Now Available: 'The Dubious Commode'

And my beloved series' swan song is finally here. The Dubious Commode is the third and last long novella sequel to Ghosts and Tea, and as I've mentioned before, I only had enough sequel ideas for three books, and none of those ideas were hefty enough to justify beefier novels. So long novella sequels they are!

Here be the blurb:

Another wave of suspicious calm follows Freddy and Jonathan's successful solving of the singing skull mystery, which means Fate isn't quite done with the lot of them. Prue carries on with her beloved priory upgrades, stocks up on Felicity's products (arcane and otherwise), and endures the trials of being still of the living world. Freddy and Jonathan are madly in love with each other as ever, their bond growing stronger by the day.

Things appear to go swimmingly for a time, indeed, with Jonathan's workaholic publisher paying Hoary Plimpton a visit for health reasons and Mr. Headley entering the picture with a dragon's hoard of romantic smut for aunt and nephew alike.

But Brody's artistic gift comes under unexpected scrutiny, threatening a horrible shakeup in the priory and a permanent upending of everyone's lives. Then Mr. Headley decides he'd dearly love to be haunted and acquires a few oddities with ghosts attached to them.

Family isn't immune from drama, naturally, as Linford's increasingly panicked letters suggest. Lucinda's trapped in her spiritualist retreat where ladies' pocketbooks are gradually draining their contents, and Antigonous involves his committee in the mystery of the haunted antique commode. It's a haunting that baffles everyone, forcing them to resort to a few foolish and drastic measures to get to the bottom of things—even reconsider old prejudices against the very people who hold the key to ghostly mysteries.

Prue and Freddy's madcap ghostly adventures conclude in this final installment of the Ghosts and Tea series.

The book has its own gallery page over here, in which I share more tidbits about how this epistolary series came about as well as more character inspiration for Felicity Smedley, Jeremy Brody, and Osbourne Headley this time around. I really, really loved writing this series, and I'm glad I gave myself that challenge. It really helped my confidence, and I'm looking forward to using that narrative form again in my future books. 

The book is 50K words and is available in e-book format for 99 cents and in print for $9 USD. Those are my standard (and permanent) rates for every book now that I'm fully settled in the long novella camp. 

For everyone who stuck with the series since The Ghosts of St. Grimald Priory, thank you so much for your support. I really hope this final book proves itself to be a nice, tidy sendoff to characters who mean a lot to me now. Thank you again, and I hope you enjoy the book.

---

And a bonus update! I added the 2026 calendar banner to my Book News page, but as with the 2025 banner, there's no date on any of the books highlighted. And that's to allow for changes (especially unexpected ones) in my schedule, energy levels, health, motivation, etc. 

If we were to follow my calendar from this year -- which will likely be followed next year as well -- then we're looking at a March 1, July 1, and November 1 calendar cycle for 2026, too.

Nosferatu (2024) -- And on Christmas Day, Too!

Oh, God, I hope this is good. I haven't been impressed with recent adaptations of Dracula (don't even get me started on the Netflix "re-imagining", which I had to DNF after the first episode). No more talks about the Coppola version, either, however faithful it might be to the source (marginally, folks -- there ain't no love story in Stoker's novel)*. 

I'm really loving the visuals here, and I hope, hope, HOPE nothing gets romanticized. I don't know how many folks out there are devotees of vampire lore and would love to see revenants depicted as they were in folklore (reanimated corpses), but if the studio in this case hopes to appeal to a mass audience, a PG-13 rating will likely be in store for us. I don't know. I've grown leery when it comes to adaptations of Stoker's novel, but I still hold on to hope that a fantastic take on the book and on vampire lore is within my lifetime. 

So I'm hoping big time that this one will be the one to break me out of the (self-made, admittedly) dumps. It does look dark and gorgeous in all the right ways so far as an updated take on the classic German film. Fingers crossed. 

* phenomenal soundtrack, though!

From Charm to WTF

Funny how the mind works sometimes, drawing bizarre AF connections between disparate things and coming up with something so different from the inspiration source's purpose. And as a heads up, this is me looking two books ahead now that the finish line for my WiP is in visual range. 

So behold this video, which came out back in 1985. Love the song, love the video, thought it's such a charming yet melancholy take on time and adulthood. It was also one of my first ever 45s I  purchased as a sixteen-year-old.  

I think you can guess where I'm going with this.

The theme (as I interpret it) involves maturity and the loss of easy and careless joy -- which one experiences in childhood and adolescence -- as one grows older, and the weight of life bears down on them. And Belouis Some (Neville Keighly -- had to look up his last name) is something like the Pied Piper, drawing adults' younger selves out for a final dance. Most return to their older selves while a handful follow him into the sunset. Dancing, of course.

Lots of darker stuff being stirred in my head when I watched this video and reread the fairy tale, of course. Since I've done a semi-deep dive into the lore and the possible historical sources of the fairy tale, I've been introduced to some pretty somber events and fascinating theories, and I'm planning to run with what I can take from all those. 

That said, of all the sources and interpretations of the legend, Belouis Some's video planted the seed that to me is the most fruitful of everything I've seen and read. Ayup, pretty bizarre considering the vast difference in tone and subject between the video/song and the story I'm set to write, but it's too fun and crazy to ignore.

