Song of the Week

Takénobu, “Shady Grove” (Appalachian folk song)

Hello again. It’s Monday.

Not too much happening this week: there will be a new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door up on Patreon tomorrow. I’m also working on the audio drama script I wrote about last week. If you’ve got an extra three dollars a month and want to support what I do, now is an excellent time to sign up for Patreon. If you sign up before the end of the month, you’ll get the first episode of The Well Below the Valley for free, as you won’t be charged until April 1.

I should be back to something resembling a regular posting schedule next week.

Odin update:

Continue reading “Song of the Week” →

Announcement: The Well Below the Valley

The Well Below the Valley cover image: A dead tree stands on a field of short grass, against a blank gray sky. Text reads, "Space Whales Press presents The Well Below the Valley, an audio drama."

I am starting a new project!

(“But don’t you have enough projects?” Yes. Yes, I do. Let’s not talk about that.)

On a rainy morning in 1922, an archaeologist is found dead in a London hotel room. At first, it is assumed his death was a natural one, but questions soon arise:

Who has been following the professor around Oxford?

What happened on his last field expedition, which was cut short and declared a failure?

What became of his crew?

And how did he drown, miles from the harbor and with no other sources of water nearby?

In a world still living under the shadow of the Great War, four intrepid investigators must discover the secret Professor Ragnarsson was murdered to keep, and learn that the world is darker and more terrible than they could ever have imagined–and that they are the only things standing between the earth and its total destruction.

Introduction to The Well Below the Valley
Continue reading “Announcement: The Well Below the Valley” →

Journey to the Water Chapter X: The Abyss

Journey to the Water cover image: three evergreen trees stand on a hillside, shrouded in bluish fog. Subtitle reads: the sequel to Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea.

Table of Contents

I kicked my legs and held my arms out to steady myself. My body moved slowly, as if I swam through mud instead of the water I saw all around me, as if I swam in a dream. Light filtered down from above and fell upon the gate of bone and upon the fins of a mighty whale that swam in the depths below. 

A human hand, the same gray-blue as the whale’s fins and as long from wrist to fingertips as I was tall, emerged from the darkness. An arm, encrusted in barnacles and dappled in white and gray, followed. The figure unfurled its great length, and I found myself face to face with a giantess, her upper body bare and mottled with coral, and her waist tapering down to the tail of a mighty whale. Her hair was long sea-grass, and colorful fish darted between the fronds. Her face, angular and sharp-toothed, held a whale’s huge dark eyes. She studied me with one, and I saw myself reflected in it, tiny and distorted. Unhurried, she turned her head to fix me with the other. 

I could not move. Distantly, I was aware of my body breathing, though I remained submerged in the otherworldly sea. A terrible deep note sounded through the water, shaking the bones of the gate and stilling my heart for a terrifying moment. There was a question in that note, and in the wide-set eyes of the giant. At last, I understood: I swam before Nashurru, goddess of the deep and the places between, and she wanted to know why I had come to her. 

Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter X: The Abyss” →

Song of the Week

Afro-Celt Sound System, “Release”

It’s Monday again. I hope you are safe and warm, wherever you are.

I don’t have a new chapter for you this week, but the latest chapter of Journey to the Water (which was released on Patreon last week) will be up here on Wednesday. If you haven’t read the latest chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door, you can find it here.

I’ll be giving New Moon Door chapters names to make them a little easier to navigate, so keep an eye out for that. I should also be able to announce a new, Patreon-exclusive project later this week! Regular chapters should resume next week.

Odin update:

Continue reading “Song of the Week” →

The Book of the New Moon Door, Part Two: Chapter One

Arden Geray

The Book of the New Moon Door cover image: A book with yellowing, wrinkled pages lies open on an old wooden desk, with a sprig of lavender lying in the center.

Table of Contents

Half an hour later, the constables pull Isabel out of the ruins of Arden Geray’s house. They take Berend and the professor away—to a hospital, she hopes, but her ears still ring and she can’t make out what they’re saying. Beside her, the earth churns and settles as the dead writhe in mindless rage. She can do nothing to quiet them. 

The constables don’t notice the subterranean movement in the dark. They place Isabel in an uncovered carriage to take her back to the chapel on the blue field. Geray’s ghost follows. 

Continue reading “The Book of the New Moon Door, Part Two: Chapter One” →

New Patreon Post/Journey to the Water Chapter X

The vision showed me a street of marble the color of fresh snow. For all its beauty, it was a dead city, and Khalim was not there.

Journey to the Water Chapter X: The Abyss

The latest chapter is now available on Patreon!

Song of the Week

Etta James, “I’d Rather Go Blind”

Hello again. It’s Monday.

