What If?

One week from today, the first Volume of The Glastonbury Chronicles, Uneasy Lies The Head will be released as an audio book.

I have been thinking about this book for awhile now.  It was written at a time when Princess Diana was very much alive and her sons, William and Harry were still in knee-pants.  Hard to envision generations later to the eve of the 1000th anniversary of the Norman Conquest and expect to get it all right.  Names didn't pan out, but still I was on to something.  I must have been, because it seems the government of the UK has done everything in its power to make sure none of this happened.  Laws have been changed.  Stephen couldn't have had an older sister and still have been next in line for the Crown.  Titles could not have been inherited by someone conceived by in vitro fertilisation.  And now...now the whole premise of the book, a UK swallowed up by The European Commonwealth (European Union)  to the point that the Monarchy has been abandoned seems to have resulted in a UK looking toward Brexit...to making sure that scenario cannot happen.

What if?

What if someone got their hands on this book and was determined to see that it could never happen?

Just wondering out loud.

At least they found the tunnel between Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem and Nottingham Castle after the book was published. 

Seems I got something right.

#Brexit  # Glastonbury Chronicles #Uneasy Lies The Head

Oh my!  I have just seen the new cover for the audio book version of my "Uneasy Lies The Head", and I am as thrilled with it as I was when I first heard the audio,  What do you think?

My dear friends, I ask your forgiveness for being so lax in using my blog.  The mourning period for my late publisher, Peter Paddon has gone on much longer than I had expected, but now I am back.

And I am back with wonderful news!

I have recently entered into a contract with Skyboat Media to produce my books as audio books, and today I received the advanced copy of "Uneasy Lies The Head".  They tell me it will be available both in disc and downloadable for from Amazon and other retailers, and Audible sometime in March. 

It is one thing to see one's words on paper, and quite another to hear them being read aloud by someone else!  I am beyond excited, and I hope you will be too.

Meanwhile, several other projects are in process, one of which is a set of Tarot cards based upon the books.  The book for them is already complete, with total descriptions of the cards and their meanings, just waiting for an artist to illustrate them.  If you should know of anyone who might be interested, please let me know.

Progress has been made on Volume VII of the Glastonbury Chronicles, though it is still far from complete.  As for Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe, Dubhghall told me he wanted to recount his time with Richard II.  Unfortunately, researching Richard II is like trying to swim in the La Brea Tar Pits.

More later...I hope not too much later.

It's Good To Be Back

It has been a while since I have posted.  Yesterday was the third anniversary of the death of my dear friend and publisher, Peter Paddon.  His death really knocked the wind out of my sails. and rendered my Muse practically mute. 

Now I am back, trying to regain the momentum I had had as an author.  Ten novels in three years, then three years of silence.

I will be at the World Fantasy Convention in San Antonio, Texas at the Wyndham on Riverwalk  from November 2 to November 5, and at Loscon at the Los Angeles Airport Marriott over Thanksgiving weekend, speaking, soaking up the good vibes of other authors, and getting back into the swing of it.  After all, my characters have been up to a lot since last we met, and it is high time they tell me what they have been doing.

See them, and you, soon!

Greater Los Angeles Writers' Conference

A marvellous day at the Greater Los Angeles Writers' Conference with so many other exceptional authors. So glad to know I am not the only one who never intended to write a series but found the characters had other ideas. Equally glad to know I am not the only author whose characters have lives of their own.

I am so excited to find out what wonderful things await to be discovered at Westercon in San Diego, Califprnia next weekend!

Westercon

Looking over the initial programming grid for Westercon over the July 4th weekend, it seems I have four interesting panels (two on Saturday, two on Sunday) and an autograph session on Sunday. The panels vary from Shakespeare's influence on Science Fiction and Fantasy to the role of Mythology in SF & F, with discussions on religion and building a mythology for a fictional world. These are topics which are very close to my heart, and I am really looking forward to being on these panels. Hope to see you there, in San Diego, California at the the Town and Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center.

