A look back at 2023
It’s the time of year where a recap is called for. Check out the post for the books (and two extras) released in 2023, what I’ve written, and improvements to this website and my authorial wiki. Books that came out in 2023
- All
- Albion
- Announcements
- Charms of Albion
- Ideas to books
- In Character
- Land Mysteries
- Mysterious Arts
- Mysterious Charm
- Mysterious Powers
- Novellas
- Questions and answers
- Reading
- Research adventures
- Technology
- Writing and publishing
All the information you might want
Hello, and welcome to my newly redesigned website! I wanted to take a moment to share some of what you can find now. I’ve also revamped and redesigned my authorial wiki, and this post also has more about what you can find there. My goals I’ve written an ever increasing number of books, and I have a lot more in mind. While you can absolutely still read almost all of them in any order you like, I wanted to make it easier to find the books you’re interested in. Here’s what the website and wiki now make possible. Read on for more specifics and a lot of links. A way to follow characters or larger arcs across multiple books. Are you curious about a particular character? The wiki will let you find out all the places they appear, and which books are significant. Curious about the full arc of the books about the Carillons or the Edgartons or the Council? You can find lists and brief notes about each book in one place. A way to find the books you’re most interested in (or avoid the books that aren’t your thing, or not right now). To make this easier, I’ve created tags, content notes, and a list of books with context that let you browse for those things you want to read. A way to put books in order in different ways. With books reaching from 1882 to 1940 right now (and expecting more Victorian-era books to come, as well
The naming of characters is a difficult matter
(Look, I couldn’t resist the T.S. Eliot reference, I’m only human.) To be more serious, the names of characters are something I spend a lot of time thinking about. I got a great reader question about it this week, and that makes it a wonderful time to share some of how I do this. To be honest, there’s a lot of staring at my list of names and sighing a lot. But I also have established patterns that help me sort out what I’m doing with the names. (As a note, links to character names in this post will go to their WorldAnvil pages so you can see where they appear most easily.)
Lords & Ladies: A guide to the land magic
Are you curious about the land magic? Carillon’s background? What it means to be a Lord in Albion? Did you know there’s a new novella out? It’s my treat if you sign up for my newsletter. (Feel free to unsubscribe when you need to, of course. But I hope you’ll stick around, at least for an email or two that will let you get all the other treats I share with my newsletter subscribers.) Ancient Trust is all about what happens when Geoffrey Carillon inherits the title on his brother’s death. It has quite a lot about the land magic customs at Ytene. It also led to some interesting questions from a reader. (I love reader questions. Sometimes I haven’t settled on my final answer about something. But I’ll let you know if you ask something I can’t answer yet. Or if you ask something that’s too much of a spoiler for something that’s coming out in the future.) The questions: It got me thinking, how do the Lords of Albion engage with the House of Lords? Is attending Westminster an additional responsibility for Carillion? Do Albion peerages result in having the right to sit in the House? And what about the women? How does the Land Magic recognise women? These are great questions – and also some that I haven’t quite found the right place to get into text. Let’s take this one by one in an order that should help.
Welcome to Schola!
I had a fabulous time working with the map designer who did my previous two maps to do a map of Schola.
A little bit more… (topics and magic in Albion)
Today in our ongoing tour of the authorial wiki, a bit about some other topics. Today, we’re taking a look at the topical pages, which come in two groups, Magic and Topics.
People together (groups and organisations)
Welcome to the next stop on the tour of the authorial wiki. Last time we talked about characters, so now it’s time to take a look at groups and organisations. Groups There are a number of common group connections in Albion – notably related to the Five Schools, but also secret societies and professions. Read more about the professional and social organisations in general over here.
Character Connections
We’ve talked about extras, maps, and timelines in our tour of my authorial wiki. Now it’s time to talk about characters. Every point of view character has a page. (That means everyone who’s been the point of view in a novel, novella, or extra…)
Maps: The place where it happens
Time for stop 3 on our tour of the authorial wiki, maps! Today we’re going to look at two sets of maps, one for Albion as a whole, and one for Trellech, the main magical city. My maps are by Michael MB, who did a fantastic job taking my sketches and making them usefully informative.
Timelines: Who, what and above all, when!
Welcome to the next stop on our tour of my authorial wiki (public version). Today, I want to talk about timelines and finding out when particular events happened. One of the reasons I like WorldAnvil (the software I use for the public wiki) is the chance to create maps and timelines. With books ranging across the 1920s, a few Edwardian titles, and a couple during or just after the Great War, being able to put the books in order is key. I’ve currently got five different ways to get timeline information, read on to learn more about them!
