Good news, everybody. First, let me catch you up. It's been a hot minute. The past couple years have been an odyssey, to say the least. Releasing during the first year of the pandemic, the Malus trilogy largely fell flat on its face. I met my boyfriend and my gender transition continued on. Meanwhile, a producer from Stargate SG-1 optioned a Malus Domestica TV show, with himself as show runner. The book series got a shot in the arm with a Germany release through Blanvalet-Verlag, but though the original series still lingers in the American library system, it's largely vanished from most bookstores. Demoralized by flat sales - or at least my publisher's constant radio silence - I focused on the day job. I ended up working security at a ski resort, and in my downtime tinkered with Outlaw King 4, The Sky My Grave, and a horror podcast for John Carpenter - a horror story about a girl with fibromyalgia who gets trapped in a Michigan religious college during a blizzard and summons a "biblically accurate angel" to help with her chronic pain, resulting in a slasher/whodunit between a Skull-and-Bones faculty cult and a body-hopping cherubim. (Canceled because the producers said it was too much like Netflix's Midnight Mass, a gothic drama about vampires taking over an island off the coast of New England. Go figure.) The podcast fell through as soon as I started making headway on it, and then NBCUniversal passed on the Malus TV deal and the show bit the dust. Soon after that I lost my day job, which started a chain of homelessness that put me in my boyfriend's hometown, Traverse City, Michigan. Here we are in 2024. I'm living with my guy in one-half of the garage of an old house with three other families, writing my books. I'm currently working on the fourth volume of the Malus Domestica series, The Sky My Grave, and tinkering with Outlaw King 4 in the background. It's been a while, a long while, since I updated this blog. For that I apologize. I don't usually have much to say that doesn't get said on my social media. And outside of the occasional rash of oversharing, I've never really been one for banging on in a blog. What would I talk about, really? Writing tips? Half of people don't care about that, and the other half think I'm full of shit and itch to tell me just how much. I don't have the time or the heart to argue with people who insist on misinterpreting my advice. Failure is a better teacher than I am. The lion's share of my self-expression comes out in my novels, and not much happens in the meantime. Being broke makes it hard to have adventures to talk about, or make TikToks about. Let me know if you have any suggestions for things you'd like me to talk about! Or if you have any TikTok suggestions! Meanwhile, I wanted to let y'all know that I'm still hard at work, harder than ever before--I'm actually working on three books simultaneously. Currently, I'm serializing two of them - Malus Domestica 4: Eat The Weird (Die Hexenjagerin: Iss das Seltsame), and my 1980s-inspired space epic The Sky My Grave (formerly known as Hellbent). ❦ The Sky My Grave Three centuries since the bombs fell, and Earth is buried in an eternal winter. Enforcers called the Hounds of the Cu Chulainn patrol the snowy wastes in engines of war made from the road machines of the Old World. The Hounds set a trap for a notorious train-robber and capture Sergeant Traveler, a former enforcer presumed dead after a botched mission. Instead of executing her, the Hounds sell her to the galactic government and she is swept from the frozen Earth to chase pirates across the stars with a crew of misfits. When she discovers her prey is a cosmic death cult, she must make a choice that will change the galaxy forever. ❦ Malus Domestica Part 4: Eat The Weird (Die Hexenjagerin 4: Iss das Seltsame) As notorious witch hunter Robin Martine continues her quest, a coven of Norse witches summon an avatar of the Kraken - an unstoppable goliath bent on tearing her apart. Meanwhile, the FBI - led by hard-bitten Agent Agatha Morgan - tightens its noose around her neck. Tangled in this war are small-town cop Koyeti Grey, the demon-hunting Browning brothers, fledgling mage Wayne Parkin, and even Satan herself. When an accident turns the town of Blackfield into a treacherous battlefield and Robin begins to feel the call of blood again, everyone must band together to fight the Krakenstein - or die. ❦ If you want to follow along as I put these two epics together, come subscribe to my Patreon! Five dollars nets you regularly-updated chapters of The Sky My Grave, while $10 gets you both TSMG and MD4: Eat The Weird!
Grab a seat at my campfire and help me tell my stories. If I don't do the work, these worlds will perish - help me keep them alive!
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