Questions and answers Archives

Old As The Hills displayed on a tablet, in a stone arch with a glowing purple night sky behind it. The cover of Old As The Hills has a man with a can and a woman silhouetted on a green ground with a map. She holds out her hand, he is putting something into it, forming a doorway between them. An astrological chart behind them shows the symbols for Venus, the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn highlighted behind a splash of glowing stars.

Neurodiversity in my books

April 17, 2024 / In Character, Questions and answers

A guide to neurodiverse characters in my books, as of 2024. (Check out the grid early in the post for the current complete list.)

Ancient Trust, Best Foot Forward, Bound for Perdition, Casting Nasturtiums, Complementary, Eclipse, Illusion of a Boar, Old As The Hills, On The Bias, Pastiche, Perfect Accord, Seven Sisters, Shoemaker's Wife, The Fossil Door, The Magic of Four, Three Graces, Upon A Summer's Day

Four Walls and a Heart lying on a table with autumn gourds. The cover is a deep red, with a man in a wheelchair and a man standing, both in silhouette, in front of a large blue and glass door.

Age, characters, and time passing

January 24, 2024 / Questions and answers

A look at characters, age, and time passing. What it means to write across a range of time periods for me and my characters.

As The Ground Shifts, Mistress Of Birds, Seven Sisters, The Fossil Door

Happily ever after, no kids

September 13, 2023 / Mysterious Arts, Mysterious Charm, Mysterious Powers, Questions and answers

One of my romance spaces was talking about romances that don’t presume a child is necessary for the happily-ever-after of the romance. If you’ve read my work, obviously I’ve got a mix in here. I thought it might be interesting to talk about the variations. (I obviously think people can find happiness in a whole bunch of different configurations and life choices. My characters make a wide range of choices, both in the immediate aftermath of a book and further down the road.)

Ancient Trust, Bound for Perdition, Complementary, Fool's Gold, Four Walls and a Heart, Illusion of a Boar, In The Cards, Mistress Of Birds, On The Bias, Point By Point, Seven Sisters, The Hare And The Oak

Where to start

August 9, 2023 / Questions and answers, Writing and publishing

One of the questions that I hear fairly often these days is “Which of your books should I start with?” I now have an entire page on this website to help with your questions about reading order. The short answer is: “Start anywhere you like with any book set before 1935.” (Though there are a couple where you might have more fun in a specific order.) Read on for a few more thoughts about that.

Ancient Trust, Best Foot Forward, Fool's Gold, Goblin Fruit, Old As The Hills, On The Bias, Pastiche, Seven Sisters, Shoemaker's Wife, Upon A Summer's Day

Fanfic and me

July 19, 2023 / Announcements, Questions and answers, Writing and publishing

I’ve had a couple of questions recently about how I feel about fanfic – so time for a post where I can lay it all out. Short version: I love and approve of fanfic, but please don’t send me any fanfic (or related text, like ideas you’ve had for it) or otherwise directly wave it in front of my eyes. Sharing fan art, craft projects, and other forms of fannish goodness are all wonderful. Read on for more of an explanation (and why I’m putting it this way.)

What can you expect from this book?

July 12, 2023 / Questions and answers, Reading

One of the reasons I’m excited about my website (and authorial wiki) updates is that they’re making it easier to share more about what you can expect from a given book. Time for me to talk about your options here, depending on what information you’re interested in, and whether you want to avoid certain kinds of spoilers. Before we get into that, though, a general word about what you will and won’t find in my books.

All the information you might want

June 29, 2023 / Albion, Announcements, Questions and answers

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

WorldAnvil

The cover of Old As The Hills displayed on a tablet in front of a pine forest, dotted with firefly light. The cover of Old As The Hills has a man with a can and a woman silhouetted on a green ground with a map. She holds out her hand, he is putting something into it, forming a doorway between them. An astrological chart behind them shows the symbols for Venus, the Sun, Jupiter, and Saturn highlighted behind a splash of glowing stars.

Reviews and how they help

May 3, 2023 / Questions and answers, Writing and publishing

Reviews are a fantastic way for readers to help out authors they want to support. But a lot of readers are nervous about what to write, where to share them, and what they ought to know about the process. Here’s a little demystification to help. I’m focusing here obviously on books, but the same basic process can help with music, podcasts, and all sorts of other content out there. The short version: Leaving a brief (2-3 sentence) review of books you love wherever you get or talk about your books is a fabulous way to both help other readers and the author. They don’t need to be long or complicated to help. What kind of review are we talking about? When authors talk about reviews helping, what we mean is usually something simple. We’re talking about a review of one to four sentences from a real human who read the book and wanted to share a couple of thoughts. You don’t need to be elaborate and you don’t need to include tons of details. Reviews like this help provide what gets called “social proof”, that real humans read the book and had a range of feelings about it. Detailed reviews and literary criticism are fantastic too – but they’re a completely different thing. Many people aren’t up for writing that (and certainly not about all the books or music or whatever else it was they enjoy).

Pastiche, Sailor's Jewel

The cover of Ancient Trust on a tablet, surrounded glasses, bottles of alcohol, and a man in a tailored suit. The cover shows a man with a monocle in silhouette, leaning on a table stacked with books.

Lords & Ladies: A guide to the land magic

September 30, 2022 / Albion, Novellas, Questions and answers

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.

Ancient Trust, Goblin Fruit, Pastiche, The Hare And The Oak

Question answered! Character ages

April 28, 2022 / Questions and answers

I got an email from a reader (hi!) asking a couple of questions, including this one: “In your romantic couples, the women seem to be consistently a little older (or a lot older) than the men. Was this a conscious choice, and if so, is there a reason for it?”

Best Foot Forward, Fool's Gold, Goblin Fruit, In The Cards, Magician's Hoard, Outcrossing, Pastiche, Sailor's Jewel, Seven Sisters, The Fossil Door

Neurodiversity and recent history

October 13, 2021 / Mysterious Charm, Mysterious Powers, Novellas, Questions and answers

If you’ve read more than a couple of my books, chances are that you’ve noticed a number of them have characters who are what we’d now describe as neurodiverse. Neurodiversity is a term that encompasses a lot of conditions or experiences of how people think and interact with the world. They can include a wide range of things we have some names for, and plenty of things we don’t. Some you’ve probably heard of include autism, ADHD or ADD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, or dyspraxia Tourette’s Syndrome and some mental health conditions. Some estimates suggest that 30-40% of people fall into at least one of these categories (there can be overlaps, which make statistics harder…) There’s also a huge range of experiences and ways this shows up for people. Each and every person has a unique brain and set of life experiences. All sorts of factors like family support or expectations, educational support, professional support and guidance (if testing and/or medication is part of the picture) make a difference in what it means for an individual. We also know that while the term ‘neurodiversity’ is quite modern (it was coined in the late 1990s by Australian sociologist Judy Singer), that neurodiverse folks have been part of the world since, well, there were people. For example, John Donvan and Caren Zucker wrote In a Different Key: The Story of Autism, a history of autism. As part of their research they discovered records from the mid-1800s that pretty clearly describe what we’d call autism today,

Casting Nasturtiums, Complementary, Eclipse, On The Bias, Seven Sisters, The Fossil Door