Authors

Given how much ‘world building’ you’ve done and are continuing to do, would you ever consider allowing other authors to use these constructs to build their own stories? I can imagine it would be difficult but there are other series out there where the author has created a ‘world’ and other authors use that as a platform for their books.

By way of example – Eric Flint’s 1632 book started a huge spin off, so too has John Ringo’s Black Tide Rising zombie stories.

It could potentially allow you to help collaborate with other authors, expand the ‘universe’ and derive a potential additional revenue stream.

Whenever things get rough, Roxanne escapes to other worlds. She possesses a talent that no one else believes exists. Except her granddaughter Marissa, who exhibits the same talent.

Roxanne wants to train Marissa to live with her talent, but the rest of the family wants to stop her. They fear Marissa will end up like Roxanne: difficult, unreachable, distant. Worse, they fear Marissa will not survive Roxanne’s training—or her love.

“Worlds Enough…And Time” is free on this site for one week only. If you just want a copy of this story, download it on any e-book site or by clicking here. Enjoy!

Worlds Enough…And Time Kristine Kathryn Rusch

“Watch,” Marissa says.

She brings her small hand to her temple, then extends her arm. She tilts her head sideways, black curls falling against her neck, and stares at something I can’t see. Finally she twists her fingers ever so slightly, and a window opens in the sky.

It’s a tiny window, the size of a hand mirror, and it looks like a photograph floating on the summer breeze. The window blots out part of a birch tree, but not the lake beyond.

A floating miracle, adrift in a sea of air.

I crouch to Marissa height, barely over three feet, and stare into the window. All I can see are waves, like heat waves that appear on a highway on a sunny day.

Marissa giggles, clenches her fist, and the window disappears. All that remains are the birch trees, the dandelion fluff decorating the air, and the chill breeze off the lake.

The emptiness startles me.

My heart is pounding and my own fingers clench. I want to grab her, shake her, demand that she do it again.

Instead, I close my eyes, trying to control my own trembling. Marissa laughs, the sound farther away. She’s probably running off, but I don’t care.

Her father will find her. Bastard. He said nothing of this. He should have known how interested I’d be.

A son owes his mother. He always owes his mother.

And he should never forget that.

***

I was Marissa’s age when I first had the feeling, the sensation of worlds dividing, multiplying, changing around me. I had snuck into the attic. The air smelled of dust and mildew, the floor simple pine boards, the boxes slowly rotting in the summer damp.

My mother’s wedding dress hung in a metal wardrobe, the latch rusted open. I pulled the door, saw the white dress yellowing with age and inattention, the black cocktail gown beside it, and a blue silk evening gown with a plunging neckline and room for a bustle.

Only I didn’t know what a bustle was or a cocktail dress or an evening gown. I brushed against the blue silk, part of it trailing to the dirty metal floor of the wardrobe, and saw the dress as it had once been: hanging off a voluptuous woman, accenting her narrow waist, her high breasts, and adding to her already ample behind. The diamonds around her neck winked in the gaslight, and she smiled, her skin unlined and pale against the blackness of her hair. In the background, music played—a waltz—and couples twirled on a polished dance floor, none of the women as beautiful as the one before me, the one in the dress, the one who made the dress live.

She turned, saw me, eyes widening, and shrieked that my filthy hand was ruining her dress. Her skin, warm and soft, brushed mine, and dislodged my fingers.

Then she faded as if she had never been.

The dress hung in the wardrobe, forgotten against the black and the rusting wall.

My hand had fallen to my side, the skin still tingling from her touch.

I told my mother and she had laughed. “Miracles in the attic,” she said with enough contempt that even I, child that I was, realized she thought I made the entire thing up.

***

Darren slams open my kitchen door. He drags Marissa by the hand, pulls her inside, and takes her upstairs. I sip my coffee, warming my hands against the mug, and lean against the kitchen counter.

Outside, the breeze has become a gale. The birch trees sway and bend as if they are dancing to a music only they can hear. The sky has grown dark with an oncoming storm.

“Jesus, Mom,” Darren says from behind me. “She fell into the lake. She could’ve drowned.”

“She can swim.” I don’t turn around. I know Marissa can swim because I’m the one who took her to swimming lessons before she could walk. She would giggle and paddle toward me, dipping her head in the water like a baby seal.

“And if she’d been knocked unconscious? What then?”

Then she would have drowned. But I don’t say that.

“You were supposed to be watching her.” He steps into my line of sight, his face mottled with anger just like his father’s used to do.

“I did watch her.” My voice is amazingly level, considering how odd I feel. “I watched her create a hole in the sky.”

***

At four, you’re too young for theories. You simply know that things are not exactly what they seem.

I could never get the lady with the dress to come back. I visited the attic day after day, touched dress after dress and saw nothing except dust motes and the occasional moth.

