Black Friday Book Sale Alert!

 

Hey'a, everyone! I hope everyone had an excellent Thanksgiving yesterday — or, if you're outside the US of A, an excellent Thursday. I'm just popping in to remind y'all that all five of my published books — Blood in the Snow, Mechanical Heart, The Midnight Show, Gilded in Ice, and Mask of Scarlet — are on sale for $0.99 each as part of the Perry Kirkpatrick Black Friday book sale! This sale runs from Black Friday (today, November 25) through Cyber Monday and includes literal hundreds of clean and Christian indie reads from authors like Kendra E. Ardnek, Jaye L. Knight, Tara Grayce, Jenelle Leanne Schmidt, H.L. Burke, and myself. There's free and $0.99 ebooks, plus some special deals on print and audiobooks. You can click the images below to go straight to my sale listings, or you can browse the whole sale.

 

 

 

 

Through a Shattered Glass is not included in the sale . . . but ARC requests are still open if you're a reviewer eager to give it a read, and we're still looking for people to join in the Broken Mirrors release tour. So if either of those sound appealing, make sure you sign up!

Have you checked out the Black Friday sale yet? Which books in it are you eyeing up? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

April 2022 Doings!

April has, unsurprisingly, flown right by, and here we are in May already. I think you all already know what the month's main events were (one of them was pretty hard to miss if you follow me anywhere online), but we'll get on with the Doings all the same.

Writing!

• Mask of Scarlet is officially published and out in the world! Huzzah! We did have a little delay on Kindle Unlimited availability due to my forgetting to click the "make available in KU" button, but otherwise, the release went pretty well. Many thanks to everyone who participated!
• Other than Mask of Scarlet release stuff, my main writing project was starting the rewrite/first edit of Through a Shattered Glass (formerly known as the Super Secret Mystery Project). This has been going a bit slower than anticipated — I had a couple busy weeks when I didn't get to do as much as I wanted. But in general, it's coming along well, and the fact that I'm working with a much more extended timeline than usual means I can get in an extra round of feedback, which I'm happy about.
• I also did some work on the current module of the Defenders of Serys D&D campaign I'm running, though we missed several weeks this month, which meant I didn't have to do too much. (The current adventure also has too many possible path branches for me to prep too far in advance.)
• In general, stuff was pretty quiet on the writing front, but that's fine — it's always nice to have a more restful month.

Reading!

• Well, this was a better reading month than March was.
• Unsurprisingly, this month included a lot of ARCs. I've already posted my thoughts on most of those, but I'll provide a quick recap:
  • Tall & Dark was a delightful con/mystery adventure followup to Miss Sharp's Monsters. Highlights included the same memoir-ish style as Miss Sharp, the same dark and exciting world full of monstrous royalty, a new and clever MC, and a return of Grand Duke Vasily (who is having, just, the worst succession of bad days). I reviewed this at the start of the month.
  • My Soul to Take is the third of Bryan Davis's Oculus Gate series. It's a worldhopping Davis book, so obviously I enjoyed it — read the rest of my thoughts here.
  • Crown and Cinder and Cindy Ellen were my fellow Midnight Curfews books, and I enjoyed both very much! Crown and Cinder is a blend of Pride and Prejudice and Cinderella that just works wonderfully well (my thoughts), and Cindy Ellen is a short and sweet Old West Cinderella story (again, my thoughts here).
  • Search for the Astral Dragon is the only ARC here that I haven't already posted about — that's coming next week. In the meantime, I can say that it's a thrilling space adventure that I definitely recommend picking up.
• Outside of ARCs, we have a nice assortment of stories. I did finally finish Raising Steam, though it took me pretty much all month (reading between ARCs and due library books). I stand by what I said earlier — it's a good story, but it's not a great Discworld novel. It lacks the usual spark, and I think it's largely because no one is an underdog anymore. At this point, I only have one book left in the series (well, plus Small Gods, which I may or may not read), and I'm hoping very hard that it doesn't suffer from the same problem.
• On a more cheerful note: Every Living Thing is the final James Herriot memoir, and it's just as lovely as the others. This one deals a great deal with Herriot's family and with the new assistants who come through the practice, which was fun. Fullmetal Alchemist Vol. 4 was exciting, though I kind of can't believe that I didn't see a particular twist coming. Finally, Leading Edge is an anthology that contained a couple ok stories (interesting premises, but too open-ended for me) and one really delightful story about fae magic and goblin markets and true love. It's a pretty cheap ebook, and I'd recommend picking it up just for that one story.

Watching!

• Aaaaand we're back to the watching-stuff slump, probably because I was too busy to spend much time on the treadmill or set aside work early enough to watch anything. I finished Critical Role Episode 8, watched a little bit more No Evil, and that's pretty much it.

Life!

• . . . What the pumpernickel happened this month?
• Outside of the book release, most of this month's activity centered around work and Holy Week . . . usually at the same time. Last year, the church was still in pandemic mode, so Easter was comparatively low-key. This year, we had a big Good Friday event in addition to services and promo graphics and regular weekly stuff, and . . . it was a lot.
• And then I ended up getting hit hard by allergies and a little bit of a bug midway through Holy Week.
• It was not a good time.
• But everything got done that needed to be done! And I still got to go to Easter lunch with the Bible Study!
• And I made a coconut cake, and it was delicious! It's a recipe from my former supervisor (the one who retired in January), and it was my first time trying it. I was a little nervous, but it turned out super well!
• Other than Easter stuff . . . we spent two weekends working outside, one to cut and split a fallen tree into logs and one to split and stack all the wood we got from other fallen trees that we'd only cut into sections. That was, y'know, a lot. I'm just the person carrying things, and I was tired.
• I ended the month with another cake, this one chocolate with chocolate icing. Mostly by accident, I ended up making it on the day of Mask of Scarlet's release. (I mostly made it for dessert at Bible study that evening.) It was also very tasty, though putting sprinkles on it was a mistake because they kind of . . . went everywhere.
• I did not do very well with walking on the treadmill, nor did I figure out a stretching routine like I intended. I did start working on another goal, though, which is learning (via YouTube) some popular line dances. I'm hoping that, by the time September rolls around and I have another wedding to go to, I'll be able to actually participate in some of the dancing rather than just sitting on the sidelines.

