Archive for My Books

My Books, Life

The Abandoned Garden

I may have vastly underestimated what a garden that had been abandoned for years would be like when I wrote Tea and Empathy. I’m facing the same thing, and it’s absolutely crazy.

From what I understand, the person who used to live in this house had done a lot of work on the yard, planting a lot of trees and flowers. Then he had some kind of mental health issues and stopped maintaining the house and yard, becoming a hoarder, so the house and yard were full of junk. Then he abandoned the house entirely. A few years later, the people I bought it from bought it, cleared out the junk and restored and remodeled the house. They took down some trees that were too close to the house and must have cut down everything in the lawn because it was just about bare when I looked at the place, with only a few daffodils coming up around the shrubs and trees that were left.

A winter-bare back yard, up a steeply sloping hill. There is some grass barely growing, and a lot of bare trees.
The yard the day I looked at the house and decided to buy it.

I first saw the house in late March, then started moving in early April. And then the lawn exploded. So much stuff sprang up. A lot of it was weeds, but a lot of it was good plants, and the trick has been telling the difference. I figure that any of the good stuff that’s survived on its own all this time is a good plant to keep around because it means I won’t have to baby it. I’ve tried using the identification feature on my phone, with mixed results. There are some things I know it’s right about, some things I know it’s wrong about, and different photos of the same plant will be identified as different things. Then there are things I thought it was wrong about that it turns out to be right about.

There are masses of daylilies all over the front, side, and back yard, in huge clumps. I understand they need to be divided and spread out more at the end of the growing season. These have been on their own for a long time and seem to be doing okay, so I don’t know if I’ll bother doing anything to them.

A yard that's a sea of green, full of trees and plants. There are a few pops of color, like clumps of orange daylilies.
The yard this morning. It’s a bit overwhelming.

There are hostas everywhere, a number of varieties, up under trees and in flowerbeds. There’s a big lilac bush, a couple of dogwood trees of a variety that keeps blooms for a long time, and a huge redbud tree. There’s a mass of spirea that the bees and butterflies are loving. There’s a bunch of plants that may be milkweed. Whatever it is, the bees and butterflies are all over it. I’m generally keeping anything the bees and butterflies like.

One thing the phone may have been right about, after all, is this ugly, thorny thing I was sure was a weed but that the phone said was raspberry plants. I found some back against the fence that may not have been cut down that are producing berries. I met someone who knew the man who used to live here, and she said he did grow raspberries. But they’ve spread. They’re all over both the front and back yards. I’d pondered leaving them alone until the fall and then transplanting them to a better place, but there’s a whole thicket farther up the hill, and that should be enough raspberries. I don’t want them all over the yard because they’re thorny and ugly. And, to be honest, I’m not a huge fan of raspberries. They have gritty little seeds and not a lot of flavor (though that may be because I’ve only had supermarket raspberries. I don’t know what these will be like). I doubt I’ll get enough for jam, but we’ll see.

There are some plants that I know are invasive. They’re the first things local gardeners warn me about. One is a plant called garlic mustard, and it’s all over the yard. Pulling it up is a massive undertaking. I got the plants from last year that were going to seed, and now I have to get this year’s plants before they can go to seed. The trick is that they look similar to other plants that are growing in the yard, so I have to be careful what I pull, and there’s so much of it that it leaves the ground bare when I dig them all up. I’m throwing wildflower seeds into the bare spots.

Then there’s something called tree of heaven, which is apparently very invasive, very aggressive, and even spreads a substance that’s toxic to other plants, plus it’s the host plant for the spotted lanternfly, another invasive species that’s a threat to the local grape growers at the wineries. There must have been a big one growing here that got cut down because another was trying to grow from the stump. I normally try to avoid much use of chemicals in gardening, but this is one where you cut it down and then poison the heck out of it. I’ve been cutting these down and pulling up seedlings when I find them.

I’ve got a lot of something that’s either catalpa or an invasive called princess tree. Either way, they’re very fast-growing because there was nothing there in late March and now they’re taller than I am. I’m killing the ones close to the house because I don’t want trees right against the house.

The previous owner didn’t leave any herbs that I’ve found. The raspberries seem to be the only edible plants (well, supposedly you can cook and eat the garlic mustard, but I’m not going to try, and there are some wild strawberries, but apparently they’re not edible). So that’s different from Elwyn’s garden.

