Starting February the right way

Happy New Year! I know it's February, but I think technically the year is still new, and I spent actually New Year getting drunk in a rock bar in Tokyo, so I couldn't say it then. So, Happy New Year! 2020 is probably going to be a weird one for a lot of people, but I keep my political rants on Twitter, so let's focus on the good stuff here!

The first piece of good stuff is that I've signed my first contract for the year! My paranormal romance short story, THE WITCH'S GUIDE TO WEREWOLVES will be out in May from Evernight. Here's the blurb:

Callie McIntyre believes in a lot of things. She believes in tarot cards and moon magic, and that's the reason her last girlfriend left her. But she never believed in werewolves until she meets Devon Miller out in the woods one night.

Devon's story is crazy, but who's Callie to argue about it? With a full moon fast approaching, Callie is determined to help Devon tackle her fears. Sure, neither of them know a thing about werewolves, but with another reluctant lyncathrope in tow and all Callie's witchy optimism at work, surely they can get through Devon's first full moon in one piece... Right?

I'm excited about this! I had a lot of problems last autumn with writer's block and anxiety, and decided to write myself a cute, sweet romance with werewolves to help get past it. It took until late January for me to actually finish it, but I'm so happy with how it came out, and it definitely helped with the writer's block, so it's going to have a special place in my heart.

The second piece of good stuff is that Olivia R Burton and me/Amber Morgan will have at least two romances out this year. If you've loved our past collaborations, like The Godfather's Naughty Daughter and Song of the Argyle Goddess, you'll want to stay tuned for CASH GRAB and THE HARBOR MASTER'S SHACK.

And the third piece of good stuff is that I have a ton of other books planned for this year! How many of them I'll actually get to writing is another issue, but I will absolutely be writing the final Blood Canticles book this year. If you want to stay up-to-date on what I'm working on, the best places are either Twitter or my Facebook group.

Stay happy and I'll catch you all later!

VOID DREAMS is out!

Actually, it's been out since last week, but I've been busy with real life - trying to finish a story and prep for a biiiiig trip to Japan, and I kinda forgot to post anything on the blog about. But it's out! Hurrah! Lola and Tristesse are back for their sixth adventure! Hurrah!

Lola and Tristesse are back where they belong … but they didn’t come alone.

Something is haunting the streets and dreams of Fort Rosser, and when Lola’s clients start dying, she’s forced to accept that Gehenna hasn’t let her go yet.

Now Lola and her friends are in a race against time to stop a monster that can only grow more powerful. Cut off from the immense magic of the patrons, Lola needs to get creative to deal with this threat. But everyone has their limits. If Lola goes too far, can Tristesse bring her home?

You can buy VOID DREAMS now at Evernight, Amazon US, Amazon UK, and wherever else you buy your ebooks.

The next Blood Canticles book, which will hopefully be out in 2020, will be the last one. This series has come a long way since BLOOD WITCH, and I've loved every step of the journey, but it's time to give Lola and Tristesse a happy ending, and for me to move onto other shiny new projects. So grab VOID DREAMS and start speculating on what happens next...

VOID DREAMS is coming!

This is the official post to make it officially official! VOID DREAMS, Blood Canticles 6, is coming to Evernight in October! As usual, more details as I get them, but here's the blurb to get you excited.

Lola and Tristesse are back where they belong...but they didn't come alone.

Something is haunting the streets and dreams of Fort Rosser, and when Lola's clients start dying, she's forced to accept that Gehenna hasn't let her go yet.

Now Lola and her friends are in a race against time to stop a monster that can only grow more powerful. Cut off from the immense magic of the patrons, Lola needs to get creative to deal with this threat. But everyone has their limits. If Lola goes too far, can Tristesse bring her home?

This is the penultimate Blood Canticles book, and I'm kinda nervous about it. The series has become a big, important part of my life since I wrote BLOOD WITCH in 2014, and it's sort of hard to imagine my writing schedule without Lola and Tristesse on it.

Luckily, there is still one more book to write...and until then, I'm just going to get hyped about VOID DREAMS being on the horizon! Hopefully you'll join me!

CHAOS SONGS is in the wild!