May Plans

• The most exciting bits of May are happening at the same time: my sister coming home from college for the summer and our Bible study's yearly retreat. I'm honestly not sure which I'm more excited about.
• I intend to finish the first edit of Through a Shattered Glass by the end of the month — maybe a second round of edits as well, if things go extraordinarily well.
• I also really need to figure out what's happening with the TaSG cover. Which probably means biting the bullet and hiring someone to make it, because once you factor in the cost of stock art, it's a pretty reasonably priced option. I'm just procrastinating because my favorite cover designer isn't available.
• At work, I think May will end up being the Month of Signage . . . unless stuff keeps getting delayed, which is entirely possible. It will, if nothing else, probably be fairly quiet since we sorta dropped the summer newsletter that would normally be taking up a lot of time. (In theory, this means that I should also take the month to update all my how-to-do-this-job documentation and maybe print a copy so that other people can reference it. Will I actually do that? Who knows.)
• One solid plan I do have is that I'm going to participate in Bryan Davis's big 20-years-of-authordom celebration contest! Which means y'all will be seeing a fair bit about Davis's books on my blog and social media accounts. (Don't worry; I will intersperse it with non-Davis-related stuff.)
• This also means that I want to finish rereading Oracles of Fire so I can write the "rereading DiOM/OoF" blog post that I've been planning for months. I should probably get back to finishing up my series rereads in general, honestly . . .
• I also want to work on crafting projects! Specifically, cosplay-related stuff for Realm Makers! My plan is to do more low-key cosplays three days (which will have a base of primarily items that I either already have in my closet or can wear as normal clothes in addition to in a cosplay), plus a "centerpiece" outfit for the Awards Banquet. I am very excited, and I'm trying to manage my expectations, but . . . yeah. I have gotten very few opportunities in my life to cosplay, so I like taking advantage of the opportunities I do get, especially because I've been watching a fair number of Morgan Donner videos in the last year.

How was your April? Any exciting plans for May? Did you pick up any of the Midnight Curfews releases? What's your favorite cake (to make or to eat)? Do you enjoy cosplay? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

5 Reasons to Read Mask of Scarlet

And it's here! Mask of Scarlet has officially released! If you preordered the ebook, it should have hit your Kindle or Kindle app this morning, and if you've been holding out for the paperback, you can order that now on Amazon! Quite a few people have already told me how excited they are about this book, and to all of them I say . . . thank you. Y'all are wonderful.

On the other hand, maybe you're on the fence about picking it up. Maybe you want to know what to expect and look forward to in this story. If so, I'm going to give you five reasons why you should absolutely pick up Mask of Scarlet.

About . . .

Mask of Scarlet

Bastian Dennel, PI #3

Bastian Dennel is a detective, not a matchmaker.

But he’s also not one to turn down easy mazuma. So when one of Innsjøby’s richest young sheiks hires him to find his so-called true love — a girl he’s met only once at a masked party — Bastian is on the case. After his last few high-risk adventures, he’s ready for a job where the most difficult part will be collecting his payment. Sure, all he has to go on is a guest list and a description . . . but how hard can it be?

Of course, easy money always has a catch, and what should’ve been a simple search turns out to be anything but. Everyone seems to have their own opinion on who this mystery girl should be, whether or not it matches reality, and even the Families are getting involved. To make matters worse, Dayo is acting cagey, and Bastian doesn’t know why.

Bastian’s business is the truth. But what can he do when everyone around him has already decided what they want the truth to be? Find out in this Jazz-Age take on “Cinderella,” book three of the Bastian Dennel, PI mysteries!

Find it on: Amazon || Goodreads

 

5 Reasons to Read Mask of Scarlet

1. Because you need more of Bastian in your life. Bastian seems to be a fan favorite out of all my characters . . . for good reason; I love him too. (He would point out that I have a very strange way of showing it, especially in this book, but, y'know. Authors are like that.) In any case, Bastian wouldn't call himself a hero, but he is a genuinely good guy, and Mask of Scarlet is a story in which I think he really proves his character.
2. Because the only thing better than one Dennel detective . . . is two Dennel detectives. That's right! After her adventures in Gilded in Ice, Kona is joining Bastian as his assistant as he investigates this mystery. And that, of course, means some very fun interactions as Bastian shows Kona the ropes of detective work.
3. Because you want to meet Dayo's family. Fun fact: Dayo actually has a very large family — the only major character whose family might be bigger is Caio. We don't meet all of Dayo's family here, but we do meet quite a few members, including some who play a large role in the book.
4. Because this is a family-focused book . . . in more ways than one. In Innsjøby, there's family and there's Family, and both are quite important in this story. The latter is a side of Innsjøby that I haven't gotten to explore much in previous books, but which will play a larger role in some later stories I have planned. So it was cool to get to work with it a little more here.
5. Because you want to see more of your favorite Innsjøby couples. Bastian and Dayo's relationship plays a pretty significant role in this story — I'll let you decide whether or not that makes you worry. But Mikael and Kona also get a couple turns in the spotlight. And while I'm still keeping romance pretty low-key . . . well, let's just say there was some excited squeeing in the beta comments over a few scenes.

Are you excited about Mask of Scarlet? What are you most looking forward to about it? Is there anything you're hoping to see either from this story or future Bastian Dennel, PI stories? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 Hello, everyone! Hope y'all are having a good spring. I've certainly had a productive few months — though, strangely, the writing side of things has felt less stressful and busy than it did six months ago, even though I'm arguably getting more done. Stuff's weird. Also, despite my productivity, this list hasn't changed much . . . though I do have some updates for you! As always, if you want more information on any project in this post, you can find that on my Works in Progress page!

On the Taleweaver's Desk Issue 4: April 2022

On the Desktop

These are the projects you might find open on my laptop or desk if you took a peek at it during a normal day. They're currently in progress and at the top of the priority chart.

Mask of Scarlet (Bastian Dennel, PI #3)

What is it? Book 3 in my Bastian Dennel, PI series, a Jazz Age mystery take on Cinderella (with a little inspiration from "The Red Shoes" for extra spice).

Status: Releasing in one week! Don't forget to preorder the ebook! Also learn how you can join the release party and help spread the word.

It's wonderful how much faster every stage of editing after the initial edit/rewrite is. You go from "This will take a month if I'm lucky" to "Two weeks and I'm through" to "I'll go slow and take three days" to "Eh, I can get it done this afternoon." I actually managed to get this finished well ahead of schedule — pretty impressive, considering the fact that I originally expected to be working up to the last minute — and at this point, everything is ready to go. All I have to do is hit "publish" on the paperback and send out promo materials to those who want something special to share for the release.

Super Secret Mystery Project . . . aka, Through a Shattered Glass

What is it? A dark-ish portal fantasy remix of Lewis Carroll's Alice books combined with The Snow Queen.

Status: TITLE REVEAL TIME, Y'ALL! Also, drafted and currently in the first rewrite.

I drafted Through a Shattered Glass over the course of about three weeks while Mask of Scarlet was with beta readers. I've vaguely considered doing an Alice retelling for a while, but I didn't come up with the idea of combining it with The Snow Queen until October 2021. I let the concepts stew for a while until after I finished Mask of Scarlet, by which point the storyline was . . . well, not solidly in place, but firm enough to outline and then write. It's a very different animal from the Bastian Dennel, PI books, which I think helped me write it so quickly. (It's also first person POV. Storms I've missed first person POV.) I then let it sit while I finished up Mask of Scarlet, and I just picked it back up to start rewrites this week. At the moment, I'm about three chapters in.

D&D Campaign: Defenders of Serys

What is it? Defenders of Serys is the homebrew D&D campaign that I run for my D&D group.