Post-Wondercon Reflections

To be fair, I probably should have stayed home.  I had a massive asthma attack on Thirsday (and asthma is something new to me) and was told I also had pneumonia.  But it was Wondercon,  I had promised to be there for a book signing, and I wasn't contagious so armed with 2 different kinds of antibiotics, 2 oral inhalers and one nasal inhaler I climbed aboard my trusty mini-TARDIS (as I have named my new blue Celebrity scooter) and headed for the wilds of Anaheim and the delightful madness that conventions are made of.

Wondercon was its usual kaleidoscope of costumes, from three young ladies who looked as though they had stepped out of the opening sequence of Indiana Jones 2 (the recreation of Kate Capshaw's dress was so good I kept waiting to hear "Anything Goes" in Mandarin) to characters fro, old Twilight Zone episodes, to various Avengers.  The most recreated costumes were the TARDIS and Harley Quinn, followed by Captain America and various incarnations of The Doctor.  I didn't get to see any of the panels, but I was interviewed by Gene Turnbow of Krypton Radio.  I have been told the interview will be up on You-Tube shortly

Afterward I headed over to California Adventure to catch the new Frozen show, which was delightful.  Being a Disney Annual Passholder has its benefits.  The Parks are only a few blocks away from the Anaheim Convention Center and were very lightly attended yesterday, so with a Fast Pass I had only a half an hour to wait till I saw the show, and then, exhausted, went home and collapsed.

Today I catch up on what the DVR recorded yesterday, notably the return of "Outlander".  Of course I'm a fan!

Wondercon 2015

I just received confirmation that I will be signing copies of my latest novel "Raven's Daughter" and both the Glastonbury Chronicles and Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe series at Wondercon in Anaheim, California this coming April 4 (Saturday) from 1:00 PM to 4:00 PM at the Greater Los Angeles Writers' Society (GLAWS) booth.  Hope to see you there!

In The Mired Bog of History

Did I ever mention that the historical research on Richard II has been bogging me down? It is like trying to swim in the La Brea Tar Pits. There are reasons for Dubhghall to visit this time period, compelling reasons of which I was unaware until I saw David Tennant play the role in Shakespeare's play in the Fall of 2013. I don't know if it was the direction, the acting, the play itself or a combination of all of them, but sitting 6th row centre in Stratford Upon Avon for that magnificent production was electrifying, and there was one brief instant almost at the end when I felt...I knew...that this was where I had to focus.

The research has been laborious and it is not over. One of the books is in 6 point type, which even with my glasses is hard to read. And of course this particular book is not available on Kindle, so I can't make the type any bigger.

So bear with me. There will be another in the Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe series. I promise. It's just taking longer than I had expected. At one point I was so bogged down that I was ecstatic to find my lost manuscript of "Raven's Daughter" (presumed lost since 1995 in a computer crash, but a copy was unearthed by my husband last summer on one of his old computers) and I finished that and Pendraig Publishing released it. If things bog down any further I may have to switch gears again and finish yet another partial novel which is sitting in my Dropbox, taunting me.

As for The Glastonbury Chronicles...will there be more? I had come to a satisfying ending with "The Barley and the Rose", but every now and then the characters reawaken in my head and start muttering about it not being over yet. There is the deck of Tarot cards awaiting an illustrator. The book part is all done, but I paint with words, not brushes. Someone else needs to take it on from here. Anyone out there?

WFC 2014 Day 1

The trip from Los Angeles was long and tedious.  Up since 7 AM PST Tuesday morning to get ready and taken to the airport about 20 hours later for two flights and a stopover in Dallas.  Love Field... it conjured up old memories of when my stepfather used to fly in and out of that airport decades ago.  Lordy, how it has grown!

And of course somewhere along the line I picked up a bloody cold!  I also picked up large quantities of Emergen-C and Earl Grey tea, which will help me get through it.

