Whisked from her troubled, solitary life to a spaceship centuries in the future, widowed folk musician Riss Waldon must first figure out how she got there, and then if it’s possible to get home. Before long, she is visiting strange and deadly planets and meeting new alien races, and forming friendships with the crew. Even as they strive to discover a way for her to return, she wonders if it possible to step out of the shadows of her past life and stay here. But when the well-being of the entire crew rests on her shoulders, she isn’t sure she’s up to the task. What if she fails them? All she can do is try …
From one sale to another! I decided impromptu today to run a “Black Friday” sale for From the Shadows. From now (Nov 23) to Dec 1, the ebook of From the Shadows is only $0.99 at all digital retailers.
Click here to get your copy of the story readers have dubbed: “science fiction for people who don’t like science fiction.”
*****
What people are saying about From the Shadows …
“The inner and outer journey of Riss is a riveting tale of a young woman who comes out of the shadows of her past, and finds her way on new horizons.“
“Although [this book] has a fun futuristic space backdrop, it’s really a quiet story about one woman’s journey from grief to embracing a new life and her own potential.”
“This story makes me feel the way I feel when reading Jane Austen, L.M. Montgomery, or the Mitford books. It’s a lovely book to curl up with on a blustery autumn evening or a lazy Saturday morning. I didn’t want it to end!”
To my surprise and delight, Amazon has noticed the lowered ebook prices for the Whitney & Davies series and has obligingly dropped prices on the paperbacks as well–which is something I’ve heard about happening to other authors, but have never experienced myself before now. This is entirely Amazon’s doing, and I have no control over how much or how little they lower the price, or for how long it will last, and they don’t actually bother to inform the authors about this to begin with, so when I say, hey, if you want a paperback you should get it now, that’s not just me being all salesperson-y, that’s because I genuinely don’t know how long they’ll keep the prices lowered.
I don’t know about you, but this sure seems to me to be a great time to get in some early Christmas shopping!
(Disclaimer: if you’ve been around this website for a while you know that I prefer to promote sites other than Amazon for buying my books. Alas, only Amazon is providing these prices right now, so I am reluctantly bowing to corporate rule and promoting it. Believe me, if I could offer you these prices through Bookshop.org or your local indie bookstore, I would!)
“Of all the ghastly holidays, Christmas is the worst!”
When apprentice magician Maia Whitney’s plans for a quiet Christmas with no obligations toward anyone are disrupted by a friend in need, she resigns herself to yet another holiday filled with indigestion and artificial cheer. Things look up when her friend and fellow magician Len Davies joins the adventure, but Maia is still far from feeling merry or bright.
Len would go with Maia to the ends of the earth, but this crumbling manor in the remote Yorkshire countryside tests even his goodwill toward man. He doesn’t object to the ghost supposedly roaming the halls, but he wishes he knew just what has his host’s young sister so scared. To top it all off, he can barely spend any time with Maia, as she is so busy helping her friend.
Will ghosts, curses, cads, and thieves ruin this Christmas for everyone? Not if the intrepid duo of Whitney & Davies has anything to say about it! It will take all their magical abilities and ingenuity, but they are determined to make this a happy Christmas for all.
*****
Today is the day! Christmas comes early for all you lucky readers, because While Shepherds Watch is published today! Click here for links to Amazon, iBooks, B&N, Kobo, and more.
I honestly had so much fun writing this novella. It reminded me of all the reasons I began writing the Whitney & Davies series in the first place–the sheer delightfulness of these characters, and the enjoyment of adding a magical twist to a traditional British mystery. I wrote it when I ought to have been working on any number of other writing projects–the third Pauline Gray novella (so close to being ready for publication, guys), the next Whitney & Davies novel (set in Cambridge, no less!), the next collection of Whitney & Davies short stories (all plotted out, just not written), the next adventure for Riss & co aboard the Caledonia (my heart’s children!) … but I threw all those out the windows and just wrote for fun, and as a result, I have this lovely Christmas gift for all of you.
And that’s not all! Click on the following titles to take advantage of a Whitney & Davies sale, because every ebook in the series is on sale for $0.99 this week to celebrate the new release.
Happy reading, friends, and be sure to spread the word (and Christmas cheer) about While Shepherds Watch and the Whitney & Davies sale! I can’t wait for you all to share in this new adventure with Maia and Len.
Today is the day! I am so excited to be able to share the cover for While Shepherds Watch with you all, as well as the story’s description.
I feel as though I should create a huge build-up, but to be honest, I don’t really go in for that sort of thing, so let’s skip right to the reveal, shall we?
Without further ado … While Shepherds Watch
“Of all the ghastly holidays, Christmas is the worst!”