Status: Slowly writing Season 4 Module 2.

Look, we've been playing kind of sporadically, and the material I had stretched over more sessions than I expected it do, and my motivation to work on this has been low. Also, the party is in Middle Earth, meddling with the affairs of The Lord of the Rings after they derailed the story several sessions back (as in, they derailed LOTR, not the campaign story), so I feel pretty confident in my ability to improv. After all, I already have a framework to work inside of, and if we end up in a combat scenario I didn't anticipate, well, I have a pretty limited scope of enemies to pick from. In any case, I have the next couple sessions pretty much prepped, so I'm not worried.

Stacked on the Side

These are the stories that I'm not actively working on (at least not officially), but I'm keeping close at hand because I plan to get back to them soon (or I just work on them sporadically as the urge takes me).

There are no significant changes to any of these projects since my October 2021 update, but I'll leave the list here for anyone who hasn't seen it before!

Blood in the Earth

What is it? Blood in the Earth is the sequel to Blood in the Snow and a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses crossed with the myth of Hades and Persephone.

Status: First draft finished; awaiting rewrites. Probably won't happen this year unless there's a miracle . . . even though I do genuinely want to go back to this sooner rather than later.

Once Upon a Dream

What is it? A light steampunk (or gaslamp fantasy?) Sleeping Beauty retelling; the predecessor to The Midnight Show

Status: Edited several times over. Awaiting another round of rewrites/expansion/edits.

Shelved for Now

These are stories that are also on hold, but which I don't have specific plans to work on very soon. They're still within easy reach should I decide to return to them, but they aren't a top priority.

There are no significant changes to any of these projects since my October 2021 update, but I'll leave the list here for anyone who hasn't seen it before!

Dust of Silver

What is it? Classic-ish fantasy retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses crossed with Rapunzel, the first book in what has the potential to be a rather long series. Also, a rewrite of a book I wrote years ago that won't let go of me because CHARACTERS.

Status: Several chapters into the rewrite, though those several chapters haven't been touched in a few years. I swear I'll get back to this . . .

Between Two Worlds

What is it? A portal fantasy adventure about what happens when you come home from the adventure, only to discover that the adventure isn't quite as done with you as you thought.

Status: Awaiting another round of edits/rewrites while I write other things and daydream about its sequels.

The Way of the Pen

What is it? Self-aware fantasy adventure about a girl and her author.

Status: The first draft is sitting on my shelf, patiently waiting for its turn back in the spotlight, as it has been for some time.

Berstru Tales series

What is it? A classic epic fantasy series and the longest-running series I've worked on (either in the number of books written or in how long I've worked on it.

Status: Needs to be rewritten from the ground up, but the bones are good. I did come up with more new and exciting ways to make the characters' lives difficult, so . . . there's that?

A Tower of Portals Campaign

What is it? A second D&D campaign inspired by one of my favorite video games.

Status: On hold; worked on as I come up with new ideas and have time.

Awaiting Delivery

These are the stories that are on their way, but haven't quite arrived yet to the point where I can write them: ideas I'm toying with but haven't even started to draft because they're still too nebulous.

Additional Bastian Dennel, PI novels

What is it? Exactly what the heading said.

Status: I have solid, albeit unwritten, plans for the next two Bastian Dennel, PI novels, and I plan to start outlining and drafting Book 4 once I get to a good spot with Through a Shattered Glass, and Book 5 is next in line after that. I possibly have Book 6 pretty well figured out as well, though I may end up switching it in terms of series position with one of two other ideas — that'll depend on some other factors. I'm keeping plotlines close to my chest for the moment, but I can tell you that at least one of the stories in the pipeline is a murder mystery.

Novellas from the world of Blood in the Snow

What are they? Currently, three ideas for spinoffs, most of which are also fairy tale retellings: one Puss in Boots (no, really), one Orpheus and Eurydice (probably crossed with a similar Japanese myth, Izanagi and Izanami), and one that's not currently a fairy tale retelling but would be about Gan and Azuma before they were animal-keepers at the emperor's palace (inspired the summer I spent watching a lot of Hogan's Heroes.

Status: Won't be written until after I edit Blood in the Earth.

Unnamed Fantasy Murder Mystery

What is it? Exactly what the headline says. A prominent noble is murdered; his adoptive daughter is poised to inherit his lands and position — but some are saying her hand was behind his death.

Status: Still just an idea. Still not going to be tackled until after Blood in the Earth.

Worldhoppers Inc./Mythology D&D Campaign

What is it? Yet another homebrew D&D campaign. Or two. Technically it's two possible themes for series of connected one-shots and short-term adventures, with a few adventure ideas for each theme and a chance that I'll just try to combine them.

Status: Probably not going to work on this until I have a lot of spare time, need a new campaign for my D&D group, or have reason to prioritize the Welsh myth adventure. I'm also moving some of what I had planned for it into Defenders of Serys, which is going to be great.

And that about covers it! What do you think of the concept of Through a Shattered Glass? Are you more excited for Mask of Scarlet, Through a Shattered Glass, or the future Bastian Dennel, PI books? Tell me in the comments! And once again, don't forget to preorder Mask of Scarlet and RSVP for the Midnight Curfews release party!
Thanks for reading!

March 2022 Doings!

A third of the year is already gone . . . hard to believe, isn't it? It's been a busy month for me in many ways, but a restful one in others — and a good month, I'd say, all round. Let's get on with the Doings so you can see what I mean!

Writing!

• This has been another busy writing month! A little less so than February was, but still very busy and very productive.
• I spent the first week and a half of the month hard at work on my Super Secret Mystery Project (TaSG), averaging about a chapter a day — except on the day I spent mostly in the car and the day I finished the draft, on which I got several chapters written. It's been a while since the words flowed that readily on any given project. I think it was a combination of a tight deadline and low pressure — TaSG isn't directly connected to any of my previous projects, and I hadn't fully committed to anything with it, but I did need to get it done by a particular point in time for what I wanted to do with it.
• After finishing the Super Secret Mystery Project, I took a bit under a week off while I waited for the last of my Mask of Scarlet beta feedback to drift in, and then I dove back into edits on that project. I've been working on that on and off through the second half of the month — I'll finish a round of edits, take a few days, then edit again. At this point, I'm at the ebook formatting stage, which is exciting. I'm testing a new method of doing chapter headers that I hope will make my life a little easier. (Also, I remembered to start with ebook formatting this time rather than print. Thank goodness.)
• On that note, there's still time to sign up for an ARC of Mask of Scarlet or the other Midnight Curfews, Crown and Cinder and Cindy Ellen! The goal is to have ARCs available sometime the week of April 10.
• Outside of my novels, I've been working writing the next adventure for my Defenders of Serys D&D group. That's going a bit slowly because I don't have a ton of time or energy to put to it, but I do have the next couple sessions ready, and the fact that we basically didn't meet this month meant I had some extra time to plan. If worst comes to worst, the nature of the next adventure means I already have a good framework and plenty of pre-made NPCs to improve with, and a very limited number of options for enemies if I need a combat scenario on short notice.