Right now I am totally time-warped and my ears have not cleared from the changes on pressure, so everything is coming into my head through what feels like a tub of thick, viscous oatmeal, but I'm sure it will clear up eventually.

The room at the Hyatt Regency is enormous, the staff cordial, and the little restaurant across the street, the Clark Street Grill, was quick and the food was both good and inexpensive, which made up for the lack of food along the way.  I am going to really have to reset my body clock!

Ran into my convention buddy from last year in Brighton, Elizabeth Crowens, as I was checking in, and hope to spend some time with her during the week.  Meanwhile, trying to figure out how to get this huge canvas bag filled with books (which was presented to me at check-in) back to Los Angeles with all the other stuff I have with me.

And He Took With Him The Sun

This has been one of the saddest days of my life. My husband and I were awakened at 4:21 AM by a phone call from our dear friend Linda Paddon, wife of my publisher Peter Paddon. Peter passed away sometime during the night.

We had enjoyed dinner with both of them just hours before at the same restaurant we usually frequent on Wednesday evenings. He had seemed fine then, happy with the buttons and key chains and postcards for "Raven's Daughter" promotion which I would be taking with me to the World Fantasy Convention early next month, chatting excitedly about some new projects in the works, and discussing last week's episode of Doctor Who. We never realised we would not see each other gain.

His passing is hard to deal with. He was a relatively young man, 50, filled with life and love and enthusiasm, bright, cheerful, creative, a fine writer as well as a fine publisher. He was a man I had known for over 20 years and never known him to be other than kind and generous.

Jay and I met Peter in England at a retreat in 1991, a few years before he went into publishing. We became friends and I visited him when I went over again in 1994 and invited him to visit us should he ever get a chance. The following year he took me up on the invitation and stayed with us for a couple of weeks, met our house mate Linda and fell in love with her. He moved over here the following year, married Linda and opened Pendraig Publishing.

I was by no means the first author he published. He began by publishing a whole raft of nonfiction books, and when he was ready to start doing fiction he asked me if I still had the manuscript for the book I had been working on when I had visited him in 1994. I told him yes, and in 2010 the first of my 10 novels, "Uneasy Lies The Head" was published by Pendraig. It has been a long and happy relationship.

The new novel, "Raven's Daughter" is the impossible novel. Begun in 1995, it was lost in a computer crash until last May when my husband found 50,000 words of it backed up on one of his old computers in Word 95. He was able to translate it to a current version and I completed it and handed it off to Peter in August of this year. The paper and ink version is up on Amazon; the Kindle version  is up for pre-order and will be out 31 October.

Peter, I wish you could have stuck around for the on line launch party. I hope it does you justice.

I will miss you forever.

And as the Gods have willed it, a few moments ago a partial solar eclipse began in the skies above California.  When Peter left, he took with him the sun.

Sci-Fi For Your Wi-Fi: Panel on Krypton Radio

Tomorrow I, along with fellow novelists Robert Seutter (the Brass Jack novels) and Maggie Secara ("The Dragon Ring", "King's Raven" and "The Mermaid Stair"), will be doing a panel on creating a fantasy world. It will be recorded for broadcast on line on Krypton Radio (kryptonradio.com) on the following dates and times:
Saturday Sep 27 9PM Pacific
Sunday Sep 28 5AM Pacific
Sunday Sep 28 4PM Pacific
Thursday Oct 2 5AM Pacific
Thursday Oct 2 4PM Pacific
Saturday Oct 4 5AM Pacific

The panel will be presented at The Los Angeles Science Fantasy Society (LASFS).

Launch Date 31 October 2014!

The novel that almost didn't happen will be published this 31 October, just in time for me to take it to the World Fantasy Convention, this time in Washington D. C.!