The big day has finally arrived! CHAOS SONGS, book five of the Blood Canticles series,* is unleashed! It's been a long time coming - when I started this book, I was living in the UK, and the move from there to the Netherlands really disrupted my writing. So there was a big gap between the starting and the finishing of CHAOS SONGS, which left me feeling kinda tired of it at some points.

But now it's here! And I love it! And you're going to love it too! There are so many moments in the book that make me feel all giddy and excited, and as I work on book six, Void Dreams, it's important for me to remember that giddiness. And I'm really hoping Lola and Tristesse's continued adventures leave you feeling giddy too.

Chaos magic makes anything possible. Even the unthinkable.

Lola and Tristesse have defeated one enemy, but Gehenna isn’t finished with them yet. A way home seems impossible. And while Lola struggles with the magical bond she forged with the mysterious patrons, the Shrouded Guard are still hunting them down.

Forced into strange alliances with rebel demons and an underground cult, Lola and Tristesse must decide what they’re willing to do - and to sacrifice - to escape. And if they don’t decide fast, the choice may be taken from them.

Buy it now from Evernight Publishing, Amazon US, Amazon UK, and wherever else you get your ebooks. 

*Book five?! Can you even believe it?

Red Hot News!

I've just signed the contract for CHAOS SONGS, book five in the Blood Canticles series! This feels like it's been a long time coming. I didn't have any books in the series out last year, because...you know... the whole move-to-Amsterdam affair. I got pretty distracted, and then pretty worried the book was terrible, and then I wrote a completely different book.

Anyway! I'm thrilled to be able to finally say that Tristesse and Lola's next adventure is coming soon - hopefully April. Stay tuned for more news! In the meantime, here's the (unedited blurb) for your edification.

Chaos magic makes anything possible. Even the unthinkable.

Lola and Tristesse have defeated one enemy, but Gehenna isn’t finished with them yet. A way home seems impossible. And while Lola struggles with the magical bond she forged with the mysterious patrons, the Shrouded Guard are still hunting them down.

Forced into strange alliances with rebel demons and an underground cult, Lola and Tristesse must decide what they’re willing to do - and to sacrifice - to escape. And if they don’t decide fast, the choice may be taken from them.

"Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes."

So! It's been a hell of a while, right? I've been dark here for a while (though, as always, the best place to see what I'm up to is Facebook or Twitter), because as you may recall, earlier this year Nero was offered an amazing job in Amsterdam. After a lot of soul-searching, we decided to take the plunge. We moved at the end of July, and since then, it's been...well, there's been a lot of pancakes.

There's fruit on it, so technically speaking it's one of my five a day.

There's been a lot of other things too. We lived in a fancy hotel for a while when we first got here and were house-hunting. Luckily for us, it was a pet-friendly hotel, so Yuki was able to be a five-star luxury cat for a few weeks.

Her life is pain.

She handled it as best she could, but I'll be honest - even a five-star hotel is still a hotel, and it was a massive relief to move into our new home in mid-August. We're in a quiet neighbourhood just outside of Amsterdam, surrounded by canals, ducks, and herons, and I absolutely love it here. Miss Yuki has settled in nicely, too.

Mijn kat is buiten

While Nero started his new job pretty much straight away, I spent August and early September job-hunting before finally landing a new role in mid-September. Yay! It's with a company I really like so far, doing work I genuinely believe in and that makes a difference to people's lives. And as an added bonus, the hours are pretty flexible, and I now have a much shorter commute to and from the office, so I have more writing time! Not to mention more time to explore Amsterdam.

Classic Netherlands.

I was apprehensive about the move, in all honesty. We've both left behind good friends, beloved family, jobs we were happy in, and a city we knew well and have lots of amazing memories of. And although I do miss my people, I have fallen in love with Amsterdam. It's vibrant and interesting, and has many fine pancake houses, and I now get the pleasure of showing people around when they come to stay, which I love doing!

So, it's taken a few months, but I feel settled in now, and have finally learned which way to look when I cross the road (not that it helps).