Reading!

• Ugh. This month started out really well in terms of reading and then everything just . . . fell apart. It's starting to look back up, but yeah.
• I started out by steaming through three more Discworld books, two of which were new to me and one of which was Making Money, which, while not on the same level as Going Postal, is still excellent-quality Moist von Lipwig content. The two new ones were good as well, particularly Thud!, though not anywhere near my favorites list.
• Then I switched over to arguably my favorite book I've read this month, Cinderella Must Die by W.R. Gingell. I posted about how much I loved this one earlier this month, so I won't repeat myself except to say that it was an absolutely delightful romp of a fairytale murder mystery.
• Back to Discworld, I read Snuff, the last City Watch book. And it was . . . fine? It was a very good book. But it lacked some shine or spark that had made me love the other Vimes books, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why. It wasn't that Vimes was out of the city — The Fifth Elephant is one of my favorite Discworld novels. It wasn't that there wasn't stuff happening. It was just . . . missing something.
• At this point, I was starting to think that maybe I was reading too much Discworld, and I'd remembered that I had a Kindle Unlimited subscription that would expire in a month and a bit that I needed to use. So I worked through a few indie reads — Sorcerer and the Swan Princess was an interesting take on Swan Lake, though it wasn't as substantial as it could've been, and Stolen Mayfly Bride featured a properly Other take on fae — before realizing that if I wanted to do a Discworld post in March, I needed to get busy.
• And so I started Raising Steam . . . and that's where it all fell apart because I could just. not. get into it. I should've been all over it, because it's Moist von Lipwig and Vetinari and so on . . . but it just wasn't doing it for me. Eventually, I realized why: I'm a good third of the book in, and it still doesn't feel like there's real stakes. There have been challenges, but it's nothing the main character can't deal with and hasn't dealt with before. There's not even the usual risk to Moist's life, since he got himself into the current situation. And I think it's the same problem I had with Snuff; while there was action and mystery enough, I rarely felt like there was any risk of the conflict not being successfully resolved.
• Anyway. Raising Steam is currently on hold while I read my ARC of Tall and Dark, the first in Suzannah Rowntree's successor series to Miss Sharp's Monsters, and I'm enjoying that very much thus far. So at least the month's ended on a high note.

Watching!

• If this month was a bit of a slump when it came to reading in some ways, I made up for it in what I watched! I spent a lot of time in the car at the start of the month, plus I've been making an effort to use the treadmill a couple times a week, so that's given me a little more space where I don't feel guilty about watching longer stuff rather than writing, editing, blogging, or doing something else "productive."
• I actually watched three whole movies this month! Most exciting to me was finally seeing Encanto, which was a lovely movie. I'm not sure if it was quite as amazing as everyone hyped it up to be, but it was still excellent. I do love a good family story, and a magical family story in an equally magical house is even better. I have to say, though — why's everyone so obsessed with not talking about Bruno when "Waiting for a Miracle" is right there? Y'all are sleeping on the good stuff.
• Anyway. I didn't love the other two movies, though for different reasons. Meet Me in St. Louis is an older slice-of-life-ish musical, and, it was . . . fine? I spent most of it mentally shaking my head at the characters. As for No Time to Die, the new James Bond . . . well, let's just say that the title is inaccurate on multiple levels. I will give it credit for good costuming (the major female characters are in actual practical clothing!) and for character depth and having family actually be a good thing and a motivating factor? But it was so long.
• Outside of movies, I fit in another episode and two halves of Critical Role (bringing me up to midway through Campaign 3 Episode 8 and introducing me to Chetney. I also started watching No Evil, which is a YouTube animated serial featuring mythology and legends from North and Central America. I didn't expect to love it, but I've gotta say, I'm kinda hooked.

Life!

• The highlight of the month was, of course, my sister being home for spring break for a week at the start of March. The whole family drove up to pick her up, which was a lot of time in the car — but, as I said, it was some good quality writing time, and we got to meet one of her friends, so that was fine. We didn't do a lot during the week, but we did watch a movie and play a couple rounds of Sentinels, and we finished out her break by visiting my grandpa in Pittsburgh . . . where it snowed. And was cold. But getting to see him was still nice.
• Since then . . . most of the excitement is stuff I've already covered in other sections. I will say that work has been very busy, as I'm knee deep in materials for the church's Good Friday event, other Lenten and Holy week materials, and trying to solve problems of signage around the church on top of my normal work. It's . . . a lot. I'm not complaining by any means, but yeah.
• Pi Day was a nice bright spot in all the stress, though! We celebrated with spaghetti pie and strawberry mallow pie, both of which were DELICIOUS.
• We did finally get some warm spring weather, which is just . . . hallelujah thank you God. And then it promptly froze again the next couple weeks. But now it's warming up again! I'm wearing short sleeves (under a cardigan, but still)!
• I also got new tennis shoes, which are slip-ons instead of traditional lace-up shoes, and I am delighted.
• So, yeah. It's not been a quiet month, but it has been consistent in its business, so I won't complain.

April Plans

• Mask of Scarlet comes out THIS MONTH, y'all! If you want to get in on helping with the tour, keep checking my spaces — Kendra and I will be releasing details on how to get involved soon. And, of course, you can still preorder the book.
• I also plan to edit the Super Secret Mystery Project, so that'll be fun.
• I am not doing Camp NaNoWriMo. It's just not the place I'm in, and I don't feel like I need the extra motivation.
• Of course, I'm looking forward to Easter. Our Bible study is planning the usual Easter lunch gathering, and I'm thinking about what I want to contribute. I may attempt coconut cake using the recipe that my supervisor gave me before she retired. We shall see.
• On the work front, I don't anticipate life getting any less busy anytime soon. Even once Holy Week is over and done, we'll have summer to prepare for . . . and we're thinking of redoing some of the church signage, which means I get to do a bunch of research to figure out what that even looks like.
• I'm not even going to try to plan out my reading, other than the fact that I'll have several books to read or finish for review and I want to get some more mileage out of Kindle Unlimited before it goes back to full price and I cancel the subscription. I'm too tired to be anything but a mood reader.
• I want to keep using the treadmill semi-regularly. You might be saying, "But Sarah! It's spring! Go outside!" and to you, I reply: I do not like walking on the road. If I liked walking on the road, I would not have spent time and effort campaigning for a treadmill. I do hope to go outside and read, ideally in a hammock, and I will almost certainly end up outside to help clear up the tree that fell down in our yard the other day. (Don't worry! Nothing was damaged! It's not even a really big tree, thank goodness, and we knew it would come down eventually.) But I like to do my excercise where I can pair it with Critical Role or Leverage or another show. 
• I also kind of want to get better about stretching regularly so I don't end up with really bad consequences from sitting and staring at screens all the time? But I have to do research before I can properly commit to that. I'm just saying it here now so I'll have extra motivation to work on it.

