A Lovesome Thing is available here at Amazon.com now, for your kindling pleasure.
Also, Adam Stephanides has posted a long, thoughtful and detailed review of Advice From Pigeons at his blog, ‘Completely Futile.’ Thank you, Adam!
If you’re wondering whether you would like a book or not, you couldn’t ask for better information and analysis than Adam provides at his blog. And I’m not just saying that because he liked my book!
I’ve finished updating the Royal Academy website to reflect the recent issue of A Lovesome Thing.
Anyone who wants a link to purchase, or to read the prologue and first chapter, can find them at https://raosyth.com/thebooks.htm.
Deron Douglas of Double Dragon has taken me by surprise again. This morning he emailed me to announce the release of A Lovesome Thing, the second Royal Academy novel. And of course, I haven’t even posted the free excerpt at my website — nor will I be able to, for a few days.
In the meantime, here’s the cover – also by Deron Douglas. I love it!
My day job starts tomorrow, and the long weekday afternoons of editing in the garden are over for another year.
In spite of all the time I spent traveling, this has been a tremendously productive year by my standards. I finished line-edits on A Lovesome Thing, the second Royal Academy novel, and finished the second major revision of Swept and Garnished, the third. In addition, I finished some short stories (which are unfortunately in the ‘not sold’ pile) and another novel, as yet nameless, whose second revision I plan to complete tonight. Big thanks to Nancy for beta-reading, and to Elaine’s critique group for keeping my nose to the grindstone! And of course to the Milwaukee Area Writers’ Guild, who give the best in-depth critiques anybody could ask for and make me fix my endings.
When the weather’s decent, this is where I work. I carved this niche out of the border last year, promising myself that I would only let short plants grow in it; but that resolution fell foul of my passion for foxgloves. A friend had given me seed from her plants, and last year there they were, little felt-leaved beauties; and all of them had come up in my ‘short-plants’ area!
I transplanted most of them around the yard, but I’ve had such bad luck with these finicky plants that I left a few in situ. They thrived, I think you’ll agree — you’ll probably also agree that they aren’t foxgloves, 
and I have been cherishing a common roadside weed. But by the time that became obvious beyond a shadow of doubt, they had become architectural elements in the garden plan, and now they’re even more interesting as finches, chickadees, and downy woodpeckers feed on their seeds.
With all this going on in the garden, plus the fact that my amazing neighbor has tamed the chipmunks to eat out of our hands, it’s a wonder I get anything done!
The line-edits for the second Royal Academy novel, A Lovesome Thing, are completed! And Deron Douglas is finishing a lovely cover painting … watch for its release in September.
I’m going off-line for a few weeks, so comments have been disabled to avoid spam building up.
Keep cool!
I’m an inefficient blog reader, so sometimes I take a few months to catch up with even the blogs I like best. Today was one of those days; I picked E.M. Bowman’s blog out of my bookmarks more or less at random, and ran into a fascinating flowchart about types of dystopias, and a link to another by Maureen Johnson. Continue reading
Realizing that endings give me trouble, I’m paying closer attention to them. I read two books with unsatisfactory endings this week, and one with a thoroughly satisfying ending. 
‘The Baron in the Trees’ by Italo Calvino had an ending that fit perfectly with the text, yet left me unsatisfied in a way that made me realize I was dissatisfied with the book as a whole. I had followed the baron’s entire life, its ups and downs, and here I was saying to myself, ‘so what?’ How could such an unusual life story leave me with such an empty feeling, as if it had all been pointless? Continue reading
Discworld convention, that is — I’m at the North American Discworld Convention in Madison, my first encounter with Pratchett fandom, and a really engaging one.
It’s hard to believe, now that Terry Pratchett is a household name, but fifteen years ago I had never heard of him. I remember giving a manuscript to a Scottish friend to read, and having her give it back with the comment that it was ‘like Pratchett,’ and thinking ‘Oh-kay;’ it wasn’t until I went to England myself and saw the ranks of his books that I realized this might be a name I ought to remember.
This was back in the day when, as Sir Terry says himself, his books were not so much released in the US as they were allowed to escape. But every year more and more of them became available over here, the Pratchett section grew larger in my local bookstore, and Discworld became more and more a viable alternative to the mundane world. With NADWcon, I guess I’ve gone as far as possible towards living in it for a weekend! I’ve met Mustrum Ridcully, the ladies of the watch, and more Fleegles than I can remember. I’ve attended workshops on creating dragons and country dancing, and touched base with the Zombie rights people. Later today will be heraldry, a bestiary workshop, and the public reading of ‘Where’s my Cow?”
And, of course, one of the best features has been listening to Sir Terry’s stories in his public lectures. An exciting bonus came when Neil Gaiman made an appearance yesterday, for the talk on ‘Good Omens.’ For an hour and a half, he and Sir Terry told us what it was like to write ‘Good Omens’ together, back when ‘Neil wasn’t Neil Gaiman yet, and I wasn’t Terry Pratchett;’ about a time when sending CDs back and forth in the mail was easier and more reliable than using the internet, a publisher who dropped the already printed book because of one bad review, and the professional writers’ (probably constant) concern about whether the months put into a project would pay off. Now, at a safe distance, we know how well it has paid off — not just in money and fame, but in a friendship that it was a privilege to eavesdrop on for a little while.
This may be the last North American Discworld convention that Sir Terry attends. What good luck that I was able to be here! I have to thank my colleague who let me know the convention was happening. I haven’t asked her permission to use names, but anyone who was here will remember her as Horace the cheese and her children as two of the very bluest Feegles.
Now, on the last day of NADWcon, black storm clouds are gathering over Madison and huge raindrops pelt down as if the Midwest is determined to recapture our attention. The workshop schedule for the day ends with ‘What to Read When You’re Not Reading Pratchett,’ and many of the costumed revelers will probably have departed for workplaces where they cannot wear woad or armor. Yet this is the magic of writing — cons end, people take off their fancy dress, but Discworld will always be there, just waiting for us to re-open the books and dive into it.
Happy reading!
Heading to North American Disc World convention day after tomorrow, wondering when it is appropriate to wear a shoulder dragon in Madison. Are there rules — labor day, sun over yardarm, etc?
