As a special post-Christmas gift (and one that respects our empty wallets) today is Stuff Your Kindle Day! There are loads of free books.
I’m linking to Romance Bookworms for the complete list. I’m thrilled to be part of this event. My contribution is a free copy of Alien Haunts (free till Dec 28 on Amazon).
Merry Christmas! I hope you have a joyful, peaceful festive season – with lots of books!
I’ve had a good reading month this December.
It kicked off with Book 5 in the Beware of Chicken series by CasualFarmer. It wasn’t my favourite of the books. That remains Book 1. But it was enjoyable to return to this heartwarming fantasy world.
Still in the progression fantasy zone, I enjoyed the latest Iron Tyrant series novel by Seth Ring, Falling Gold. It was easy reading with some interesting developments.
Lauretta Hignett started a new series with A Little Bite. It was short and sassy with an opinionated young heroine.
I also had a re-read binge of Jamie Bennett’s contemporary romances. She does slow burn well and often reduces me to tears with her Cinderella heroines. You could start with any of her books. Defending the Rush is good if you like football, and if you like football romances, I picked up Penny Reid’s Homecoming King as a free book and found it one of the more enjoyable marriage of convenience novels I’ve read (and a bit sexier than Jamie Bennett’s books).
A hero is integral to most novels. We follow their journey. But “hero” has connotations that sometimes obscure the purpose and grace of the concept. Therefore, it can be useful to consider the role of the “protagonist” instead.
“Hero” links us to the word “heroic” and we expect the lead character to strive, perhaps to grow, often we hope to witness them triumph. A “protagonist” doesn’t carry such a heavy burden of expectation. A protagonist is freer to interrogate their world. What can they learn?
In real life I think we should all consider ourselves the hero of our own stories. However, if we push that notion of hero closer to protagonist then I think we have more agency. We can ask what are our goals? What experiences confront us or have shaped us? How will we change? Why should we change? Who will we journey with?
We don’t have the mythical hero’s burden to save the world. Our challenge as the protagonist-hero is to be more ourselves.
Yup. You’re the hero of your story when you’re you.
And when I say “you”, it can be a collective “you”. The hero can be a community, a nation, even a business; whatever entity that is challenging the world so as to be true to itself.
I think the temptation to inhabit the role of victim in your own story comes from this concept of the hero as a larger than life character who must triumph or else loses the right to exist.
A protagonist whose journey is one of internal and external discovery is far healthier.
“All is well and all shall be well!”
— Fourteenth century mystic Julian of Norwich.
I’m still hung up on the idea of Golden Age fiction and what characterises or defines such work.
I’ve decided that my Caldryn Parliament novels promise that all will be well.
After all, what is a Golden Age but one where we find inspiration from earlier heroes that impossible dreams can be pursued? They won’t always be attained, but the journey will bless the world.
All will be well.
Be comforted.
Take courage.
Change the world.
The release of Rogues Lie went so much better than I expected. I did so many things wrong. For a start, life meant that I had to push back the release a month from when I originally set the pre-order. So, release day went from Halloween to Thanksgiving, and worse, to the weekend of the Black Friday sales. The wisdom of the book marketing world suggested I pretty much couldn’t have chosen a worse release date.
And yet…
You guys made it work!
Thank you.
When I woke up in the morning of what would have been New York’s evening of the release day (sorry for the time zone confusion, but I’m in Western Australia and that means I live in most of your futures) and saw that Rogues Lie had cracked the top 300 in the US Kindle Store, I nearly cried. As for your kind comments, messages, and reviews … pass the tissue box!
Thank you. I cannot say it enough times. Thank you.
When I first had the idea for Caldryn Parliament I WANTED to write it. The idea of mixing science fiction, fantasy, and mystery genres with a dash of romance was irresistible. I also longed to have a protagonist who stalked the halls of power. I wanted to show real people in a world of complicated alliances and potential tragedy (not tragedy in terms of deaths, but in terms of having to juggle competing interests. For one group to flourish, must another suffer?).
I mean, what would I even call this mixed bag of genres? It’s not quite cozy fantasy or mystery. It’s not romantasy (oh the envy I feel for authors who can use that tag and Amazon’s algorithms reward them with discoverability). I’m still searching for the right descriptor.
But I took the leap. I even built a website (yes, it’s basic. So are my tech skills).
And then, politically, the world went mad and I was committed to releasing a new series set in a parliament at a time when people were side-eyeing politicians or dreaming of rotten-tomatoing them.
The successful launch of Rogues Lie feels like I can finally breathe after holding my breath for much of the year.
Fate willing, there will be eight books in this series. Next up is Ghosts Cry. I’m hoping to release it in March 2026, but I learned my lesson this year! I’ve set the pre-order for June to give myself wriggle room if everything goes sideways. I’ll bring the release day forward if life permits.
Rogues Lie is out today! This is the third book in my Caldryn Parliament series and secrets are stirring, rumors swirling, and Giddy is…well, Giddy has dramatic plans!
Buy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DXN289NV/
Blurb: A whisper campaign threatens Vanda Kavanagh’s hard-won position as Warden of Caldryn Parliament, but are the malicious rumors a personal attack or do they mask an uglier plot?
As Vanda investigates, long-hidden truths are revealed leading her to question everything she believed about herself.
In a city steeped in magic and political intrigue who can Vanda trust?
Excerpt (link to excerpt on book page): https://caldryn.com/books/rogues-lie/
Note: If you’re new to this series, please start with Book 1, Stars Die. Reading out of order will mean spoilers for earlier mysteries, plus everything really does build on what came before. This is a world with a lot of secrets and some truly ambitious goals. Enjoy the journey!