How was your March? Any exciting plans for April? Have you preordered Mask of Scarlet and/or requested an ARC yet? Are you happy about spring's arrival? And do you prefer to do excercise inside or outside? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

February 2022 Doings!

And here we are again! It feels like I just did one of these . . . but, of course, February's a short month, and I did end up delaying my January Doings! by a week, so no surprise there. Most of this month's excitement has been writing-related, so let's just jump right in there.

Writing!

• On the whole, this was a pretty good writing month! It started, of course, with revealing the cover of Mask of Scarlet — which, friendly reminder, is available for preorder on Amazon! And if you can't wait for the release date, you can request an ARC of any of the Three Midnight Curfews.
• On the day of the cover reveal, I also finished editing Mask of Scarlet and sent it off to betas. I know one has finished, and while I haven't looked at her in-manuscript comments yet, I know from her messages that I very much got the reactions I was hoping for. So that is very encouraging!
• After sending out Mask, I did take a few days off from writing (mostly) as a bit of a break before jumping into outlining and drafting my Super Secret Mystery Project, also known (at least to me) as TaSG. If you can correctly guess what those initials stand for, I will give you a cookie . . . and maybe something else? We shall see. :D
• In addition to TaSG/the Super Secret Mystery Project, I've been doing some thinking about future Bastian Dennel books. I think I have a good idea of what the next three or four books in that series are going to be, and I have a plan of when I'd like to release the next two. After that, well, we'll see what opportunities come up.
• On the D&D front, I haven't done a whole lot of campaign/adventure writing, but I have done a lot of thinking about future plotlines and what might happen and where the characters might go. I mentioned last month that the group met the Fellowship — yes, that Fellowship — and was very excited about it. They also informed me that, in addition to wanting to potentially go back to Middle Earth, they would totally be down for more world-hopping adventures, which means I can potentially just combine a different campaign concept I was thinking about with the Defenders of Serys campaign. (And that, my friends, is a great relief.)
• Finally, one last bit of exciting writing-related news: I am officially attending the Realm Makers conference in July! I have a registration and a room reservation (and a roommate), and I am SO HYPED. This will be my first-ever writing conference, and I can't wait to go, learn, and meet all the awesome people.

Reading!

• This has been an interesting mix of reads, to say the least. I discovered back in January that one of the libraries I go to was doing a winter reading challenge for adults, so I tried to tune some of my reading to that, with . . . mixed success. In addition, the other library I have a card at did a Blind Date with a Book event, which I'm sure you all can guess meant I was delighted.
• My Blind Date Books were J.R.R. Tolkien's transaltion of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo and Gregory Maguire's A Wild Winter Swan. The Tolkien-translated poems were excellent, of course. It was interesting both to read the full version of Gawain and the Green Knight (since I've only ever read abridged or sanitized versions) and to read the medieval reimagining of Orpheus. As for A Wild Winter Swan, it was a very well-written book that I nonetheless did not particularly enjoy reading. I'd be happy to own the Tolkien, but I don't even think I'd consider rereading A Wild Winter Swan.
• Other than that, I had two new reads: Death Wind (Elven Alliance #3) and Rise of the Dungeon Master, a graphic novel about how D&D was created. Both were quite good, and I definitely enjoyed them! In Death Wind, I did have some stylistic frustrations with the author's writing (which is nothing new), but the story was excellent. And Rise of the Dungeon Master was very well-written and well-illustrated, and I think the writer did an excellent job distilling and expressing the story.
• I also reread quite a few books, all of them good. The highlights? The Lord God Made Them All is always a delight — it's James Herriot's fourth autobiography, and it's just as much a comfort story as the others. Alice in Wonderland and Alice Through the Looking Glass were childhood favorites, and it was fun to revisit them. And Going Postal is one of my favorite Discworld books — no wonder, given that Moist von Lipwig is very much an example of one of my favorite archetypes.

Watching!

• As has been the usual, there's not much to say about this category . . . but I did finally finish Episode 5 of Critical Role Campaign 3, and I started Episode 6, so there's that. I continue to love all the characters, but Laudna and Imogen are definitely my favorites. (Orym is, like, third place, just because you can't not love him.)
• (No, I haven't watched the show yet. Yes, I absolutely do want to watch it. I just have to get to the point where I have time to watch it.)

Life!

• Mmmkay, what happened this month that didn't fit into a category I've already talked about . . .
• Oh! We finally got a treadmill! I've been pushing on and off for us to get one for probably ten years at this point, on the basis of "Remember how when we had the one my grandpa gave us, I used it pretty much every day?" and, more recently, "You know how there's nowhere good to walk around here that doesn't require a fifteen-minute drive first?" We held off initially because we didn't want to have to move a treadmill and then because we couldn't agree on what we wanted. 
• But! We finally agreed, and we put in the order around the beginning of the month, and then it arrived the day before the Mask of Scarlet cover reveal. We wanted them to deliver it down to the basement . . . so, of course, they instead put it in our front entryway. And then we had a very interesting night of trying to get it down the inside basement stairs. Eventually, we had to move it back outside, wheel it around the house on a dolly to the outdoor basement stairs, and take it down that way. On the upside, no one was injured, nothing broke, and now we have a treadmill! Which I have used multiple times, though not every day — I'm currently aiming for 2–3 times per week.
• I tried a new biscotti recipe for National Biscotti Day. These ones were Milk Chocolate and Honey biscotti, and they were pretty tasty. They turned out a little darker than I wanted because I didn't leave them in long enough on the first bake and overcorrected on the second, but they were still good.
• We did have several warm days this month, which was nice. Downside: that meant we had to go out and cut a tree into logs for splitting. (The tree in question had been cut down last November or December, but it's at the back of our property and not very convenient to get to.) Upside: a friend from our Bible study came out to help, which meant we finished much faster. Even more of an upside: the friend brought his crossbow to shoot and let us shoot some as well.
• After procrastinating for about six months, I finally went and got my eyes checked and confirmed that yes, I do need new glasses, and then ordered the new ones the next week. I'm supposed to actually get the new glasses this weekend, and I'm rather excited. While I like my sunglasses, I've realized over the last two years that I made a mistake when picking the frames for my regular glasses (which are just for distance, for the record), getting ones that are smaller and looser than I really like. It took buying blue light glasses to realize my mistake. The new ones, however, should be a better fit, and I'm hopeful that they'll be less annoying to wear.
• Otherwise, most of this month's excitement has been at work, where things have been quite busy with the newsletter, Lenten and Holy Week preparations (yes, Holy Week this far out!), and a funeral on top of the usual stuff that needs to get done. I'm certainly not complaining, since I'd rather be busy than bored, but it has been a lot, especially this past week.
• Oh! And the last exciting thing that happened this month: not only did I make Duolingo's Diamond League (two weeks in a row!), but I hit the top spot on the leaderboard! It took a week of, ah, slightly obsessive Duolingo practicing. I mean, it was productive use of my time, but it was a lot of time on Duolingo.

