Best Foot Forward is full of music. It’s not only full of music, but it gave me classical music back. There’s so much music that I’ve written a full explanation (complete with a playlist you can listen to). Learn more about the music in what I’ve been calling Best Ear Forward).
Note that it does contain spoilers for the book!
In a recent newsletter, I mentioned that working on Old As The Hills had let me test a research note model for more research-demanding fiction that’s working pretty well. (This is also in service to my contemplating a 1480s series set around the time of the Pact sometime down the road. I have a ton of background reading to do before I can even think about it, so no time soon.)
As I suspected, more than one reader was interested in how I set that up, so here’s a glimpse into my research notes. (Click through on the screenshots to see a full size version, but I’ve also described the contents in the text.)
Are you curious about the land magic? Carillon’s background? What it means to be a Lord in Albion?
Did you know there’s a new novella out? It’s my treat if you sign up for my newsletter. (Feel free to unsubscribe when you need to, of course. But I hope you’ll stick around, at least for an email or two that will let you get all the other treats I share with my newsletter subscribers.)
Ancient Trust is all about what happens when Geoffrey Carillon inherits the title on his brother’s death. It has quite a lot about the land magic customs at Ytene. It also led to some interesting questions from a reader.
(I love reader questions. Sometimes I haven’t settled on my final answer about something. But I’ll let you know if you ask something I can’t answer yet. Or if you ask something that’s too much of a spoiler for something that’s coming out in the future.)
The questions:
It got me thinking, how do the Lords of Albion engage with the House of Lords? Is attending Westminster an additional responsibility for Carillion? Do Albion peerages result in having the right to sit in the House? And what about the women? How does the Land Magic recognise women?
These are great questions – and also some that I haven’t quite found the right place to get into text. Let’s take this one by one in an order that should help.
(more…)I’m currently in the editing process for Best Foot Forward, and thought you might find a glimpse into the process interesting.
I do most of my writing on the desktop that lives in my bedroom. However, I do most of my editing on the laptop that lives in the living room, which has fewer distractions.
Here’s a shot of what that looks like. Read on for a description of both the image and the process.
Mistress of Birds is the final book in the Mysterious Powers series, exploring the impact of the Great War on the people and institutions of Albion.
Thalia has had a certain small success with her literary writing. But her inspiration is gone, and no one is buying her stories. When her family volunteers her to stay at her great-aunt’s house on the edge of Dartmoor, she figures at least she’ll be fed.
Adam had a bad War. Ten years after he was invalided out of the Army with shell shock, he still hasn’t recovered. His family have lost patience, and when his uncle breaks his leg badly, they ship him off to lend a hand. Adam isn’t sure he’s able to do anything useful. When his uncle wants a report on the apple orchard, though, Adam realises something isn’t quite right.
The mysteries of the house and the apple orchard bring Adam and Thalia together, in search for answers. Together, they might just be able to figure out what’s going on, what’s making the eerie noises in the house, and why the apples ripen so late.
Mistress of Birds is my take on a Gothic romance (spooky house and all). All of my books can be read in any order, but this one stands alone particularly well.
One particular content note on this one (also on my content notes page). The book does deal with long-standing PTSD (what we’d now call CPTSD). If you’re sensitive to discussions of it, chapter 31 briefly references the barbaric treatment of it in 1917. (One paragraph, strong implications of what happened, few explicit details.)
I had a fabulous time working with the map designer who did my previous two maps to do a map of Schola.
Welcome to the next stop on the tour of the authorial wiki. Last time we talked about characters, so now it’s time to take a look at groups and organisations.
There are a number of common group connections in Albion – notably related to the Five Schools, but also secret societies and professions. Read more about the professional and social organisations in general over here.
We’ve talked about extras, maps, and timelines in our tour of my authorial wiki. Now it’s time to talk about characters. Every point of view character has a page. (That means everyone who’s been the point of view in a novel, novella, or extra…)
Time for stop 3 on our tour of the authorial wiki, maps! Today we’re going to look at two sets of maps, one for Albion as a whole, and one for Trellech, the main magical city. My maps are by Michael MB, who did a fantastic job taking my sketches and making them usefully informative.