Unfortunately for me, the garden isn’t at all related to my work and earns me no money, unlike Elwyn, so I’m fitting in that work around my writing work. I’m spending about an hour a day pulling weeds and cutting things back. Right now, I’m just trying to keep it from being an eyesore. I may have to wait until next spring to actually plan what I want to do with the lot. I’m hoping to keep it mostly natural with ground cover and flowers instead of grass. And preferably fewer weeds.

My Books, Life

Life Meets Art Again

I’ve mentioned before that my life seems to be reflecting my books. After creating my idealized small town in my mystery series, I ended up moving to a town that has a lot in common with the one I created. After writing about a woman stumbling into a hidden village, I moved to a town tucked into a valley.

The trend has continued. I wrote about Elwyn moving into an abandoned cottage with an overgrown abandoned garden. Well, the house I bought (which is somewhat cottage-like) had been abandoned for years before the person I bought it from bought it at auction and restored it. The yard had been very carefully landscaped by the former resident, but it’s been allowed to run wild, so I’m having to gradually dig out all the weeds to find the good plants. I don’t think I wrote nearly enough work to get the garden back under control in the books. In my case, it mostly seems to be flowering plants and trees, not herbs. I haven’t run across any herbs. I have one tree that might be a fruit tree, but I’m not sure, and there are some plants my phone’s photo identification software tells me are raspberries, but I’m really doubtful.

And then there’s the fact that I seem to have moved next door to one of my characters. I’ve been re-reading a book I’ve been working on off and on for years, preparing to do another round of revisions. And then I realized that one of the secondary characters who appears later in the book, a character I created when I still lived in Texas, has the same rather unusual name as my next-door neighbor for the house I just moved into. Then the other evening when I ran into this neighbor and was chatting, I realized that the neighbor actually looks a lot like I imagine this character to look. She even has a similar personality. It’s eerie. I’m going to have to rename the character. The description on its own is common enough that I don’t think anyone would read the book and think I was writing about my neighbor (she’s well-known in town), but with the name, it would make it a bit creepy.

With the town, it’s clear in my writing that this was something I was looking for, even if it was unconscious at the time, and I found what I wanted. I had no idea how crazy the yard was going to be because the person who restored the house had cut everything back, and it was late winter when I looked at the house. The yard didn’t explode until after I moved in. But moving next door to a character I wrote years ago, with the same name, is a little unsettling. Now I’m going to have to try not to think about the character when I see my neighbor. Changing the name should help.

My Books

20 Years of Enchanted, Inc.

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of the first Enchanted, Inc. book. I think yesterday is actually the anniversary of the first time I saw it in a bookstore. The big books may have strict “don’t open this box until this date” policies, but with books like mine, no one cares when it goes on the shelf. I remember stopping by a bookstore on the Sunday before the book’s Tuesday release date and being surprised to find it there on the New Releases table at a Borders (yes, the book is so old that it was sold at Borders).

But then when I went around to area bookstores on the actual release date, when it was supposed to be on shelves, it wasn’t at half the stores I went to. I don’t know if there was a delay in unboxing the books and getting them on the shelves, since the Monday of that week was a holiday, or if they just didn’t plan to stock the book at all in those stores. It was a huge emotional roller coaster as I drove around to bookstores. When I found it in a store, I’d chat with the staff and sign their copies and leave the store feeling like a famous author. When I didn’t, I’d slink out, hoping no one noticed me. It tells you something about how much turnover my wardrobe gets that I still have the top I bought for those release day visits hanging in my closet. Hey, it was cute, and it’s fairly classic, so I don’t think it’s out of style. If it ever gets warm here this summer, I’ll have to wear it.

I guess because it was shelved early in some places, I was already getting e-mail from readers who wanted more books, which was exciting. I was also getting “I heard about this book but I can’t find it in stores” e-mails, which was encouraging that people wanted it, but frustrating that people who wanted it couldn’t find it, and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I just had to tell people to ask for it, and the stores could order it (and maybe if people were asking for it, they might get copies to put on the shelf).