But the air was alive up there, and I had a sensation that if I touched the right thing at the right moment, I could see worlds I hadn’t even imagined. Not just visages of the past, but possibilities of the future, permutations of the present, times that exist outside of ours.

In some of those places, my mother believed me, nurtured my talent, told me of hers. In most of those places, I believed the world was a much better, much friendlier place.

***

Darren takes Marissa home. The supervised visit is over. I am told I should not see her again.

I am left in my small house eighty miles from nowhere, one of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes only yards from my front door. Nowadays, motorboats and airplanes break the stillness with startling regularity, but when I moved here more than thirty years ago, silence was the norm.

I needed silence to concentrate, the glitter of the sun on the lake water to focus, the sparkle of deep winter snow to catch and hold my eye.

Sometimes I could slip—find an already existing window and start to step through it, like I first did in my mother’s attic—but I could never create my own.

I learned that in 1970 when Darren’s father left me.

***

By then, the theory I couldn’t form at four had become a full-blown dissertation, complete with footnotes and bibliography. I saw each conversation as my orals—a chance to convince the people around me that we were in one timeline out of millions, each linked by events, separated by choices in response to those events, and tied to each other by a single touchable moment.

My theory had pieces of Alice’s Adventures through the Looking Glass mixed with some C.S. Lewis and twisted by a touch of Ray Bradbury.

Years later, I would add more pages—chaos theory, string theory, the theory of everything—as well as musings on time by scientists from Dirac to Einstein.

But those scientific principles were in the future. In 1970, I was exploring inner space, trying to expand my mind, thinking the adventure came from within, not from without. My guru was Timothy Leary, my expansion of choice LSD, my trips cosmic, significant, and oh so wrong.

It was a sign of the time that Darrell—Darren’s father—who couldn’t take my constant drug use, my discussions of the limitlessness of the universe, my willingness to sit at the feet of anyone who believed in the existence of alternate worlds left me alone, pregnant, and broke—and no one blamed him for what happened next.

They blamed me.

***

The shrink has her own theory. She still tells me about it, even though I heard it in court when Darren got the judgment against me, forbidding me to see my own granddaughter for more than two hours, and never ever unsupervised.

The shrink thinks I make up alternate worlds because I do not like this one.

No matter how many books I bring her, no matter how much my aunt testifies to the Talents within our family, the shrink persists in her belief.

“Roxanne,” she says to me when I complain about Darren’s hasty departure, “you have to face what you do. You cannot constantly escape to other worlds.”

What the shrink does not understand is that I did not escape that afternoon by the lake. I wanted to, but I couldn’t reach the window. I couldn’t even see what was inside.

I was there the entire time.

I was there, just like I was supposed to be.

***

There will be a new hearing. Some legal assistant arrives at my house with court papers. My son has decided to exclude me from my granddaughter’s life forever.

I hesitate before I call my attorney. I cannot sound hysterical. I cannot let him know what I will lose.

I walk through my small house, touch the antiques that have once opened the past for me and do no longer. The desk I found at a flea market outside of Boston, which took me to a dark gray afternoon with a filthy harbor out the window, and a man writing a letter with a quill pen. The letter began Dearest, She has learned of us. I must end—

Then he saw me, started, and the pen scrawled awkwardly along the page. He shouted, pushed, and I fell backwards, out of wonderland, and back to the flea market where a dozen people stared at me as if I had lost my mind.

By then, I knew: Only two trips are allowed through a window into another time—a trip there and a trip back. After that, the window closes.

Still, I buy the objects that open worlds for me: the desk; a book of poems written in Latin (once held by a sobbing priest who screamed when he saw me); a glass serving bowl that in a not-too-distant past had held salad and matching glass tongs (lost to time). The woman who had been mixing the salad in the bowl had seen me and smiled, thinking I was one of her guests, until she saw my attire—blue jeans, a Cal Tech sweatshirt, bare feet. Then she frowned and spoke to me in a language I did not understand. Someone nearby grabbed my arm and shoved me backwards—and that window closed, like all the others before them.

I can find windows—existing windows—but I cannot create them.

Not like Marissa.

Marissa, who holds universes in one tiny little hand.

***

Perhaps doctors are right. Perhaps newborns should not ingest mind-altering chemicals in their mother’s milk.

Over the phone, my mother called Darren’s screams colic, but when those screams didn’t end, the neighbors called the police. They took him away from me, claiming he was malnourished, claiming he was addicted, claiming he would be brain-damaged forever.

He programs computers now, graduated from the top of his class at Harvard, lives a mundane life with a wife who refuses to meet me and the most beautiful child in the world.

The doctors were wrong: he is not damaged. At least not visibly. But he has a paranoia I recognize from my hippie days, a tendency to believe the worst of everyone around him, a rebellion against authority that must have come through the milk as well.

That the authority he rebels against is me is something I have trouble dealing with. I freely admit that, even though the shrink believes I do not—I cannot—understand.

