Welcome to my plans for 2024. Of course, it’s always possible that reality will interfere at some point, but here’s what I’m hoping for in the coming year:
Plans for 2024
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A look back at 2023
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It’s the time of year where a recap is called for. Check out the post for the books (and two extras) released in 2023, what I’ve written, and improvements to this website and my authorial wiki.
Books that came out in 2023
(more…)Up for a 2024 reading challenge?
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It’s late December, which means it’s also the time when various sites post their reading challenges. If you’re doing one in 2024, here’s a guide to which of my books might fit particular categories. (If you’re doing a challenge not listed here, and other people can join in, send me a link and I’ll add it!) You might also want to check out my post about summer reading challenges from the summer of 2023.
The two challenges I’m pulling from for this post are the Book Riot’s Read Harder 2024 challenge and the 2024 PopSugar Reading Challenge. They have some overlapping categories, so I’m going to note which challenge applies, and the books I’ve written that might apply.
Three Graces is here!
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As the war in Europe comes to an end in April of 1945, there’s finally a bit of time and space for Lizzie Carillon to work on an old mystery – what exactly brought about the death of the brother and sister in law she never met. Three Graces is about friends using their skills, what happens as war ends, and what it means to find justice in a community.
In 1922, Delphina and Temple Carillon died within days of each other, leaving Temple’s younger brother Geoffrey as Lord. Over the years, he’s figured out the cause of death – direct action by Albion’s Council. In 1935, he got more information about what brought them to that point. But no one’s known what started the whole awful problem.
Lizzie brings in her friends – Alysoun Edgarton and Thesan Wain – hoping that the three of them might make some progress and get some answers.
I loved getting a chance to spend more time with all three, and there are a couple of other tidbits tucked in here about how various other people are coming to terms with the Second World War and its events.
We also have appearances by a number of other characters. Geoffrey Carillon, Alexander Landry, and Isembard Fortier spend much of the novella in Europe, untangling ritual magics in the wake of the war’s end. We get a glimpse of Lizzie and Geoffrey’s eldest, Edmund. There’s a turning point for Garin Fortier. And we get to see both Lapidoth Manse and Reggie Hollis again, if briefly. And, of course, there’s Margot Williams, swanning through the plot in high-fashion clothes and a swath of questionable choices.
And if you just want to get your copy, here are all the places you can get Three Graces.
Idea to Book: Ancient Trust
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Ancient Trust is the novella you can get by signing up for my newsletter. (More below on why I did that). You can unsubscribe after, if my newsletter isn’t your thing, I won’t take it personally. Just please, don’t mark me as spam!
It also is a story I wanted to tell since I had the opening scene in my head.
Ancient Trust takes place in 1922, when Geoffrey Carillon inherits the land magic from his brother. Carillon and his valet Benton are in Kenya, as part of a longer expedition between points in Africa, seeking specific materia (plants, minerals, and other items with magical potential) to bring back to Albion. He does it responsibly, but this period is toward the tail end of a massive exploration of natural resources that was not, shall we say, often managed well or sensitively.
The Carillons
I knew I wanted to write something that was toward the beginning of the larger arc of the Carillon family in this generation. There are in fact a number of of beads on this particular necklace, running from Bound for Perdition in 1917 through the upcoming Three Graces in 1945 (out in December 2023) that will finally bring out some answers to the question of what actually happened to Temple.
The Carillons are a longstanding family – Ytene, their landed estate, goes back to nearly the Norman Conquest in 1066. There’s a lot of complex history there. And of course, there are recent tragedies, beginning with the death of Geoffrey and Temple’s parents on the Sussex, which was torpedoed in the Channel in 1916. This is an actual historical sinking, and the history about it has a number of unclear aspects, including – regrettably – the total number of deaths.
In the course of the Great War, Temple is doing secret research with a number of other people. It becomes clear that some of that wasn’t good for him, on an extremely direct level – but Geoffrey has no idea what he was doing, nor is he in contact with anyone who seems likely to know.
Carillon and Benton
A second reason I wanted to write Ancient Trust is because I love Carillon and Benton together. (Not romantically or sexually, Benton would never. But in all the ways they’re absolutely chosen family for each other, yes.)
