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Surprise! Giveaway

In Announcements
December 9, 2022
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(This giveaway is over! It ended on Tuesday, December 13th, 2022. Thank you so much for everyone who joined us!)

Do you love jewellery? Do you know someone who does?

My dear friend Elise Matthesen is an amazing jewellery maker – and also a lover of my books. She’s offered a delightful giveaway, with a short timeframe. One lucky person will win an item from Elise’s shop (based on your answers to question 2).

[giveaway details removed]

More about Elise

Elise won the Hugo Award (a major award in the Science Fiction and Fantasy fandom community) as a Fan Artist in 2020. Her pieces are in the collections of quite a few authors, musicians, artists, and other creative folk. Many of us have a custom of picking up something from Elise for a major achievement in our creative lives.

If you’re a fan of Lois McMaster Bujold, as I am, Elise both designed Lois’s award pin collar and makes planet pendants similar to those referenced in the Vorkosigan books at one point.

Here’s a few samples of Elise’s previous work. Again, check out the shop for the current delights!

An elegant almost monochromatic pendant sharply contrasts against the plain white background. Silver wire is wrapped to form the pendant's head, with a spiral at the bottom. A disc with a black centre and tracing curves of pale blue and pink is mounted above a larger round black bead that gleams in the light.
Almost Monochrome pendant
A pair of earrings shimmering with blue irridescence lie on a wooden table. Two smaller blue-green beads lead into a larger one, with a larger lampwork glass bead at the bottom swirling with peacock colours of blues, greens, and purples as well as clear glass.
Blue lampwork earrings
A square pendant is woven thickly with silver wire, forming the backdrop for a jade-green and gopper dragon charm, pale green glass rose beads, and droplets of shimmering pearls in the pale colours of the water: opalescent green, blue, and white.
Dragon with Green Roses pendant
Elise, who is white with long blonde hair, wears a dark black dress. Elise is standing in front of a wooden door, holding up a phone camera to take the picture in one hand and the Hugo Award (shaped like a rocket ship) in the other. A blue hanging flag reads "Do more of what makes you happy." at the left.
Elise, holding the Hugo Award
The focus on this pendant is fuzzy, in order to capture the flash of the labradorite that is the main stone of the piece. The blue flash lights up the top of the bead, with a black shape forming the outline of a house with a peaked roof. Smaller labradorite beads, swirled around with silver wire, make up the rest of the pendant.
House in the Labradorite
A circular pendant of intricate woven silver wirework forms the frame for a golden dragon charm. A single transluscent white bead hangs in the air above the dragon, while layers of pearls of different sizes frame the ground and the sky around the two.
Pearl Dragon with Moon pendant

I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Elise for more than 20 years, so as you might imagine, I have quite a few of her pieces by now!

The necessary giveaway details

By entering, you understand that if you are the winner, I will be sharing your email address with Elise to make arrangements about getting the piece you have won.

Elise ships regularly, but depending on where you are in the world, the piece may not make it to you in time for holiday gift-giving.

No reading of books or purchasing of anything is required, but we certainly hope you enjoy thinking about wonderful things to read and look at!

Read on

The naming of characters is a difficult matter

In Albion, Writing and publishing
December 8, 2022
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(Look, I couldn’t resist the T.S. Eliot reference, I’m only human.)

To be more serious, the names of characters are something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I got a great reader question about it this week, and that makes it a wonderful time to share some of how I do this.

To be honest, there’s a lot of staring at my list of names and sighing a lot. But I also have established patterns that help me sort out what I’m doing with the names.

(As a note, links to character names in this post will go to their WorldAnvil pages so you can see where they appear most easily.)

Cover of Eclipse displayed on a tablet, resting on a pine bough, surrounded by wood five-pointed stars.
Eclipse is a great example of several different naming patterns in my books.
(more…)
Read on

Where are you, online? (Looking at some social media options)

In Announcements, Writing and publishing
November 17, 2022
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Hello! Given the world (and especially the Internet at the moment), it seems a good time for me to look at where I’m spending my time online in the authorial sense.

I’ve put together a survey form to ask some questions about what spaces you’d be interested in, so I can think about some options. I expect to get whatever new options I add set up by the end of December 2022 at the latest. (ETA, December 20th: Survey form now closed. Watch this blog space for an update on what we’re going to be trying!)

It’s completely anonymous unless you give me your email address at the very end. You can also use the contact form or email me at celia@celialake.com if you’d rather do that.

Cover of Fool's Gold displayed on a tablet, set on a desk with a pink rose, a fountain pen, a jar of ink, and paper.
Robin does love his fountain pens. Not so good for online communication, though…

Where I am right now online

I send out a newsletter on most Fridays. It has my latest news, a highlight of a book that’s been out for a bit, links to any blog posts I’ve made, and notes about the week’s writing. It also usually includes a couple of links I discovered while researching that week.