***

I remember the first time we met. He was eighteen. He had used his powerful mind to track me down.

I believe he remembered me from those first few months—inside that complex mind of his were images of me—and I had a hunch that he too had peered into alternate worlds and saw how happy we would have been if only I had done things right.

We had eight years. I was clean and pretending to be unimaginative. My visits to antique stores were infrequent and I tried to stay away from estate sales, garage sales, and public auctions so that I couldn’t touch the past.

I tried very hard to be normal, to hide my secret life.

We would talk about everything from politics to aliens, from the things we could touch to the things we could only imagine, to the importance of belief and the willingness all humans have to understand something beyond themselves.

We would talk, then.

And he would listen.

***

Finally, I call the lawyer.

He is my age, expensive, and world-weary, with a high tolerance for alternate lifestyles, even though he hasn’t lived one himself in nearly thirty-five years.

He takes my call: he has gotten the papers. He expected to hear from me.

I am slightly annoyed that he did not call first.

I sit on my screened-in porch and stare at the lake as we speak. Sunlight glitters on the water, making diamonds, making tiny untouchable windows that might—if we’re lucky—open alternate worlds.

Sometimes I am distracted, but my lawyer is used to that.

Today it seems to irritate him.

“I asked, Roxanne, if you were supposed to be keeping an eye on her,” he snaps, his voice metallic through the phone.

“The visits are supervised. I’m never the only one watching her.” I rock back in my chair, looking at the lake from a different angle.

The prisms of light flicker, but do not move.

“Don’t you remember the fight we had to get Marissa out to the lake house in the first place?” he asks. “Don’t you remember the discussion with the judge, your promise—in writing, Roxanne—that you would never take your eyes off her?”

“I blinked,” I say. A blink of an eye: the lid closes, then opens. It takes only a moment, or perhaps an entire night. The amount of time passing depends on your definition of time. If a moment is a blink of an eye, and a blink is the closing of the lids, followed by the opening of the lids, then I looked away for only a moment.

“It says here you left her.” I can hear papers rattling through the earpiece. “It says you went inside and made coffee.”

“Darren was already going to her. I knew she’d be fine.” Then I whisper: “She swims, you know.”

“I know.” He sounds so exasperated.

The swim classes convinced the first judge that I cared. I was the one who drove Marissa there, the one who held her in the water, the one who listened to her coach, swam with her, helped her learn to use those tiny limbs.

I was the only one thinking ahead—knowing, fearing, if she fell through a window into another world there was no guarantee she would land on ground. She might find herself a pond or a pool or a too-full tub. She might need to know how to hold her breath before she moved backwards, into the world she had just left.

Of course, I never explained it quite that way. Lawyers, judges, logical minds—they never entirely understand. So I said simply, convincingly, apparently, that swimming is a survival skill as important as walking and it’s always better for children to learn early, particularly if they’re going to be around lakes.

Back then, that had been a point for me.

“But that’s not the point now,” my lawyer says. “The point is that you should have gone after her. You should have saved her, not Darren. He sees it as one more sign of your growing irresponsibility.”

“I’m not irresponsible,” I say.

“Your granddaughter nearly drowns and you make coffee?”

“She didn’t nearly drown.” I have to struggle to keep my voice level. “She can swim.”

“I’m going to be honest with you, Roxanne,” he says to me, and I hate the tone. It is the same tone Darren uses with me now — an I-will-speak-slowly-because-you-will-never-understand tone. “You’ve blown this. Even if we do go back to court, the best you can hope for is supervised visits in a neutral place—like Social Services. You’ll never get to see her at your house, and certainly not at Darren’s. Maybe it’s best if you let Marissa go. Your record with children is poor. Wait until she’s an adult, like you did with Darren. Wait until the two of you can talk.”

I did not wait until Darren was an adult. He was taken from me, and no one would tell me where he went. He found me.

And for a brief time, I was his alternate world.

“No,” I say. “I have to see her.”

“Why, Roxanne?” he asks. “And don’t give me the grandmother-granddaughter crap. I don’t buy it. Other people aren’t real to you.”

“There are things in life that only I can teach her, only I can show her.”

“Yeah,” my lawyer says. “Which is precisely what your son is afraid of.”

***

He was too old when he came to me, my son, my Darren. His mind had already formed around precepts someone else had taught him—that solid objects existed only in one space-time, that this world was the only one (except for Heaven and Hell—which Darren himself called mythical concepts—he had taken his disbelief one step further than even the world around him had taught him).

Although I tried to tell him about our family’s talents—my aunt’s ability to know what had happened in someone else’s past, my mother’s sudden inklings of what was to come, my own ability to reach into already existing windows—he did not believe me. He laughed, calling our talents superstitious nonsense which could be explained logically, he was sure.

Later, he called my beliefs fantasies, and even later, drug-induced hallucinations.

By then, he had married.

