Wow, it's been a while! Sorry about that! 

After everything that happened in 2021 with losing my sister and then my grandmother (on my sister's birthday of all things) and then a couple months after that an aunt plus my own health recovery after being hospitalized with covid pneumonia at the same time as my sister, things kinda got away from me. I did get back into writing in 2022 and managed to post a couple of things early in that year and then everything got away with me with still being exhausted and suffering from sleep deprivation (our dog took a turn for the worse with his congestive heart failure in late 2021 as well and I was up at all hours taking the night shift looking after the dog (who, by that point, insisted on sleeping beside me in the living room picking up on my ill health and needed comforting emotionally)). It's also been hard trying to maintain multiple platforms and I sort of let this one and my Buy Me a Coffee fall into neglect. However, with all the mess that's happening on Patreon right now I'm going to try and revive this page.

First of all, I've have updated this page to remove all previously posted chapter drafts of my high fantasy, Cinderella retelling From the Ashes. Why? Because, drumroll please......it released to Amazon last October! Woohoo!

I'd originally painted this as just a temporary cover while I was still writing it and then re-evaluate how I wanted the final cover art once the book was completed.

And here's the final cover!

This book was so much work! Besides the actual writing of it and dealing with any necessary edits, I also did all the interior formatting myself and, as shown above, painted my own book cover. That wasn't all the painting I did though! I also made two maps and thirteen interior illustrations! Here are the maps!

I won't show you all of them here (possibly later in another post), but here are a couple teaser screenshots for the interior formatting for the paperback!

It turned out to be a much bigger book than anticipated too! The final word count came in at a bit over 182k! The book is available in both ebook and paperback, but there are actually two paperback editions: one standard B&W edition; and one colour interior. So, if you go to order a copy, please make sure you get the paperback you're wanting. Amazon will default to showing the B&W edition first, but you will find the colour print version by clicking on 'see all formats and editions'. I've also tried to denote at the bottom of the description which copy is which, so, when in doubt, check either there or look at the price: sadly, colour printing is expensive so it is pretty much of a special edition and costs a good deal more. I also have it enrolled in KDP Select, so it's available for free in Kindle Unlimited! Just please make sure you are not reading via page flip mode as KU pays authors by page turns which do not register with page flip mode. Here's the  link!

So, that' one update, another is that I've already started the next retelling which is titled Out of Her Depths. However, that book is partially on hold as I've been making great progress in resurrecting the book I lost almost 5 years ago to a laptop malfunction! I've now managed to rewrite almost 75k of the near 115k of the second book in my steampunk series The Gemquist Chronicles and there's a very good chance that I will be able to finish writing it this year. That's my aim at least. I'm also continuing to work on my urban fantasy An Inkling of Magic which now has a grand total of twenty-eight chapters. Most of which, I still need to share here.

Okay, more news: I started a newsletter on MailerLite which then basically came to a screeching halt because of changes Gmail and Yahoo made to how they're handling newsletters. However, I've since found a way around that problem and have shifted my entire newsletter over to Substack. So, if you prefer the format of things over there, I would encourage you to join! Both free and paid subscriptions are available and all subscribers (regardless of type) will get the free bonus epilogue to From the Ashes (and any bonus epilogues for future books too).

Speaking of story bonuses, I have a short, companion story to From the Ashes coming out on my newsletter later this month. It's titled The Letter and is sort of a prequel short story regarding one of the main characters. It will be readable within the newsletter itself, but there will also be downloadable versions available too. One version being formatted in the same way as the print copy of the main book. Earlier this week I made a cover for it and I'm really quite happy with how it turned out. Here's a teaser for it!

I also continue to work away at my jewellery and am way behind on getting photographs up of my latest pieces. Also, if you happen to be in Michigan around Labor Day weekend, I'll be at an art show in Port Austin! Would love to see you there.

Well, that's all for now, but I'll try to be better about updating this page and come back to show you the other illustrations I painted for my latest book. In the meantime, I hope you've enjoyed this post and will check everything out and consider supporting whether here as a subscriber or join my Substack newsletter.