The book wasn’t considered a particular success. It got great reviews and had really good sell-through, but it wasn’t a bestseller. Still, it just keeps plugging along and is still in print all these years later, when some of the books the publisher actually pushed at that time have gone out of print. They did do a little more promo with the next book and they bought two more books (the first contract was for two books), so it did well enough to get that. The book launched that phase of my career and brought me a lot of recognition. The book has been published around the world. I have translations in Dutch, German, Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese, and Indonesian (or some language from that area — not sure exactly). It’s been optioned for film by Universal Studios and had a screenplay written by the same writer who wrote I, Tonya and Hope Floats, but the movie never got made and the option lapsed. There was a team including a writer who worked on Angel as showrunner trying to get networks interested in a series, with no bites. More recently, it was optioned by Disney+ for a streaming series, but they let the option lapse. Really, my whole experience with this book has been a roller coaster, with lots of exciting highs followed by letdowns, but it just keeps plugging as more people continue to discover that universe and those characters.

Thanks to all who’ve been with me along the way, whether you found these books (and me) back in 2005 and have been following my work since then or whether you just found me recently. It’s the readers who keep me writing (literally, because if people weren’t buying books, I’d have to quit writing and get a real job).

I wonder what the next twenty years will bring.

My Books

New Book Release

Clouds & Curses book cover. A bluish background with ornate designsI made an executive decision yesterday and decided to just launch Clouds & Curses, Tales of Rydding Village book 3, instead of trying to do a fancy preorder campaign. I had all these ideas of what I could do, but with everything else that’s going on, I had a feeling none of it would get done, so I might as well get the book out into the world. People could discover and buy it, and I could promote it when I got a chance. If I delayed so I could set up pre-orders and do a big launch, there was a real chance that I might not get around to promoting while I move to and set up the new house, but the book wouldn’t be available to sell. This way, I can get it out there before things get crazy.

The seller agreed to the repairs I asked for based on the inspection (mostly things that came from the updates they made to the house, not things that come with an 80-year-old house), so things are moving ahead. I could be in possession of the house as early as next weekend, depending on when they get things fixed and when they set a closing date. That means I need to start packing. I saved the good boxes from the last move, and since the new house is so close (a 5-minute drive, 20-minute walk), I’m going to just make multiple trips — fill the boxes, load up my car, drive over, unload boxes, bring them back, repeat. I have a room that won’t have any furniture going in it yet (it’s going to be an exercise/craft/storage room that can double as a guest room with an inflatable bed) where I can stash stuff to get it out of the way for when movers bring in the furniture.

I’m also going to have to make decisions about blinds/curtains and get a washer and dryer, since those don’t come with the house.

But back to the book … this is the one that I’ve said was in part a mash-up of situations from Persuasion, Sense & Sensibility, Hope Floats, and a dash of Wuthering Heights. That’s the new romantic plot. We also continue with our other characters and delve deeper into the mystery of what’s going on in the village. It’s longer than the other books in this series have been.

I’m planning more books, but I don’t know when I’ll get to writing the next one. I have research to do, as well as plotting (I’ve started doing character development), and life is going to be crazy for probably a month or two as I upend my life for the second time in a year, and then I’ll have a lot of work to do to get settled in. It’ll be just the right time to be working on landscaping and maybe planting a garden. I’m having a really hard time focusing right now.

The book is currently (as of the time I’m posting this) available at Amazon (e-book and paperback) and Apple, and as I get more links I’m adding them to the book’s page, so keep an eye on that to find it at the place you like to get your books.

My Books

In the Cold

I somehow lucked out and managed to move north and into the mountains in time for the coldest winter in fifteen years. The temperatures have been below average for almost the entire month. There’s been snow on the ground for nearly three weeks. This week it was below freezing all week, with temperatures in the single digits overnight.

It hasn’t been too bad, aside from the fact that I live in a basement where the cold comes up through the floor. I’ve dealt with that by covering as much of the floor as possible. I don’t want to buy carpets for a place that’s meant to be only temporary, so I’ve used things like exercise mats, beach towels, and the big moving blanket my mover left with me. The walls are more than a foot thick, and they’ve put new windows outside the original wood-framed windows, so the place is pretty well insulated. The weak spot is the back door, which is the original 100-year-old door with a window in it. I resorted to “redneck weatherproofing” there, stuffing plastic bags into the gaps around the door and stacking the cushions from the patio furniture against the door to block the drafts, as well as putting a second layer of curtains over the window. That seems to have worked pretty well.

