I know many of us prefer not to shop for books on Amazon, so I wanted to offer an online option that some readers might not be aware of. Bookshop.org not only distributes all the StarDance Press paperbacks (the Whitney & Davies series, From the Shadows, the Pauline Gray novellas), they also give a portion of the price to the independent bookstore of your choosing.
Nothing quite beats going into a physical bookstore and browsing through their physical books, but that can be more and more challenging these days–there are fewer local indie bookstores in general, and most of them can’t afford to give shelf space to all the authors they might wish they could. It’s especially challenging for independent authors like myself, who are not supported by a marketing team from one of the “Big Five” traditional publishers (e.g. Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hatchette Livre, and Macmillan).
So I am thankful for options such as bookshop.org, who are able to support local independent bookstores, small independent authors, and the reading community, all at the same time!
I suspect many people by now have heard of “Jolabokaflod,” or “Christmas Book Flood.” It’s the Icelandic tradition of giving books on Christmas Eve and spending the evening reading. Whether you have an Icelandic heritage or not, this is a lovely tradition, and one I suspect many families would enjoy implementing as part of their own holiday practices! In our family, we’ve always given books as part of the main Christmas event (we do Christmas Eve gifts, but those are always either special Christmassy pajamas or a new ornament for the tree), and I’m not sure my crew would welcome a change now, but there is something so cozy about the idea of spending the night before Christmas curled up with a good book.
And luckily for fans of StarDance Press, we have two separate series to choose from for books to give–or keep!–for reading on Christmas Eve, or any time during the holidays.
In Whitney and Davies, we have magic, mystery, the Roaring Twenties, Britain, friendship and witty banter, and a slow-burn romance that has been building through three books and one novella (and a couple of short stories!). Maia Whitney and Len Davies use their wits and their magical abilities to solve mysteries as they gradually learn to rely on each other and build a relationship on a foundation of trust and friendship. Fans have likened this series to “Agatha Christie with magic,” “Downton Abbey, The Dresden Files, and Right Ho, Jeeves,” and a blend of Dorothy L Sayers and Patricia C Wrede.
Not a fan of magic? Prefer a shorter read or a completed series? Try Pauline Gray, a collection of three mystery novellas set in the 1930s in the small town of Canton, NY, in the foothills of the Adirondacks. Pauline is a young career woman whose sense of justice keeps drawing her reluctantly into solving mysteries and becoming more tightly interwoven into the small town community as she does so. Fans say, “Recommended for fans of Patricia Wentworth novels, Jimmy Stewart movies, and fans of 1930s Americana.”
Rather not commit to any series at all, preferring a stand-alone work? A fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, or other sci-fi that focuses on the human condition? From the Shadows is perfect for you! This gentle sci-fi story follows Riss Waldron on a journey through space and time, yes, but also through the struggles of her own heart and sense of self-worth. Fans have related it to Jane Austen, LM Montgomery, or the Mitford series (in space!).
So whatever your taste in books, StarDance Press has something to offer. All our books are available in ebook and paperback format, and you can access them through any of the links in this post.
So what are you waiting for? The only trouble now might be waiting to give them (and read them!) until Christmas Eve!
Part of the Whitney and Davies series, but able to be read and enjoyed all on its own without any knowledge of the rest of the books, While Shepherds Watch is a delightfully lighthearted Christmas mystery. A crumbling Yorkshire manor, rumors of a ghost wandering the halls, a young girl with a deep secret, and a cad who needs to be taught a lesson. Only Maia and Len can smooth out these tangles to make a Happy Christmas for all! If you like your Christmas books to be, well, Christmassy, than this is definitely the book for you!
Once again, Glamours and Gunshots is featuring in the Epic Sale of Beloved SFF. (SFF, here, stands for Science Fiction and Fantasy). Running from September 10-14, all the sale books are being offered for $0.99 or free. You can’t beat that!
Click here to go to the sale page and check out all 42 of the books on there.