When apprentice magician Maia Whitney’s plans for a quiet Christmas with no obligations toward anyone are disrupted by a friend in need, she resigns herself to yet another holiday filled with indigestion and artificial cheer. Things look up when her friend and fellow magician Len Davies joins the adventure, but Maia is still far from feeling merry or bright.
Len would go with Maia to the ends of the earth, but this crumbling manor in the remote Yorkshire countryside tests even his goodwill toward man. He doesn’t object to the ghost supposedly roaming the halls, but he wishes he knew just what has his host’s young sister so scared. To top it all off, he can barely spend any time with Maia, as she is so busy helping her friend.
Will ghosts, curses, cads, and thieves ruin this Christmas for everyone? Not if the intrepid duo of Whitney & Davies has anything to say about it! It will take all their magical abilities and ingenuity, but they are determined to make this a happy Christmas for all.
❆ ❆ ❆
While Shepherds Watch will be released on November 2 in paperback and ebook format, and the ebook is available for pre-order now. There’s also a Goodreads page for it already, so if you are a Goodreads user and want to add it to your TBR, click here.
I’m so looking forward to sharing this story with you all! Some holiday magic coming your way, November 2!
Friends, I am so excited to be able to share this news with you. Not only is the next Pauline Gray novella being released this autumn/winter, coming on November 2 is a new Whitney & Davies story!
I’ll be releasing more info about it soon, including the cover and back blurb, but for now I can tell you that it is a Christmas story, novella-length (I originally conceived it as a short story, but, well, it grew), featuring Maia and Len, and it is set between Magic Most Deadly and Glamours and Gunshots.
The title is While Shepherds Watch, and here is at least a little teaser of the cover:
So set your calendars for Nov 2!
I hope to be able to set this up for pre-orders this week, so that you can be extra sure to get yours in time for Christmas, and if I am able to do that I will let you know. Stay tuned for paperback info, a full cover reveal, and the back blurb soon!
And be sure to check in later this month for info about the third Pauline Gray novella’s release date! All kinds of exciting stuff happening here at StarDance Press this season.
Canton, N.Y. is a small town tucked between the Adirondack Mountains and the St. Lawrence River. It is home to St. Lawrence University as well as SUNY (State University of N.Y.) Canton. The Grasse River winds its way through the town, as well as numerous streams and brooks. The park in the center of the village has been there–if not as long as the town has existed, then pretty darn close. It shows up on every old map I’ve seen, and I’ve looked at a lot of them.
It is my hometown, where I was born and raised, and it is also the setting for the Pauline Gray mysteries. All the characters in the Pauline stories are fictional, but I have done my best to keep the setting as authentic to Canton in the 1930s as possible. The photos and memories posted on the Historian Town & Village Canton Facebook page has been one great resource for this; family has been another.
In the end, though, nothing beats poking around the town in person for inspiration and authenticity. For all that I spent my formative years there, there’s a lot of the town I never explored growing up, and so now I take advantage of any trip up to visit my folks to drive around and re-familiarize myself with the landscape.
(I am embarrassed to admit that all the way up until the final proofread of Candles in the Dark, I had misplaced the street where Pauline lives to the other side of the village–even looking at a map hadn’t helped me properly orient it until I actually drove down it and said, “Whoops.”)
On this most recent jaunt to the north country, I corralled Carl as my chauffeur so I could focus on the landscape and not on the road, and we set out to figure out which street looked the most promising for the setting for a murder. It didn’t take long before we found it, on the road that leads to Morley (readers of Candles might remember that Morley is the home of the mill that was the setting for that murder). It was a beautiful day, with the sun shining and all the fields shining greenly in the sun thanks to the frequent rains this month, a light breeze blowing … the kind of idyllic day in the country people dream about but rarely get to experience. Just right for a mild little adventure.
My specifications were fairly simple: it needed to be by the river, fairly lonely, not frequently traveled, and beautiful. Off Rt 27, we found the exact right side road. Don’t you love it when that happens?
All these houses are far too fancy for my fictional house that is the heart of this story, but they certainly provided plenty of inspiration as well as admiring gasps as Carl drove very slowly past while I took frantic snapshots out the windows.
Back on Rt 27, we stopped by St. Mary’s Cemetery to poke around a bit–ostensibly for research purposes, but mostly because I have a hard time resisting the lure of old gravestones. So many fascinating stories hidden behind the names and dates and epitaphs!
Both so young–obviously the twelve-year-old even more so, but the twenty-three-year-old as well.I never think about Canton being a hot spot for immigrants, but there certainly were a lot of Italian and Irish names here in the Catholic cemetery.What a full and adventurous life Patrick must have had! I bet he had stories to tell his grandchildren.
