Publishing is always looking ahead, so even though the leaves have barely begun to show their fall resplendence here, my bookish brain is focused on Christmas. In two weeks, my next Family Holiday Tales books DADDY’S 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS releases!
I’ve once again teamed up with Phoebe Cho, illustrator of MOMMY’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS, for another heartfelt and realistic take on a Christmas classic. As you can see from the cover, Phoebe does amazing character work, bringing such vibrancy to my words with her illustrations.
DADDY’S 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS is a play on the classic Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Only this is a 12 days like you’ve never seen before!
You can pre-order it from from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, or Kobo, and it officially releases on October 24. Here’s a sneak peek at some of the “gifts” Daddy receives from his children during the holiday season.
Most writers, and probably many readers, have heard the phrase “write what you know.” There are a lot of different ways to interpret that, but a common one is to write emotional truths into your stories. So pulling from emotions you’ve experienced and infusing that into the work. Using your own life as inspiration.
But unless you’re writing an autobiography or a memoir, you’re generally not writing about your actual life. This can be a tricky line to navigate when using your own life as inspiration, especially if you’re pulling from emotional truths that are painful.
I used this quote from Hamlet to make the book trailer for ONLY DARK EDGES because it so perfectly encapsulates the main character’s state of mind in the beginning of the book.
This was true for me when I was writing my YA novel ONLY DARK EDGES. I was writing about a teen who was dealing with the death of her sister, and though I was pulling from my own experience of losing my sister, I wasn’t writing about my own grief. The emotional core of the character was similar to my own, but they were not the same, and our experiences were definitely not the same. I will admit that it was a hard book to write, and it was hard to separate my grief from the main character’s.
This was one of the reasons why I chose to make it a very loose retelling of William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. Having the framework and themes of the play in mind helped give me some emotional distance from the writing. It kept me from getting too bogged down in my own emotions, so I could actually get the book written. In particular, I found it interesting exploring the themes of madness and indecision from Hamlet and incorporating that into my book.
Hamlet meets Six Feet Under in this YA psychological thriller that is both heart-pounding and heart-wrenching.
Delta’s spent the summer navigating the treacherous waters of losing her older sister, Gemma. Determined to brave junior year of high school without her sister, Delta finds solace in the arms of a new girlfriend. But grief takes a twisted turn when Gemma’s tortured ghost appears with a dire warning.
Beware the storm.
Plagued by the haunting suspicion that Gemma’s death involved foul play, Delta is plunged into a downward spiral of grief and paranoia. No one can be trusted—not her girlfriend, their friends, or her sister’s once-loyal boyfriend. Not even Delta’s own mind.
With a hurricane bearing down, two tempests collide at the abandoned Sea Glass Lodge. Accusations fly. Secrets unravel. And everyone is a target of the storm.
Today is release day for my YA psychological thriller ONLY DARK EDGES! It’s hard to believe I have now published eight books. Thanks to all of you for sticking with me through all these many genres and age categories. And please consider leaving a review for my books on Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you talk about books (reviews really do help readers find my books).
Only Dark Edges a modern-day, gender-swapped Hamlet retelling that’s about trying to find a way out of grief to what I’ve always called a “new normal.” But things are certainly conspiring against our main character Delta, so she’s having a hard time doing that.
I’ve written about grief before in my books, particularly in WITCH TEST, but Only Dark Edges was a particular challenge for me because it’s about the death of Delta’s sister. Those of you who have followed me for awhile know that it was the death of my own sister, Kylene, that inspired me to begin writing books (see “The Story of How I Became a Writer”). Having Hamlet as something of a framework gave me enough emotional distance from the book to be able to write something so emotionally charged.
I took a bit of an unusual approach to the book trailer with the voice over being a quote from Hamlet. I think it perfectly encapsulates Delta’s state of mind at the beginning of the book.
Hamlet meets You’ve Reached Sam in this YA psychological thriller that is both heart-pounding and heart-wrenching.
Delta’s spent the summer navigating the treacherous waters of losing her older sister, Gemma. Determined to brave junior year of high school without her sister, Delta finds solace in the arms of a new girlfriend. But grief takes a twisted turn when Gemma’s tortured ghost appears with a dire warning.