And in between all the moving, house-hunting, job-hunting, and waffle-eating, I have been writing. I did lose my rhythm leading up to the move (honestly, part of the reason I'm so glad I love it here is because I NEVER WANT TO PUT MY LIFE INTO BOXES, PUT THE BOXES ON A FERRY, TRAVEL ACROSS AN OCEAN, PUT THE BOXES IN A HOTEL AND LIVE OUT OF THE BOXES FOR A MONTH EVER AGAIN), and I really stalled on Chaos Songs for several months.

Instead, I ended up writing an Amber Morgan book that I adore, and which should be out later this month, and collaborating on another project with Olivia R Burton, which was just tons of fun (and you should check it out). I got back to Chaos Songs in September and was determined to finish it in September... and then in October... and then in November... and then it turned out this was quite a hard book to write because I really wanted to stay true to the rules of the world I've developed since BLOOD WITCH, whilst at the same time letting my characters progress, and, well, it was hard work.

But I finally wrapped the book up this weekend. Huzzahs! I feel kinda exhausted, but fired up at the same time, because now I can start thinking seriously about the next two (and last) books in the Blood Canticles series. My goal is write them both in 2019 if I can, although the next project on my list is another Amber Morgan book. I've been pushing myself since we moved to look at ways of increasing my writing productivity and managing my writing time better, and I have some plans in place to make sure I stay focused and busy in 2019. So hopefully I can bring you more books that you guys love as much as me!

I'm probably not going to get back to a regular blogging schedule, apart from to share news, as I think time spent blogging could better be spent writing. The same goes for the newsletter (which you may have noticed hasn't exactly been happening anyway, but in my defence, I've had a lot going on). So again, Facebook and Twitter are the best places to see what's going on and I love to make friends, so come on and say hi!

Leidseplein being all festive.

Wednesday Snippet - Wherever she'd been, it wasn't their realm.

Happy mid-week! I hope you're all having the week you want, that your tea is hot and your favourite snacks are at hand. I've been neglecting Chaos Songs a little lately, which I've talked about a bit, but I thought I'd share a snippet anyway. Real life is calming down and balancing out again, which is good for me and hopefully good for my writing too. I have been kinda distracted by a couple of other projects, but in the spirit of the Year of the Kappa, I need to adjust and adapt and allow for that.

So! Let's catch up with Lola, shall we?

Oh, I am anxious and aching, breathing the burning air

A four-day weekend is upon us and I couldn't be more ready. It's been a strange week, mentally. The fog of depression and anxiety came down again, and suddenly every day has been a struggle from waking to sleeping. It's been a week where I haven't been able to write, despite being full of love for both the projects I'm working on. A week where my day job has seemed overwhelming and I've lain in bed every morning secretly hoping I'll discover I'm suddenly sick and can't go in. A week where I look at all the weird little coping mechanisms I have and suddenly wonder is this normal? A week where dread has settled in the pit of my stomach for no reason, and my head has throbbed and my body has rebelled against me, and I find myself wondering is there something wrong with me? Some mystery illness? Some phantom condition that's silently killing me?
Of course there isn't. My body is fine. My mind is mis-firing, and all I can really do is get through each hour and say to myself, see? Nothing bad happened. And that's how I make it to the end of the week. Tomorrow I won't have to get up with the alarm clock. I won't have to go anywhere or do anything if I don't want to. I'll have four days where I can read under a fluffy blanket with Yuki on my lap and a cup of tea at hand, write if the spirit moves me, and laze on the sofa with Nero watching MasterChef. I can exhale.
I don't know how other people experience anxiety, but for me it's a sense of not having enough time, of not working hard enough, of not being good enough, of having faked my way in life. And so my writing suffers. What's the point in me writing when my writing isn't good enough? What's the point of writing if I can't get out 5k a day, every day? What's the point in writing when I'll never write all the books in my heart? And so I don't write, and then I feel worse, because I'm not working hard enough at writing.
There really aren't any tricks to getting out of this cycle. I just have to write something. Anything. There are scenes in my head for Chaos Songs waiting to get out. I just have to unfreeze myself, and sometimes that takes a while. 
But I have four days ahead of me, and today the sense of dread isn't so deep. Today I feel like I might be okay, and while that feeling lasts, I plan to do the little things that bring me peace. Burn a spiced vanilla candle, read a Point Horror book, wear a perfume laced with lavender and chocolate. And write, because I know, I know, that once the words are flowing, I will feel less claustrophobic, less uncertain, and more grounded. I've been here before, so many times. I know the way out, and I find the way out, every time. And that's how I make it to the end of the week.

