Tag Archives: Belle Books

Tuesday Treat!!

The Chalice War: Stone postcardsI gots swag!!!

The Chalice War: Stone postcards, hot off the press!!

And while you might be able to get some from me at a convention, I thought I would send a few out to a handful of lucky fans. All you have to do is guess what number I’m thinking of between 1 and 999! If you’re one of the five closest to the right number (above or below), you’ll get a postcard, signed and mailed to your address!!

Submit your guess in my Facebook group!! (If you’re not a member yet [hairy eyeball directed at you!!] submit your guess and ask to join and you will be approved!) Deadline: May 26, 2023

Easy peasy, right??

Ready, set, guess!!

Teaser Thursday: One Day ‘Til Release!!

The Chalice War: Stone, by David B. CoeAnother teaser, to get you excited for tomorrow’s release from Bell Bridge Books of THE CHALICE WAR: STONE, the first book in my new Celtic urban fantasy. Enjoy!

*****

Macha turned back to Marti. “You summoned us. Why?”

Before Marti could answer, the Fury went on. “You used herbs and oils to do it.” She halted her pacing beside the spear of tiger’s eye and nudged it with the toe of her shoe. “And crystals. How quaint. I’m guessing you lost more than your husband to the Fomhoire. They killed your conduit, too.”

Marti stopped herself from saying something rash and irrevocable. Macha wanted a reaction. She was a predator; all three of them were. Twisting the emotions of mortals came as naturally to them as hunting did to a hawk. Marti gained nothing by lashing out. And by holding back, she denied them nourishment of a sort.

“Yes, they did,” she said, keeping her tone even. “I wish they hadn’t of course, and I’m sorry to have summoned you this way. To be honest, I don’t like the smell of petitgrain any more than you do.”

An amused grin flashed across Macha features and was gone.

“Nicely done, Marti.”

“I don’t mind the smell that much,” Nemain said.

“Do shut up, Nellie.” Macha resumed her pacing, hands held behind her back. “You have questions.”

Delicately. She needed to learn as much as she could while revealing as little as possible.

“They sent Sluagh to kill Alistar,” she said. “And it turns out Alistar took certain precautions, just in case something like this happened. It seemed like he knew the Fomhoire would come for him eventually.”

“What kind of precautions?” Macha asked, as Marti had known she would.

Always distract the Furies with truth, Alistar told her. They’ll sense lies, but they’re not so smart that they can’t be distracted with a few well-placed truths.

Marti shrugged. “Spare license plates for the car, stuff with our finances. It was like he knew I’d outlive him.”

“And your question is?”

“Why? What made him a target for the Fomhoire? What did they think they’d gain by killing him?”

Macha stopped and clapped her hands in mock applause. “Lovely, my dear. You should be in show business with us. What do you think, girls? Shall we make Marti part of the act?”

Badbh leered.

Nemain glanced from one sister to the other. “Why? Does she sing, too?”

Macha ignored her. “You brought it here with you, didn’t you?” She waved off the question. “You must have. You’re far too clever to have left it behind.” Her eyes narrowed. “But I do believe Alistar kept you in the dark about its true nature. That would have been like him—doing the prudent thing—assuming he had a choice in the matter. The problem is, he wasn’t as prepared to die as you imply. If he was, he would have told you more.”

“They were after something he had?” Marti asked, unwilling to confirm the Fury’s suspicions.

“They are after something you still have,” Macha told her. “Stop playing games with me.”

“What is it she has?” Badbh asked, taking a step toward Marti, hunger in her pale eyes.

Macha’s gaze flicked toward her sister. “It doesn’t matter.”

“I think it does.”

“I’m sure you do,” Macha said, facing the other Fury. “But I have no intention of telling you.”

The glower Badbh directed at her sister could have kindled wet wood.

“Maybe we should speak in private?” Marti asked, trying to mask her eagerness.

“I don’t think I’m ready to do that, either,” Macha said.

“What do you want?”

Macha gave an exaggerated shrug. She was having too much fun for Marti’s taste. “I haven’t decided yet.”

“The Fomhoire want it, too, right?” Badbh said. “Just let them fight for it.”

“That’s tempting, actually,” Macha said. “I would love to see another full-blown war between you and the Fomhoire. It’s been too long.” She brushed a tiny thread off her dress. “But in this case war would be dangerous, even for us. We can’t afford for you to lose it.”

“Then tell me what I need to know.” The words tumbled out of her, reckless, too fast. Macha had frightened her. Marti’s suspicions about the stone had been growing in recent days. With the Fury’s last words, terror exploded in her mind.

Gods, Alistar. What did you do to me?

Macha smiled again. “I don’t think so.”

“But you said—”

“Oh, we don’t want to see you beaten, but we have to have some fun. Don’t we girls?”

Badbh and Nemain cackled, sounding far more like Furies than nightclub singers.

“You know what you’ve been hiding,” Macha went on. “I do, too. Now, it seems the Fomhoire have some inkling as well. But it’s been lost to time for so long they can’t imagine where it could be or exactly what it might look like. To be honest, none of us can.”

Macha halted, scanned the room with studied indifference before fixing her gaze on Marti once more. “Actually, I would love to see it.”

Marti shook her head. “No.”

The Fury pouted, her lower lip protruding provocatively. The audiences in Vegas must have loved these three.