By then, his mind had been poisoned, by his wife.

***

After that day near the lake, I have thought a lot about Marissa and how she fits into this world. She is one of the window-creators. If she touches an object, she doesn’t find the window, as I do. She makes it.

Like the woman in the dress (a great-grandmother, I later learned), like the man at the desk, like the priest with his poetry, my granddaughter has the ability to open moments in time.

I suspect she also has the ability to close them.

I have searched for this my entire life—something I cannot explain to my lawyer, who sees my actions as negligence—and something my shrink willfully misunderstands. My granddaughter is special, but only people who understand her special ability will help her develop it.

She needs me, even more than I need her.

***

It takes planning, of course. And silence. I speak to no one, confide in no one, write to no one.

I act alone.

I let my lawyer pursue our defense in court, even though his heart is not in it. Neither is mine. Supervised visits in Social Services will do neither me nor Marissa any good.

I let my shrink enroll me in more rehabilitation programs, even though I am still clean, and have been for nearly twelve years now.

Of course, I do not tell her that I plan to be gone before the first program starts.

Darren’s house is in a modern neighborhood with large lots and houses that the media calls McMansions. His is a 6,000-square-foot monstrosity with an indoor and an outdoor pool, a four-car garage, a guesthouse, and a state-of-the-art security system.

The system funnels into the guesthouse and the garage as well as the house.

People forget that I was once a beloved member of the family—or at least a tolerated one. I have keys. I have codes.

I can—and have—slipped in and out unnoticed.

Marissa’s bedroom is in the south wing, on the second floor. She has a suite with a playroom, a bedroom, and a second bedroom for guests or the nanny that Darren keeps threatening to hire. The south wing has a door at its far end that leads into the apartment above the garage.

It is so simple to enter the garage by the side door, shut off the alarm before it even blares, climb the stairs to the apartment, and then cross into the house. So simple that I worry I will get caught whenever I do it.

This night it is even simpler. I wait until everyone is asleep. I have a flashlight that I only use in the non-windowed parts of the hallway, but I really don’t need it.

I know this place as well as I know my own—the worlds we travel between, the lives that get lived within these little boxes, in these quiet walls.

Marissa’s suite is filled with nightlights. I close and lock the main door, then slip into her bedroom. She is asleep on her side, her hands tucked under her head as if she were praying. Her curls float behind her.

My hand hovers near her temple, wishing I could pull the window from it with a touch of my fingers. But I dare not try.

Instead, I cradle her against me, coax her awake. She blinks sleepily at me and smiles—to his credit, Darren has never said anything negative about me to her—and settles into the crook of my arm.

“Remember?” I whisper. “Remember showing me how you can make pictures in the sky?”

She nods.

“Can you do it now?” I ask.

She nods again.

“Watch,” she whispers.

She brings her small hand to her temple, then extends her arm. She tilts her head sideways, black curls falling against her neck, and stares at something I can’t see. Finally she twists her fingers ever so slightly, and a window opens right in front of us, a window filled with light.

I look through it, but cannot see clearly, just like before.

I reach out my hand, but Marissa shakes her head. “Papa says not to touch.”

Damn him. Darren knows—and believes—his daughter, but denies the talent to me.

Damn him.

Still, I smile at her. “Grownups can touch,” I say.

I touch the edge and the window widens. I still cannot see through the light.

Marissa puts her thumb in her mouth, a little girl now, in a world she does not understand.

I would comfort her, but I do not. She needs to remember this. She needs to remember it like I remember the attic, as the defining moment, the beginning of her understanding of the nature of the universe.

She will explore, on her own, her abilities, if she only remembers how I behave.

I am nervous, but I can’t let her see that.

My heart pounds. I ease my body away from hers, then kiss her forehead. She looks at me with wide, frightened eyes.

I place both hands into the light. It is warm there, and I catch the scent of daffodils.

“Remember,” I say, and tumble through.

She reaches out a hand to stop me—and instead, closes the window.

Just as I expected.

***

A blink of an eye—

—and suddenly, I am sitting beside a row of daffodils, planted against a headstone. The cemetery is carefully mowed, the trees are large—birches—and beyond, you can catch a glimpse of one of Minnesota’s ten thousand lakes.

Sunlight glimmers off the water, creating prisms of light, little windows into yet even more worlds.

I am not willing to travel beyond this spot. I am comfortable here. It is quiet, and I always do best in the quiet.

The air is alive, filled with visages of the past, possibilities of the future, and permutations of the present.

I know this world is a much better, much friendlier place.

 

Worlds Enough…And Time

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Svetap/Dreamstime, Naphotos/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

 

Mod R is out today, so you are in my semi-capable hands. This is a slice of life post.