I got the lowdown on the different roads (and what they would or would not have been called in the ’30s) from my dad when I got back to the house, which made for the perfect cap to the day.
Sometimes research looks like hunching over a computer or old books, poring over details to make sure yours match, and that has its charm (though it’s best if one remembers to take frequent breaks to rest one’s eyes and stretch one’s back), but this sort of research has to be my favorite. A beautiful day, a drive through the countryside with my husband, followed by a chat and reminiscing with my dad. It doesn’t get much better than that!
I will admit, the results surprised me. I didn’t realize until after I counted up all the votes that I had fully expected Maia and Len to win by a landslide. Instead it was a tight race, and they came in third!
So, Pauline it is. In honor of the choice, here’s an unedited snippet from the third book, accompanied by an illustration borrowed from a fashion illustration of the 1930s.
“How about a cup of tea before you go, dear?”
Miss Lewis said this every time, and every time, Pauline smiled and accepted. She didn’t care very much for tea, but she had said “yes” the first time out of politeness, and now it had become something of a ritual.
She enjoyed watching Miss Lewis prepare the brew. First she brought the kettle to a boil while she washed out the flowered china teapot. Then she poured the boiling water into the pot to warm it while setting out the two delicate teacups and adding a cookie from her always-filled tin to each delicate saucer.
Once the pot was warmed, Miss Lewis emptied it, added the fragrant black leaves, filled it once again with boiling water, turned her three-minute hourglass over, set the fine wire mesh tea strainer over the first teacup, and at last, when the three minutes were up, poured the tea.
It was an elaborate process, and it put Pauline in mind of the Old World, and the ritual that afternoon tea had been in Victorian England. She appreciated this touch of European elegance into her life, and in truth, the flavor of the tea wasn’t so bad once one got over wishing it was coffee.
Today’s cookie was molasses, much to Pauline’s relief. Some days it was a peanut butter cookie, which took all her grace to eat without grimacing. Those were the days she had to hurry home and eat an apple or drink a glass of milk, anything to rid herself of that cloying taste and feel in her mouth.
Today, she was happy to linger over the tea, looking out the kitchen window at Miss Lewis’s garden. Mostly vegetables, there were occasional bursts of color and bloom from various types of old-fashioned flowers: sweet peas, peonies, narcissi, sweet-smelling lavender, and of course roses.
“There is such a peacefulness here,” Pauline said, a trace of wistfulness in her voice.
…
“I do love to give out my books and flowers. I let the neighborhood children pick flowers out of my garden to take home to their mothers, you see. They do the weeding that my arthritic hands can’t manage anymore.” Miss Lewis looked ruefully at her gnarled fingers. “That’s the way to get through life, Miss Gray. Give what you can to others, and allow them to give to you when you have need.”
Pauline’s motto was more along the lines of “take care of oneself and never be beholden to anyone,” but she thought Miss Lewis’s way was, perhaps, the better.
Cycling back home with Barchester Towers and Cranford nestled into her basket beside a nosegay of roses and campanula, she was sure of it.
That passage is from Secrets of the Past, and I hope you will enjoy meeting Miss Lewis as much as Pauline does, and the story that unfolds from that meeting.
If you’ve spent any time at this blog at all, or even if you wandered here wanting to learn more about my other writings after reading one of my stories, you probably know that I have three “universes” I mainly write in: The Whitney and Davies universe, aka Golden Age Detective Fantasy, aka Whodunnit Fantasy, aka Agatha Christie with magic; what I call the Caledonia universe, or the setting for From the Shadows; and the Pauline Gray historical mysteries, no magic at all.
I currently have projects in mind for all of these universes, and choosing between them for what to work on next can be almost as much of a challenge as the writing itself–or at the very least, a distraction from actually doing the writing. So I thought I might toss the options out there and see if there’s a preference from readers as to what project I turn the majority of my attention to first. So far my plan of “write whichever one strikes my fancy at the moment” has resulted in a pile of unfinished drafts, shockingly enough. (I KNOW. Who would have thought?)
The first question, then, is: which universe are you most eager to read another story in?
Whitney & Davies
Caledonia
Pauline Gray
After that, it gets a little more complex.
For Pauline, the options are fairly straightforward: the next installment of the series. Actually, that’s not “fairly” straightforward, that’s completely straightforward, and it’s not even “options,” it’s one choice: the next novella.
For Caledonia, I think it would look like a long short story that works as an interlude between the events of the first novel and the events of the next, followed by said next novel. It is possible that I might be able to jump right into the next novel without the interlude, but the way things stand for story development right now that would leave a gap between the stories, and so I think we really do need that bridge.