Professional Wednesday: Learning From Each of Our Projects

Ideally, every new book and story we write is not just an adventure in imagination, a chance to discover new characters and settings and narratives, but also a learning opportunity. I continue to improve my writing with each project, and I try to do at least one thing new with each story or novel. For instance, while working on my short story for the Dragonesque anthology, which will be published later this year by Zombies Need Brains, I was aware that my editors (and good friends), Joshua Palmatier and S.C. Butler, both tend to cut out a few dialog tags from all the stories they edit. I was determined to make that impossible for them. And I wound up managing to write the entire story using only a single instance of “said” or “asked.” Let them find something else to cut! In doing this, I actually made the story leaner, more concise, and more fun to read.

The Chalice War: Stone, by David B. CoeWith this in mind, I thought it might be helpful to list a few things I learned, reminded myself of, and/or tried to do differently while writing my Chalice War trilogy, which debuts on Friday, May 5 (THIS FRIDAY) with the release of The Chalice War: Stone from Bell Bridge Books.

Journal about, well, everything: The first book in the Chalice War series includes a frenzied chase/trek across the U.S., and a series of climactic scenes that are set in Las Vegas. The second book is set in Australia — in Sydney, as well as in the tourist town of Kiama along the Illawarra coast. The third book is set in Ireland. I have driven across this country a few times, and I’ve been to all the places I just mentioned. I have driven into Vegas at night, approaching from the east, as my characters do. I have spent time along the Irish coast (although not quite the same part). I have spent a good deal of time in Kiama.

And I have journaled about all of these experiences. While writing descriptive passages for the books, I drew heavily on old journal entries (and also on my old photographs). I’ll admit this is not the first time I have drawn upon personal experiences and writings for this sort of thing. When I wrote the Fearsson books, I consulted journal entries from visits to the Sonoran Desert. Whenever I write in the Thieftaker world, I draw on old entries from my college years in New England. This is not a new lesson, so much as something I was reminded of while writing the Chalice books. But the value of the point is undeniable. The more we write, the better we get, and journaling helps us keep in practice, which is reason enough to do it. But it can also be a terrific source for material that we can adapt to our fiction, be it in the form of descriptive writing, character development, or even plot points.

Dude, lighten up: My books tend to be very serious. Bad things happen all the time to good people. The fate of the world hangs in the balance again and again and again. It’s kind of like Buffy’s tombstone from the finale of the fifth season of Buffy The Vampire Slayer — “She saved the world. A lot.” I’m not suggesting this is a bad thing. People return to my books because I keep the stakes high, and they like that.

And the stakes could not be higher in the Chalice War books. The fate of our world is balanced on a knife’s edge throughout all three volumes. Serious stuff.

But people who know me know that I enjoy laughing and that I joke around a lot. And in these books, really for the first time in my career, I rely heavily on humor. I won’t go so far as to call the books “light-hearted” or “romps” — the series is action-packed, and, as I say, the stakes could not be higher. Still, there is a lot in these pages that made me laugh as I wrote, and I expect the books will make my readers laugh as well. A lot.

Limit the number of POV characters: Early in my career, when I wrote my big, fat epic fantasies (The LonTobyn Chronicle, Winds of the Forelands, Blood of the Southlands), I used a vast array of point of view characters. I was writing big sweeping stories and had a cast to match. I went from those to Thieftaker and Fearsson, which both had, basically, one POV character (the first chapters of the second and third Fearsson books were written in other POVs, but then both books reverted to Jay). Noir-style mysteries, I felt, worked best when told from the perspective of the investigator. Later books (Islevale, Radiants) fell somewhere in between — more than one, but not as many as those huge stories I told early on.

With this newest trilogy, I tried something a little different. I needed more than one POV character, but I wanted to have a maximum of three in each book. And that’s pretty much what I did. Chapter one of books I and II are from different POVs, but after that I have two POV characters in Stone, the first book, and three POV characters in the others.

And I like the way the novels read with limited casts of this sort. There is enough variety in the voices to propel the books forward with each POV shift, but there are few enough narrators that my readers can grow comfortable with the characters and their personalities. Obviously, every story is different, and what works with one series won’t necessarily work with another, but going forward, I will look for opportunities to limit my cast of narrating characters to more manageable numbers.

I hope you will check out the new series. I really do believe you’ll enjoy the books.

In the meantime, keep writing!

Monday Musings: This Blog, My Books, Your Support

This Blog:

I want to say from the outset that I love maintaining this blog. I write my twice-weekly posts because I enjoy sharing my thoughts (on Mondays) and my writing tips (on Wednesdays). Writing on demand in this way is always good practice. Delving into various issues with the Musings posts often is therapeutic for me, and forcing myself to think about different craft issues on a weekly basis helps me continue to hone my own writing skills.

I will also admit, though, that maintaining the blog is time-consuming. Some weeks, the posts flow pretty easily. Other weeks, not so much. It can take me a full day to write the two essays, occasionally more than a day. That’s fine, too. As we all know, writing can be like that — easy one week, excruciating the next.

To state the obvious, I am not compensated in any way for my blogging. That has been by choice, and I do not intend to place a paywall between my readers and the content on my blog. That, I fear, would change the dynamic between my blogging and reader response to my posts, which feels very organic right now. I want to keep it that way. I have thought, though, about creating a Patreon (for those unfamiliar with Patreon, it offers creators a chance to gain financial backing from subscribers) and asking people to contribute voluntarily. If every person who visited my blog and every person who subscribed to it gave just one dollar per week, that would be ample compensation.

As I say, it’s something I’ve considered. But . . . .

My Books:

As I’ve already said, I maintain the blog because I enjoy doing so. But, to be perfectly honest, I also do it to bring traffic to my website. The calculus is a little convoluted, but it goes something like this: If people come to my site to read the blog, maybe they will stick around and look at the other pages. And if they look around, maybe they’ll become interested in my books, and maybe they’ll start buying and reading those books. As marketing strategies go, it is neither brilliant nor revolutionary, but I’m a fantasy writer, not a Madison Avenue executive, and it’s the best I’ve got.