When I was a child, time seemed to move in a straight forward way, like floating down the stream of a slow, gentle river in a little boat. Then I became an adult, and the passage of time stopped being a steady ride. Sometimes it’s a rapid current, and I don’t know what’s going on, and the boat is falling apart. Sometimes the river turns into a swamp, and I’m going in circles, rowing as fast as I can and getting nowhere. Sometimes I just give up and drift. But then there are times when I open my eyes and notice that the sky is a beautiful blue, the water is clear, and the weeping willows are bending gracefully over the banks.

April had managed to pack all of those moments into 4 weeks. It’s always a very busy month for us. Gordon and both of our daughters were all born in April. This year, there was a book tour on top of it, followed by Gordon getting sick, and then a storm that ripped the decorative shutters off our house and damaged the stucco. Through all of it, we have been working on the book, which is a mammoth at 173,000 words and still isn’t done.

The river has been clogged with debris of Not Done for a while. Boxes of books haven’t been mailed, admin tasks haven’t been attended to, phone calls haven’t been returned, and important errands haven’t been run. I haven’t unpacked. I normally unpack within 24 hours of coming home.

::stares at the suitcases::

I swear I will unpack today.

We did accomplish some things. I have gone to my medical appointments. They had given me a heart monitor out of abundance of caution, and I am delighted to report that I am allergic to whatever kind of glue is on it. I broke out in hives, and the itching was ridiculous. The monitor fell off after 5 days and I actually did a little dance of happiness. I also dragged Gordon to have an eye exam, and his new glasses have arrived. I need to drag him out again to pick them up.

We went out for a dinner with friends and then again to celebrate the birthdays. We have left the house so many times in April, it has to be a record of some kind.

We signed and mailed off 2,600 bookplates for a special book box.

We heroically cut the grass in the backyard, because we finally got rain and in the true Texas fashion, the weeds had gotten thigh-high in a space of a week. Gordon ordered a dumpster for a spring cleaning, and I am ridiculously excited, because I can clean out the back yard. It accumulates old planters, random items like rusted thingie that was used at some point to turn the shutters, and other weird stuff, and I swear that refuse keeps reproducing somehow.

Someone emailed about the mammoth I made during the Q&A. Here she is.

I made her with Premier Parfait Plush for Kid 2. The pattern is available on Etsy from KnotsandSnuggles. Their mammoth has a wider head and less curly hair, but I really liked the curls. There is no trick – they happen naturally if you pull up a longer yarn loop.

I haven’t finished the Book Tour Shawl. I am saving it for the summer trip to Columbus Book Fair.

The next project is this shawl, Frühlingserwachen. I’d love to know what that translates to.

Pattern and Image by FraeuleinGerdaEU

This is a very interesting pattern that looks deceptively complex, but is actually pretty straight forward. My issue right now is that I don’t quite have the right yarn for it.

I can hear you laughing, but hear me out.

This shawl takes at least 1,200 yards. I wanted to do one of Wendy Wonders gradients with it, but realized that what I have tops out at 800 and matching to it will be difficult. I’m trying to figure out how to approach this. Should I do each section in a different color? Do I want cotton or something like Blue Heroin with lurex for this or do I want wool? Fingering or DK? Should I stick to the gradient but do the narrow cross sections in a different color or would that look ugly?

I am conflicted.

Well, I need to be at work in 8 minutes, so I have to end this lovely picnic and climb back into my metaphorical boat.

This is my reminder to myself and to anyone who needs it today: the book will get finished, the chores will get finished, the planet will keep spinning. In a rush to get everything done and to catch up, let’s not forget to enjoy the river.

The post Slice of Life Monday first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to head over to Storybundle to pick up a copy, along with ebooks by Robert T. Jeschonek, Andrea Pearson, J. Daniel Sawyer, Dean Wesley Smith, and ten more great writers. Everyone’s book is an exclusive. That’s right. Everything in the bundle is exclusive to the bundle, including my book.

The book is exclusive to the Storybundle—meaning that at the moment, you can’t get it anywhere else. So if you want to read it now, pick it up from Storybundle. If you don’t want a deal on the ebook or if you only read print, then you can always preorder the book on various retailer sites in a few weeks. The new edition will release on July 14.

The second edition of The Write Attitude is quite different from the first edition, which originally appeared in 2016. I kept some parts of the original book, but much of the material is newer. The new material comes from my Patreon page. Not every post from my Patreon page shows up here, although several do. If you want to see everything, though, head to Patreon and sign up. 

This post, which first appeared on this site in slightly different form, is from January of 2015, and is one of the early chapters in the book.

Churning It Out

Toward the end of a pretty good Entertainment Weekly article about the romance side of the publishing industry, this sentence appears:

[Bella Andre]’s a naturally fast writer—on average she churns out four to six books a year—and she released the first one in June 2011.

Before we get to the reason I’m telling you about that sentence, let me say one thing that might or might not be related: There’s a slight snobby tone to EW’s romance article. What’s that all about? The magazine’s called Entertainment Weekly. It’s not The New York Times Book Review. EW sings the praises of The Walking Dead and video games, and everything in between, for heaven’s sake, but somehow romance fiction doesn’t meet the high standards of entertainment?

