The fifth Tales of Rydding Village book, Pottery & Peril, is now available for pre-order at the major online retailers. There will be a paperback, but you can’t set those up for pre-order. You can get all the info on the book’s page.

Our main romance in this one involves two newcomers to the village, so I did something different and started with these new characters when they’re outside the village, showing how they get there. So don’t worry if you start reading and have no idea who any of these people are. They’ll get to familiar ground and meet our regular characters soon enough.

This is essentially the “Halloween” book of the series. It takes place in late fall, around the transition to winter. I call it “Wintereve” in this world, but it has a lot in common with celebrations of Halloween and Samhain (in Celtic cultures). Making up festivals and figuring out how to celebrate them is one of my favorite things about writing this series. I do some research about folklore and traditions, then mix and match and make up my own. They almost all seem to involve a bonfire. That’s accurate to the way a lot of real-world festivals go, but also I love a bonfire or campfire. There’s a campfire ring in my back yard that I hope to use this year, if I can dig it out of the raspberry bushes that took over that part of the yard. If not, I’ve got a mini firepit that I can set up. There’s something magical to me about a fire at night, with the smell, the sight of the flames, and the warmth contrasting with the coolness of the evening.

There is a bit of spookiness in this one, but it’s more atmosphere than anything even approaching real horror. More like a ghost story than truly scary.

This is the book I took a pottery class for so I could better understand the process and how it feels. I hope I conveyed that accurately in the book.

I’m already at work on the next book. In fact, I started writing it yesterday. I don’t have it fully outlined yet, but the opening scenes came to me, so I wrote them down. I’m hoping to get it released sometime this winter, since it takes place around Midwinter (yes, another festival).