June Rambles

Updates, an introduction to Tal, and a giveaway!

It's hot. At least, where I am. The little window a/cs cannot quite keep up so the house remains around 78F; ironically, what the gov't recommends to keep a/c units on. It's tolerable but outside is Satan's buttcrack so I'm pleased to be cooler than that.

I hope you are cool where you are.

It is that time where I recap the month. June flew by. Pride was a resistance and a joy. (Joy in the face of fascism is resistance) Summer vacation has been in full swing and kiddo and I visited the butterfly show at the conservatory, and the local art museum, and the parks by the river. I teach tax classes during the summer and started this month, mostly aimed at newer practitioners, with more lined up in July.

On to the meat of things, I suppose.

If you can, by July 5th, Romancing the Vote is running another auction to raise funds for voting rights organizations. I've got an item on money laundering in there but there are lots of wonderful perks for authors and readers and plenty of buy it now items.

Things I Read

I read Stacy Reid's The Wolf and the Wildflower which is an incredibly romantic and wild romance novel. Jules dresses as a man and is an alienist, a 19th century psychologist, helping a duke who has returned from being lost in the wilds of Canada since a young man. I love cross dressing narratives, have since I was a little girl reading Tamora Pierce and this felt like an adult version of it.

I spent most of the month deep in Kelley Armstrong's A Rip in Time series, where a 2019 Canadian cop ends up in the body of a 20 year old housemaid in Victorian Edinburgh. It's bonkers in the best way. I also enjoyed two King Arthur books, but especially The Once and Future Queen, which feels new adult. Gwen was taken forward into the future to grow up and brought back to save Albion. It is also a second-chance romance, with her and Arthur, and I'm deep into those right now.

Things I Enjoyed

Work has been cracking this month, so the only thing I really watched was the world cup. I enjoy soccer and once, ever four years, I go insane. I watch as many matches as possible. FIFA is hella corrupt, I'm not going to lie. But, seeing the joy and care of fans by other fans has also been deeply healing to me.

Anthony Bourdain, the only celebrity whose death I cried over (why????), has a quote somewhere about how most people in the world are good people. They want to care for their families, care about their neighborhood, and share meals and joy. That comment is deeply affirming about the human experience especially as I navigate daily life in a fascistic state that seeks to consistently strip civil rights of more people. That goodness, that art, that joy, is what we seek to bring back to the light and the world cup gives us glimpses of that.

I've been enjoying R&B mixes on YouTube, especially by the Andrew Chran (vol 7 morning coffee is my workout music); Afternoon Tea; Noise Complaints; and seijuslog, which is more classical and jazz. I love Slow Mornings. She also does all the art and I deeply appreciate that as so much of YouTube is full of AI art.

Also infused waters. A splash of strawberry basil infused water in unsweetened iced tea makes for a ridiculously refreshing drink.

Writing Things

I have finished this edit of Tal! Now it is on to crutch words. The pre-order should be available by the end of this month for a September release.

Fellow author, and an artist (I am not!), L.P.M. Sinclair helped with this cover design. (I am a big fan of her work, Songs of Dead Gods, which is kind of a horror. Very creepy. And by helped, I mean she took my initial design and made it work)

The base is a painting by famous Gilded Age painter, John Singer Sargent, called Mrs. Charles E. Inches (now in public domain). While his most well known is probably Madame X (most recently discussed online because of Laura Sanchez Bezos's horrible tribute to it at the Met Gala), he is remarkable for his incredibly frank drawings, especially for the way that women stare directly at the viewer. Challenging the viewer. Denying them the privacy of looking without being recognized.

While this painting is ten years before Tal takes place, in an alternate 1897, the clothing and the style and the hair matched the vibe.

Now that editing is done, and crutch word work is ongoing, I think next is marketing, which I suppose that is what this is. Crutch word editing is a lot of work. I don't think I realized how often I use some words as a shortcut, really. Crutch words are an easy path to get out the story I'm trying to tell, but doesn't truly move the story forward or explain the action in the way that another phrase or word may. Apparently, I really like burn the verb, and char or sear or singe don't quite cut it.

Mark Twain once said that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug. Crutch words, for me it seems, are the almost right word. I hope the exercise makes for a more powerful story.

Since Tal comes out in September, I should let you meet her.

Tal killed a man, or maybe she didn't. She doesn't remember everything. She was Talia until seventeen, and now she's Talbot, a young man, a forensic philosopher, an assistant in a lab to understand death to one Remy St. Clair.

Tal has another secret: she's a necromancer. A vox mortis. But all mages are recruited by the Order of the Sacella to be trained to use their magic safely and to protect the Order. That often meant war. For a necromancer, it meant keeping the dead as functioning soldiers on the battlefield. Not the life she wants.

But she doesn't enjoy waking up to corpses shambling into her bedroom because of untrained magic. The dead in the lab allow her to use her magic and listen to the secrets the dead whisper.

She's safe. She's Talbot. Talia, the suspect, is gone. Talbot, the quiet assistant, lives a peaceful half-life. She enjoys the freedom that she has Talbot, the sort denied to a woman like Talia.

Then she uses her magic, in front of an Order mage, and finds herself trapped: Work for him or he'll will tell turn her over to them. In return, he'll teach her to quiet the magic. Who could say no to such a deal?

Would like an e-arc of The Dissolution of Tal Stephens? Put in a comment and you'll be entered in a drawing for 2 copies!