Wednesday Snippets - the wolves were at the gate

Happy Wednesday, folks! Hope you're all well and keeping warm (if needed). I'm seeing tons of snowpocalypse pictures from my friends all over the UK and USA right now, and it's still defiantly freezing here in Cambridge, so I'm just assuming Ragnarok has started.

I'm under the weather, appropriately enough, I guess, and battling a nasty cold. So there hasn't been as much writing this week as I'd like, but I think I'm on the mend now, so fingers crossed! Here's a little look at something I did manage to squeeze out. Enjoy!

Wednesday Snippets - She’d owed them a lot of blood

Happy Hump Day, friends! Hopefully the week is treating you well so far. I'm making steady progress on Chaos Songs, having fun deciding what horrible things to do to Tristesse and Lola. I've got new characters to introduce, old ones to revisit, and weird stuff to unfold, and it's awesome! So, here's a quick look at what I've been up to so far. Last week we visited Tris, so let's visit Lola this week. Enjoy!

Wednesday Snippet - I have never been nothing...

Guys. I can't tell you how good it feels to be working on a Blood Canticles book again! I feel so at home with Lola and Tris, it's like meeting two good friends for tea. Except my friends are trapped in another world. And the tea is probably poison, because that's just the sort of time they're having. But anyway! Here's a taste of what I've been up to with them both:

"By March, the worst of the winter would be over."

Neil Gaiman.

This quote is a lie, by the way. Here in Cambridge, we're experiencing Actual Snow and everyone is falling into a state of icy panic. We have fraught discussions over how many pairs of socks we should wear, whether the buses and trains will be running, and if our boss will let us go home early. We're not designed for snow. Especially in March.

And it is March! I've been conspicuous by absence round here, I guess. So let me catch you up on things in my favourite manner: by making a list.

1. THROWN TO THE WOLVES won an Evernight Reader's Choice award! It was voted Best Romance on the Go, so thank you very much, lovely readers. And IMPERIAL DEMON was runner-up for best lesbian romance, so thank you again! If you hop on over to Evernight's site, you can use the coupon code WINNER2017 to get 25% off any Readers' Choice winners and runner-uppers. I'm always slightly shocked to win any kind of accolade, and it wouldn't happen without people taking the time to vote for the books, of course, so thank you again! Kisses.

2. Nero and I had an AMAZING holiday in Japan and spent loads of time with @pocketrex, which was also AMAZING, and we met so many lovely cats and ate so much fantastic food, and saw so many incredible sights, and I loved it, and we're going back next summer. If you want a glimpse of our adventures, the best thing to do is find my pictures on Instagram.

3. I'm doing much better mental health-wise. I'm still having some black days here and there, but the constant, aching anxiety I was dealing with before Christmas is under control. There's still work to do, but I'm out of deep water.

4. I'm working on the next Blood Canticles book, Chaos Songs. I'm so happy to be back with Lola and Tris! My plan this year is to focus on Blood Canticles and the Luporum. The Luporum was always going to be a trilogy, and that hasn't changed. Blood Canticles, I think, has two more books after Chaos Songs. Work has started slowly, because I'm still trying to get back into the daily writing rhythm that my anxiety and depression busted, but I have so many ideas and plans for Chaos Songs that have been brewing since before I even finished IMPERIAL DEMONS, and I'm excited about sharing some snippets with you soon!

5. I always name the year after a mythical animal, dating back to the hallowed, ancient times of 2013. Normally I do a big post about it in January, but obviously it's not January anymore, so here's the quick and dirty version: 

2018 is the Year of the Kappa. Partly inspired by our visit to a Goblin Pond in Tokyo on New Year's Eve, partly because the kappa is a creature associated with water, which is the element associated with emotions, and that feels right as I battle against anxiety and depression, and partly because a kappa, to me, is a creature of balance. If he loses the water in the indent in his head, he loses his power. Balance is going to be a big theme for me this year as I work to keep various plates in the air: writing, perfume-making, home life, health, and work life. So even though the kappa has a reputation for trouble-making and, um, drowning people and eating their souls, I feel like he's the right symbol for me this year.

