New Cover and two sales!

We’ve got a new cover for BETWEEN WALLS, guys! I’ve been waiting eagerly for this since I uploaded the interim cover. Ain’t she a beaut?

In other news, I’m running a 60% off sale on the complete SHARDS OF A BROKEN SWORD over on Smashwords, where you can get whatever eformat you read for whatever ereader you have. ($6.99 down to $2.79). Sale ends September 23rd (click on the image to find it).

King Markon’s son, Prince Parrin, is afflicted by a nasty curse that brutally attacks any woman with whom he so much as flirts.
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When the crafty Prince Akish attempts to rescue Princess Kayami Koto from a dragon-guarded and enchanted keep, it seems only sensible to bring his own dragon.
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Dion ferch Alawn must gather all the shards of the Broken Sword that will unite her country and save her world.

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I’m also running an all-retailer 99c sale on the first book in my Time Traveller’s Best Friend series in preparation for the publication of the third book at the end of this month.

Meet Marx. Meet Kez.

Marx is a small, angry man with a time machine and a chip on his shoulder. Kez is a homicidal little girl with a price on her head and a penchant for kicking people where it hurts the most.

Stolen time craft, shadowy corporations, and the odd goat shed or two can be more deadly than you think… 

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Sale ends on the 6th! Available on Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, and Smashwords.

Look forward to the cover reveal for the third book–I’m certainly excited about it!

Thanks! (and Have an Excerpt!)

It’s so close, guys! Just a week and 2 days until Memento Mori comes out! That being the case, I wanted to take the opportunity to say thank you to my awesome beta readers, the people who cheered for me over these last couple of months, and that one guy who actually kicked me into finally writing the 2nd book in the Time Traveller’s Best Friend series.

First, the beta readers. Thank you so much! You continue to surprise and delight me with the stuff you find, the things you love, and the typos you correct before its too late. In particular, thank you to Dinah, Carly, Elizabeth, Anna, and Martina; you guys gave such useful feedback and one or two of you were even kind enough to love Marx and Kez as much as I do.

Second, thanks to the people who’ve encouraged me in some way over the last couple months. It’s been a rough couple of months due to a lot of sickness, pain, and general too-much-to-do-ness. So thanks to Josh, who has been there from the start with Kez and Marx and always encourages me (also, check out his art, guys!), to Sarah, who talks to me about Kdrama, squees over favourite authors with me, and sends the occasional cat pic (especially for the cat pic 😀 ), and to Intisar Khanani, who always seems to know the stuff I don’t and is always willing to help out.

Thirdly and finally, thanks to the guy who gave me the kick in the pants I needed to get going on the 2nd Time Traveller’s Best Friend book. I don’t know his name or what he looks like, but the owner of one of the bookstores I deliver books to said every time he was in, he was asking for the next book. You guys have no idea how much I needed to hear that. I loved Kez and Marx but I wasn’t sure they were resonating and I had to get going on my fantasy series. So thanks, man. I don’t know who you are, but there’ll be a free new-cover copy of A Time Traveller’s Best Friend in the A Bit Curious store for you when I get the shipment.

Now for an excerpt! (And don’t forget to preorder for next week, guys!)

–oOo–

“We’d better synchronise our timepieces, sir.”

“We have a time limit?” asked Mikkel, his brows rising in surprise.

“Not as such,” said Arabella. “But there are certain things that need to happen at exactly the right time. If they don’t…well, let’s just say that we really, really want them to happen at the right time.”

“Are we fixing events in time?”

“Something like that.”

“That’s going a bit overboard, isn’t it?” Mikkel said, frowning. Time and synchronicity were reasonably flexible: so long as a few major things remained fixed, smaller changes didn’t ripple too far forward. River-like, time had a way of falling back into its previous course, flooding around obstacles and back into its accustomed bed. “Even if we’re here to help Kez and Marx—! I mean, they can’t do too much damage running around the Time Stream; it is self-repairing, after all.”

Arabella gave a small, prim cough.

“It fixes itself.”

Arabella’s mouth pursed in a pained sort of way.

“Good grief! They broke the Time Stream?”

“They are trying to fix it, sir,” Arabella said excusingly. 

–oOo–

The Fantasy of Writing SciFi

I don’t write scifi.

That probably sounds weird, given that I’m publishing the 2nd book in my Time Traveller’s Best Friend series this month. Don’t worry, you didn’t imagine it; Memento Mori really does exist.

