my "as usual" seems to be a...
2023-10-08 22:08:56 +0000 UTC View PostI got slammed with a bunch of edits due ASAP last week, plus moving my MIL out of her house. (HAHAHAHA, she has so much stuff. It's a nightmare. She's lovely, but this is going to be exhausting.) And so I crashed and burned at the end of the week and I'm losing a few days this week to my event in Portland. I'm trying very hard to get a new Sam chapter to you by the end of the week, though, as well as a TBR post. I might include a few movie recs? Tis the spooky season, and I've seen a lot of h...
2023-10-03 20:53:06 +0000 UTC View Post
You've all been so patient, thank you! I've been freakishly inundated with work lately and every time I clear off my plate, more lands. Oof.
Happy Friday, friends!
--Lish
2023-09-22 21:35:59 +0000 UTC View Post
I had to drive 4 hours to an event last weekend. Driving from where I live to the tricities area of Washington is long, but a fairly straightforward drive and quite pretty in some places.
Unless you have a headache bordering on a migraine, which I definitely did have. I was by myself, so I had no other option really than to keep going. I took lots of breaks, drank water, tried to stretch when I could. It was pretty miserable, but I made it. I was hoping for a quiet hotel night--my event...
2023-09-19 19:58:09 +0000 UTC View Post
It was my birthday! I told one my of friends I was "eld" and she said, "eldritch?" and that's my new favorite way to describe myself. I am becoming the eldritch being I deserve to be.
Birthdays are weird when you get older. I always want to do something, but I never want to plan it, especially since my birthday is during the first week of school for my kids. Or I guess just kid now, since Bigs graduated this year. So I'm tired and have zero desire to plan stuff. Usually my mom wil...
2023-09-14 02:55:21 +0000 UTC View PostI do have an image for this one, but I'm posting it from a boat and it won't upload! I'll repost it later. Until then, enjoy!
2023-08-28 04:49:10 +0000 UTC View Post