So if you’ve been wanting to collect the entire Whitney & Davies collection, now’s your chance, plus you have the opportunity to snag a heartfelt, cozy sci-fi book at the same time.
While you’re still here, don’t forget to sign up for my monthly newsletter! It’s a great way to keep up with sales, publishing news, and other fun stuff that doesn’t always make it to the blog. Plus you get a free short story when you sign up!
In my last post I said I wasn’t sure when the next Caledonia book was going to come out … but that doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun with research, anyway.
I never did physics in college, so most of what I put into From the Shadows was very much seat-of-my-pants, desperately looking stuff up as I thought of it, hoping to technobabble my way through. That only goes so far, though, and so I am hoping to equip myself better for future books.
Besides, the more I know, the further my imagination can roam … who knows how many creative possibilities are out there that I haven’t been able to grasp simply because I don’t know about them?
So when I found Physics of the Impossible and Parallel Worlds by Michio Kaku, I knew they were just what I was looking for. Especially since the entire premise of From the Shadows is based on the idea of parallel worlds, and they are traveling through space at faster-than-light speeds, with alien planets capable of sustaining life along their way … yeah, those are definitely some impossible physics right there. Like I said, these books are just what I need for future sci-fi stories.
I have a couple of books I was already reading when these arrived, so I’m hurrying to get through them, and then … it’s physics time!
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!”
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!
In my most recent blog post, I spoke about the defaults I revert to when writing characters. Today I’ve been thinking about one of my other storytelling defaults, which is the importance of community.
Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire. The monks who built this place knew more than a little about the importance of community.
I was going to say that this theme shows itself most strongly in From the Shadows, but then I thought, No, actually it comes out most strongly in the Pauline Gray series, and then I dithered about it for a while before realizing hey, it doesn’t have to be a competition. So let’s simply look at the three different worlds I’ve built and see the way community plays out in each, without holding one against another, shall we?
First up, From the Shadows. On the surface, it looks like the main problem of the book for our protagonist, Riss, is that she’s stuck on a spaceship in the future with no way to get home. But actually, as the story develops, we see–and Riss learns along with us–that her real problem is her deep, unsatisfied need to be part of a community where she is valued both for her own self and for her gifts. The community aboard the Caledonia is a close, tight-knit, self-contained group, and Riss’s struggle to figure out if she could belong there is really what makes up the heart of the story.
Then there’s Pauline Gray. The need to find and/or build community doesn’t play as active a role in Pauline’s stories, but the community of a small, rural town in the midst of the Depression is the firm backbone of the series. This is a place where the people look out for each other, and even if they don’t like each other very much, they come together in difficult times to do what needs to be done. That’s why murder is such a shattering thing each time it happens in Pauline’s world–because it tears apart the fabric of the community, and it breaks the unspoken trust that people have in their neighbors. Pauline is less aware than Riss of her need for community, but she feels the tearing of it even if she is not aware that’s what the problem is.
Well, what about Whitney and Davies? I will admit the theme of community isn’t quite so strong in these books as it is in the others I’ve already mentioned–but it is there. In Magic Most Deadly, Maia’s discovery of magic allows her to enter into the community of magicians, and in Glamours & Gunshots she starts to figure out what she wants her role in that community to be. Len, meanwhile, is moving out of the community he’s always been part of and searching for a new one, one where he doesn’t always have to hide who he is and what he does. Together, they are forming their own microcosm of a community and seeking ways to serve the larger community at the same time.
When I was younger, I was pretty oblivious to the human need to exist within a community, but the older I get, the more I value it. I’ve lived in places without any sort of community–was a young mother in some of them, which I 100% do not recommend–lived in others where there ought to have been community and wasn’t, and hardest of all to endure, lived in some places where they was a community and I was on the outside of it. Those experiences have all shaped my own deep desire to be an active and valued member of a community. Not a selfish wish to be part of some hidden “inner circle”–like Mark in C.S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength–that’s when community turns into a clique, and is one of the ugliest things in the world. But a genuine community, where people look out for each other and take care of each other and help each other out when needed, and everyone has something to give and everyone’s lives are woven together.
