'Voices in the Briars': Done!

As threatened, my "Bluebeard" retelling is now finished in first draft form. Oof! Where do I begin with this? Firstly, it's vampire fiction, with the vampires being more of the classic Dracula type in the sense of the count being that archetypal suave European aristo while surrounding himself with the more mindless, ghoulish incarnations of the undead (the "lesser revenants" being more along my preferences for vampire fiction). 

The story straddles folktale and our more modern take on vampire lore, and I made sure to work significant elements of the fairy tale into the plot since the story is my original vision in spite of the Perrault's influence. The key is there. The mysterious locked rooms. The blood on the key. The ball to reassure the bride (in this case, the ball is there to celebrate the groom). The "business" that takes the count away, allowing the groom to explore where he shouldn't. The discoveries of the count's secret and of the groom's movements. The final confrontation.

Above all, the idea of obedience / subservience, which is a theme of Perrault's fairy tale, is also worked in more extensively and even starts early.

Finally, there's a nod to the Estonian variant in that the friendship between Dávid and Lóránt plays a key role in the plot. There's also a hat tip to the legend of the Blood Countess with the setting being in 19th century Hungary and of the count being fed the blood of innocents (of which he has a steady supply). 

So, yeah -- done! I expect edits and revisions to be lighter than usual since I've been doing quick edits and revisions whenever I open my story file and reread the last chapter I wrote (sometimes last two chapters). And I'm grateful for a more chill polishing stage before I dive into the next book because there's no rest for the wicked. 

And I always celebrate with a music video. Before I'd post a disco video for campy fun, but I figured I'll mix things up a bit and share what I believe is the greatest intro theme of any TV series in human history. Yeah, the gauntlet's thrown because BEHOLD THE GROOVY AND WEEP!

They don't make intro music like this anymore. I've always loved this theme. Also after a few days' worth of excessive heat here, we now have the infamous fog back, and I'm looking out the window right now, adoring the gray scene and the cold that's blowing through my partially open window. I love it. 

Or, to be more specific, I love Karl. Why, yes, our Bay Area fog is nicknamed Karl the Fog, and I'm here for it.

Bless Long Weekends

Oh, my lord, I didn't expect this. Firstly we were given today off when it wasn't in our work calendar until now. I guess it helped that we're also so far ahead in our workload that we can afford to chill for a four-day weekend. Booyah to that!

Secondly, with the Bay Area going through a heat wave (as in heat advisory levels all the way), I've confined myself indoors for two days in a row. Thursday and Friday being normal work days for me, I was at a loose end yesterday even after doing the laundry (a normal Thursday chore). Sooooooo...

I dug out the file and wrote another chapter even after completing the required single chapter earlier on, and I ended up getting two chapters done, a shocker of an event that was repeated today, too. I originally had next weekend pegged for the completion of Voices in the Briars in its initial draft form, but it's going to happen this weekend instead because of the unexpected holiday break. 

I only have two chapters left to do, which means I'll be able to tackle each on Saturday and Sunday. 

So yay!

That said, I'm not changing the release date from Nov. 1, however tempting it might be to do just that given this early completion. I'll just keep going with whatever's next on my plate once the edits and revisions are done.

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!