Extras, get your extras!
What’s an extra? Now and again, I write something extra. It can be a few thousand words, or thirty thousand. It can be a bit of backstory I need to write out to keep going in the book. Or something that happens after the book ends that affects future events. Sometimes, I just want to spend a little more time with those characters. Other times, it’s a chance to get a bit of a story from someone else’s perspective. I share these extras with my newsletter subscribers. And now I’ve got an easy way to let you know what extras there are (and what they cover). Check out the Extras page on my authorial wiki for a short summary of each available extra. Click through on the title for each one to learn more about it. Scenes from the extras are also on my books and extras timeline. Getting copies for yourself If you’re already getting my newsletter, starting on June 3rd, 2022, there’s a link at the top of every newsletter that will let you download whichever extras you like without putting in an email address. If you’re not already on my newsletter list, you can get all the extras here. You’ll need to enter your email address for each one (or sign up for one, get the first newsletter email, and then use the link there to get the rest. Up to you!) I hope you’ll stay around on my newsletter for news about what’s coming soon, more
Threading characters through books
One of the things I love most about writing about Albion is being able to weave people through different books. Sometimes this is in a big way. All the books in the Mysterious Charm series deal with people who are friends or allies or co-conspirators (as the case may be) with Lord Geoffrey Carillon. But sometimes it’s more subtle. Take Farran Michaels, for example. He first appears (if you read the series by number, which isn’t chronologically in time) in the first chapter of Goblin Fruit as one of the young men apprenticed to the auction house. He turns up later in Magician’s Hoard as a representative of the auction house (he’s now a more senior apprentice). But how did he get there? And what’s with his particular gift for materia and objects? That’s where Seven Sisters comes in. While it’s his uncle who’s the hero of that book, Farran’s present for much of the action. I love being able to tuck those little touches in. Albion is a sizeable community, but it’s not huge. With only a few more academically focused magical schools, people who went to those schools tend to know each other. Others interact in significant but small professional communities. And, as an author, it’s a lot more fun to do a passing mention of a character I’ve already gotten to know in passing, rather than Random Standin#42. Readers new to the series with that book should be able to follow everything, but people who’ve read and
Magical creatures
As you’ve noticed if you’ve read Outcrossing, there are magical creatures in my books, as well as the ones we all know about. There are, broadly speaking, three categories. Animals we know and love These include your average ordinary wildlife – badgers, hedgehogs, ponies (Well, most of them. There are some magical ones, too.) Birds, snakes, lizards, all sorts of other beasties. A magical variant Sometimes there are magical variants of a given type. For example, the nightjar is an actual bird (with a very unusual sort of sound – you can hear an American cousin clearly starting at about 1:10 on this recording.) This piece in the Guardian about nightjars (and other fauna of the New Forest) delighted me, and describes them as “somewhere between a kestrel and a crocodile in appearance”. Twilight nightjars, however, are magical. They sound like the non-magical variety, and have the same shape. And nightjars do live in the New Forest. But where the non-magical species are usually brown or buff, the Twilight Nightjar is more like the darker varieties of a Victoria Crowned Pigeon, with a good splash of iridescence. Their feathers and eggs are used in various magical potions and workings. Entirely magical And of course, we have varieties of magical creatures who either live in Silence-warded spaces (so, fully magical), or like many creatures in our own world are not often seen. These include wandermists (a cat-sized winged dragon that appears to be largely made out of mist), or the ginsies,
Lammastide
Albion has a host of seasonal and agricultural festivals. Some are more celebration than anything else, others are about specific magical commitments tied to the land. In our world, you’ll sometimes see this festival called Lughnasadh, a festival devoted to the Irish god, Lugh. It was often celebrated with games and competitions and stories, as a connection to the funeral games he held for his foster mother, Tailtiu. (Lugh himself is neither particularly associated with the sun or the harvest: he was a god who was known for being skilled in many ways.) However, while there are a number of harvest rituals around cutting the first of the corn in Great Britain, there isn’t good evidence for a pan-Celtic festival, whether dedicated to Lugh or to anyone else. Cutting the first corn is a common element, but some places have links to ritual plays, others to bonfires, some are up on a hill, some are down near water… In the Anglo-Saxon tradition, there’s another name, and one that came down through the Christian church, later: Hlaef-mas, which became Lammas. This might involve baking a loaf of bread, breaking it into four pieces, and crumbling each piece in the corner of a barn to offer protection to the grain about to be stored there. It was also a great time for harvest fairs and gatherings, before the heavy work of the harvest began. A word about corn and grain: In historical works in and about Europe, you’ll often see the word