Tomorrow and Monday, Small Town Witch is available on Amazon as a free Kindle download! If you’ve been waiting to check out the story, now is your chance!
I’ve talked about the characters, how I wrote the story, and even shared a deleted scene from the novel. But what else is there to learn about this story? These are the top five secrets behind Small Town Witch. (more…)
From Small Town Witch, chapter 4: It takes a certain amount of concentration to fly on a broomstick, especially because I live in an area known for very large trees. I…
In all the excitement for Small Town Witch tomorrow, I haven't stopped work on my current work in progress. In fact, this month, I participated in Camp NaNoWriMo with their new flexible…
From my upcoming novel, Small Town Witch, Chapter 5, "The Faeriekin Party": I pointed to a pond filled with water lilies and floating candles. “That’s the dance floor.” Heather stared in…
The following are pictures that I took on a camping trip to Big Trees of Calaveras County Park in August 2011. This trip was a large part of my inspiration…
If you have looked at my new website for Small Town Witch, you may have already read the character sheets I posted about the main characters. These include a lot of interesting facts about the characters to help you familiarize yourself with them. Reading them is not necessary for understanding the story, but they may add to the experience.They contain some of the information that I keep for myself to remind me about the characters.
Well, the things that I included on the website were deliberate–and so were the things that I left off. For example, you may notice that I included a “race” designation for all of the characters (referring to which type of magikin they are) but no “ethnic” details. This was left off because it’s not important to the characters or the story, for the most part. The story is not about ethnic tensions or racism in the sense that humans are judged for their skin color. (There is tension between humans and magikin, so those details are explicit.) From the names of many characters, ethnic diversity even in the small rural town can be implied. As far as I am concerned, they’re Californian.
In the same vein, I have not noted any characters’ sexual orientation. This is a little more relevant to the story because sexual orientation is discussed a little bit. But I absolutely did not want to make this an important point in my characters. I want to have diversity in my stories, because there is diversity in the people that I know, but I do not want them to be defined by their sexuality. This is not a LGBTQ story or a time to preach about LGBTQ issues. This is a story that happens to have some non-straight characters. (more…)
Korinna was overwhelmed by the number of fields in the surrounding area, full of drilling soldiers and grazing marewings. After wandering around on her own and fearing that she would…
This week, one thing that I researched was the Venus flytrap, one of the more popular types of carnivorous plants. What is so fascinating about them? Well, for me, it's how unique…
So Varranor found himself dressed in smothering ceremonial robes in the midst of a procession through the winding streets of Kyratia. He kept one hand on Korinna’s arm, just under…
As a writer, my ideas can come from anywhere. Sometimes it can be spontaneous, like a suggestion from a friend, a flash of insight, or a memory from the past. But
ideas can also come from research, where I actively go and learn more about the world in order to find new and interesting things that I can incorporate into my stories. Each Wednesday, I’ll highlight a topic of research or something cool that I found which helped inspire me.
This idea came from listening to classical radio. I don’t remember the name of the piece that was being introduced, but the DJ was talking about the historical context of something that she
was about to play when she mentioned the idea of choreomania: the compulsion to dance. Although I was doing something else at the time, the name stuck with me, and when I sat down at my computer later that afternoon, I knew that I had to learn more.