Yes, it’s been forever since I posted. I’m sorry. I have reasons, but they honestly feel like excuses. I know, I know: they feel like excuses because the black dog has been chewing on my ass for months. I’m trying to get/do better.

So. Last January. Published The Law of Magical Contagion.

The capper to Siobhan Miller’s terrible, horrible, no-good, very bad day was a dog, tied to the stop sign. She hates dogs. She’s terrified of dogs, and that was a big dog. Looking sad and lonely, tied to a stop sign. That was not okay. She was the only one around, so she took him home. Only to find that he wasn’t a dog, but one of the Good People, under a curse. And there were more of them.

And they were all after her. And all she had was the dog (who wasn’t a dog) to help keep her from being taken away from all she’s ever known. Because that dog? He and his twin sister are family that she didn’t know she had, and their appearance has upended everything she’s ever known about herself. Including that she was human to begin with. She has a lot of questions.

Starting with curses, and how and why they sometimes spread.

In March, I put out a collection of short stories. Science fiction, this time. Title is Escape Velocity.

An optimistic collection of six stories revolving around leaving Earth, or living (and making a living) further out in the solar system.

Xanadu–Sometimes, making a profit just needs an outside perspective for why it hasn’t yet.
Turing’s Legacy–It takes love to make a person. And maybe an accident.
Theory in Practice–Psychological care may well be more important in a closed environment.
Reasonable Accommodations–Microgravity could be an answer to some disabilities.
You Can’t Go Home Again–The effects of long-term isolation on asteroid miners explored.
Everyday Miracles–What could push someone to emigrate to a new off-planet colony?

I got my brain hijacked by what I THOUGHT was a short story. It wasn’t. It turned into a full-blown novella-length coming-of-age story. Which normally, I can’t stand, and don’t write. I didn’t have a choice on this. It came out whether I wanted it to or not.

The final product was put up for sale in May: The Passing of the Age. It even spent a little bit of time on the Amazon best-seller’s list for its category.

Once, gods and Titans went to war because humanity existed and the Titans…didn’t like that. Will, the blacksmith’s apprentice, was born long after the war’s bitter, destructive, last gasp. It left the land scarred, leaving behind the Wastes, a massive pit in the landscape, dug by poisoned magic. The old world was lost in the ashes, and survivors were left with so little that any who didn’t pull their weight (or had something someone powerful wanted) were exiled to starve in the Wastes.

Just. Like. Will.

Cast out to the Wastes because his father remarried and his stepmother had wanted her children to inherit, he turned to his master, the smith. The smith, who had held Will back to keep using his labor for free, refused to go against the rest of the village, angry though he was to lose Will’s labor. In lieu of the honestly-earned status of journeyman that would have protected Will from exile, his master gave him a bag of grave goods: a hammer (but not a good one), tongs (that were rusting to pieces), and a file (more than half worn out). And two small coins to pay the ferryman when he reached the river dividing life from death.

Will entered the wastes with the clothes on his back, inadequate grave goods, and determination to live through it, in spite of his village. And a mission given him by the Land, and by the god of the wild places, to take the knife he made with his grave goods to the very center of the Wastes. There, he will find his destiny.

Then last month–July–I put out another type of story I don’t write. A romance. A ghost story romance. I was not planning to write it. It just came out.

That was Soul Inheritance. It ended up being a lot more fun than I thought, and…wholesome. Definitely a clean romance, and a lot more religiously inclined–openly so–than most everything else I write (even though it’s in the background of literally everything I write).

Fresh out of college, Evelyn Alexander’s first order of business was finding a place to live. One she could afford on her small inheritance before her job started. None of the local rental agencies had anything in her price range, but…she found a small Victorian house for sale, the only one mostly untouched in a decaying neighborhood of subdivided rental houses.

Complete with a ghost. A very attractive ghost. A very attractive ghost with a strong dislike of the idea of anyone changing his house. So, of course, she bought it. A cranky ghost for a roommate was still a better option than the tiny studio with criminal neighbors.

Between working to restore her new house, embezzlement at work and a murder next door, Evelyn has her hands full. As she works to get on her feet as a productive adult (and not fall in love with a ghost she can’t have), the problems start to snowball. And it’s only compounded by learning that her house has far more secrets than just a single, cranky (attractive) ghost…

I am still working on Liquid Diet 5. Current title for that one is Street Snacks. I’m about a third of the way done. I thought I had a good idea of the full plot, but it jinked a bit. Like my characters tend to do, I had a bunch insert themselves, and run away with the plot a little bit. I’m no longer sure where things will end up. Or how. I’m hoping to have that done and out by…October? Maybe? I know my daughter’s poking at me to hurry up and finish it. Kinda hard to do that, right now–the kids are under elbow, and…I can’t write like that. Thankfully, school starts next Wednesday. I should be able to write better after that.

The other issue is…well. Technology-related. Laptop is partitioned (which either is a recent development, or I didn’t know about), and the C drive is…stupid. It’s literally the smallest partition. And it decided that there was insufficient room to update about a month ago, and I had to delete EVERYTHING THAT WASN’T MS PROGRAMS off of it to have room for updates. Which included my music. And my music player can’t FIND the damn music I write by, now.

(I got an MP3 player. I’ll be putting the rest of my music on it soon, but right now, it contains just my writing music for the Liquid Diet Chronicles.)

Also planned for November is Sleigh Bells and Wedding Bells. It’s a follow up to last year’s romance, Fixing Up Love. I’ve got it 3/4 of the way written. It’ll be a novella, and I might–MIGHT–publish the two together in one volume in paperback. If there’s interest.

(I might do that anyway, for the sake of my daughter and her best friend, who both love romance, and are fourteen.)

I think that’s it for this year’s projects. I will say this: I can’t keep going at this pace. I’m going to have to slow down how many books I push myself to write and put out. I think maybe next year, I’ll aim at four, with one of them being a collection of short stories, one Liquid Diet book, a slot for a “hi, there, I’m ambushing you!” idea (there’s one or two that are nudging), and…a Modern Gods book. I have an idea for one that I’m working on getting written. I’ve got about four chapters done, with another two started. And I have a plot.

I am going to try to keep everyone up to date a bit better. And to do that, I’m going to add “update blog” to my to-do list. I’m aiming at monthly, for now. May go to weekly, once I get that habit built. Wish me luck on everything. I have the feeling I’m going to need it.