“Business Trip” Part 1

This coming weekend, I’ll be heading down to southern Arizona for my first ever business trip. This trip will involve going to conventions and fairs and hanging out with my sister, but since I’ll be selling books at those conventions and fairs, and since my sister is also my illustrator, I’m counting it as a business trip. We might just work on the cover of the second book.

Break My Bones but Never Hurt Me

Bloody black sadness drips down like long shadows.

It’s memory.

It’s madness.

It’s regret.

It’s pain.

It’s all the dreams

that lie lonely and broken

in this walking tombstone that carries my name.

Long Lost Bonus Scene!

So as I mentioned back in November, in preparation for the “World of Miscast Spells” posts, I was combing through old files and happened upon a partial scene that I cut from the book… and I have no idea why. That is, I have no recollection of the events leading up to my not using this scene. So after rediscovering it, I thought, “This is pretty good stuff, and it does a nice job of explaining the different types of human magic. Maybe I can cram it back into Miscast Spells before the release?” Except that I couldn’t cram it in; it sort of falls somewhere in chapter 9, but that chapter already had a good flow that would have been disrupted by this scene. There were several parts of this scene that are covered elsewhere in the book. Additionally, I don’t really go into human magic that much in the rest of the series (though I do mention the idea of “obliteration” a little more in the second and third book). So I couldn’t use this scene officially, but I like it too much to scrap it entirely, so I’m making a gift of it to all, my loyal and maybe new blog followers. Happy belated Valentine’s Day! I hope you like exposition (which is not a type of magic.)

The World of Miscast Spells: The Empire

The Empire covers most of the continent formerly known as Astasia. It is comprised of sovereign nations with their own customs, cultures, and governing bodies who also owe allegiance to the Empress and Imperial Council. The first Empress, Hypatia Mbaga, was originally the queen of the country of Ingadi. She was chosen to lead the Empire, along with a council comprised of royalty from the rest of the Imperial countries, not only due to her country's great size and influence, but also because she worked alongside Marco Melieh. She and Melieh were successful in communicating the need for the diverse human peoples to come together in peaceful terms to turn away a more vexing and constant problem than their individual land disputes, philosophical disagreements, and economic disparities: the Goblin Menace. While humans might be willing to fight to the death about which kingdom had first conquered the Nopali desert or whether or not a guild-based feudal system or a capitalistic republic should govern their lives, everyone everywhere agreed that the scourge of goblins that had flooded over Nomansland and into Astasia had to be dealt with before they could cause anymore chaos.

Exciting News!

I’ve been a busy bee this weekend, proofing books (they're so beautiful 8_8) and setting up several pages on social media websites. If you prefer Facebook, I’m there. If you’re partial to the more casual venue of Tumblr (and many pictures of cats, rabbits, tea, and books), I’m there, too. I don’t really understand why Twitter exists or how to use it properly, but I figured why not give it a go. So please, follow me in whatever way you see fit.

On a more exciting note, the ebook of Miscast Spells is now available! You can purchase it from Amazon or Barnes and Noble. In a few weeks the print version will also be available. Stay tuned!