Beware the storm.
Plagued by the haunting suspicion that Gemma’s death involved foul play, Delta is plunged into a downward spiral of grief and paranoia. No one can be trusted—not her girlfriend, their friends, or her sister’s once-loyal boyfriend. Not even Delta’s own mind.
With a hurricane bearing down, two tempests collide at the abandoned Sea Glass Lodge. Accusations fly. Secrets unravel. And everyone is a target of the storm.
The mom side of me is deep in summer mode here. The family has taken a day trip to a heavenly-scented lavender farm, we have a small vacation coming up, and we’ve been engaging in all the usual summer activities like swimming and sprinklers.
But that doesn’t mean things are quiet on the author side. Quite the opposite with my next book ONLY DARK EDGES coming out on July 25! The cover has an interesting story that I talked about on TikTok, and the main image was created by darksouls1 on Pixabay.
Hamlet meets You’ve Reached Sam in this YA psychological thriller that is both heart-pounding and heart-wrenching.
Delta’s spent the summer navigating the treacherous waters of losing her older sister, Gemma. Determined to brave junior year of high school without her sister, Delta finds solace in the arms of a new girlfriend. But grief takes a twisted turn when Gemma’s tortured ghost appears with a dire warning.
Beware the storm.
Plagued by the haunting suspicion that Gemma’s death involved foul play, Delta is plunged into a downward spiral of grief and paranoia. No one can be trusted—not her girlfriend, their friends, or her sister’s once-loyal boyfriend. Not even Delta’s own mind.
With a hurricane bearing down, two tempests collide at the abandoned Sea Glass Lodge. Accusations fly. Secrets unravel. And everyone is a target of the storm.
Keep an eye out on my Events page or subscribe to my newsletter to stay up to date on all my author events. I have some great fall events I’ll be adding in soon!
I’ve become very passionate about sharing my knowledge about self-publishing children’s books with writers. My conference sessions and workshops are packed full of good information, but if the self-publishing bug has hit you and you find yourself wanting more personalized guidance, I’m now offering one-on-one Self-Publishing Consultations. You get me for a whole hour to ask all things self-publishing and to come up with a plan for the next steps in your indie author career.
How is your summer (or winter if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere) shaping up?
I wasn’t even sure how to title this post because I have so many exciting things to announce. First of all, THE BEDTIME KNIGHT is now available as an audiobook, narrated by Stephanie Quinn. And it earned an orange banner on Amazon for being the #1 new release in Audiobooks on Bedtime & Dreaming for Children! You can find the audiobook on Chirp, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Audible, Libro.fm, Scribd, Audiobooks.com, and Google Play.
If you’d like a free listen of THE BEDTIME KNIGHT, sign up for my author newsletter, where you’ll also earn access to two free short stories! It really is the best way to get all my latest news and exclusive offers, and I’ll only email you once a month. I appreciate all you who subscribe to the blog, but if you haven’t also signed up for my newsletter, I’d love for you to do that too.
For all you Kobo readers, two of my books are on sale right now. For the first time ever, ELIXIR BOUND is free now through April 9th! This award-winning YA fantasy is Shadow and Bone meets The Lord of the Rings with strong female characters embracing their power while on an epic quest. PIRATE ISLAND, the middle grade adventure reminiscent of The Goonies, is only $2.99 now through April 16th.
Now a little something for the writers! I’ll be presenting two workshops at the in-person New England SCBWI Conference, April 28-30. The titles of my workshops are “Traditional vs. Self-publishing: Who Will Win?” and “What to Expect When You’re Self-Publishing.” Keep an out another SCBWI workshop announcement coming soon! You can see all my author appearances, including a local in-person one in May, on the Events page.
Finally, I had the pleasure of being a guest on the Woodbury Writes podcast, hosted by Sandy Carlson, poet laureate of Woodbury, CT. We had a great conversation about creating fantasies for young readers and more!
There’s more I could talk about, like how I’m so very close to being done with revisions of my YA psychological thriller Hamlet retelling. I’ll be doing a cover reveal and release date reveal for that soon…as soon as I finalize the title! But I’ve reached information overload.