I’ve spent the week bundled up in warm clothes under an electric blanket, so I was pretty comfortable. There was also baking (since the oven helps warm the house while producing something to eat). I did not try to venture out because I don’t have the clothes for this. My coats and sweaters are fine, but I need to get better pants or find a good base layer. I got some snow boots last week that should help keep my feet warm, but I haven’t tested them yet. I’d rather endure this for a few weeks than have 105-degree temperatures for a month and around 100 for another couple of months.

Much of the snow is gone from my front yard, aside from the places where it got piled up by the snow plow, but the back yard is still totally covered in snow. It looks like a different world depending on which window I look out. I got the fun experience of shoveling snow last week. It took a lot of effort to dig my car out enough to move it from behind the wall of snow left by the plow.

But it’s going above freezing this weekend, and I’m hoping to get outside a bit more. I like cool weather, I just am not crazy about freezing weather. We had a reasonably warm day last Friday, and I went out to the Frontier Culture museum to go walking. There was snow on the ground, but the paths were clear. It was fun walking around looking at the snow without being too cold.

The other thing I did this week was update my website. I’ve added some photo galleries to the pages for the Rydding Village books, with some visuals of my inspiration for the village and some looks at the crafts mentioned in the books. I got to see a wood-fired brick bread oven in action, and I put the photos on my site. Maybe that will help you visualize the things happening in the books.

Tea and Empathy

Bread and Burglary

My Books, writing

Starting the Next Book

I started writing Rydding Village #3 this week (title remains to be determined). I did the character development for the new characters last week and started plotting, then got a bit more into plotting this week, but then I decided that I needed to really “meet” the main characters for this book before I made more plot decisions, so then I started writing the first scene. I don’t know if it will remain the first scene or if this scene will even remain in the book, but it’s my current starting point.

The main couple in this book is made up of a character who appeared briefly in the second book and a character who has been mentioned but who has not appeared. At the moment, I know a lot more of their backstories than I know about what’s going to happen in the book. I’ve worked out a whole story that happens long before the book, which made me feel like I knew more about this story than I really did, so when I set out to outline this plot, I realized how vague it was. Maybe I’ll write that story and use it as a newsletter subscriber bonus at some point, but for now it’s mostly for my own benefit to explain why things are the way they are now.

This book is also going to start getting into the mystery of what’s going on with the village, why it’s abandoned and why it seems to be a magic magnet.

I don’t have a publication date planned yet. I’m a bit behind schedule because I always get overly optimistic about what I can get done. The plotting/planning took longer than I expected. As I said, I thought I had the whole book in my head, but when I started actually outlining, I realized that what I had was all backstory, not story. That often happens with my “shiny new ideas,” but this time it’s a book I need to write, not a distraction. I hope it means these characters will feel really vivid and come to life for me as I write them.

Next week is when the writing will begin in earnest and I start with things like target word counts.

My Books, TV

Returning to The Office

I recently stumbled, quite belatedly, onto The Office Ladies podcast, in which Jenna Fischer and Angela Kinsey (Pam and Angela on The Office), who became best friends during the process of making the series, do a rewatch and dish on the behind-the-scenes info about the making of each episode. I was aware that this existed, but I’m not really a podcast person. Then the episodes that are on YouTube showed up as “recommended” for me, and it turns out that they’re perfect for listening while I do Sudoku, crossword puzzles or online jigsaw puzzles. And that got me started rewatching the series to catch the things they mention. I did a partial rewatch a few years ago but got sidetracked before I finished it. Now I’ve been going back and looking for the things they point out in the podcast.

I actually watched this series in the first place because when they showed Pam in one of the promos, I immediately said, “That’s Katie!” and had to watch to see who this character was. The series premiered a couple of months before the first Enchanted, Inc. book was published, so it had already been entirely written and edited and the review copies had even been printed. That means The Office in no way influenced my series. But it was like seeing my own character that I’d already written come to life.