The latest chapter of Journey to the Water will be up on Patreon tomorrow (Tuesday), and the new chapter of The Book of the New Moon Door will be up here on the blog on Wednesday.

Sad news below the cut:

Continue reading “Song of the Week” →

Not the post about reviews that I was intending to write

I had originally planned something much longer and cleverer than this, but things are Bad on all scales from the personal to the global, so this is what I’ve got.

Okay. Reviews. By now, you’ve probably gotten your copy of Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea and maybe have had a chance to read it (no judgment; I either read books in a single day or over the course of several months, so I get how it is). I would love it if you would write a brief, honest review on the platform that suits you best.

Lots of people will tell you that leaving a review on a book helps boost it in the Amazon algorithm. I don’t know if that’s true; it seems like sales and clicks are the things that make the algorithms happy, but they’re inscrutable and threatening, so who knows. What reviews do is help readers who would like the book find it, and keep readers who wouldn’t like it from wasting their time and money. This is true whether the review rates the book one or five stars. I’ve read plenty of one-star reviews that make me want to read the book in question, because my taste is evidently the opposite of the reviewer’s.

Reviews are not for authors. The book is already published; if there’s a typographical error or misplaced comma on page 37, for instance, the author can’t go back and change it. They also can’t change major plot details or unsatisfying endings. You can give constructive criticism if you like, but the author can’t put it to use until the next book (or several books in the future, depending on when the review is published). Reviews are for helping readers to determine whether a book is a good investment of their time and money. What that looks like is entirely up to the individual reader.

There has been a lot of drama in the independent publishing world surrounding reviews, ranging from authors throwing social media tantrums to stalking reviewers and turning up at their homes to harass them. Given this history, I want you to feel safe and free of judgment if you choose to leave a review for my book. I can’t promise that I will never read your review, but I give you my word that I will never try to figure out who you are, doxx you, turn up at your house uninvited (some of you are my real-life friends, so I will turn up at your house eventually, but only for normal things), argue with your review on any platform, or even complain about it on social media. I’ve written this promise here on the Internet, where everything lasts forever, so you can hold me to it.

You also don’t owe me a review. All you owe me, if you choose to read my work, is to acquire it legally (purchasing it/getting it secondhand from a shop or a friend/borrowing from a library/reading it for free here on the website). I’d love it if you wrote a review–again, it helps new readers find my work–but you’ve got your own stuff going on. If you have the time and inclination, great. If not, I still appreciate you reading. You’re what makes this all worth it.

That’s my post about reviews. I’ll be back on Monday with a new Song of the Week. In the meantime, let’s voice our opposition to war, protect trans kids, and tell our pets we love them.

Journey to the Water Chapter IX: The Temple Under the Mountain

Journey to the Water cover image: three evergreen trees stand on a hillside, shrouded in bluish fog. Subtitle reads: the sequel to Beyond the Frost-Cold Sea.

Table of Contents

Here is the tale that the grandmothers told me, as well as I can recall it. 

The island was called Mau, and the fairest maiden upon it was named Noa. When she was a girl, and her three small siblings were but infants, their parents were both lost at sea in a terrible storm. From this storm came Soroena, an eel as large as the mountain of Ewandar. In the springtime, a single bright blue star rises above the horizon at sunset, and a serpentine trail of white stars follows it; this is the eel approaching the island, demanding a sacrifice as it did every third year at the end of the rainy season. 

“Is this eel like the great lind-worm of the North,” I asked, “scaled and finned, with teeth like sabers?”

“Hush,” Luana said. 

The next constellation to clear the horizon was a human figure, arms spread wide. This was Noa, chained to a volcanic rock a short distance from the shore of her island. She had grown to womanhood caring for her siblings, while others fed the slow but inexorable appetite of the eel, but this time she was not so fortunate. At sunset, her fellow islanders secured her to the sacrificial stone, and there she would wait. Soroena would arrive at midnight, and devour her whole, leaving only her hands and feet in the iron shackles—and, more importantly, leaving the waters surrounding the island safe for another three years. 

Continue reading “Journey to the Water Chapter IX: The Temple Under the Mountain” →

New Patreon Post/The Book of the New Moon Door, Part Two!

The constables don’t notice the subterranean movement in the dark. They place Isabel in an uncovered carriage to take her back to the chapel on the blue field. Geray’s ghost follows.

The Book of the New Moon Door, Part Two: Chapter One

The Book of the New Moon Door is back! This new chapter is available on Patreon. If you’re not a subscriber, don’t worry, you’ll be able to read this chapter here on the blog next week.

If you’d like to read spoilers before all your friends, you can become a subscriber for only $3 a month. If not, no worries. I appreciate you reading either way!