March Plans

• First job for March: finish drafting TaSG/the Super Secret Mystery Project. I've managed about a chapter per night thus far, with a few exceptions when I didn't write anything, so I feel good about this. It's first-person POV, which I think tends to go a little faster. I'm hoping to get this done early in the month so I can move on to the second job for March . . .
• The second round of Mask of Scarlet edits! As I said, I have some comments back from betas, and I'm expecting more in the next week or two. Since this comes out at the end of April, I can't procrastinate on this, but I do want to finish the Super Secret Mystery Project draft before I switch over.
• Of course, things might be slowed a little by the fact that my sister! is coming home! for spring break! And I am so excited to see her again! I'm a bit saddened that I probably won't be able to take time off, but I'll still get to hang out with her a fair bit outside of my working hours.
• Work will probably continue to be busy all month. But, again, I'm not complaining. Better busy than bored, as long as I'm busy with good things and not busy putting out fires.
• On the reading front, I have several series and series-rereads in progress that I want to finish (notably, Oracles of Fire, Legends of Karac Tor, and finally reading the last half-dozen Discworld books). I also have rather a lot of books in library stacks that I really should read . . . but, let's be real, I'm mostly going to continue mood-reading.
• Finally, I'm hoping that spending time on the treadmill will also mean more time to watch stuff. I'd love to actually catch up on Campaign 3, start watching the Legend of Vox Machina show, and hopefully fit Encanto in there somewhere. That said, I'd settle for just watching more of Campaign 3, period.

How was your February? Any exciting plans for March? Any guesses about the Super Secret Mystery Project/TaSG? Are you going to Realm Makers? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

Mask of Scarlet Cover Reveal

All right, all right! Who's ready for a cover reveal? (It's me. The answer is me. I'm ready. Hopefully y'all are excited too!) Today, we're debuting the cover of Mask of Scarlet, the third book in the Bastian Dennel, PI series. Like the other covers in the series, it was designed by yours truly! But before we get to that . . .

Nah. I'm kidding. Let's get this shiny out for y'all to admire.

 

Bastian Dennel is a detective, not a matchmaker. 

But he’s also not one to turn down easy mazuma. So when one of Innsjøby’s richest young sheiks hires him to find his so-called true love — a girl he’s met only once at a masked party — Bastian is on the case. After his last few high-risk adventures, he’s ready for a job where the hardest part will be collecting his payment. Sure, all he has to go on is a guest list and a description . . . but how hard can it be? 

Of course, easy money always has a catch, and what should’ve been a simple search turns out to be anything but. Everyone seems to have their own opinion on who this mystery girl should be, whether or not it matches reality, and even the Families are getting involved. To make matters worse, Dayo is acting cagey, and Bastian doesn’t know why. 

Bastian’s business is the truth. But what can he do when everyone around him has already decided what they want the truth to be? Find out in this Jazz-Age take on “Cinderella,” book three of the Bastian Dennel, PI mysteries!

Releasing April 29, 2022

Preorder on Amazon || Add to your Goodreads shelf || Check out the rest of the series

Mask of Scarlet is releasing alongside Kendra E. Ardnek's Crown and Cinder and Rachel Roden's Cindy Ellen as part of the Three Midnight Curfews, a group release of Cinderella retellings. This is my first time publishing outside of an Arista Challenge release . . . though, I mean, there's still a lot of overlap, given that Kendra was still the one to put it together. You can learn more about the other books at the links below.

Crown and Cinder (The Austen Fairy Tale Book 2)

Preorder on Amazon || Add to your Goodreads shelf || Austen Fairy Tale Book 1

Cindy Ellen (The Austen Fairy Tale Book 2)

Preorder on Amazon || Add to your Goodreads shelf || Discover the series

 

And, of course, a cover reveal means special promotions! Today through February 11, The Midnight Show and Gilded in Ice are both available in ebook form for $0.99 on Amazon. A lot of y'all have probably picked those up by now, but if not, now's the perfect time to do it!

So, what do you think of the cover? How excited are you about Mask of Scarlet? Please tell me in the comments!

 

January 2022 Doings!

 

It's the first Doings of 2022! Whoop whoop! January feels like it's been a pretty busy month, mostly because it included, as Bastian would say, a lot of lates and earlies — up as long as I could manage to draft or edit, up before the sun to get to work on time. All in all, though, it wasn't a bad month.

Writing!

• The first draft of Mask of Scarlet, aka Bastian Dennel, PI #3, is officially finished! And, if all goes to plan, by the time you read this, the second draft will be at least 70% done as well. It was a much cleaner first draft than Gilded in Ice, which I expected — there aren't quite as many elements to balance, and I didn't have to adjust the timing and pacing as much. Most of the biggest changes were in the first three or four chapters, which I wrote before I had all the story details I needed worked out.
• In addition, Mask of Scarlet has a release date — April 29 — and soon will have a cover as well! The reveal is on February 9, so keep an eye out for that! Plus, The Midnight Show and Gilded in Ice will both be $0.99 (ebook) that day, if you haven't picked up either of those yet.
• The book is also up for preorder on Amazon, so feel free to go check that out! Normally I hold off on the preorder until the cover reveal, but I'm releasing it a little early this time.
• Finally, on the D&D front, my group finally reached one of the parts of the adventure I've been planning for the longest: an encounter with the Fellowship — yes, that Fellowship from LOTR! They met Merry, Pippin, Boromir, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli, roughly in that order (and that should give you a clue about when in the story they met the Fellowship), and did effectively derail the course of one of the greatest fantasy epics of all time . . . but, of course, in this case, that was exactly what I hoped they'd do. (It's always worth noting when derailing a plotline makes a DM happy.) Of course, what I didn't anticipate was how much they'd want to either stick around in or come back to Middle Earth . . . so we'll see where things go (literally) once they finish up their current quest.

Reading!

• Things I intended to reread this month: The Great Hunt (Wheel of Time book 2) and the rest of Legends of Karac Tor.
• Things I did not reread this month: The Great Hunt (Wheel of Time book 2) and the rest of Legends of Karac Tor. Oops. (In my defense, The Great Hunt is, as far as I remember, a lot of growing pains for Rand and Mat, and I just have not had the energy to deal with that or the amount of sadness in the latter three Karac Tor books.)
• On the upside, the month started out very well — I finished The Dark Archive (only one book left before I'm caught up on the Invisible Library books!) and read Between Kings, the final City Between book. Both were excellent, especially Between Kings. It wasn't my favorite in the series, but it was a very good finale, and I was happy with where the characters landed.
• I also continued my Dragons in Our Midst reread by moving on to the Oracles of Fire series. I've gotten through two of the books, and I'm enjoying them much more than I originally did.
• Back to new reads — I cleared a few books off the backlist and read The Cruel Prince, The Innocence of Father Brown, and the first three volumes of Fullmetal Alchemist, all of which I enjoyed for very different reasons. The Innocence of Father Brown was definitely the best of the three — no surprise there. The mysteries are clever, and I like the characters of Father Brown and Flambeau. I would honestly put them on a level with the Sherlock Holmes stories in many respects. As for the other two: The Cruel Prince was exciting, though not something I'd go out of my way to recommend — if you want a book about fae, there are better ones out there. Fullmetal Alchemist was an enjoyable read — I almost said a fun read, but that's not quite true, given some of the themes it deals with. But it wasn't all grimdark, and it has a nice brotherly relationship and some interesting lore, and it doesn't lean as heavily into certain uncomfy tropes as other manga I've read. I do plan to keep going with all three series as I'm able to get ahold of the books.
• And then we have some assorted rereads: Ticket to Write by R.M.S. (a compilation of bus ticket poetry originally posted over on Against the Shadows), Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett (which is a very interesting take on a lot of fairy tales all put together), and Paper Crowns by Merriam Neal (a fun novella with a magical cat; very nice as a stress-reliever).