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, Benton definitely falls somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but his life circumstances have given him clarity around what rules and expectations apply right now. He started out working as a hallboy and then a footman in a country house. When the Great War began, he served in the trenches, before being assigned as Carillon’s batman or soldier-servant when Carillon was assigned as an officer to their unit. When Carillon was pulled out for Intelligence work, he took Benton along – and discovered along the way that Benton was capable of learning quite a lot more magical technique and practical skills than he’d been taught so far. (You can see some of this in On The Bias, in 1925.)
By the point we see them in Ancient Trust, they’ve settled into a life of expeditions punctuated by a few months back in Albion. They’re always moving on into some new setting, but Benton is clear about what Carillon wants out of him, and which parts Carillon will handle. And Benton, of course, brings an absolute pragmatism and attention to detail to all his work.
I loved getting to write Ancient Trust seeing both of their takes on what was going on, and what information was and wasn’t available. Their mutual comfort with each other and trust in each other is an absolute delight to me.
Connections to others
The last part of this is what I knew I wanted to do with this piece. For authors, this kind of reader magnet is meant to be an introduction to your characters, world, and writing that hopefully entices people to try out more of your work. Obviously, this is going to work better (and honestly, also be more fun) if you can tie in more than a couple of people.
I’d been putting off writing this piece (despite having the opening scene in my head for quite a while, including Carillon’s comment:
“I fear, Benton, that we must accustom ourselves to a new mode of address.”
But as I kept nudging the outline, I realised that the timing of this allowed me to do some fascinating things with other characters. Ancient Trust overlaps with Outcrossing, my first book, which meant I could show Carillon’s meeting with Rufus (the hero of that book) from the other point of view.
I also knew that Carillon had been friends with Giles for quite some time, since before the Great War, and that one of the things he is quietly furious about is the sort of warfare that involves gas attacks, like the one that blinded Giles. What I didn’t entirely know – until I wrote Ancient Trust – was how the Edgartons fit into that.
When Captain Kate Lefton (newly married) and then Richard Edgarton showed up at the end of Outcrossing, I knew that these were people Carillon trusted, but also that that trust was relatively new and untested. I also knew he was very new to his title and had only recently returned to Ytene, so he’s not yet confident in his own connection to the estate and the land magic.
(Including, in this case, whether he could reliably pull off the soc-and-sac judicial magic, which requires the Lord of the land’s permission, and also someone who has the land magic connection and judicial magic knowledge to make it work. Richard Edgarton, as a Lord in his own right and also a magistrate, makes an excellent substitute. But of course, when I wrote Outcrossing, there was a lot I didn’t know about any of these characters yet.)
I loved having a chance to explore how Carillon comes into the Edgarton’s circle, why he trusts them as quickly as he does (largely because he trusts Giles), and he is absolutely clear they’re competent in their own areas of skill and knowledge.
Again, if you haven’t read Ancient Trust, it’s a novella (so a quick read) and you can get it for free by signing up for my newsletter. Enjoy!
Four Walls and a Heart is out!
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Four Walls and a Heart brings us back to 1884, and Gil and Magni’s romance.
They appear, some years later (in 1906) as secondary characters in Pastiche, where they’re able to help Richard improve his life in a number of ways. I’m delighted to have the chance to go back in their history, to when they fell in love – and more importantly, admitted it.
It’s also a book about figuring out what choices you have when your life has changed dramatically. It’s full of loving books and reading, and baked goods. (You might want a snack while you read, from what my early readers have said…) And it involves some fun at the seaside, in Brighton.
All in all, it’s a lighthearted cosy read, just the right treat for a break in your day.
Happily ever after, no kids
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One of my romance spaces was talking about romances that don’t presume a child is necessary for the happily-ever-after of the romance. If you’ve read my work, obviously I’ve got a mix in here. I thought it might be interesting to talk about the variations.
(I obviously think people can find happiness in a whole bunch of different configurations and life choices. My characters make a wide range of choices, both in the immediate aftermath of a book and further down the road.)
Idea to Book: Sailor’s Jewel
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Welcome to the “Idea to Book” post for Sailor’s Jewel. Sailor’s Jewel is set on an ocean liner in 1901. Really, that’s a lot of what you need to know about it.