In the W&D universe, the choices are:
Another collection of short stories, this time mostly featuring Maia, Len, Gwen, and Becket
A one-off novella or long short story set in the same world but featuring entirely different characters
The next novel in the series
My instinct here is to get the next novel out there, but I don’t know, are people interested enough in the short stories that they would be a nice filler between novels? Is the novella something only I would be interested in? Would readers like the occasional short story in between novels but not necessarily an entire collection of them?
So these are the questions I am asking you all to answer: what do you want to see next from me–the next Pauline Gray novella; the continuation of Riss’s story; the next W&D novel; a short story or stories around W&D, or a novella set in their world but featuring different characters? Feel free to answer with only one option or with putting your choices in order of what you want most to read down to least.
As I shuffling off the responsibility of organizing my work onto my readers? Yes, I absolutely am. Do I feel guilt over this? Nope, not a bit.
Let me know in the comments, or send me an email if you’d rather keep it private! Also feel free to let me know some of what you hope to see from any or all of these universes by way of long-term storytelling. I know what my ideas are for the futures of these stories, but what are yours? Let’s chat!
For the first time ever, StarDance Press has a proper logo! This is still the prototype, so I am more than willing to hear your impressions of it. Do you like it? Hate it? Think it’s a good start but could still use some tweaking? I’ve been working on it for so long I have lost all sense of perspective (as tends to happen with the writing, come to think of it), so I would appreciate any and all feedback (as also happens with the writing).
I hope you are all having a wonderful summer! Carl and I started a quick (ha ha) painting project to improve the master bedroom and my study over the July 4th long weekend, and we are still working on it with no immediate end in sight. Isn’t that how it always goes? Still, it should be beautiful when it is finished, and in the meantime, I’m off to go scrape some more old paint off the wooden boards in my study so we can sand and refinish them. Cheers!
That’s three layers of paint: white primer, neon pink, nasty brown. Off, off, off! Oh yes, we’re refinishing the floors as well.But it’s going to look lovely and serene when all finished. Eventually.
Between the previous post, FB, Twitter, Tumblr, and in-person conversations, the votes for “Golden Age Detective Fantasy” and “Whodunit Fantasy” are split pretty much evenly, with one extra suggestion of “Roaring ’20s Detective Fantasy.” So I still haven’t come to a conclusion as to what name I should coin for this specific sub-genre of “detective fiction in the style of Christie, Sayers, Allingham, etc, with a splash of magic.”
The points for “Golden Age Detective Fantasy”:
Evocative
Specific
Intriguing even for readers who aren’t familiar with mystery sub-genres
Sounds more alluring than Whodunit Fantasy
Points for “Whodunit Fantasy”:
Short and snappy
Easily understood even if readers aren’t familiar with mystery sub-genres
Covers more ground than Golden Age Detective Fantasy
Since “Golden Age Detective Fiction” is technically only used for authors who were writing during that between-wars era, Whodunit Fantasy is a more correct name
How’s a poor hapless author to decide? I know it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it would be nice to have a name to put on back copy and on the series page of the website. I’m still mulling it over!
In other writing news, I’ve had a great deal of fun recently concocting a magical wardrobe for Maia created in-story by Helen. There are practical aspects: dresses that fold to no larger than a handkerchief, and when unfolded are wrinkle free! Dresses with pockets that can hold more than a handbag and yet don’t alter the line of the dress! Then there are the decorative aspects: embroidery that literally sparkles; the ability to alter a hemline or neckline or change the sleeves from long to short with simply the correct word to release the spell.
I try not to go too overboard describing clothing in the books, because too many details can take a reader right out of the story, but it is sooo tempting when I have so many wonderful options to use as inspiration!
This is a fantastic demonstration of a dress that a clever magician could create to change from a day dress to a dinner dress with one snap.I think Maia is definitely the type to wear a cape, don’t you? Even if she secretly feels it is a bit over-the-top, she just can’t resist the swoop and swish of it. And the dress beneath is practical enough even for her.The green frock here is very close to one I just had Helen create for Maia–except hers has more embroidery, and the floaty bits at shoulders and hip are gold rather than green. I love it, and I wish I could have one myself!
This is just a tiny sampling of the patterns I’ve been drooling over these last couple of weeks. If my next blog post sheepishly admits that I broke down and made myself a 1920s dress, you’ll know why. I can justify it all as research, right?
If you are an author, what sort of fun rabbit trails does your research tend to take you down? If you are a reader, what bits of extra detail are your favorite to read about in a story? And for both parties, if you haven’t already, please weigh in on whether you prefer “Golden Age Detective Fantasy” or “Whodunit Fantasy”!
