I'm very pleased to announce that the audiobook edition of Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand is now available on Audible! David Ault worked so hard on this audiobook and I think it turned out spectacularly. If audiobooks are your thing, please give it a listen!

 Remember that announcement I teased a while back? Well, it's ready to be announced: Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand is getting an audiobook adaptation!

Not only that, but the narrator is none other than David Ault, co-creator of the Jodcast, professional voice actor, and all-around awesome guy! We got to chatting on a comment thread on a Jodcast X post, I asked him if he'd be interested in the project since the character of the faerie king was actually partly inspired by him, and now an audiobook has happened, and it turns out social media can be useful after all!

David has been an absolute joy to work with, and he did an amazing job drawing the listener into the story and bringing the characters to life, and even singing which he gets a jillion gold stars for. (And, being English, he can do a much better British accent than I can.) 

He also did me the huge service of going through the text and making sure everything was in proper British English. Because as much as I love the UK, I have never been there (yet), and although I grew up reading a lot of British children's literature, enjoy following British astronomy, have written way too much Neopets fanfic that was required to use British English to be accepted for publication in the Neopian Times, and I think nowadays I actually listen to Brits more than Americans*, there are some definite gaps in my knowledge (usually about items that are not related to astronomy or food or medieval combat). (Did you know they call crosswalks "pedestrian crossings" there? Wild!) 

So I am indebted to David for giving me a crash course on British English (and a fascinating side trip into British geographical nomenclature!), as well as correcting things that I promise I actually already knew, but that I missed when I was converting the manuscript from American to British English. To make a short story long (which I can do because this is my blog and there are no word count limits that I have yet found), I originally wrote the manuscript in American English despite the story taking place in England, simply because I am American, I live in America, and aside from aforementioned fanfic with specific publication requirements, I feel it's dishonest of me to pretend to be British when I write. But when David signed on for the audiobook, I figured that sort of gave me the green light to just go ahead and make it British. It's an international production, much like the James Webb Space Telescope and Fraggle Rock! (But I still missed some odd things in the transition, like calling trousers "pants" which is British English 101, and not spelling "armour" the Commonwealth way, despite my Neopets fics involving quite a bit of armour and I am perfectly aware how it's supposed to be spelled and I am still kicking myself about it. I think I need more sleep. David was so patient with me and he deserves a medal.)

Anyway, that's neither here nor there; the point of these ramblings is that the audiobook is coming to Audible very soon, so keep an eye out for it (or keep an eye on this blog, or my social media, I guess)!

*Speaking of listening to a lot of British people, I think I've begun to pick up a little bit of an English accent, which is going to be very awkward if I ever have a real spoken conversation with a British person. I guess I could try hard to sound more American? Would they even notice? Am I just overthinking everything again?????

 

My novel Between the Salt Water and the Sea Strand is now available in ebook format (and paperback is coming soon)!

Check it out for a fun collision of modern England and British/Celtic mythology and folklore, a heroine on the autism spectrum, and more than you ever really needed to know about making rock (the confectionery, not the geologic object). 

I worked hard on this one and I really hope readers enjoy it. (Old Tom is totally based on my cat.)

Stay tuned for that cool announcement I promised!

Cover art for the next novel I'm going to publish very soon!

One of the (many) things I love about the UK is how the sky is always in a mood. <3 Also, corgis are fantastic.

You may remember me doing some concept art for this novel last year; I'd actually written the manuscript then, and now I'm finally ready to move forward with publishing. I'm very excited to share this tale of faerie warriors, a middle-aged cat lady, and surreptitious theoretical physics. Also, snails are important.

... I promise it all makes sense in the end.

P.S. I have a very special surprise planned for this novel, so keep an eye out for a big, cool announcement!

 

Color study for Wix, the fairy knight from the story I'm working on. I've been having a lot of fun incorporating bits of Celtic, Irish, and Welsh mythology as well as medieval fairy folklore. This is in keeping with the fact that what we now call "fairies" actually evolved culturally from the Tuatha Dé Danann of Irish mythology, a race of highly magical supernatural beings who are largely cognate with Celtic deities. Which, honestly, I think is a lot more interesting than little butterfly-winged women sitting on flowers, in the Victorian tradition.

The book explores how the once-powerful Tuath Dé lost the British Isles to mortals and became reduced to diminutive, rarely-sighted beings, and what might happen if the fair folk ever decided to try to take the mortal world back. It also details a journey through Annwn, the otherworld, where time and space and physics don't really work the same way as humans are used to.

Also, in the book, fairies don't always have wings, just when they need to fly.

I've been trying to do more stuff, so here's a concept sketch for the novel I've been working on. Carnonos is the king of the faeries, who used to be worshiped as gods by the ancient Celts, but during the Middle Ages they retreated into another world and now only rarely interact with the mortal world. Even more rarely do they have dealings with mortals these days, but Carnonos believes that faeries and mortals can get along at least on an individual basis.

However, he's been missing for decades, ever since an usurper took his throne and threw the fae realm into disarray. Now the unrightful queen has gathered her forces and launched an attack on the mortal realm to search for a magical artifact Carnonos hid there before he disappeared. It's up to a quirky family of mortals, an eccentric author, and the king's most loyal warrior to rescue him, retrieve the artifact, and save all of Britain.

In the book, the fair folk come in a wide range of appearances, from almost human to quite monstrous (those are the ones that usually get labeled "goblins"), so I had fun playing around with designs. Carnonos's antlers are actually Irish elk antlers, because I felt that fit his status as an ancient and venerable entity, and because I just wanted to sneak in a bit of paleontology.

Finally, some artwork! Uggghhh I'm still in "brain drain" mode you guys. But I did manage to put together some very rough concept sketches for one of the main characters of my next novel!

This is Wix, a fairy warrior who rides her corgi mount Kinnyfan into battle because in the mortal world, she's only about the height of a human hand. One blustery day, she shows up in Scarborough, England in a desperate attempt to stop the invasion of the mortal realm by the usurper fairy queen, who is trying to find the magical artifact that will allow fairies to regain their full size - and full magic power - in the mortal realm.

Wix finds some unlikely allies in a trio of siblings on holiday and a middle-aged fantasy author, and although she is deeply distrustful of humans, these quirky mortals may be Wix's only chance at finding the long-lost true fairy king and saving both their worlds.

When designing the fairies in this book, I wanted to focus on making them look distinctly non-human. They're not just people with wings, they're a totally different class of creature, and while some fairies approach looking human, others can look drastically different--the ones that are more monstrous or grotesque in form are called goblins. Wix is one of the more human-looking fair folk, but on the quest to find the fairy king, the protagonists will also run into some highly unusual fairies, including quite possibly the ugliest thing to ever exist.