Sorry. I had to get that off my chest.

As I said, the article, “A Billion-Dollar Affair,” by Karen Valby, appeared in the October 24, 2014 issue, and did cover the romance industry (of the time) pretty well. (And is still available online.)

So why am I objecting to that single sentence?

I’m not, really. It’s a common sentence from any media that covers books. And I’m not even objecting to the entire sentence. Bella Andre does write fast by most writers’ standards, and she does so comfortably.

What I’m objecting to is the phrase “churned out.”

It’s become a cliché. Any writer who writes fast “churns out” material. Or she “cranks out” or “pounds out” whatever it is that she writes. Because clearly, no writer who writes fast can think about what she writes.

There are other implications in that phrase. The material “churned out” isn’t very good. Anything “churned out” is an exact copy of what has come before. It has no real value, primarily because of the speed with which the writer “churns out” the material.

In the olden days of traditional publishing, those of us who “churned out” a lot of books did so under a lot of pen names. Here’s how it worked in my case: Kristine Kathryn Rusch might, at best, put out two books per year; Kris Nelscott one every two years; and Kristine Grayson one every six months.

Most reviewers never noticed all the short stories or blog posts or nonfiction. Only a handful of people (including my agents back when I was stupid enough to hire them) knew that I wrote under other pen names as well.

While reading a midlist thriller novel in bed one night several years ago, I laughed so hard that I woke Dean up. What made me laugh? The author’s bio, which stated that the byline of the novel I was reading was a pen name for a “well-known #1 New York Times bestselling author.” Ballsy and hysterical. That writer wrote so many books that his publisher refused to publish them all under the author’s bestselling name.

Or maybe the publisher never got a chance. Because I later discovered who the author in question was (and that’s why I’m not naming the book here), and discovered that the author had nearly a dozen pen names, and kept them all quiet—except for that coy little bio for at least one of them.

In the opening to Bag of Bones (first published in 1998), Stephen King writes that his main character, a bestselling novelist, kept one novel in the drawer for every novel he published, since his publisher was demanding that he publish no more than one book per year.

Think about this, people: How many other industries that have mega-selling products demand that the producer of popular, high-quality material slow down? What happened to providing the consumers with what they wanted?

When Nora Roberts started out, she was fortunate to begin with Harlequin, which could publish as many books as she produced. She stayed with Harlequin even after she moved to a bigger publisher (Bantam) for a once-per-year hardcover, which then became a once-per-year hardcover and twice-a-year mass market paper, and then became twice-a-year hardcovers and three-times-a-year mass market paper, and finally, she had a big fight with Harlequin, and started up the J.D. Robb pen name (twice per year) and her publisher (by then, Putnam) threw in the towel. The publisher finally agreed that Nora could put out a lot of books. But the publisher’s other writers couldn’t.

Nora Roberts’ speed didn’t matter to that publisher because the publisher had no expectation of quality based on the genre. As we all know, and Entertainment Weekly’s snobby tone confirms, romance is trash anyway. No one expects quality fiction from writers who crank out cookie-cutter books for women.

You think I’m kidding, right? I’m not. I’m old enough to have read the trade journals as romance got its start as a genre, as the Romance Writers of America (founded in 1980) fought for recognition from publishers, as romance readers slowly realized that they were marketing force that had a lot of clout.

Romance has a lot of respect now compared to the 1980s—and still writers see phrases like “churned out” and that slightly school-boyish tone that every Literary Critic uses when discussing romance.

It’s about love and mushy stuff. It can’t be good. It might include kissing and touching and actual irony-free emotion. Anyone can churn out that crap if they put their minds to it. But most people are sensible enough to want respectability instead of…whatever it is that these romance people have.

Oh, yeah. Money.

And readers.

Who actually like the books.

I have taken exception to that snobbish attitude for my entire career. I’ve written essay after essay about it in all kinds of journals and magazines. I’ve written some business blogs on it too.

Back when I was writing those essays, the attitude was merely annoying. Savvy writers could get past it with the judicious use of pen names, and make not just a living, but a substantial living. As in earning mid-six figures or more, simply by hiding the fact that the fast writers wrote more than one book per year.

That snobbish attitude has always been harmful to writers who wanted to make a living. But in my mind, that snobbery always went hand-in-hand with a desire to be recognized over a desire to have a full-time writing career. The writers who wanted to make a living figured out how to handle the respectability argument while “churning out” a lot of books. The writers who wanted respectability and labored over each word never left their day jobs.

Now, however, that snobbish attitude has become actively harmful to writers. Most of the ways that books sell to readers have broken down. The traditional publishing systems have lost their impact. The old-fashioned way that publishers advertised books—that one-size-fits-all method—no longer works. Bookstores don’t window titles much anymore, if a reader can find a brick-and-mortar bookstore that sells new titles within driving distance of home.

