Characters and songs
Four songs illuminating characters from my books – Orion, Isembard, Gabe, and Hereswith.
Four songs illuminating characters from my books – Orion, Isembard, Gabe, and Hereswith.
One of the things I’ve loved about the arc that reaches from the Mysterious Fields trilogy to Grown Wise is getting to see family patterns shift and change. Right now, we’ve had a chance to see four generations of the Fortiers and how they act and react.
Learn about the history of the Fortier family, especially since the late 1800s, down to Ursula Fortier.
All about the original inspiration for Albion and my writing – a chance comment about the Wars of the Roses and exploring different kinds of stories.
Find out the ideas behind The Magic of Four: a love of classic school stories, exploring a second generation of characters, Schola and her magic. And oh, yes. Horses.
A guide to neurodiverse characters in my books, as of 2024. (Check out the grid early in the post for the current complete list.)
What is architectural magic like in Albion? This post takes a look at some of the theory and practice, including how it affects the demesne estates and land magic.
What’s behind Illusion of a Boar? Two sets of chosen siblings, a historical reference, a major military deception, and different ways of being neurodiverse in the world.
A quick look at which of my books are part of FaRoFeb 2024’s sales and promotions.
The ideas behind Best Foot Forward: the comment that started it all, Alexander and Carillon, music, and Vienna.
Doing a summer reading challenge? Here are my books that fit specific prompts/bingo squares/etc.
I love all my books – and all my point of view characters – but Thesan and Eclipse are particularly near and dear my heart. (I love Isembard too, mind you.) This staffroom romance at a magical school has a special place in the series, too. Education and the foundations of Eclipse I grew up in the US, but with British parents. Every year, my father would go off to spend a week or so in England – for research, to see shows in the West End (he was a theatre professor), and to see friends. He’d come back with his suitcase half full of books, many of them for me. School stories There’s a whole glorious literature of children’s school stories in British children’s lit. The ones I grew up on were mostly Enid Blyton’s St. Clare’s and Malory Towers books, and the Chalet School books (there are many, and the first half or so are set in a school in the Austrian Tyrol, but run on a British girls school model, before it moves due to the Second World War.) But there are many many other books of that type and certainly many references to the boarding school experience. The houses, the rivalries between them (even when you’re put in them in purely pragmatic ways), and the many things that students get up to when they’re not right under a teacher’s nose (and sometimes when they are) were all part of the tapestry for me. My own education and