And so, I am a little reluctant to set up a Patreon because in a way I already ask you for a financial contribution, don’t I? I make no secret of my desire for you to read my books. I write about them in my blog posts, I refer to them in my social media posts, I talk them up and even hand-sell them at the conventions I attend. If someone were to ask you, “What do you think David B. Coe wants from you?” you probably wouldn’t have to think too long and hard before coming up with, “Well, I guess he would like me to buy his books when they come out.”

The Chalice War: Stone, by David B. CoeLet’s back that up with a little math. I said a moment ago that, were I to start a Patreon, I would be happy with contributions of $1.00 per week, which comes to $52.00 for the year. Now, as it happens, I have the first book of a new trilogy coming out on Friday of this week, May 5th. This is The Chalice War: Stone, the first book in my new Celtic urban fantasy from Bell Bridge Books. The second book, The Chalice War: Cauldron, will be out in June, and the third book, The Chalice War: Sword, will be out soon after that. Each printed book lists for $17.95. Factor in sales tax, and the three books together would cost about $57 or $58, or about $1.12 per week. (If you read ebooks, the three together will cost a total of about $16, or $0.31 per week. What a bargain!!)

The Chalice War: Cauldron, by David B. CoeSo, for about what you might give to a Patreon, you could have all the blog posts AND all three books in the new series.

And so . . . .

Your Support:

Yes, with a Patreon, most of the money goes directly to the author. When you buy our books, we authors get a much smaller share of the proceeds. And yet, most authors I know would make that trade every day of the week and twice on Sunday. Why? Because we write! Because we LOVE to write! Because we have new ideas that we are eager to write and have published!

Much that we hear about the publishing industry sounds arcane and confusing, and many of us respond to elements of the business with amazement and dismay, wondering why anyone ever chose to set up an entire sector of the economy in quite this way. But boiled down to its most basic elements, the business model is pretty straightforward. Authors write books, publishers put out those books, readers purchase and read those books. And if all goes as it should, and readers do their part, authors get to write and publish more and more books. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Which brings me, at long last, to my point. I need for you to buy my books. It really is that simple. If you like the blog — if you navigate to my page on Mondays and Wednesdays, or if you subscribe to my feed and the posts come to your inbox — you know how much I love to write. I love it so much I do it for free twice every week. But I can only do that if the books move off the shelves and I get to write and publish more of them.

Your support is vital, not just for me, but for every author whose work you care about. Stories matter. The written word matters. Today, more than ever before. All over the world and, sadly, all over our country, self-expression is under assault from those who fear ideas. All over the world, and all over our country, literature is dying a death of a thousand cuts: book bannings, apathy, the allure of gaming and television and social media. Books and authors need the passion and commitment of readers, just as readers need the passion and commitment of writers.

And, to state the obvious, authors need to make a buck. This is our passion, our obsession, our craft and art. It is also our livelihood.

So, please, enjoy my blog posts. If you’ve missed any recently, feel free to go back and read through the archives. And take a look around the site. Make yourself at home, and rest assured that I’ll be back with another post on Wednesday, and with more in the weeks to come. But also please consider that when you buy my books, and those of other authors, you not only get those stories, you also make possible all the content we make available to you.

Thanks for reading this. Have a great week.

Creative Friday: THE CHALICE WAR: CAULDRON Cover Reveal!!

The Chalice War: Stone, by David B. CoeAs I have mentioned previously, the release of the first book in my upcoming Celtic urban fantasy, The Chalice War (Bell Bridge Books), has been delayed. We had hoped for February. It will be May.

After that, though, the other two books in the trilogy will come fairly quickly. You have already seen the gorgeous art for book I, THE CHALICE WAR: STONE, and yet I offer it again above. Because how can you see it enough, right?

And today, I offer as well, the cover reveal for book II, THE CHALICE WAR: CAULDRON. I am so jazzed about the look of these novels. Book II is set in Australia — in Sydney and its surrounds — where my family and I lived for a year back in 2005-2006. It was so fun to revisit our experiences there as I wrote the various scenes. And that bird on the cover is an Australian Magpie.

So, there it is! Enjoy!

The Chalice War: Cauldron, by David B. Coe

Professional Wednesday: Preparing For the Coming Year

December has come to my little corner of the Cumberland Plateau. The trees are bare, days of gray skies and cold winds outnumber the blue, chickadees and nuthatches, titmice and woodpeckers and cardinals flock to my feeders. Yes, we still have nearly a month left in 2022, but already these remaining weeks feel foreshortened. The holidays will gobble up much of our time and energy in the closing days of the month, and we will be distracted by all the preparations for family get-togethers and the like.

Which is as it should be. The past two years have seen our holidays strained and, for some, ruined by the pandemic. We deserve a holiday season.

Already, though, my professional thinking has turned to 2023. In past years, I have written about my penchant for mapping out my professional year, trying to plan for the many projects I intend to take on in the months to come. I didn’t write a post of this sort last year, because of the uncertainty surrounding our daughter’s health, and the fresh memory of how so many of my plans were upended in 2020 and 2021 by the pandemic, by family issues, by emotional strain, etc. The fact is, my professional plans are always just that: plans, intentions, hopes even. Nothing more.

And so I approach the coming year with a bit more humility than I did in the years before Covid and before my family’s health crisis. Any work calendar I create will be written in pencil, not pen.

But I also understand that planning out my work calendar helps me, and I believe you might find it helpful to create a similar plan for your coming year.