Because books are available all the time rather than for only a few months, readers pay less attention to release dates than ever before. Readers have always read a book when they felt like it, and not a moment sooner. But in the past, readers had to buy the book when they saw it, because they might never find a copy again.

So, even if readers didn’t read the book for a year or more, readers still had to buy it in that limited time window.

Not any longer. Readers can make a note of the title, realize it’s been published, and buy it days or hours or minutes before reading it. That really changes the way that the publishing industry markets books—or it should.

It hasn’t yet, entirely, anyway. But the industry is starting to get a clue.

Event books, the ones that publishers convinced the media to promote, are no longer events. The numbers to become a bestseller are much, much lower than they were in 2007.

Lists matter, but less and less as readers discover their books in other ways.

And one of the major ways that readers discover a book? E-mail alerts or notifications that scroll across the reader’s favorite online retailing site—alerts and notifications tailored to that reader.

No longer do we all get notification of the top five books on The New York Times bestseller list. Now, we get science fiction (if that’s what we read) or romance or mystery. We get notifications about our favorite author’s latest book, not the latest release from some author whose work we would never, ever, ever read.

The notifications come from bots designed by the retailers. What provokes those bots to let a reader know about an author? Publication of her latest work. The bots always send readers a note that an author they have bought before (through that retailer) has released a new book.

The reader might not buy that book immediately, but the book might go on a wish list. It might be put in reserve until the reader has the cash to order or the time to read.

Another change in the way people buy books also has to do with unlimited availability. All readers indulged in binge reading of a new-to-them author, but in the past, that binge reading was combined with treasure hunting.

Whenever I discovered a new writer whose work I liked, I’d read what was easily available, then I’d go to the library to see what it had. Libraries never had the complete oeuvre because, like bookstores, they have limited shelf space. So I’d dig through every used bookstore in every town I visited until I got each and every book by that author.

Or as close to each and every book as I could get.

Other readers did the same.

Now, readers can order every book that a favorite author has written, whether that author has written five books or hundreds. That fear writers have, the fear that readers won’t respect the work if it doesn’t take years to complete, is silly when looked at from a reader’s perspective.

Readers want to escape from their lives for a few hours. They might want to read a beautiful well-written slow-moving literary novel or they might want to read a fast-paced hard-to-believe thriller. But readers want the book when they’re ready to relax. If they liked that book, they want another by the same author. The author becomes a known quantity, and the reader wants more.

Binge-reading has become an all-consuming activity, just like binge-watching. And the best way to get noticed as a writer is to publish enough to enable your readers to binge for a weekend.

But the idea of writing a lot is the opposite of the way that most writers are trained. Writers are told to slow down, think about every word, consider every sentence. Writers are taught to forget story because story is something that hack writers do.

Hack writers can “churn” out words because words are unimportant to them.

Real writers write so slowly that they might only compose a paragraph per day.

Real writers who have day jobs and who still believe myths spouted in the 19th century.

Real 19th-century writers who are still read today, like Charles Dickens or Louisa May Alcott, got paid by the word, so they wrote a lot of words, for a lot of publications. These writers wrote fast long hand, and they “churned out” a lot of stories we no longer read.

But they also “churned out” stories that all of us still read.

That little phrase, “churned out,” holds so much disrespect. Deadly disrespect, because writers who hear that phrase—and use it themselves—won’t be able to survive in this new world.

The 21st century is not leisurely, although we have more leisure time than ever. Can you remember the name of the “important” literary novel of five years ago? Ten? Without looking it up? I didn’t think so.

Yet, I can still name the important literary novels of forty years ago, because they got all the press, and I do mean allthe press.

It’s impossible to get all of the press now. The best way to get attention is to give your readers what they want. If they like your work, they want more of it.

If they want more of it, the only person who can give them more is you.

And the only way to do that is to write a lot, whatever that means for you.

One sure way to teach yourself to write at a comfortable pace is to clean up your language. Watch every word. Make sure you’re using the right phrase—when you’re talking about writing.

Clean “churned out” from your vocabulary. Don’t say you “cranked out” a novel. Don’t apologize for writing fast. Don’t tell anyone how long it took to finish a novel.

Write and release.

The only people who judge fiction writers for how fast they write are people for whom reading isn’t something they do for enjoyment but for prestige. They want to impress others with their literary acumen.

I don’t know about you, but I want readers who get lost in the story, not readers who have already determined that I’m a hack because I don’t write at the proper speed or in the proper genre or with the proper attention to language.

Enjoy your writing. Take as much—or as little—time as you like to compose your stories.

Because how you created the story doesn’t matter. How much readers enjoy the story does. Readers don’t care if it took you one week to write that story or fifteen years. All readers want is escape.