I started this book ("Raven's Daughter")  in 1995, got about 56,000 words into it and suffered a total computer crash.  Needless to say, I was heartbroken.  I had a lot of it in longhand, but the prospect of doing it all over again was a bit more than I could bear, so I started in on the two series "The Glastonbury Chronicles" and "Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe" which Pendraig Publishing picked up in 2010.  Then a few months ago my wonderful husband, Jay T. Mayer happened to find a file on one of his old computers.  He had backed up the entire 56,000 words for me and forgotten about it.  It was in a very old form of Word, and on Mac format instead of PC, but with a lot of work he was able to convert it and deliver it to me in a format with which I could work.

Two months later, to the day, I finished the book and turned it in to my publisher, and last night the publication date became finalised.  To say I am elated would be an understatement!

Enjoy!

What's In A Name?

     I just saw the mock-up of the cover for my latest novel.  It was wonderful, except I noticed the title had been changed from The Raven's Daughter to Raven's Daughter.
     "Why?" I asked.  
      Before I had a chance to ponder the question for more than a few seconds my publisher responded that it was a stronger title without the article and that the use of the word the at the beginning of a title was disappearing.
     A sign of the times.  We have gotten so used to texting in shorthand, speaking in shorthand and conversing in shorthand that those wonderful building blocks of speech, articles, are beginning to be banished from our consciousnesses.  I mourn their loss.
     Fast cars, fast food, fast talk.  The use of an article as the beginning word in a title makes it difficult to find the title in a search engine.
     Sigh.
     Yet  I do recognise the truth of it and have been guilty for a long time of the same article abuse, even when referring to the plays of  William Shakespeare.  Tempest, Merchant of Venice, Taming of the Shrew, Winter's Tale...all of these seem to have lost their article when mentioned in conversation and nobody seems to miss them.  Gone also is the initial A in such plays and films as Hard Day's Night and Streetcar Named Desire, which at times is simply called Streetcar.
     Welcome to the twenty-first century.
     As Bob Dylan sang, "The times, they are a-changing."
     Wait...maybe that's where one of the missing articles went...

Once Upon A Time

About 19 years ago I began to write a book,  It was a fantasy romance about Jacynet Corbeau, a Bladeswoman and member of the Raven Guild, a redheaded sword-for-hire in a mythical land  filled with political intrigue in a society somewhere in the Middle Ages, and the man who would become her true love, a young Bard called Donall with a mysterious past.  Somewhere  about 50,000 words into the novel I was beset with a profound and total computer crash and I thought the manuscript had been lost forever.

Thank The Gods I was wrong!

Two months ago my husband Jay, that steadfast, good-hearted dear soul whom I have known since we were children together, my dear husband Jay found a back-up of the book on one of his old computers.  It was in a version of Microsoft Word so old that he had to strip the files entirely and reconstruct them to get them into the current version of the same program, but techie that he is he was able to restore everything I had written up to that point.

I spent the next several weeks reading, editing and finishing the book, which now stands at about 71,000 words, and with any luck "The Raven's Daughter" will be out this Fall, in time for the World Fantasy Convention in Washington D. C.

The World I Used To Know

I have been in the UK for a week now.  So much has changed in the last 14 years...I barely recognize London, with all its new modern glass-enshrouded buildings.  Even the Tower of London has changed.  There are parts of the various towers which are now open, closed on my prior visits, and the White Tower is filled with exhibits, and not just a place to wander about and seek history on one's own, but a carefully laid out tour, as well as a place in which garbed historical recreationists wander, trying to bring a sense of history to the various tourists.

It was in one of the rooms of the White Tower that I happened to run into one of my readers, a very nice, very tall young man called Simon, who was as surprised to run into his favorite author as I was surprised and delighted to find such a dedicated fan.

As a dedicated reader and fan myself of many authors, I had made various pilgrimages myself in the prior few days, first to the grave of J. R. R. Tolkien in Oxford, then to Shakespeare's birthplace in Stratford and various other sites associated with his life.  I also had the rare privilege of seeing David Tennant perform in Richard II, a fantastic production with the Royal Shakespeare Company.