I don’t write horror, either; but I’ve published a short ghost story.

Nope, I’m not schizophrenic (not that you can prove, anyway); I just have a different world view.

Aliens, time travel, ghosts…

…those things don’t exist in my paradigm. I’m a Christian writer, so I believe in God. Any other supernatural or alien creatures other than angels or demons? I don’t believe in ’em.

So when I write about them, I’m writing fantasy. And I am a fantasy writer.

I came to this conclusion a few years ago when I first wrote A Time Traveller’s Best Friend–why it was that I found it so easy to switch to writing scifi when it wasn’t something I’d ever considered writing. Why I felt so much at home there with Kez and Marx. I’ve always been more interested in characters than genre (it’s the reason I read so widely across genres) and when Kez and Marx showed up there was no other setting for them than a Scifi one. They were time travellers, and could never have been anything else. I just wrote them into the fantasy world that was right for them.

So next time you read one of my scifi books–psych! You’re not really reading Scifi. It’s all in your imagination. You’re reading Fantasy.

Kicking Shins Through Time and Space

I LOVE THIS COVER SO MUCH

When I first wrote A Time Traveller’s Best Friend, it was a short story.

It was a short story written for my writers’ group, which gave a series of prompt words that turned out wildly different stories from each of us. I took it back to the writers’ group, still madly writing the last 500 words—have I mentioned that I’m a procrastinator?—while the small talk was going on. It turned out to be reasonably popular, which was nice.

My problem was that I really connected with Kez and Marx. I’d never intended to write scifi (I’ll follow up on that in a blog post next month) but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to keep writing about Kez and Marx. I didn’t like the idea of extending the short story I already had, but I am a fan of scifi tv series (*coff*Star Trek Voyager*coff*) and it occurred to me that I could do something similar with Kez and Marx.

And so the short story became a Book.

However, by the time I was finished the first draft of that book, I was quite certain that I could keep writing this pair of characters into more books.

The book became a Series.

I dithered on the series for a bit—I had another series I was writing, and exciting new ideas for other books, and I wasn’t entirely sure how well Volume One was received. Then it came to my attention (through a bookstore owner who stocks my books) that a certain reader was always coming in and asking when the next book in the Time Traveller’s Best Friend series would be out. I mean, I always wanted to keep writing about Marx and Kez, I’d just got sidetracked. That day, I was again caught up in the excitement of Kez and Marx’s world, ideas fluttering away in my back-brain and plot growing steadily and sturdily behind that.

The upshot of all this is a number of things:

First and foremost, Volume Two of A Time Traveller’s Best Friend, Memento Mori, is on its second edit and will be published next month. Just as excitingly, Jenny at Seedlings Design Studios has designed a new cover for A Time Traveller’s Best Friend, and next week will be hard at work on the cover for Memento Mori. Thirdly, A Time Traveller’s Best Friend has a new blurb! You know, because once you update the cover, you should take a look at the blurb…

Below is the new-and-improved blurb for A Time Traveller’s Best Friend. You can check it out on Amazon, iBooks, Kobo, and Barnes & Noble. (There will also be new-cover paperbacks available from late next month! Yay!)

Meet Marx. Meet Kez.

Marx is a small, angry man with a time machine and a chip on his shoulder. Kez is a homicidal little girl with a price on her head and a penchant for kicking people where it hurts the most.

After a narrow escape from the owners of the stolen craft he pilots, the last thing Marx wants is another gun pointed at him. What he wants and what he gets, however, are two very different things.

On the run from killers, shadowy corporations, and one very specific Someone, the last thing Kez wants when she points a gun at yet another apparent killer is a self-appointed protector.

What she wants and what she needs, however, are two very different things…

Shorts & Excerpts!

Well, as promised, I have begun a new page.  It can be found at the top of my main blog page, and is entitled ‘Shorts & Excerpts’.  Despite this title, it has nothing to do with clothing or newspaper clippings, and is in fact the place to look for bits and pieces of my writing from upcoming books.  The first short is ‘A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend’, uploaded in the hope of whetting your appetite for ‘A Time-Traveller’s Best Friend: The Complete Adventures’, which is loosely scheduled for release on Kindle October 1, 2014. 

Enjoy.  More excerpts should follow in the weeks to come.

Oh, and if you’re too lazy/can’t find the main button, here is the link: Shorts & Excerpts

Don’t hesitate to comment, good or bad.  I can take it.  Really.  And if you see someone weeping messily in the corner IT’S NOT ME.