Twitter is the place where I’ve shared more flippant commentary on the writing process, often with some back and forth with Kiya, my friend and editor (and other half of my brain who makes my books so much better.) If you haven’t been following this bit of the news, I’m not sure how much longer that’s going to be viable. I’ve also shared links to new books there or other news.

I’ve really enjoyed some of the conversation with readers there, and seeing what they say, too, when they tag me in to the conversation.

Facebook is the place where I spend the least time, but it also gets announcements of new books and other related material.

(more…)
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Best Foot Forward is out!

In Announcements, Land Mysteries
November 4, 2022
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Best Foot Forward is the one Kiya (my friend and editor) described as “M/M aroace/bi-allo-(incidentally polyam) enemies-to-it’s-complicated there-was-only-one-bed espionage and WWI trauma-healing romp”.

Cover of Best Foot Forward displayed on a phone, resting on folded golden linen with a mug of coffee. Yellow flowers lie on a book with Scrabble tiles spelling out "spring is in the air". The cover has a deep red background with map markings in a dull purple. Two men in silhouette stand, looking up at a point in the top left. An astrology chart with different symbols picked out takes up the left side of the image, with glowing stars curving up to the title.

Best Foot Forward also contains:

  • Vienna and Berlin in 1935
  • The power of spring
  • Healing and becoming who we were meant to be
  • Love of music
  • Egyptian theology
  • Land magic and the good it can do
  • Chosen family

Music turned out to be a big part of this book, so there’s an additional playlist and explanation of the music references. (It does contain spoilers for the book, but there’s a link in the author’s notes to remind you to go look and listen, or from the book page here on my website or on the authorial wiki.)

[mybooktable series=”land-mysteries”]
Read on

The Music of Best Foot Forward

In Land Mysteries, Research adventures
November 4, 2022
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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!

Copy of Best Foot Forward lying on a wrinkled silk cloth, with a violin lying across it. The cover has a deep red background with map markings in a dull purple. Two men in silhouette stand, looking up at a point in the top left. An astrology chart with different symbols picked out takes up the left side of the image, with glowing stars curving up to the title.
Look at how nicely that violin goes with the cover! : The Music of Best Foot Forward

Read on

Keeping research notes

In Research adventures, Writing and publishing
October 13, 2022
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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.)

The cover of Sailor's Jewel by Celia Lake shown on a tablet resting on a bed of pale blue flowers. The cover is a vibrant blue, with an ocean liner at the left, facing the viewer. At the bottom right stand two silhouetted figures, a plump woman in a long dress and a taller man leaning against the side of the frame. Highlights of golden yellow from the title, lights on the liner, and a sprinkling of stars across the top pop out against the blues of the cover.
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Lords & Ladies: A guide to the land magic

In Albion, Novellas, Questions and answers
September 30, 2022
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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.) 

A copy of Ancient Trust displayed on a tablet, surrounded by drinks on a drinking cabinet. A man holding a book and glass wearing a grey suit stands at the right of the image.

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…)
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A glimpse into editing Best Foot Forward

In Land Mysteries, Research adventures, Writing and publishing
August 25, 2022
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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.

A laptop with a black fountain pen with shimmery metal lying on the keyboard on top of some index cards. The screen shows a Scrivener window with multiple areas of text and notes, in shades of dark green, black, and gold backgrounds. The content of the screen is described in the following text.
Getting ready to edit Best Foot Forward
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Mistress of Birds is out!

In Announcements, Mysterious Powers
August 5, 2022
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Cover of Mistress of Birds, set on a table surrounded by pinecones and red berries, against a white background. Cover of Mistress of Birds. A man and woman in 1920s clothing silhouetted on a purple and deep blue-grey background. He holds a walking stick as tall as he is and wears a cap, she wears a hat and long sweater. Apples are inset in the top left.

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.)

Get your copy!

Read on

Explore my blog posts

Explore posts about each book

12 Seconds in 1927 Ancient Trust Authorial Wiki Best Foot Forward Bound for Perdition Carry On Casting Nasturtiums Chasing Legends Complementary Eclipse Elemental Truth Enchanted Net Facets of the Bench Fool's Gold Forged in Combat Four Walls and a Heart Friend? Friend. Goblin Fruit Grown Wise Harmonic Pleasure Illusion of a Boar In The Cards Magician's Hoard Mistress Of Birds Nocturnal Quarry Old As The Hills On The Bias Outcrossing Pastiche Perfect Accord Point By Point Sailor's Jewel Schola Tales Seven Sisters Shoemaker's Wife Silent Circuit The Fossil Door The Hare And The Oak The Magic of Four Three Graces Treats And Extras Upon A Summer's Day Wards of the Roses Weaving Hope Winter's Charms

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