Today is a day of rest, and tomorrow I head to Brighton for the World Fantasy Convention.

Ten Days and Counting

Ten days from now I will be boarding the airplane.  Ten days from now I will be all packed, all sorted out and ready for the trip to the UK for three weeks of research, fun and most important, the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton, England, where I will be doing readings from my novels on Thursday, 31 October from 3:30 - 4:00 PM at the wonderful Hotel Metropole at which the convention is being held.

It has been nearly twenty years since last I saw Brighton, and the friends I visited there have long since passed on, but I remember the place as clearly as if it were yesterday.  I can still feel the sharp cut of the wind off the ocean and smell the salt air.  Lovely place, Brighton.  I do hope I get to see some of it besides the hotel, but then there is a lot more to this trip than the 5 days in the Hotel.

And there is a lot to do before I leave.  I still have things to write, lists to make, clothes to sort, and cats to cajole into being good while we're gone, and I think the toughest part of the trip is going to be not having them around.  We have someone staying at the house to feed them and watch them and everything else while we're away, and I even plan to do the morning ritual on tape so she can play it to them before they are let outside to play.

It is called "The Good Sweet", from the opening line in which they are admonished:
Be good, be sweet.  Stay out of the street.  Don't go near anything with a mouth bigger than yours.  Don't go near anything with claws bigger than yours.  Don't get into anyone's house or garage or patio or storage area or trash cans or boxes.  Don't get into anyone's car or van or motorhome or mobile home or truck or trailer or boat.  Don't go near anything with a motor or an engine or anything than makes a loud noise. Don't let anyone you don't know pick you up.  Don't take food from anyone you don't know.  Don't eat bees; don't eat spiders; don't eat lizards; don't eat birdies.  Don't bring bee or spiders or lizards or birdies into the house.  Leave the creeping, crawling, flying things alone.  No fighting, keep your fur clean, and most of all know I love each and every one of you very, very , very much....and come home when you are called.

Pretty good advice for anyone.  I hope they listen to it, even if it's a disembodied voice on a tape recorder.

Across The Pond

Less than 4 weeks to go until I board the Virgin Atlantic flight for Heathrow Airport.  Less than 4 weeks to go before I have to figure out what and how to pack for a nearly 3 week stay in the United Kingdom.  Truth be told, I am highly excited by the prospect of this trip, as it has been more than 14 years since my last visit, and I am much in need of the sights and sounds of the place and of walking old streets and pathways as I research the next novels.

Besides research, which will take me from Stratford Upon Avon to London and probably Glastonbury once again, I will be attending the World Fantasy Convention in Brighton and doing readings from my books on Thursday, 31 October from 4:00 to 4:30 PM.  Looking forward to meeting other authors in my genre and readers thereof, going to the awards banquet, and all such a wonderful convention entails.

And then there is Stratford!  I have long wanted to see the home of William Shakespeare, and this will be the perfect time, for friends of mine managed to get seats for us to see David Tennant in Richard II, a play rich on texture and in plot, filled with history (albeit weighted politically by the Bard) and the splendour of the times.  What an inspiration to see it in that setting.  My Muse will be working overtime collecting notes from which to prod me later.

WonderCon

I am so excited about this coming weekend  I will be signing my novels, all 9 of them, at WonderCon on Saturday  March 30 from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM at the Greater Los Angeles Writers' Society booth, 1022 at the Anaheim Convention Center.  Such a great opportunity to meet and greet people and to make new friend.  Last year's WonderCon was a fabulous experience and I know this year's will be even better.

Right now I am working on the guided meditations for the Tarot of the Sword and the Rose, which I hope to have not only as a part of the book that will go with the Tarot deck, but also as an audio CD set.  The cards are in the very capable and talented hands of Holly DeFount, a marvelous artist, who is illustrating them from my written descriptions.  It takes time and a lot of work to illustrate 78 cards and the back of them, but we hope to have the deck finished by late 2014 or early 2015.