Hunter by Mercedes Lackey is the first book in a YA urban fantasy trilogy. I enjoyed it, but oddly, I’m satisfied with it as a standalone and don’t feel the need to read the next two. From their blurbs they take twists that don’t appeal to me. Great world building in this book.
I anticipated reading Turns of Fate by Anne Bishop for months, and while it deals with tough issues of domestic abuse and general nastiness, the Wyrd is fascinating and the twists and turns of the plot and how it weaves together is so good.
A Courtship of Dragons by Alanna Cole was pure cozy fantasy, and an enjoyable, imaginative read.
I re-read the Towerbound litrpg series ahead of the release of Book 4, and found that Book 4 lived up to the others. I like the compassion at the core of this gritty series, the compassion and found family and the sense of justice and hope.
Also, Rogues Lie (book 3 in my Caldryn Parliament series) is out on Saturday!!! I am so excited.
A whisper campaign threatens Vanda Kavanagh’s hard-won position as Warden of Caldryn Parliament, but are the malicious rumors a personal attack or do they mask an uglier plot?
As Vanda investigates, long-hidden truths are revealed leading her to question everything she believed about herself.
In a city steeped in magic and political intrigue who can Vanda trust?
Annually, as the year draws to a close, I start thinking about my publishing predictions for the next year.
This year I’m focused on the power and hiding place offered by nostalgia, and not necessarily of a time past, but of a vanishing reality.
When I was growing up I read and re-read Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery. It was published at a time (1908) when most of its audience lived in cities and life on the land was being romanticised.
Pollyanna by Eleanor H Porter was published at a similar time (1913), although without the rural setting.
Both had orphaned heroines, but critically to their broad appeal, both presented the child as a reason for the adults in the novels to open their hearts.
Children want to be loved.
Adults want the courage to love and be loved.
The appeal is obvious today when so many of us feel exhausted; beleaguered, even.
I suspect that rather than a rural setting where the agricultural industry has stripped out small communities, the contemporary nostalgia will be for big suburban yards, neighbors sitting on porches, and an orphan finding a home. What aspects of contemporary life will be celebrated in these books I’m not sure, but I think freedom and independence will be as important as family.
When I was checking publishing dates for this post, I also looked up the Australian equivalent novel, A Little Bush Maid by Mary Grant Bruce. Norah lost her mother, but her father was a large and beloved part of the novel, along with her brother and his best friend. It was published in 1910. Celebration of the rural idyll was alive and well even Down Under. (Warning: racism and sexism are both on display in this series, as was true for many of the books from the era.)
The other day I was listening, distractedly, to The Futurists podcast. Brett King and guest host Kevin J Anderson were interviewing Jeffrey Morris in an episode called, Filming the Future. Someone on the podcast said something about how the way aliens and monsters were imagined in 1960s movies was a product of the technology that existed to produce them as costumes or puppets or whatever. Now, with that physical limitation removed via CGI, AI, or insert-your-software-acronym-of-choice the possibilities are endless, and that it’s the same with the environment the aliens or monsters exist in.
But I have doubts about infinite options. I think humans always build cages, or at minimum, impose limits.
For something to be a commercial success you tend to have to trigger emotional arousal, whether by violence, fear, sex, or ambition. People like to see how they can triumph. Even the catharsis of tragedy can be a triumph (in the sense of achieving satisfaction).
So I don’t think just any type of alien or monster will appear. I think they’ll have to embody a key driver of our time (like fear linked to the necessity of responding to climate change) and be emotionally arousing with the temptation of triumph.
Think of Godzilla rampaging after the atomic bombs were dropped.
And once the movie studios see which monsters audiences respond to we’ll get more of the same.
As Sir Terry Pratchett once wrote, and I’m quoting from memory so forgive me if I get it a little wrong. “People don’t want news. They want olds.”
CGI might offer endless possibilities, but we prefer the familiar.
***
I sometimes think how frustrated a newspaper or magazine editor would be if I submitted articles as short and incomplete as these posts. But I like sharing my ideas before I reach any conclusions. I like that I still have room to change my mind, add or subtract from my answers, and wander away down byways.
When you’re writing a novel (or a screenplay) everything your characters do has to serve a purpose. This is related to the idea of plants and payoffs in screenwriting. Readers (audiences) are investing their time and imaginative/emotional energy and they must be rewarded. If the writer shoves something in front of the reader to pay attention to, then that attention has to pay off.
In fiction clear lines are drawn between action and outcome in a way that real life can’t provide. Real life is like that biblical quotation, “For now, we see through a glass, darkly…”
Fiction takes the glass and polishes it clear (at least in spots) so that the reader can trace from action to outcome and be satisfied.
The reason I’ve belaboured the importance of plants and payoffs is because real life seldom rewards us with them.
We think that the kindnesses we do are seldom noticed, even more rarely rewarded, and what does it even matter?
But my life philosophy is that while kindness matters, our specific kind actions aren’t the point. We are butterfly wing flaps.
You know the old chaos theory of a butterfly flapping its wings and triggering a storm hundreds or thousands of miles away?
I believe that actions we aren’t even aware of taking are potential butterfly wing flaps. We never know what small thing we do may trigger a life-affirming outcome for a stranger.
Believing in chaotic kindness is a way to journey with hope and to feel connected even when we’re seeing through a glass, darkly. Those times pass. Our unrecognised, vital importance to others never does.
Thank you for simply being you.