I don’t talk about politics on this blog, but it isn’t political to say this country is experiencing a deep division right now, a tearing apart of what we value and how we view the world and our place in it. There is a limit on how much each ordinary person can do to change that on a grand scale. But here’s what we can do: we can look out for our neighbors. We can take care of the vulnerable in our towns, villages, and counties. We can cut down that limb from the tree in our yard that is threatening to fall on the next-door neighbor’s house. We can thank our town officials for their hard work during this election season. We can buy a coffee for the guy (6 feet) behind us in line at the local bakery, just because. We can make a meal for the new parents down the street. We can encourage our kids to talk to the outsider at school, the one shy kid who always stands in the corner and can’t seem to believe that anyone would want to be their friend.
Community doesn’t exist simply by a group of people living in close proximity to each other or being part of the same activities. It comes about when people commit to caring for one another, to seeing each other, to not living as though others don’t matter.
That’s a message I keep needing to tell my heart, which is probably why it keeps cropping up in my stories. Maybe you need the encouragement as well? Covid-19 has created a lot of loneliness for a lot of us, and made community something out of reach in many cases. I hear you–moving to a new place in the midst of a pandemic means it’s been awfully hard for our family to do anything toward finding a community. But it’s worth it to keep trying.
And if you can’t find it in real life right now, I hope you can find enough of a community in books to tide you over until you can.
Our seminary family–or part of it, at least. I didn’t think those years were that long ago, but boy do we all look young.
I don’t write fanfiction anymore (no time; too many original projects requiring my writing attention these days–I have FOUR stories in progress right now, three that I’m actively working on and one that’s on hold, and so, so many more just waiting for their turn), but I do still find myself imagining fanfic-type stories just for fun, stories that won’t ever get written down. I was daydreaming this morning about an Emma sequel focusing on Emma’s daughter, and I automatically pegged her as a calm, sensible type, who starts out the story quite content with doing what everyone expects of her, and then her life gets stirred up and turned inside out when romance and excitement come her way without her ever wanting them.
Then I realized, wow, do I have a penchant for writing that sort of character or what? Going through my published books, we have:
Maia Whitney: So practical and sensible I had to rewrite her character several times to keep her from being utterly boring, and is in fact frequently dismissed by her family and even some of her friends as dull.
Pauline Gray: Practical and calm, solves murders because of her strong sense of justice but does not enjoy the excitement of them at all, in fact wishes she could hide away in a library somewhere researching something dull and safe.
Riss Waldon: Falls into a space opera, is immediately determined to enjoy it because what’s the point of an adventure if you spend your whole time panicking and trying to get out of it, continues to act sensibly through the entire thing because she can’t stand irrational behavior.
Going back through my old LMM fanfics, for original characters I have:
Meggie Blythe: starts out as a practical 10yo with a touch of dreaminess, ends as a young wife and mother who is still both practical and dreamy. (I loved Meggie with all my heart, but I can admit that she didn’t really get all that much character growth throughout that series of stories, nor did she have much in the way of flaws.)
Gwen Blake: impulsive and clumsy, but definitely grows throughout her stories into someone more practical and sensible, and always more on the common sense side of personality traits than the dreamy, romantic side. Much more Elinor than Marianne, basically.
Not to mention that the non-OCs I’ve written about are Jane Stuart, Shirley Blythe, and Diana Blythe, all canonically practical and down-to-earth.
Even looking at the short stories I’ve written, they tend heavily toward “ordinary, sensible person gets sucked from a boring, everyday life into adventure and then has to be the only level-headed person when everyone around him/her is mad.”
Which has led me to wonder if I can write a madcap adventurer. But, my creativity rises up in protest, I like sensible people getting dragged against their will into adventure! I don’t want to write about people who want adventure, that’s boring!