Meanwhile I am preparing for my journey to Brighton, England for the World Fantasy Convention this coming October.  I will have the chance to do a lot of research while I am over there, and I foresee Dubhghall having several more adventure throughout history, at least one in the Elizabethan Age and one in the Victorian Age, and probably a whole lot more.  Remember, he has said that he has lived so long he may not remember all his adventures in the order of them happening, just as you or I do not necessarily recall our lives in linear sequence.

As for The Lads, as I am wont to call the King and his Knight and the other members of the Companions, will they be back?  Perhaps.  They have been chattering in the background recently, though not loudly enough for me to hear more than murmurs.  There are stories yet to tell of lives lived between the books in the Glastonbury Chronicles, stories only partially recounted in flashback or recounted in part by Dubhghall.  And  then there are the Glastonbury Archives, peripheral accounts and such.  The Tarot of the Sword and the Rose is one such work, as the Tarot was mentioned in some of the books and will be recreated in full.  There is at least one journal, a page of which was included in an earlier work, and more, stories by others, including Dames of the Order, all of which round out the true history of he Order of the Sword and the Rose and those who have created it and kept it alive for all these millennia.  

What else?  Well, that is for them to know and me to find out!

78 Card Pick-Up

OK, I have been absent from the blogosphere.

Sorry.

I have been beset by 2 things since the end of November: the flu, which despite  vaccinations for both it and pneumonia (the latter which I seem to barely have avoided by the sweet intervention of Kaiser Permanente, which in its good graces did not let me put off coming in to see a doctor) has laid me low off and on since the first day of Loscon, and the blessed persistence of my Muse.

After more than two decades, my part in producing a new Tarot deck has gone to the next step: the artist.

I was fortunate enough to meet my counterpart, the wonderful Holly DeFount, at Pantheacon over Presidents' Day Weekend in San Jose, California.  My publisher, Peter Paddon of Pendraig Publishing had decided we were a match and within days of my sending the written versions of the cards to him, he had transmitted the same to her.  She is presently soaking up all nine of the so-far published novels of The Glastonbury Chronicles and  Tales of the Dearg-Sidhe in preparation for the harrowing task of actually illustrating them.  The Tarot of the Sword and Rose will take a couple of years to illustrate, but I am so very excited at the prospect of actually sitting down with them in my hands to do a reading, I am willing to wait as long as it takes.

A little background:

I started the deck before I started the books, but not long before, based upon the experiences I have had as a Tarot  reader since 1967 and the tradition my spiritual path has followed.  When the books began to manifest in the early 1990s, it became plain that the two dovetailed and that as the unconscious backgrounds of the tradition fed the novels, so did the novels bring forth the symbolism necessary for the cards.  They are based upon a pan-Celtic mythology, folklore of the British Isles, history, and characters and situations in the novels.  I had put even the notion of doing the deck for years until in Volume IV of The Glastonbury Chronicles, "The Rose Above The Sword", the tarot cards manifested and became an important plot device, a manner in which forbidden history, lore and religion could be kept alive in symbols which only a few could read and pass down through the generations until it was possible for them to resurface to the public.

For several weeks between my appearance at Loscon and Pantheacon I was awakened in the middle of the night with symbols, pictures and instructions from that same Dark Muse who regularly rouses me from sleep to write the novels, only this time it was in a frenzy with some deadline I did not understand...the deadline which turned out to be getting them to Peter in tome for him to get them to Holly so we could meet at Panntheacon.

Now that the actual descriptive writing is done, I have a bit of leisure during which I plan to do a series of pathworkings or guided meditations to go with the major arcana, hopefully to  be released as a set of CDs to go with the cards and their book.  I have a lot of time, so the rush is not going to be nearly as intense.  The first one is already finished...only 77 to go.

Meanwhile, Mercury is retrograde, I am still recovering from the flu that the flu shot did not seem to cover, and I need to get some sleep.

Be well, all.