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Good morning one and all!
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Spring has truly reached us, and we’re heading into summer, quite frankly. I’m starting to have to refill the bird feeders every day. I’ll do that for the next couple of months, until the birds, like the grossbeaks and the goldfinches, migrate away.
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I look at my birdseed budget as my entertainment budget. I spend a lot of time looking out my windows and watching the silly birds. This year, the robins have been highly entertaining. There’s a young male—probably a juvenile—who’s been visiting the feeding station up the hill. He lands on the top of it, looks down at the various feeders, and thinks to himself, “That’s WAY too much work.” Then he hops back down to the ground and snaps up a lot of tasty, tasty bugs.
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I’m still knitting. A LOT. As soon as I finish one hat I start the next. This week, I finished Mesa Verde Beanie pattern. (https://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/mesa-verde-beanie) This was a pretty easy pattern. I actually BOUGHT yarn for it, instead of using the yarn from my stash. I like how it turned out and I’ll probably make another one at some point.
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Because it’s the last week of the month, I get to tell you about one of the books that I’ve written. I thought I might start back at the beginning, with the very first book that I ever had published, Paper Mage.
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(There was actually a book before Paper Mage, but that was the practice book that will never see the light of day.)
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Paper Mage was picked up by a traditional publisher (Roc) and was published by them back in 2003.
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In 2023, I had a twentieth anniversary Kickstarter to celebrate the new version that I put out then. I actually went back and read through the book, basically a quick light edit. Didn’t change much, caught typos, and added paragraph tags. (Young writers don’t understand how to paragraph their work. I was no exception.) The book was better than I feared, and I’m still proud of it.
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I have fond memories of writing this book. Even though it’s told with a split timeline, with the main character Xiao Yen in the “present” as well as where she started, as a small girl, I wrote it in the order that the reader experiences it. People thought I was nuts to do that, particularly for a first novel. I’ve had friends point out that I tend to complicate things for myself, particularly in terms of writing, to make them “interesting” for me. I don’t believe I do that for every novel, but then again, I might.
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When I had problems figuring out where Paper Mage was going, I’d get myself extremely caffeinated then sit down with paper and pen and write out in my journal what I thought should happen next, brainstorming. I generally went to a coffee shop to do this, someplace with comfy chairs and music so that I was forced to focus.
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I also did a tremendous amount of research. This novel is set in Tang Dynesty China, around 837 AD, the second flowering of the Silk Road. The research influenced the writing, and then I’d write and discover I needed some fact and would dive back into the research.
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Remember, this was before the internet. Mostly I haunted bookstores and found old history books about China and read them.
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Did I plot out this novel? No, not really. I had a vague idea of there the ending was, and how the two distinct story lines would intersect. But I really wasn’t plotting.
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I never published a sequel to Paper Mage even though eventually I came up with the plot for an entire trilogy: Paper Mage, Paper Dragon, Paper Phoenix. It followed the life of Xiao Yen, ending with her death. I’ll never write those books. I’m not that writer any more.
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But I do think about this story sometimes. And the what ifs that always occur.
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So if you want some literary, historic fantasy that comes with some level of trigger warnings, go pick up your copy today!
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And I think that’s all for me today.
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They say history doesn't repeat itself, but it will frequently rhyme.
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However, what about crimes that get repeated? How are they similar to the original? How are they different? And why?
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The devil is in the details, after all.
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Come see what the syndicate members of MCM have done with crimes that riff off of events from the past.
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MCM. So Criminal, It's Good.
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Horray! It's May! And there's a new book on sale only on the KRP store.
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This month? Night Strike--a historic aviation thriller written by Blaze Ward--is on sale for just $0.99. It's in part to celebrate the release of the fifth book in the series, Sea Wolves.
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The Red Branch—a top secret Soviet operation to hunt Nazis following WWII.
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In South America, they discover a conspiracy to attack New York City.
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Do they save their enemy?
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The Red Branch, a new military aviation action-thriller series, set in the aftermath of the Great Patriotic War (what westerners call the Second World War), when heroes must rise up, regardless of their politics, to save the world.
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