Idea to Book: Complementary
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Complementary is a f/f novella in 1910, and it’s full of art, forced proximity, and a dash of folklore.
Fundamentally, Complementary exists for two reasons. First, I wanted to spend a bit more time with Elizabeth Mason (who appears in several other books, notably Pastiche, The Fossil Door, and Old As The Hills.) Second, I knew people who were getting a collaborative project off the ground to feature f/f or sapphic romance, Kalikoi.
Elizabeth Mason
Mason – as she is widely known – and Witt are both Penelopes, a relatively small community of specialists who figure out what magical chaos has happened now and fix it (or at least get it stable). They’re Albion’s forensic scientist specialists, but they’re also the people you call in when someone has done something troublesome in an alchemy lab or with one of those ritual methods that really, no one should mess with.
They were apprentices at the same time, and have worked together closely ever since, in the manner of people who can and do finish each other’s sentences.
They’re not the same, though. There’s a theory out there – first put forward by forward by Dahilia Lithwick in 2012 that divides people and characters into Order Muppets and Chaos Muppets. (I should note that the original article discusses Supreme Court justices in the US in ways that have aged unevenly, shall we say.)
This also applies to Penelopes. Mason is the Chaos Muppet of the two, and Witt is definitely the Order Muppet. On average, the Penelopes alternate when they do apprenticeships, though not entirely. (Lucy Doyle, who was Witt’s favourite apprentice and Gabe’s apprentice mistress is definitely also an Order Muppet.) Gabe, of course, is also a Chaos Muppet. Neither he nor Mason are precisely out of control, but they do definitely have unconventional solutions to a number of problems.
Anyway, I wanted to spend more time with Mason, and in her head. (Want more Witt? You can get a brief section from Witt’s point of view in the extra “Three Times Told“, that takes place after The Fossil Door. There are a few more bits from Witt’s POV coming in extras for Upon A Summer’s Day.)
Mason is an artist who has a hobby of forging historical documents for fun and education. (How do you know how to detect them if you don’t try making them yourself? I might also have been thinking of a particular episode of Leverage in there.) Complementary gives her a chance to show off her art skills as well as her investigation skills.
I also had mentioned her partner Rosemary a few times, and I wanted to know how they got together. Rosemary is a midwife by profession, so keeps irregular hours and is also reasonably tolerant of Mason’s habit of covering every flat surface with other objects.
Artist colonies
During the 19th and early 20th century, there were a huge number of artist colonies dotting scenic bits of the British Isles. Like the one in Complementary, they weren’t always terribly well organised. Basically, you’d get a bunch of people together, some amount of shared resources to rent somewhere to live and manage some amount of food, and then everyone would go off and sketch and paint and whatever. It was usually the more portable arts, of course, especially if you were ending up somewhere more rural.
One of the things that was appealing about writing about it is that you have a range of personalities thrown in together who might not otherwise have spent a ton of time with each other. Add a bit of a challenge to solve and it makes a great setting.
Folklore
Finally, I wanted to have some fun with folklore. That area of England turned out to have some delightful bits of folklore. King Onna, the barrow, the Black Shuck, and the Devil beating on the church of the door are all part of the ongoing lore and conversation. If you do a search on any of these and throw in the word “Southwold” or “Norfolk”, you should dig up several versions.
(Though to be fair, it’s hard to come across spots that don’t have some sort of legend about large black dogs. They’re as common as healing wells, you can’t avoid coming across them regularly.)
The Deadman’s Barrow is actually relatively close to Sutton Hoo, a famous Anglo-Saxon burial site of the 6th and 7th centuries that was first excavated in the 1930s. You may have seen the famous helmet or other items from the site.
If any of this intrigues, do check out Complementary, a novella of 35,000 words, just the right length for a pleasant treat.
Where to start
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One of the questions that I hear fairly often these days is “Which of your books should I start with?” I now have an entire page on this website to help with your questions about reading order.
The short answer is: “Start anywhere you like with any book set before 1935.” (Though there are a couple where you might have more fun in a specific order.) Read on for a few more thoughts about that.