Right now, I am struggling to decide what major writing project I will take on next. I have posted about this before, and have asked for input from followers of my work and this blog. Yet, still I haven’t been able to decide on a path forward. That’s fine for now. I have stories to read for the Artifice and Craft anthology. I have a story to write for the Dragonesque anthology. I have a couple of editing clients interested in engaging me for some work. In short, I have no shortage of things to keep me busy.

I’d be lying, though, if I said I wasn’t missing the allure of the new shiny. One of the things a work calendar does is keep me looking forward. Often a project supplies its own momentum. The desire to see it through to the end, to complete the damn thing, is usually enough to keep me on task. Now and then, though, I need the carrot of the next project to pull me through. “When I finish this, I get to work on X.”

Put another way, I don’t have to decide right now what major writing project to take on in 2023. I am certain, however, that if I can decide and hold that next project out as the prize I get for completing other things, it will make reading anthology slush a little easier.

I also find a work calendar helpful as I seek to manage my own professional expectations. It’s easy to look at a blank calendar and think, “I have all year to get X,Y, and Z finished.” As it happens, this is rarely the case. Already I know that I’ll be editing short stories for much of January and preparing for the releases of The Chalace War books starting in February and continuing through the spring. (Oh, and here’s the art for book I again, just because I love it so much . . . .) Plus, non-writing stuff is bound to impinge on my writing time. We need to do some work on our house, and that will also probably come in the spring. The work promises to be disruptive. There is no way I’ll be as productive as usual while it’s going on.The Chalice War-Stone, by David B. Coe

I need to take all of this into account while planning my schedule. Because even if some of my deadlines are self-imposed (rather than coming from a publisher) I know that missing them can disrupt the work to follow. It can also have an impact on my mood, on my self-confidence as an artist. We should always keep our expectations for ourselves realistic. The last thing we want to do is set ourselves up for repeated failures by expecting too much from ourselves and not taking into account time commitments we have to make to other parts of our lives. This is not to say that we should budget too much time for projects. There is a balance to be found. We want to push ourselves to accomplish tasks that matter to us, without expecting so much that we can’t help but fail. A work calendar helps me with that.

So as the year winds down, and as I sit in front of a fire, or in front of yet another World Cup soccer match, I will be working on my work calendar, mapping out a strategy for getting done all I hope to accomplish, and also for managing the inevitable disruptions that life — both professional and private — tends to throw in our path. It’s easy to do. I receive calendars in the mail all the time from the various charities we give to each year. I always reserve one of those calendars for this.

Best of luck with your 2023, whether or not you map it out ahead of time.

And, of course, keep writing.

Professional Wednesday: The Chalice War, Book I Cover Reveal!!

For some time now, I’ve been writing about and teasing my new Celtic urban fantasy, The Chalice War. The series is part thriller, part comedy, part myth, part urban fantasy, part mystery. It is set in our modern world — all over it, in fact: book I takes place in the U.S.; book II shifts the action to Australia, and book III is set in Ireland — but the series also draws heavily on Celtic lore. It is unlike anything I’ve written before. Each volume was a ton of fun to write, and will be, I hope, just as much fun to read. I love these books and I am incredibly excited about their upcoming release.

The first book, The Chalice War: Stone, should be out from Bell Bridge Books in February 2023. The second book, The Chalice War: Cauldron, will follow within a month or two, and the trilogy’s finale, The Chalice War: Sword, will drop not too long after that.

Today, I am delighted to share with you the incredible jacket art for book I, which was created by my brilliant editor and publisher, Debra Dixon. Drumroll please . . . .

The Chalice War-Stone, by David B. Coe

Professional Wednesday: Another Celtic Urban Fantasy Teaser!

This is a busy week and I have a lot going on. No time to sit still and write a Professional Wednesday post. And why should I when what you REALLY want is another teaser from my upcoming Celtic urban fantasy release. This, like the first one I shared with you several weeks back, is from The Chalice Wars: Stone, the first volume of the trilogy. It picks up sort of where that last teaser left off. Enjoy! And rest assured: normal Professional Wednesday posts will resume next week.

Keep writing! And read on!

*****

All of these suburban streets looked the same. Treeless yards, soulless cookie-cutter houses, paved driveways with new, expensive SUVs. It was enough to make Marti throw up. And it was likely to make her and her beat up Ford wagon stand out like mutts at a dog show.

If she ever found her house. As far as she could tell Fairlea Lane didn’t exist, though that could have been her fault. She had no sense of direction. None at all. Lots of Sidhe had the same problem. At least Alistar said so. But she had never met anyone who was as bad with a map as she was. She could get lost on a one lane desert highway. She had, in fact.

She wasn’t good with cars, either. Especially new ones with computers in them. She didn’t drive this old junker because she wanted to. She would have loved a sleek new roadster, something shiny and fast. But magic and tech didn’t always mix well.

Reaching an intersection, she stopped and read the street signs. Classic rock blared on her lousy little radio—she hadn’t been able to find any indie stations, and she wasn’t going to listen to country unless she had no other choice. She turned down the music and looked around. She had been here twice already. She was driving in freaking circles. The directions from the real estate agent had sounded so easy. Directions always did.

She leaned out the open window—needless to say, she didn’t have AC in this thing—and called to a cluster of kids playing with sidewalk chalk in a nearby driveway. They stared back at her like she was the monster living under their beds, until one of them got up and ran into the house, probably to tell her mother some crazy woman in a car from Colonial times was trying to kidnap her. Marti thought about driving away, but figured that would freak out the kids and their mom even more. The last thing she wanted was for her first day in the new neighborhood to end with a 911 call.

A woman emerged from the house a few moments later, the little girl peering out from behind her.