Watching!

• Focusing most of my time and energy on Mask of Scarlet has meant that I haven't had a lot of time to watch stuff, much to my disappointment — I'm missing my Critical Role, and I also desperately want to watch Encanto, since I keep hearing so many good things about it. Plus, Legend of Vox Machina just launched in animated form . . . it's a real problem.
• The little bit of movie-watching I have done has mostly been with my family. We rewatched Charade at the start of the month, right before my sister went back to college, which was a lot of fun. It's my favorite older movie for a reason, you know?
• But, yeah. Hopefully I'll be able to get in a little bit more watching-of-stuff once I finish this round of Mask of Scarlet edits.

Life!

• January started off pretty well — although it snowed, which I distinctly don't love, that plus the cold and ice meant I got almost a week of either snow days or holidays or work from home. So that was nice. Less nice: the fact that all the other times it's snowed or sleeted or been otherwise inclement, it's been on weekends or days that I would have off anyway. Also, I'm sick and tired of being cold, and it's only a month and a bit into winter.
• ANYWAY. Moving on from complaining about the weather: my sister headed back to college in the second week of January, which was sad . . . and also meant I was home alone for three days. More importantly, it meant I was responsible for keeping the fire going for three days, during which I'd mostly be at work. Thank God, I actually succeeded at that — and I didn't set myself or anything else on fire in the process. I still can't start a fire . . . but it didn't go out on my watch!
• After that, the next big thing — and, honestly, the most noteworthy part of the month — happened at the very end of the month, when the Director of Admin at the church where I work retired. She'd worked there for 45 years in various positions, so that was a pretty big event at the church. It was really something to hear everything people had to say about how she'd influenced the community, not just of the church itself, but of the neighborhoods and city. For myself, I'm sad she's gone — she was my direct supervisor, and was genuinely a great person to work for and with — but her successor is lovely, so the transition hasn't been too difficult.
• On the baking front, we've had a bit of a mixed month. I coincidentally happened to make a chocolate layer cake on J.R.R. Tolkien's birthday, so that worked out nicely . . . except for the bit where the cakes ended up not being fully done in the middle. Oops. We salvaged as much as we could and filled in the rest with the mini-mini cake we'd made with left and trimmings from leveling off the top. If nothing else, it tasted good!
• Then I made pretzel knots about a week later, which were delicious. And the last thing I baked was a loaf of sourdough bread with cranberries and walnuts . . . which failed miserably because I didn't correctly adjust the baking time to account for the mix-ins. That was a thoroughly miserable day.
• On a happier note, Michaels has been having yarn sales all month, so I've gotten to add a lot to my stash. I've decided to make myself a capelet, and I'm already a third of the way done, despite only having worked on it a few times over the month. I'm using the new O'Go yarn from Bernat, and it's a pretty nice format aside from the fact that you can only go through the skein one way. I also got yarn to make something for a friend . . . which may be a Christmas present, so this is officially the earliest I've done anything regarding Christmas gift acquisition.
• Also — this is technically a February thing, but it was on the first, so it's fine — I had my first Connect Group meeting with more than one other person! So that was fun! People seemed to enjoy it, so hopefully we'll continue to have more than just me and one other person.
• And, of course, we have D&D adventures! In one campaign, we've spent the month preparing for the first big boss fight we've had in a while. We've literally traveled to another plane to take this being on, and we've pulled together a ton of our allies . . . it's exciting, y'all. In addition, some of the members of the Underground are getting together to do monthly one-shots, and we had our first one about a week ago! I ended up playing a Knowledge Domain cleric with a fantasy!German accent, and she was pretty fun . . . though I'm going to have to get used to being squishy after having played a paladin so long. It's weird going from 84 HP to only 31, y'all.

February Plans

• First things first: I need to finish editing Mask of Scarlet. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to power through that this weekend and get it to betas at the start of next week; that may or may not be reasonable depending on how accurate my memories of the second half being mostly clean are.
• Also, as I already mentioned, I have a cover reveal for Mask of Scarlet on Wednesday! So I'm hyped for that!
• Back to the writing: once I finish MoS, I want to give myself a day or two off, and then I have my Super Secret Mystery Project to attempt. Unless I call it off . . . but I don't want to do that without giving it a fair shot, especially because I want to take some time and write something that's not Bastian Dennel, PI. (Don't panic — I love Bastian, and I'm not leaving for good. But I do need to shake things up every now and then.)
• I also need to write the next Defenders of Serys adventure, but not immediately — I have enough material for another two or three sessions, and I also don't know what the next adventure is going to be. On the upside, I know the two most likely possibilities, and of those two, one is building off an existing story, and the other will be pretty straightforward. So it won't be the end of the world if I have to hurry to get it written. (What really does need to get done soon is the map for the final combat . . . which is sort of going to be five maps in one, so I should probably get cracking on that.)
• Outside of writing and writing-adjacent activities . . . there's actually not much. This month's photo competition theme is street photography, which I probably won't do much for — it's too cold for many people to be out and about, and I don't have time to go find them anyway.
• At work, we're already starting to gear up for Lent and Holy Week — two of my big projects this past week were both connected to Lent, and the assistant pastor is putting together stuff for the Good Friday service (which will involve a lot of graphics work on my part), and . . . yeah. That'll undoubtedly continue through February.
• I'm also really hoping that February will be the month that I make Diamond League in Duolingo. I'm not actually competitive about this, but I am a completionist, and one of the only achievements left for me to get is to get the #1 spot in Diamond League. I have a plan of how to get that spot . . . but I have to get into that category first, and that's the struggle.

How was your January? Any exciting plans for February? How are your New Year's goals or resolutions going (if you set any)? Have any fun projects going? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

On the Taleweaver's Desk Issue 3: January 2022

Hey'a, all! It's a month into winter, and that means it's time for another issue of On the Taleweaver's Desk, the part of the blog where I unpack the "big picture" of my writing activities and the status of my various writing projects. I think I'll probably be sticking with the format that I put together last time for now, but again, if there's any way you think I can improve this setup, let me know. As always, if you want more information on any project in this post, you can find that on my Works in Progress page!