Ah well. Maybe someday the pendulum will swing about in the other direction. For now, practical characters it is!
I sat down the other day and wrote out a list of the stories I am working on, and the ones I would like to be working on within the next few years.
It’s quite the list.
First, there’s the next Whitney & Davies book, and the two I have loosely plotted to follow that one. (Both Yorkshire and Cornwall inspired a new W&D story, and I’m really looking forward to getting those written and revisiting both places in my imagination.)
Newnham College in Cambridge provided the inspiration for W&D Book 3–set at the fictional Saint Dorothea’s, the college for magicians hidden inside Cambridge UniversityThe ruins of Fountains Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales provided the inspiration for W&D Book 4The gloriously wild and rugged (or at least it was gloriously wild when we were there, thanks to all the storms) Cornish coast is the setting for W&D Book 5
Then there’s the unexpected sequel to From the Shadows, which might??? lead to a third book? I’m still not sure. Quite frankly, there wasn’t even supposed to be a sequel, so clearly I am not the one in charge of these stories, I just go where they direct.
I have plot outlines sketched in for a total of six novellas in the Pauline Gray series, and I would hope to be able to carry that series out even longer so long as the characters and stories don’t get stale–for readers as well as for myself.
You would think that would be enough, wouldn’t you? But no–I have ideas for a middle grade fantasy book, a young adult fantasy book, and a cozy mystery series. And this doesn’t even take into account the stories that pop into every author’s imagination and demand to be written!
I’m not complaining, not at all. It’s wonderful to have such a wealth of stories to play with, so many different worlds and characters to explore and share with readers. I am in no danger of getting bored for the next several years, that’s for certain.
So tell me: what sort of projects do you have teeming in your brain these days? What are some of your short-term and long-term creative goals? Whether it be gardening or knitting or sewing (oh, don’t get me started on my knitting and sewing projects!) or pottery or painting or baking or anything else creative at all! I’d love to get inspired by what’s inspiring you.
There’s a story waiting to be revealed here, too, it just hadn’t made itself known to me yet. Maybe you’ll be luckier … or more attuned to its whisper.
Hello friends! Long time no chat. I wonder why? Oh, that’s right.
Moving Day!
We bought a house! Which I have no photos of yet because we’ve been too busy moving in, ha. I do have a few shots of fun features, though.
Hyacinth growing in our front garden, a pantry AND a china cupboard, a study/sewing room all my very own, and the girls turning the door off an unnecessary outbuilding into a seesaw of sorts as Carl demolished it.
Moving in a time of pandemic is … challenging, to say the least. One doesn’t exactly want to buy a sofa without first testing it. And how can one tell if flatware is going to suit one’s hand without hefting it? Not to mention choosing paint colors …
But we’re managing. We have plates, bowls, and glasses now, even if we’re still using plasticware. We all have beds, mattresses, sheets, and blankets. Three out of the four of us have dressers. We have no couch, but we have a dining room table and chairs. The books are still packed away (weep, weep), but the boxes are easily accessible, for a change.
And speaking of books …
As the title of this post indicated, I am extending the sale on Magic Most Deadly, From the Shadows, and Candles in the Dark until the end of April. Since the quarantine seems to be extending (at least in many places), so shall the sale! So until May 1, those three books are still FREE.
And hey, if you’ve already downloaded and enjoyed those stories, Glamours and Gunshots and Magic and Mayhem are not on sale, but are still less than the price of the wonderful coffee drinks none of us are able to indulge in right now (do I miss Carl’s and my weekly dates to our favorite coffee shop in Cambridge right now? Boy howdy, do I miss them). So you could definitely pick up one or both of them to round off your Whitney & Davies collection as it stands right now without it breaking the bank!
Hang in there, friends. In the words of the inimitable Red Green, “I’m pulling for you. We’re all in this together.”