Her hair in the first few seasons is different than I see Katie. I think Katie looks more like Pam did in later seasons when she didn’t have the long, curly hair (which is ironic, given that I have long, curly hair), and Katie’s probably a bit spunkier than first season Pam. But Pam otherwise fit my description of her being like a girl next door, hair that wasn’t quite blond and wasn’t quite brown, eyes somewhere between green and blue, the kind of person whose description could apply to half the population. She even dresses a lot like I imagined Katie dressing. I guess first season Pam was more like Katie before she gets the job offer, when she’s in her original job at the beginning of the book, before she gains a bit more confidence and gumption from realizing that she has something special about her.

Then there was the office setting. I’d tried to do more of a workplace comedy at first, something a lot like The Office, but with magic — except there was no US The Office at the time, and I didn’t see the British version until later, so I didn’t have a good frame of reference. That idea mostly went by the wayside as the magical plots took over and the characters came to life. Before I decided that Merlin would be the boss and he’d actually be a good boss, I had the idea of the boss being someone more like Michael, mostly because I have had that boss (he even had the same first name). He wasn’t quite that stupid, but he was really big on the whole “having fun” thing and liked to have parties, only ours were usually after work, which forced us to stay late at the office or go to work-related events on weekends. He once came up with this whole incentive program where you set your goals for the week, and if you hit them, you got to leave early on Fridays, but then he’d plan either mandatory meetings or office parties for Friday afternoons, so you couldn’t actually leave. His whole life was the office, and he tried to make it that way for the staff.

I ended up not using that in the book. The only thing that remained from that original character was the bit about Merlin reading all the fad management books, though I ended up using that to show how he thought they were kind of dumb instead of constantly adjusting course based on which book the boss had just read. That came from a different job where the upper management of the company seemed to go through a different management trend every year. When I moved, I finally got rid of some of the stuff they handed out for each year’s theme.

Now I’m so far removed from the working world that I can look at this series almost as a fantasy show set in a strange, unfamiliar realm. It’s funny to look at it now and remember that feeling of deja vu as I remembered my former boss but also saw one of my characters come to life. It’s been about 20 years since they filmed the pilot episode, so Jenna Fischer has aged out of the role of Katie, but that was definitely the type I had in mind as I wrote.

My Books

Release Day!

Bread and Burglary book coverIt’s a release day birthday for me. Bread and Burglary goes on sale today as an e-book. The paperback should be on sale at Amazon tomorrow (August 8), and it may take a little time to get picked up by other systems. Amazon changed their way of handling paperbacks since my last book, so my usual timing for setting up the paperback so it would come out at the same time as the e-book turned out to be off. I don’t currently have any plans for audio. That’s beyond my budget right now, so the series needs to either sell well enough for me to make the kind of money I’d need to invest in audio and show that it would be profitable in audio, or well enough for Audible to see it as a good bet and buy the audio rights.

I don’t have huge plans for my birthday, other than going out to buy some cake. I’d thought about having a big day out and playing tourist at one of the big historical sites nearby, but there’s a chance of storms this afternoon (both the outer bands of Debby and a front coming in), and I don’t want to be driving through the mountains in a thunderstorm, so I’m sticking closer to home. I’ll see what strikes my fancy once I leave the house. A book I put on hold at the library is in, so if it’s looking like a rainy afternoon, I may pick up a takeout lunch and spend the afternoon curled up with a book. The perfect birthday!

Enjoy the new book. In the coming weeks, I’ll post some behind the scenes stuff and maybe a recipe.

My Books

Rydding Village Book 2

Bread and Burglary book coverAfter a bit of a delay caused by my move across the country, followed by another delay due to my procrastination about getting a book cover made, I’m pleased to announce that Bread and Burglary, book two in the Tales of Rydding Village series, will be published August 7, and the e-book is currently available for preorder. There will be a paperback on release day, but they don’t let you preorder those.

This book follows up on Tea and Empathy, continuing with the development of what’s going on with Elwyn and Bryn from that book, but also focusing on Lucina the baker. We find out why she has so much trouble sleeping, and finding out that the guard who stayed to become the new apprentice smith is from the homeland she had to flee doesn’t help matters. Things get even worse when items begin disappearing from people’s homes, and of course the newcomer is the first suspect. Lucina worries they’ll start to wonder about her, too, if he’s the thief, so the best thing she can do is try to clear his name. Meanwhile, he’s homesick and excited to meet someone from his homeland.