So I think that brings us up to speed. Hopefully I'll be blogging more frequently going forward, but you can always find me on Twitter and Facebook for more frequent nonsense. Happy March!

Evernight Readers' Choice Awards!

Listen up, folks! It's that one time of year I put aside my shame of self-promotion and ask you to get out and vote! On the condition that you only vote if you actually read one of my books and enjoyed it. Don't just vote because I told you to. I feel like that would undermine the process.

Anyway! It's time for the fifth annual Evernight Readers' Choice Awards! Get out there and show your favourite authors and books some love (and get yourself in the running for a prize!). Five of my books are eligible for awards this year, should you be so inclined:

THROWN TO THE WOLVES - best lesbian, best paranormal, and best Romance on The Go

IN COLD BLOOD - best paranormal, best suspense, and best lesbian

LICH QUEEN - best paranormal and best suspense

ON A DARK TIDE - Best paranormal, best contemporary, best suspense, and best lesbian

And IMPERIAL DEMONS - best paranormal, best contemporary, best suspense, best lesbian

And you can vote for any of these titles for best cover and book of the year, as well as voting for Blood Canticles as best series and me as author of the year! Phew. It's been a busy a year, I realise, when I line them all up like that.

I've been honoured and humbled to be a winner or runner-up in several categories over the past four years. I never expect it and I'm always thrilled, and I would be grateful for your votes again this year! 

Imperial Demons is in the wild!

Today's the day, folks! IMPERIAL DEMONS is unleashed! And I am SUPER EXCITED. I feel like DARK DAYS may as well have been released a lifetime ago, and I've been raring to get Lola and Tristesse's next adventure out in the world. And now, here we are!

There is nothing I don't love about this book. World-building Gehenna was so much fun. Writing a truly inhuman villain was a great challenge. Forcing Lola and Tristesse to grow in ways I absolutely hadn't planned way back in BLOOD WITCH was fantastic! I know I've said it before, but I never intended BLOOD WITCH to be anything more than a one-off novella. To now be at book four in the series, with books five, six, and maybe seven in the pipeline makes me incredibly proud and excited.

Parts of IMPERIAL DEMONS were wrenching to write, but I think I've given you an awesome story, and I have plenty of fun, madness, and magic coming up for Lola and Tris still. We just have to go through some hard times to get there...

Magic can make you mad. Love can make you dangerous.

Tristesse is gone, taken between worlds to be the bride of a sadistic demon prince. And Lola will do anything to get her back. Crossing into Gehenna is only the start. Hunted by monsters and accompanied by allies she can’t trust, Lola must endure the horrors of the demon world, and embrace the darkness of demon magic. If it doesn’t consume her, it might just save both her and Tristesse.

But in Gehenna nothing is guaranteed. Nothing except pain.

Pick up your copy (for a discount!) right now at Evernight. Or grab it from Amazon US, Amazon UK, and probably wherever else you get your ebooks!

And you can read on right now for a glimpse at the first chapter!

Snickt!

Imperial Demons cover reveal!

GUYS. IMPERIAL DEMONS has a cover and it's SPECTACULAR.

I have been swooning over this baby for days now, and I'm thrilled to share it! Once again, Evernight and Jay Aheer have done me proud. I just don't have words for how perfect this is!

Magic can make you mad. Love can make you dangerous.

Tristesse is gone, taken between worlds to be the bride of a sadistic demon prince. And Lola will do anything to get her back. Crossing into Gehenna is only the start. Hunted by monsters and accompanied by allies she can’t trust, Lola must endure the horrors of the demon world, and embrace the darkness of demon magic. If it doesn’t consume her, it might just save both her and Tristesse.

But in Gehenna nothing is guaranteed. Nothing except pain.

I'm still waiting on the release date, but all the edits are wrapped up so stay tuned!

And look how good they all look together too:

I'm kinda mind-blown that this series is at book four already. When I started BLOOD WITCH back in the day, it was meant to be a quick, short, one-shot novella. Now it's looking likely to be a seven-book series in total, and with every book I just fall more and more in love with the world and characters. I really cannot wait to share IMPERIAL DEMONS with you all <3

"I hate mornings, and Mondays. And working. But other than that I am entirely happy."