The woman halted at the end of her driveway. “Can I help you?” she asked in a clipped southern drawl. She gave the car a quick once over and then fixed her glare on Marti again.

“I hope so,” Marti said, hoping she sounded friendly and helpless, or at the very least sane. “Can you tell me how to get to Fairlea Lane?”

“You here to clean someone’s house?”

No, I’m here to steal your television.

“Actually, I’m moving in.”

For just an instant, Marti expected the woman to call her a liar. She saw the thought flicker in the woman’s eyes. But then she ventured out into the street, closing the distance between herself and Marti’s car.

“You buy the Herrera place?”

Marti shrugged. “I don’t know. The address is 16 Fairlea.”

“Mm hmm,” she said with a nod, “that’s probably the Herrera’s house. They couldn’t make their payments.” I wouldn’t be surprised if the same thing happens to you.

The woman didn’t say it, but Marti could tell she was thinking it as she checked out the car again. Marti hadn’t been here ten minutes and already she hated the place.

“So,” Marti said after an uncomfortable silence, “how do I get there?”

“It’s right over there,” the woman said, pointing toward a line of houses that backed up against hers and her neighbors’. “I’m not sure how you missed Fairlea. You come in from town?”

Marti checked the printed directions lying on the passenger seat. “I turned left from Foster Boulevard onto Sawyer. Is that coming from town?”

The woman nodded again. “Mm hmm. Like I said, I don’t know how you missed it.”

“I’m talented that way.”

She smiled. The woman didn’t.

She pointed to the street in front of them, the one intersecting the lane Marti was on. “This is Greenvale. Follow it around this way.” She pointed to the right. “You’ll pass the playground on your left. Fairlea will be on your right. Once you’re on Fairlea, your house will be three or four houses down, on the left.”

“Thank you.”

Marti pulled forward into the intersection, made a right. She could feel the woman and those kids watching her, but she kept her gaze on the road. Already most of what the woman said was a garbled mess in her head. But there would be a playground, and then Fairlea, and she’d figure out the rest. Or she’d find someone else to scare.

The houses here might have been identical to one another, sitting on barren plots of grass, shrubs, and concrete, but they were good sized. No doubt hers was way too big for one person. She had made it clear to the agent that she needed a home right away—any home. Money, she’d told her, was not an issue.

The account in New York had been Alistar’s idea. He’d even seeded it for her—transferring eight hundred thousand dollars from his own accounts into hers, back when that was some serious money. “Magic is great,” he told her at the time. “But in this world, there’s no substitute for wealth.”

The balances in his accounts were proof that living for two hundred years and having access to divination magic, could make a man very rich. And over the forty-plus years Marti had been squirreling money away in her account, it had grown into a pretty impressive nest egg—mid-seven figures. Alistar’s account was worth more than ten times as much. The manager on their accounts, Michael Craig, was also Sidhe, and had helped them with whatever paperwork and bureaucratic hassles came up over the years. Marti had opened her account under her real name—Diana Taylor—and had transferred it several years back to a new name—Carolyn Taylor, claiming that she was Diana’s daughter.

Michael’s colleagues at the bank were more than willing to believe her; Diana was born in the 1940s and couldn’t possibly have looked as young as Marti did. Getting the necessary documents proved easy. Marti had at least half a dozen birth certificates and social security cards stashed away, as did Alistar, just in case. Just in case: That had been their mantra. The hardest part had been keeping up with who they were, seeing to it that each of their various aliases listed a different alias as his or her spouse. The last thing they needed was for all their meticulous planning to be undone by a careless foray into polygamy.

The point was, Marti could have held out for something nicer, even if it cost her twice as much. But she was more interested in quick than nice. She needed a home, for herself and for Alistar’s stone. And in this case, quick also meant cheap—foreclosed, the construction not quite complete. She’d been able to buy it outright, with a bank check. No waiting, no mortgage papers to sign. She didn’t know how long she would stay. If history was any guide, she’d be moving again within a year or two; maybe sooner. But she owned the paper on the house, and so could do with it as she pleased.

She rolled past the playground on her left, and saw the intersection with Fairlea coming up on the right. Another group of kids played kickball on Fairlea, and they scampered to the sidewalks when they saw her turn, then gaped at her as she crept by.

Aside from them, and a pair of lawnmower-wielding gardeners a few lots down, the street was deserted. Four in the afternoon on a Friday, and there was no one here at all. A couple of bicycles lay abandoned in driveways, and in the distance a sprinkler twirled lazily in the middle of an unnaturally perfect lawn. Dogs barked; a mockingbird perched atop a telephone pole went through its repertoire, mimicking a jay, a robin, a goldfinch.

Number sixteen was the fourth house on the left, just as the woman had told her. There was little to distinguish it from the homes on either side of it. Beige vinyl siding, black shutters flanking the windows, a brick walkway leading to the front landing, a door of polished wood, with narrow etched glass windows on either side of it, and a half moon of triangular glass panes above. Marti couldn’t decide if it all struck her as tasteful or tacky. Either way, Alistar would have hated it, if for no other reason than the siding.

“I will not live in a plastic house!” he’d once told her, when they were working out the logistics of one of their many moves. “If that’s my choice, the Fomhoire can kill me now.”

She remembered laughing at this at the time; both of them had. It wasn’t funny anymore.

Marti pulled into the driveway and shut off the engine. But she didn’t get out. She stared at the house, at the yard, at the houses around hers.

