A New Novel, a HUGE sale, and a Giveaway!
Get the hardcover cheaper than the ebook! Plus a $50 giveaway!
I was absolutely not going to send an email today. I KNOW you’re inundated with tons of advertisements in your inbox, and if you’re celebrating Thanksgiving, you’re hopefully having a nice dinner with friends and family, but I was just alerted that Night of the Witch is on a super-steep discount for Amazon’s Black Friday sale!
Now, before I push Amazon, I want to remind everyone that indie bookstores are a great place to shop, and they also offer signed books—Malaprops and Adventure Bound can get you a signed copy of Night of the Witch and any of my other books, and they’ll gift wrap it, and the store supports the local community, and real humans who are paid a fair living wage will get the book to you. I know people are on budgets, but I want to share all the options!
I don’t know how long the Amazon sale will last—this is as much a surprise to me as anyone!—so if you’ve been considering Night of the Witch or want to give it to someone at the holidays, this is the best price I’ve seen yet. You can get the hardcover for less than $10, which is cheaper than the ebook!
Win a Gift Card for Reading!
Speaking of Amazon, would you like a $50 giftcard from them? Storyloom, my video game publisher, is offering a $50 giftcard sweepstakes, and it’s super simple to enter.
If you haven’t yet, let me use this opportunity to remind you that you can read my interactive choose-your-own-path style stories on Storyloom for free! All you do is make a free account, and then you get coins and can start reading immediately. You get more free coins every day you log in.
Don’t Die is my latest story game, and it’s so much snarky fun. The premise is that you are locked in a game with a mysterious being who puts you in different worlds and you have to survive. The goal is simple: don’t die. But it’s not easy when your first adventure is on a sabotaged spaceship, then you’re sent into the wilderness to face down both a serial killer and a cougar, then you’re whisked to a fantasy world where you have to use magic to stop an assassination of the elf king.
Every chapter has at least one choice that will lead to your death—but don’t worry, the snarky controller will reboot you. The whole concept of the game is built around clever choices and so much snark. If you’ve played Portal, then you can think of the narrator as GLaDOS, but without even the lie of cake being available.
New Book Announcement!
Museum of Magic and House of Hex are officially complete! You can read the entire story on Kindle Vella and Patreon right now, and the paperback and downloadable ebook of House of Hex is coming soon.
But! That means I need a new serial novel to start! It was a tight race polling Patreon and social media on two genre options, but in the end, a YA horror novel was the final choice!
I’m going to be starting it on Patreon first, then adding chapters to Kindle Vella. But first let me tell you a little about it:
Darkness Fills the Void is a YA horror novel that follows Monica, a teen working her mom’s bookstore. One of the new girls hired to help with the summer rush has a dark secret; she was a part of a scandal that went viral on social media. But the cruel prank caught on tape wasn’t what it looks like, and when Monica starts digging deeper, she realizes that perhaps there’s an even darker element at play…
As with before, Patreon readers will have a chance to influence how the story develops. But I am also going to attempt something new! I love found document stories—The Dead House by Dawn Kurtagich shows interviews, photos, and other documents to tell the story of a haunted girl; Illuminae by Amie Kaufman and Jay Kristoff use found documents to tell a sci fi thriller.
It’s only because I’m producing this story on Patreon that I will be able to invest in the graphic design needed to pull this off, but I’m very excited by the possibilities! Much of Darkness Fills the Void is about what you believe and how you develop those choices, so rather than give you one story with just a narrative, I’m going to show you the things that Monica and her friends see, and you can decide if they’re being haunted or if there’s more happening than it seems…
This book will be written over the course of a year on Patreon and Kindle Vella, with paperback and ebook coming at the end of next year. No hard dates, as Patreons will be able to influence the story and shape how it ends!
What I’m working on now…
House of Hex edits; paperback and ebook will be available in December.
Planning stages for Darkness Fills the Void
YA Fantasy proposal sent to agent
New adult science fiction project on submission with editors
The Fate of Magic: done, coming Fall 2024
Don’t Die: A choose-your-path story game with one goal. Don’t die.
Adult fantasy novel: at around 70,000 words, on hold for other projects.
Side gigs!
Weekly posts and videos about writing at Patreon
SNHU as an online adjunct in the MFA writing program
Accepting critique and coaching jobs with Wordsmith Workshops—in addition to doing Word Lab! Also, we’re starting live and in person retreats again!
Actively doing in-person school, library, and book fair events—book me for panels, signings, and workshops for both adults and teens on writing! If you’d like to get an idea of some of the programming I do, I describe it a bit here.
Wow, so much exciting stuff! Looking forward especially to the new Patreon/Vela story, and there adult fantasy novel!