It’s my usual mix of mystery, magic, and a hint of romance. And this one will make you hungry because there’s a lot of baking. I did a fair amount of baking while I was plotting it and writing the first draft. I wrote the first draft before the move, then started revising it while I was waiting for my furniture to be delivered to my new home. Without Internet or a television, I didn’t have a lot else to do, so I spent a whole day reading the draft and making revision notes.

I already have the next book planned and partially outlined, so I hope to be able to get that one out before the end of the year.

I set August 7 as the release date because that’s my birthday. I figured I’d be sure to remember it, and it gives me something else to celebrate. I don’t know what I’ll do for my birthday, since I don’t know a lot of people here and it seems like most of the places downtown are closed on Wednesdays. Celebrating a book release helps make the day special, no matter what else I do, but I’m pretty sure cake will be involved. Buying the new book would make a great birthday gift for me. I have dreams of making it at least onto the top ten list of one of the Amazon categories.

My Books

Twenty Years Ago

Enchanted, Inc. book cover, showing cartoon fairy and frog prince in business attireOn Monday (July 22 if you’re reading the archives), it will have been twenty years since I got the book deal to have the first two Enchanted, Inc. books published.

I wrote the first book in the fall of 2003, got an agent in early 2004, then spent some time making revisions that my agent suggested. The book went out on submission to editors in late May. I’d been published before and was used to dealing with publishers, but I still was rather naively optimistic. I was so sure that the idea was clever and perfect for the market, so I had high hopes of the book being eagerly snatched up by publishers.

That wasn’t quite the case. Rejections began trickling in. By the time July rolled around, I was starting to get nervous. There were some positive signs, though. A number of editors loved it and had passed it on to the next level for consideration.

Then in mid July, one publisher announced the intention to make an offer on it. Since it was still with several other publishers, that triggered an auction. That’s when all the editors who are interested in a book have to make offers by a certain time, and then there’s negotiation as the agent lets all the interested parties know what’s on the table. A big part of it is money, but other things can also come into play, like whether they’re willing to go for a multi-book deal, the payment schedule on the advance, what promotion will be involved, and publication date. You might be willing to take a lower advance to get the book published faster, for instance. There might be conference calls with the editors to discuss their vision and plans for the book so the author can figure out which editor they want to deal with.

The auction was originally set for July 21, but there was a schedule conflict, so it was moved to July 22. As soon as the auction was announced, more rejections rolled in as publishers declined to participate. I was beginning to wonder what would happen if you had an auction but nobody came. At least I still had that initial publisher, right? Except they couldn’t make an offer because the executive who needed to sign off on it was out of touch. But then an offer came in from Ballantine Books. My agent didn’t think the other publisher could match it, so we took that offer. I’d sold my book in a two-book deal, so it was guaranteed a sequel.

There have been times when I’ve wondered if maybe we should have waited on that other publisher. They were going to publish it as fantasy, while Ballantine was publishing it on the mainstream side of the house as chick lit. The chick lit market tanked not long after the second book was published (but fortunately after I got another two-book deal for books three and four), but the urban fantasy market was just taking off.

I celebrated the book sale by buying a pair of shoes, the shoes now known as the Infamous Red Stilettos. I’d spotted them when shopping with a friend around the time I landed an agent, and I was drawn to them about the same way Katie was in Once Upon Stilettos. I didn’t have the money for them, but I told my friend that if I sold the book, I’d buy those shoes. When I called her to tell her I’d sold the book, she told me we were going shoe shopping. It was during that shopping trip that I made a quip about the shoes being magical, and that was when I came up with that storyline for the next book (I already had the part about the corporate spy in the proposal I’d sent to the publisher).

The timing of the sale worked out great because there was a big writing conference the next week, so I got to celebrate with my writer friends and meet my agent in person.

I can’t believe it’s been twenty years. Surprisingly, that book is still in print, when a lot of other books that came out around that time (and got more of a publicity push) have gone out of print. It’s been optioned for film/TV twice, though both times the option was allowed to lapse without anything getting done. It’s been published around the world in a number of languages. I have copies on my shelf in Japanese, Dutch, German, Indonesian, Vietnamese, Korean, and Chinese, to name a few. The series ended up being nine books and a short story collection, which is more than I originally planned. I’d planned it as a five-book series.

I think a celebration is in order for Monday. I won’t buy more shoes, but maybe I’ll get some ice cream when I go to the community band concert in the park that night.