And in case visitors need a quick heads up, I'm referring to Compline, my next fairy tale gothification (as I call it), which will be written after The Perfect Rochester and which will come out next year (looking at the moment at July 1 of 2025). Fun stuff all around!

Down the Homestretch (a Ballroom Scene and Calendar Updates)

This video is worth a repost because reasons.

Actually, no. I just wrote the chapter that involves the ball scene meant to celebrate the union of the Bluebeard character and one of the heroes though the sequence is switched compared to the fairy tale. In the Perrault version, the ball is held to assuage the would-be bride's fear of Bluebeard and convince her to accept his proposal. In my book, the ball is a celebration after the union. 

I also had to use this video for visual references of the overall look I was aiming for (setting, dancers, and fashion). Alas, no swords are involved in the book, however hot as hell the male dancers look waving those things around.

I'm now down to under 20K words left to write, which is nail-biting, but since I'm also on the actual fairy tale part of the story, it's going to wind down a hell of a lot faster than I expected. I'm looking at sometime mid-July for the first draft to be done, and as far as edits and revisions go, there won't be much to do since I've been rereading and polishing whenever I open the file before diving into a new chapter. 

And even though the book will be finished and ready to go way before November 1 (the planned release date), any changes to the publication date will be no more than one month (October 1 if I decide to move the release forward). I've talked non-stop about this wave of energy and motivation I'm currently riding, and I've got every intention of taking full advantage of it. 

That means I'll be writing and completing every book following Voices in the Briars earlier and earlier until I likely have half a year at least between the final edits and the actual publication date, but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth and take a break (or at least not longer than a week). These surges of inspiration are very rare, and if I end up working on a book a year sooner than planned, so be it. I'll keep on keeping on until I run out of steam, which I hope won't be for a good long while.

I should be getting started on The Perfect Rochester in August then even though the release date isn't until March 1 of 2025. That's what I mean by my rambling nonsense above. And speaking of calendars and release dates, I'm still on a three-book-a-year turnaround -- at least through to next year. And while I've got The Bells of St. Mark's Eve, Doppelgänger, and The Shadow Groom currently earmarked for 2026, that calendar is still pretty open and may change if my energy levels flag.

Passages

One of my blogging heroes finally took his final bow and posted his farewell at his blog. I've read just about all of Don Travis's books from Dreamspinner Press, and I've enjoyed them. I refer to him as a blogging hero because he's stuck it out for years, blogging without fail once a week, demonstrating a dedication and discipline I honestly don't have when it comes to my online presence. I've bounced around so many different social media platforms, enjoying them for a short time before things got toxic beyond repair. Even my brief spell over at Mastodon -- really my favorite micro-blogging platform -- turned into more of a slog, especially when drama ended up permeating what were touted as safe spaces on the Fediverse. Where there's social media, there's drama. It's in the genes.

I pretty much mentioned in a couple of past posts and on my Book News page that my default setting has always been to sit back and listen in on conversations, engaging whenever I actually have something to say. I've never been one to share EVERYTHING, which is the requirement of social media use, and I hate having algorithms rub my nose into stuff I don't want to be a part of. I've also resurrected, deleted, and resurrected blogs over here over the years when things got too much elsewhere, and even then, I placed too much pressure on myself to "perform", which led to me ultimately giving up on blogging and deleting my personal space.

And it's because of that I look to other bloggers (especially writers) who, like Don Travis, kept the machine going on their own. They'd post like clockwork, and I wouldn't see them anywhere else online -- only on their blogs (which double as their sites). They got shit done, and they did it on their own terms. I wanted to grow up to be like them. 

But as you know, time catches up with us eventually, and even dedicated bloggers regardless of the size of their fan base will feel the weight of the years on their minds and their bodies. Heck, I keep joking about me not getting any younger when I talk about my writing schedule and publishing calendar and stuff, but nothing really grounds that home like loss. I've had my share recently though I'm not going to post about it here. Suffice it to say, I've reached that stage in life where mortality is slowly making itself felt in a variety of ways, and all we can do is adapt.

And what on earth does that have anything to do with a writer whom I've always admired and respected finally deciding to retire from the market? Well, I've come to expect consistent updates and new material from him given his track record, so seeing that farewell post was yet another reminder of how good things are bound to come to an end. Don Travis isn't the first writer to vanish from my radar, and he's not going to be the last. There have already been other writers I've known through the years who simply stopped writing and publishing, and I do hope they're doing well. 

I also shouldn't be depending too much on others for motivation, but one lasting influence he has on me is my final decision to settle down here -- on an ancient blogging platform so often derided by advocates of shinier, sleeker ones -- and blog as needed. Not to perform, no, but just to share what's gotten me so excited or happy in some way or another. Whether it's a book I'm working on or future books and what inspired them or entertainment that grabbed me -- it's all going to be in one safe space (for me), and I'm really glad I took the plunge and cut ties with all the popular places where the wild parties are happening. 

Anyway, I wish Don Travis well and publicly thank him for his books. And for showing me just how swimming against the currents by sticking to one place, however "archaic" and pretty much forgotten, can really be a great source of peace and calm online. He got shit done on his own terms, carving out his own modest corner in cyberspace, and I'm hoping to do the same with zero regrets.