I've been in a real writing slump since September. I've been working on an Amber Morgan project ("working" in the loosest sense of the word, because not much work is getting done), which I really should have finished by now, but my motivation levels have been pretty much non-existent. I've been feeling low as a result - when I'm not writing, I'm not happy. It's taken me a while to figure out the problem, and it's a combination of things really, but yesterday I deleted the last 2500 words I wrote on that wip and felt much better.

They weren't bad words. They just weren't the right words. I'm confident that when I go back to the project, I'll be in a better place and frame of mind to tackle and finish it.

That didn't happen yesterday because I had the first round edits for IMPERIAL DEMONS to work on! YAY! This time last year, I was just starting work on this book. I took a break on it to finish LICH QUEEN, so it feels like a lifetime ago that I started it now. I loved getting back to Lola and Tristesse and re-reading the almighty tome that was never going to end that is IMPERIAL DEMONS. I can't wait to share it with you all, and now the first round edits are in the bag, hopefully it won't be too long before I can! I know some people were disappointed with LICH QUEEN and the switch to Dawn, but it was important for me to tell that story and wrap up that story arc in the series. IMPERIAL DEMONS and the next two or three books (haven't decided how many I'll need yet!) will focus on Lola and Tristesse, and the fallout of their time in Gehenna, and I wanted to clear the slate, as it were, before digging into that arc.

So stay tuned - release dates and cover art are surely not far away!

Meanwhile, are we following each other on Instagram? No? Maybe we should! You can find me there as naomi_jay_clark. Evernight's seventh birthday is coming up and part of the celebration is a Loop Giveaway on Instagram!

Myself and 31 other fantastic authors will be taking part on October 23rd.  Each author will have a prize to giveaway and Evernight is offering a few GRAND PRIZES, including gift certificates and prize packs. If you complete the loop, you’ll have the chance to #win at least 35 different prizes.

I’m giving away a collectible THROWN TO THE WOLVES mug, like so:

So hit me up and look out for the giveaway later this month! Following me also has the benefits of seeing silly pictures of Yuki, and you know that's the real prize.

September Accountability

We're heading into Autumn and I'm thinking about werewolves. My plan for after the current Amber Morgan project is done is to move onto the next Urban Wolf book. I've also got the start of the next Luporum book floating around in my head, and some whispers of a stand-alone werewolfy urban fantasy romance revenge thing that I'm not even touching because I cannot start any new projects this year even though I did already.

My aim is to finish the Amber Morgan book this month, and move onto Urban Wolf 6 in October. I am hoping for first round edits on IMPERIAL DEMONS this month as well, though, so we'll see.

I'm trying to clear a few extra things out of my life this month to free up more time for writing, as well as squeezing a few new things in. I'm supposed to be doing daily physio for my knackered shoulder, which...doesn't always happen. I'm also supposed to be going to the gym and working on a routine to build the strength in both my arms up, which...hasn't happened at all, because as a hardcore introvert, the idea of going to the gym just horrifies me. But I suppose I should figure something out before I'm next due at the doctor and have to explain to him why I've been slacking off on all this stuff.

So we're approaching the change of the seasons, and I'm trying to make some simple life changes. I'm also letting go (or at least putting on hiatus) some writing and non-writing creative projects that have been causing me some anxiety to varying degrees this year. I'm not trying to be vague, I'm just not sure there's anything interesting to say about them, except that letting them go/putting them on hiatus is ultimately going to make me happier and more productive for the rest of the year.

So! That's September. Stay tuned for news on IMPERIAL DEMONS as and when I get it!

News! News! News!

I am thrilled to announce that IMPERIAL DEMONS has been accepted by Evernight! The contract is signed and we have a projected release date of October. So, if all goes well, you get Lola and Tristesse's big adventure before the end of the year! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!

I love this book and I love the future tales it will let me tell for these ladies. I can't wait to share it with you all! More details as I get them, as ever, but in the meantime, here's the (unofficial) blurb:

Magic can make you mad. Love can make you dangerous.