Her lawn had been cut within the last few days, apparently for the first time in ages. Long strands of dried grass littered the walkway. Even groomed, though, the yard didn’t look healthy. Large patches of brown, dead grass covered much of the lot, and the flower beds—if that’s what they were meant to be—were filled with wilted shrubs and dried leaves from the one tree, an oak, shading the front of the house. She had little hope the backyard would be in better shape.

“Not exactly the garden we left behind, old man.”

She hoped she’d find a place in back where she could put the stone without it being conspicuous.

She opened the door, the creak of metal loud and harsh, and climbed out of the car.

As soon as her feet touched the driveway, she felt it. It was as obvious as the breeze cooling her sweat-soaked back, as pervasive as the twined scents of gasoline and freshly-cut grass.

Power.

It hummed in the cement like an electric current, raising the skin on her legs, pulsing through her entire body. It frightened her, enticed her, aroused her even. She hungered for it. But feeling it here, now, after all that had happened, all she had lost . . . .

“Crap,” she breathed knowing a moment of panic.

She had no conduit, and so no access to her magic. A sachet of wolf’s bane, bay, dill, and anise—an odd-smelling but powerful combination of protective herbs—lay in her glove box, along with raw pieces of onyx and jasper. Those might have been enough to let her escape an attack if one had been imminent. They would have had to be. Her other herbs, crystals, and oils were packed away in the back of the car.

But she hadn’t sensed magic. This was power, which was different. Sidhe and Fomhoire possessed magic. Sluagh were creatures of magic. Power came from conduits, and allowed Sidhe and Fomhoire to access their spellcasting abilities.

She held herself motionless, closed her eyes, and tested what she sensed, her awareness flicking out like a snake’s tongue tasting the air for predators or prey. No doubt about it: power. Potentially a conduit. Strong, but not dark, not malevolent. Neutral. Unclaimed. This wasn’t Fomhoire or Sidhe. Not yet, at least. It could go either way.

Still, she couldn’t keep herself from opening her eyes and scanning above for winged demons. The sky was hazy, a faint shade of blue, and, for now, empty of Sluagh.

Relief eased through her, loosening tensed muscles, slowing her pulse. Mostly.

She had come here to get away. While on the road, she had managed to call one of the other Sidhe, to tell them of Alistar’s murder, to let them know she was without a conduit, that her part of the protective magical web—hers and Alistar’s—had been breached and would be out of commission for a while. Responsibility to her fellow sorcerers demanded no less. Beyond these warnings, though, she owed nothing more. She needed time—time to rest, time to grieve, time to find a new conduit.

This power she felt might allow her to bind again, but it didn’t promise rest or time. If she sensed it, someone else would, too. Fomhoire, Sluagh, others she didn’t wish to consider. It wasn’t a question of if they would find it—and her—only of when.

And yet, that wasn’t what bothered her most.

Marti didn’t believe in happenstance. The old gods didn’t simply allow things like this to happen; what others called coincidence a Sidhe knew for the machinations of the ancient ones. They delighted in bringing power to magic, power to power, magic to magic, for good or for ill. Which meant she was here because of this . . . presence. It had been waiting for her.

Professional Wednesday: Finishing a Book Actually Means More Work

As I mentioned last week, I have recently finished the third book in my new contemporary Celtic urban fantasy, The Chalice Wars. This book, The Chalice Wars: Sword, will be out sometime fairly early in 2023. Book I, The Chalice Wars: Stone, is currently in production, and book II, The Chalice Wars: Cauldron, is with my editor. The art work for the first book should be ready soon. I’ll share it the moment I can. I’m excited about these books. They are filled with tension and suspense, but also with humor, and they are quite different from other work I’ve done. And I am proud to add that when this third volume is published, it will be my 30th book.

For today’s post, though, I want to focus on the mechanics of finishing a book, and precisely what that means for me in terms of work and process.

I know. It seems like finishing a novel should be fairly straightforward. We type “The End” and then we drink whisky. Right?

Turns out it’s not that easy.

First of all, I NEVER type “The End.” If we as authors have to tell our readers when a book has reached its end, we haven’t done a very good job with our ending. Just saying.

More to the point, finishing the first draft of a novel is just one step in a significantly longer process. Yes, it’s an important step, but it certainly does not mean the book is anywhere near “done.”

When I work on a book, I have a separate file open on my computer, which is usually called “[Book Title] Edit Notes.” This is a file filled with reminders to myself of things I need or want to change in the book. While writing my first draft I don’t want anything to stall my forward momentum. The most important thing we can do with a book draft is finish it. Let me say that again. The most important thing we can do with a book draft is finish it. Finishing a book is hard to do, and it is all too easy to retreat into edits and rewrites rather than move on toward those looming scenes we haven’t quite figured out how to write. It is also tempting, upon noticing in earlier chapters imperfections of prose or character or plotting, to fix them immediately, to make the manuscript as perfect as possible.

But here’s the thing: No first draft is ever going to be perfect. In fact, I would argue that no finished novel has ever been or ever will be perfect. That, though, is a conversation for another time. The point is, finish your book. It is much easier to edit a finished manuscript than it is to complete said manuscript in the first place. And so, when I think of changes that need to be made, I jot them down in a different file for later, thus preserving my momentum.

Fast forward to that glorious day when we actually finish the first draft. Well, now we have to deal with that file filled with edit notes. Working through my edits can take anywhere from one day to one week or even more, depending, obviously on how much work I’ve left for myself.