On the Taleweaver's Desk
Issue 3: October 2022

On the Desktop

These are the projects you might find open on my laptop or desk if you took a peek at it during a normal day. They're currently in progress and at the top of the priority chart.

Mask of Scarlet (Bastian Dennel, PI #3)

What is it? Book 3 in my Bastian Dennel, PI series, a Jazz Age mystery take on Cinderella (with a little inspiration from "The Red Shoes" for extra spice).

Status: First draft finished; first rough edit in progress; cover reveal coming soon!

Three months later, it's done! Well, drafted, at least. That's two months longer than I planned to take drafting this, but it's fine — in hindsight, I was kind of overambitious with my goal. I'm currently in the middle of doing a rapid, rough edit before I send this off to beta readers — essentially, I'm reworking some key scenes that I know have to change, making sure the changes that I made halfway through get carried back to the beginning, and fixing glaring issues, but it's not the full-on rewrite that I often do. Then it'll be ready to go to betas at the end of the month! I also have a cover reveal coming up on February 9; fill out the form here if you want to be a part of that (or if you want to help officially announce the group release it's a part of).

Super Secret Mystery Project

What is it? You don't know (unless you're one of, like . . . a half dozen or so people). It's a mystery and will remain so for . . . mmm, probably about a month and a half or two months.

Status: Going to start writing it soon! Have been thinking about it inordinately much for the past few months!

Yeah. Because I don't want to give too many details before I'm absolutely certain that the plans I have will work out (I don't like making promises I can't keep, y'know?), there's not a ton I can say about this. But I'm planning to write it in February while Mask of Scarlet is with beta readers (unless I can't resist the urge to start it sooner), it's a retelling of technically three stories (only one of which is, strictly speaking, a fairy tale or folktale), and it could arguably be considered portal fantasy.  

D&D Campaign: Defenders of Serys

What is it? Defenders of Serys is the homebrew D&D campaign that I run for my D&D group.

Status: Thinking about the second module of Season 4. Should be writing that, oops.

I haven't really worked on this much? Honestly, I thought about sliding it down a section to Stacked on the Side just because I finished planning the first adventure and then didn't write any more because I needed to focus my energy on Mask of Scarlet (with the exception of couple of extra sessions of material to account for the fact that one of my players was going to miss a full month of play). That said, it needs to go back up the priority stack because I only have three or four more sessions' worth of material, so here On the Desktop it shall stay!

Stacked on the Side

These are the stories that I'm not actively working on (at least not officially), but I'm keeping close at hand because I plan to get back to them soon (or I just work on them sporadically as the urge takes me).

There are no significant changes to any of these projects since my October 2021 update, but I'll leave the list here for anyone who hasn't seen it before!

Blood in the Earth

What is it? Blood in the Earth is the sequel to Blood in the Snow and a retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses crossed with the myth of Hades and Persephone.

Status: First draft finished; awaiting revisions. Despite my earlier hopes, I probably will not get back to this story this year.

Once Upon a Dream

What is it? A light steampunk (or gaslamp fantasy?) Sleeping Beauty retelling; the predecessor to The Midnight Show

Status: Edited several times over. Awaiting another round of rewrites/expansion/edits.

Shelved for Now

These are stories that are also on hold, but which I don't have specific plans to work on very soon. They're still within easy reach should I decide to return to them, but they aren't a top priority.

There are no significant changes to any of these projects since my October 2021 update, but I'll leave the list here for anyone who hasn't seen it before!

Dust of Silver

What is it? Classic-ish fantasy retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses crossed with Rapunzel, the first book in what has the potential to be a rather long series. Also, a rewrite of a book I wrote years ago that won't let go of me because CHARACTERS.

Status: Several chapters into the rewrite, though those several chapters haven't been touched in a few years. I swear I'll get back to this . . .

Between Two Worlds

What is it? A portal fantasy adventure about what happens when you come home from the adventure, only to discover that the adventure isn't quite as done with you as you thought.

Status: Awaiting another round of edits/rewrites while I write other things and daydream about its sequels.

The Way of the Pen

What is it? Self-aware fantasy adventure about a girl and her author.

Status: The first draft is sitting on my shelf, patiently waiting for its turn back in the spotlight, as it has been for some time.

Berstru Tales series

What is it? A classic epic fantasy series and the longest-running series I've worked on (either in the number of books written or in how long I've worked on it.

Status: Needs to be rewritten from the ground up, but the bones are good. I did come up with more new and exciting ways to make the characters' lives difficult, so . . . there's that?

A Tower of Portals Campaign

What is it? A second D&D campaign inspired by one of my favorite video games.

Status: On hold; worked on as I come up with new ideas and have time.

Awaiting Delivery

These are the stories that are on their way, but haven't quite arrived yet to the point where I can write them: ideas I'm toying with but haven't even started to draft because they're still too nebulous.

Additional Bastian Dennel, PI novels

What is it? Exactly what the heading said.

Status: I have between three and five reasonably solid ideas that I'm pretty confident I'll write, as well as few other concepts that basically amount to "Hey, this fairy tale would be really fun to rework as a mystery and throw Bastian into." I also have a rough idea of which three I'll write next, though that's subject to change.

Novellas from the world of Blood in the Snow

What are they? Currently, three and a half ideas for spinoffs, most of which are also fairy tale retellings: one Puss in Boots (no, really), one Orpheus and Eurydice (probably crossed with a similar Japanese myth, Izanagi and Izanami), one Snow Queen (that's the half an idea), and one that's not currently a fairy tale retelling but would be about Gan and Azuma before they were animal-keepers at the emperor's palace (inspired the summer I spent watching a lot of Hogan's Heroes.

Status: Won't be written until after I edit Blood in the Earth. And the half-an-idea Snow Queen, which had the best chance of being written before then, has been . . . supplanted. Of the others, I have rough ideas of scenes in two of them, and a general concept for the last.

Unnamed Fantasy Murder Mystery

What is it? Exactly what the headline says. A prominent noble is murdered; his adoptive daughter is poised to inherit his lands and position — but some are saying her hand was behind his death.

Status: Still just an idea. Still not going to be tackled until after Blood in the Earth.

Mechanical Heart Sequel

What is it? Exactly what the title says.

Status: Still half-formed. Not a high priority, as Mechanical Heart stands very well on its own. May or may not actually happen.

Worldhoppers Inc./Mythology D&D Campaign

What is it? Yet another homebrew D&D campaign. Or two. Technically it's two possible themes for series of connected one-shots and short-term adventures, with a few adventure ideas for each theme and a chance that I'll just try to combine them.

Status: Probably not going to work on this until I have a lot of spare time, need a new campaign for my D&D group, or have reason to prioritize the Welsh myth adventure.

I think that's everything! Which of these stories are you most interested in? Any questions you have about any of them? (If you ask in the next week or so, I might be willing to provide extra info or hints!) What projects are you currently working on?
Thanks for reading!