Tristesse is gone, taken between worlds to be the bride of a sadistic demon prince. And Lola will do anything to get her back. Crossing into Gehenna is only the start. Hunted by monsters and accompanied by allies she can’t trust, Lola must endure the horrors of the demon world, and embrace the darkness of demon magic. If it doesn’t consume her, it might just save both her and Tristesse.

But in Gehenna nothing is guaranteed. Nothing except pain.

August Accountability

Well, it appears another month has gone by! July just seemed to go by impossibly fast, but looking back, a lot happened. I polished up and submitted Imperial Demons, edited LICH QUEEN and had it released, and just yesterday I completed the last round of edits for ON A DARK TIDE. Around that, I wrote and edited a 12k story and submitted it to an anthology, and got the first 4k of my new Amber Morgan project written.

So actually, yeah, that's probably why the month flew by.

So! What's the plan for August? Well, ON A DARK TIDE will be out on August 24th. I'm hoping to be able to share news about Imperial Demons with you soon. In the meantime, I'm going to be focusing on that Amber Morgan book and brainstorming Urban Wolf 6.

I've been thinking about this book a lot recently. You'll see from the Work In Progress thingy over there somewhere ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------->
that I have about 8k written of it, but I wrote that a few years ago now, and I'm not sure it's the story I want to tell next in this series anymore. I think some of the bare bones of the plot can remain, but the big juicy meaty bits need to change. So I need to figure that out before I start work on it again, but either way, Urban Wolf 6 is definitely next on the to-do list. WOLF STRAP was my first professionally published story, and even though it's been a while since I wrote a full-length Ayla and Shannon novel, their world and lives are still important to me. I always planned to give them five full-length novels at a bare minimum. At the moment we're on three short stories, two novels, and one spin-off in the shape of IN COLD BLOOD, so even though Urban Wolf 6 will technically be book six in the Urban Wolf World, it'll still only be Ayla and Shannon's third novel. There's a lot of their world left to explore.

Anyway! That's for the autumn. August is all about Amber. I will of course be checking in here with news about Imperial Demons and ON A DARK TIDE and probably other stuff as well, so stay tuned!

Flashback Friday - Blood Witch

Happy Friday, folks! With LICH QUEEN out in the wild, I thought I'd do something different for this week's flashback and take a look at one of my own books. And why not make it the book that started the Blood Canticles series, BLOOD WITCH? Why not indeed.

The early draft of BLOOD WITCH was a little different from the finished product, but the basics were the same - it started with a witch being questioned about a murder she didn't commit by two police officers who were sure she was guilty. But Lola was called Lilah, and Rowan was called Rosa, and neither of those police officers were Dawn.

Lilah became Lola because at the time I was seeing an absolute glut of urban fantasy and paranormal romance books where the heroines were called Lily or something similar, and I wanted to avoid having another Lily/Lilah/Lillian. Rosa became Rowan because, after I changed Lola's name, I didn't want two main characters whose names ended in that "ah" sound.

As for Dawn Hardy, she was originally destined to star in a book I never wrote, in a world where vampires had tried living as legal citizens and been forced back into the shadows when they just couldn't stop massacring people. Dawn was going to be a cop-turned-vampire hunter working for the government. I never got past the first few hundred words, and now I'm glad I didn't!

Lola Guntram is used to being an outcast. She's the only blood witch in Fort Rosser, mistrusted by other witches and happier working solo. But when her dark practices make her the prime suspect in a brutal murder investigation, she's forced to turn to others for help. Not that she has many allies—her ex-girlfriend thinks Lola is the killer, and the local coven leader thinks Lola will corrupt them all if she gets too close.

Help comes in an expected—and alluring—form. Tristesse is a demon on the run, beautiful, enigmatic, and suspiciously keen to assist Lola while she chases down the real killer. How can Lola refuse? With the police breathing down her neck, accusations flying, and inhuman monsters on the streets, Lola needs all the help she can get. The killer is angry, desperate, and determined. But so is Lola Guntram. And she doesn't care how dark or bloody the magic has to get—she's going to stop them.

Available now from Evernight/Amazon US/Amazon UK

Read on for an excerpt!