After I finish the edits, I next tackle my crutch words. Crutch words are verbal mannerisms unique to our writing, words or phrases that we tend to overuse or fall back on when in the midst of composing our stories. We all have them — I see them when editing the work of others, and I see them in my own rough drafts. I even see them in the published volumes of colleagues. My crutch words will be different from yours, which will be different from your writing-group buddy’s, which will be different from those of your favorite writer. But as I say, this is something all writers have to watch out for. I keep a running list of my crutch words in (another) word document on my computer desktop. And after completing any book or story, I work through this list, checking to see if I have overused any of the usual suspects. How do I know if I have overused them? I do a universal search of each word or phrase, which gives me a count of occurrences. And then I compare that number to the number of occurrences of the same word or phrase in several of my other completed, edited manuscripts, ones I know I have checked for crutch words. If the numbers are about the same, if figure I’m okay. If the number for the new book is a good deal higher, I have some work to do. Dealing with crutch words can be a slow, tedious process. It can take me several full days. Slow, tedious days . . . .

Finally, after seeing to my edits and getting my crutch words under control, I put the newly completed manuscript away for several weeks and start work on something else — short fiction, a new novel, editing projects. It doesn’t matter what. After about four to six weeks, depending on how soon the book is due, I pull out the manuscript again and read it through a couple of times start to finish, doing a full edit of the manuscript, looking for any and all problems — stylistic, narrative, structural, etc. Everything. Only after doing this, when I am convinced the manuscript is as good as I can make it at this time, do I send it on to my editor, or my agent, or my Beta readers. (At some point, I’ll have their suggested edits to deal with. And after that there will be copy edits and proofs. But that is part of the production process and is another subject entirely.)

By this time, of course, I’m in the middle of whatever project I’ve started next, so I’m no longer in the mood for celebrating the completion of the manuscript. But that doesn’t mean I can’t have a wee dram of whisky. . . .

Keep writing!

Creative Friday: Celtic Urban Fantasy Teaser!!

This week, I finished the first draft of the third and final book in my new project, a contemporary Celtic urban fantasy called The Chalice Wars. I have a lot to do with this newest manuscript still — I’ll discuss that in greater length in next week’s Professional Wednesday post.

But for today, as a way of celebrating the completion of this latest novel (which will be my 30th when it finds its way to print, later this year or — more likely — early in 2023), I thought I would share with you a bit of book one in the series. This is actually chapter 2 of The Chalice Wars: Stone

I expect it will be out in the next few months. Again, late this year or early next. For now, here’s a peek.

Enjoy!!

*****

Two drops of blood. One on the bottom stair, glistening on brick, red on red. The other on the cement landing by the front door.

The drops were small; she might easily have missed them, walked past and into the house without noticing. But having seen, she couldn’t look away, and she couldn’t take another step.

She stood rooted to the walkway, empty reusable grocery bags tucked under one arm, an oversized bottle of Australian Shiraz in the other hand, her bag slung over her shoulder. And she stared at the blood.

Alistar has cut himself, said a voice in her head. He’s cut himself while working in that damn garden of his.

To which a second voice—Alistar’s, usually so calm and reassuring—said, No, he’s dead. You need to get the hell out of here.

Blood, brick, the geraniums in the ceramic planters Alistar had placed on either side of the stairs. So much red today.

The front door was open behind the screen. Burl should have been there watching for her, tail wagging, tongue lolling happily. Or he might have been in the back garden with Alistar, in which case he should have come bounding around the corner of the house as soon as she pulled up.

She reached for the dog with her mind, with her magic. Nothing. This is what she felt at the store. This was what made her rush through the rest of her shopping, what drove her to flee the grocery store, leaving her half-full cart beside the check-out line. The sensation had been abrupt, final, like someone placed a wall between them.

Like someone had killed her conduit.

On that thought, she was moving again. Not inside, but to the back, the sweat on her palm making the bottle slick and unwieldy. At the corner of the house, she let the canvas bags drop to the ground. She kept hold of the wine; a weapon now.
As soon as she stepped into the backyard, she spotted Alistar.

He lay in the dirt between the slate patio and his bed of gladiolus. Even from a distance, she could see the blood that stained the front of his shirt, like a fan-shaped bib. She faltered a step, a choked sob escaping her, her stomach seizing into a fist. An instant later, she was at his side, knees cushioned in the rich black soil. A faint stench hung in the air, cloying, foul, the smell of rot, of disease, of death.

Alistar’s throat had been cut, ear to ear, the gash a ghoulish grin on his neck. His eyes, pale blue and once electric with wit and mischief and passion, were fixed on a clear sky, unseeing, lifeless. His midsection . . . . She couldn’t even look at that. Whatever killed him had feasted as well. She wanted to believe they waited until he was dead, but she knew better. A tear rolled down her cheek and she swiped at it. It landed like a raindrop on the slate, darkening the stone just beside Alistar’s hand.
His bloodied hand. One crimson-stained finger appeared to point at a dark scrawl on the patio. Letters in blood. A single word. Or part of one. “S-L-U-A—”

Not much, but enough.

“Oh, Alistar,” she whispered. But her heart hammered.

Now she understood where that terrible smell had come from.

Sluagh. Shadow demons. Winged, enormous, utterly without mercy. Fomhoire assassins.

Get the hell out of here!

His voice again, urgent and compelling.

First, though, she had to find Burl.

If a Sluagh did this, or more likely a trio of them—the old powers did things in threes or fours—Burl would be dead, too. They would sense the magic in him and assume he had been Alistar’s conduit. Forced to guess, she would say the poor dog was dead before Alistar knew what was coming.

She remained beside him for another moment, trying to reconcile the wreckage before her with her memories of the man she had loved. She never should have gone out. She was the one with a conduit, the one who had been maintaining their part of the network since the death of Alistar’s conduit two months ago. She should have stayed here and sent Alistar to the store. But he was so happy in his garden, and she was gone for such a short while.

It’s not your fault, and this is no time for blame. Go.

Leaving him seemed wrong. He deserved . . . more.

No. You have to go. And you have to take it with you.

She stood, gripped the wine bottle once more, and strode to the back door. It was open, of course. Burl lay sprawled on the kitchen tiles, his silky white fur matted with blood, his water dish overturned, the floor covered with a thin, dark pink mixture.

Tears again, a stream of them this time. How could she cry so for her dog, when she’d shed barely a tear for Alistar?

He wasn’t just a dog.

She felt more than grief. The stench of the Sluagh was thick in here. She gagged, biting back against the bile rising in her throat, and the terror clawing at her chest. Without a conduit, she was vulnerable, all but defenseless. Sidhe or no, she couldn’t cast much of anything without a source for the magic.
She swallowed hard, wiped her eyes again. Burl deserved to be buried, too. Losing either one of them would have been bad enough. But both?

She stepped over the dog, avoiding the stained water, and halted at the door to the dining room. Drops of blood trailed away from the kitchen, through the dining room, and into the living room. Toward the front door. She guessed they had come in from the front, killed the dog, gone back out the same way, and snuck up on Alistar from behind. Then they returned to the house and ransacked it, breaking and tearing nearly everything of value. Sluagh wouldn’t worry about leaving behind a trail of destruction, much less a splattering of blood. They were hunters, nothing more or less. They worried about the kill and whatever they’d been sent to find.

At last, terror kicked in. She hurried to the bedroom, knowing she couldn’t take much. There wasn’t time, and the Sluagh hadn’t left much intact. Clothes, photos, papers, books, music. Most of the furniture was Alistar’s and what belonged to her wouldn’t fit in her car.

Alistar had insisted they keep boxes in the attic and packing tape in the utility drawer, just in case there came a time when they would need to leave without delay. He had also paid the rent on a month-to-month basis; no lease.

“I want to be able to leave this place on an hour’s notice, and never look back,” he often said.

Hearing the words in her head once more, she muttered, “You were supposed to come with me, old man.”

She was packed in less than two hours, and had the car loaded before nightfall. But she waited until dusk to return to the garden for the one thing she couldn’t leave behind.
When it was dark enough, she went to the garage and retrieved the ancient wooden crate Alistar stored there. It must have weighed ten pounds empty. She carried it to the farthest end of his garden, took a spade from his shed, and removed the stone from its spot in the dirt.

“It should be packed in soil,” he’d told her at least two or three times. “And the crate should be nailed shut.”

On one occasion she laughed at him. “Why tell me all of this? You’ll be the one packing it. You never let me near that thing.”

He’d stared back at her, silent and grave and beautiful in the dying light of an autumn afternoon. Had he known it would come to this? Had he seen it?

She stared at the gaping hole she’d left in the dirt. They had hosted parties at the house, sat with friends on the patio, sipping wine and chatting deep into the night. No one ever noticed the stone, which was just as it had to be.

There was nothing striking about it. It was vaguely round, about the size of a honeydew melon, dull grey, with a few gleaming specs of mica and quartz. And with the spells she and Alistar had cast on it, its power was dampened. She shivered, as if someone ran a magical finger down her spine. The spells. They had cast them together, so that if one of them died, the spells would survive. He had seen this day coming.

Bastard. Brilliant bastard. More tears streamed down her cheeks. She went back to work.

The stone fit perfectly in the crate. She had created a nest of soil for it, leaving just enough room to sprinkle more dirt around it and over it. She sealed the crate, then retrieved the other stone from behind the shed. It looked much like the first; same color, shape, and size. She put it where Alistar’s stone had been, smoothed the dirt surrounding it.

She stood, lifted the crate with a grunted “Sonofabitch!” and staggered out to the car. There she wedged it into a space she had left unfilled in the far corner of the rear hatch. As an afterthought, she threw in the shovel, too. It had been Alistar’s, just like everything else in the garden shed. She slung coats and a few dresses over the stone, arranging and then rearranging until it all looked natural, like she was a slob, rather than someone trying to hide something.

When everything else was done, she went to the basement for the last of Alistar’s precautions. Somehow he had managed to buy or steal license plates from half a dozen states. On their own, the plates would have been of limited use, but he had also arranged to have new registration stickers sent each January from the state DMVs. She didn’t know how he did it, and he never bothered to tell her; it was just Alistar being Alistar. But she was smart enough—or maybe scared enough—to put a fresh set of plates on her car, and to take the others with her.

From now on, she would be from Maryland. Until she needed to be from somewhere else.

She tossed the old plates and the wrench into the back, and closed the hatch.

She needed to let the others know. Their part of the network was open now, exposed. In recent months she had sensed gaps, weaknesses in their web of magic that the Fomhoire might exploit. Now it was worse, and without her conduit there was no easy way for her to send a warning. All she could do was run, and hope she’d find an opportunity to tell them later.
It didn’t feel right. Alistar still lay in the garden, Burl in the kitchen.

Alistar had long been a prominent figure in the Sidhe community, which made her one as well. They had helped establish the network monitoring this part of the Sidhe world for Fomhoire incursions. That was reason enough for Fomhoire and their Sluagh friends to want Alistar and her dead. Not that they needed reasons to kill.

She sensed, though, that the Fomhoire were also after the stone, and she didn’t understand why. Alistar had never explained to her the stone’s significance. For years she had wanted him to tell her, but always he refused. Now she needed to know, and he was gone.

“That part wasn’t so brilliant, old man,” she whispered, peering through tears at the darkened house.

You’ll figure it out. Now, go!

She climbed into the car, and with one last glance toward her home, toward the gardens, she drove away.