And it’s your job to provide it.

“Churning It Out” from The Write Attitude

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This ebook, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

….. ah. After rereading the question I should have been more clearer, I meant to ask what is next after the Sigl Fashion articles. I apologize for the confusion what I wrote wasn’t what I meant to say!

In reply to Valentin.

I would think mending helps with bruising as that is a result of damaged blood vessels. May not remove the leaked blood that causes the discoloring but would mend the blood vessels?

In reply to Kevin.

Kevin, the answer to your question is literally spelled out in the exact post you’re replying to.

In reply to Edmund Wong.

The edits I make are going to be limited by what I’ve already written in book 5 – which sometimes means I won’t make changes which I might have done had I had the suggestions earlier. That’s just how it goes; time’s a limited resource, and I have to pick and choose how I spend it.

In reply to Celia.

It better not otherwise his forced to write a second draft

Great news! It’s great when you are on schedule with the tasks you need to do!

Out of curiosity what do you intend for the next topic in the Beginners Guide to Drucraft? I myself am interested in Primal and Dimension since we haven’t seen them a lot and I love the associations, and planets they are associated with it’s been a real treat!

But regardless any worldbuilding article is very informative, hopefully one day you can do one on the Cults major and minor, it would be interesting to see what eras where the Order of the Dragon and Warband were on top.

Will Stephen use a bicycle in this book? I thought it would be a cool combination of his Lightfoot and strength sigl.

Great audio news to usher us into the weekend:

Graphic Audio’s dramatized full-cast adaptation of Sapphire Flames is now available for preorder, with release scheduled for August 12. Arabella’s POV short story A Misunderstanding will also be included.

This is the first novel in Catalina’s Hidden Legacy trilogy, picking up three years after Diamond Fire. Catalina has been very busy learning what it means to be a Prime, Alessandro is about to do a great deal of Italian exclaiming, and fan-favourite Runa returns in the middle of family tragedy.

Speaking of Diamond Fire, reminder that the dramatized adaptation came out on April 6, so if you are following the Hidden Legacy audio releases in order, you have time to enjoy Nevada’s wedding novella before Catalina fully takes the wheel in August.

And that’s not all that GA has in store for us!

Nora Achrati is back in the Kate Daniels world, and has started directing and recording for the Wilmington Years series – with Magic Tides to be expected in late July.

The script is wonderful, the covers are being designed as we speak, and Nora, of course, brings all of her experience from the main series with her. I’ve also told her everything about the Horde’s reactions to Wilmington, so she knows about the Consort (ever merciful), the magic clams, the Keelan love and just how much we were missing Kate and didn’t want to give her peace in her HEA hehe.

After the Wilmington Years, Nora will move on to Blood Heir. That one is further down the line, and I do not have an official date for you yet.

A lot of you have also asked about a dramatized adaptation of This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me. Thank you for all the casting and directorial suggestions, soundtrack concepts, and the enthusiasm, but a gentle reminder: House Andrews is not hiring or commissioning Graphic Audio to produce these adaptations, nor controlling their business and creative decisions.

GA are an entirely independent business, who approaches authors for adaptation rights of the works they are interested in, and entirely designs and produces the full-cast “movies in your mind”. As soon as we have official news on the Maggie the Undying dramatized front, we will announce it.

Until then: preorders are open, recordings have started, and our summer is looking very good indeed.

The post Audio news: Consorts and Primes first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

I’m glad you finally got the edits back! Hopefully none of the proposed changes affect things you’ve already written for book 5?

Another occasion to see House Andrews live!

Ilona and Gordon will appear as Featured Authors at the 2026 Columbus Book Festival on July 11 and 12, 2026.

Hosted by the Columbus Metropolitan Library Foundation, the festival events will be held at Main Library, 96 S. Grant Ave, and in the adjacent Topiary Park at the corner of Town and Washington Streets.

If you would like to see House Andrews in person, here is where to find them:

• Saturday, July 11 at 1:00 PM Spirits, Spells & Swoons: Romantasy | Stage 2

House Andrews will be talking romantasy, magic, danger, and all the delicious complications that come with throwing feelings into a fantasy kingdom that’s trying to kill you. Joining them on the panel are BFF Jeaniene Frost (A Curse of Beasts and Magic) and Shalini Abeysekara (This Blade of Ours).

• Sunday, July 12 at 10:30 AM Speed Matching | Room 2A

In Speed Matching, readers meet authors in small groups for quick five-minute rounds, getting a personal introduction to each book before the authors rotate to the next table.

• Sunday, July 12 at 3:00 PM God Complex: World-Building | Stage 2

Later that afternoon, Ilona Andrews will return to Stage 2 for a conversation about world-building alongside John Chu (The Subtle Art of Folding Space) and K.X. Song (The Dragon Wakes with Thunder). If your favorite part of fantasy is seeing how an author builds a world that feels layered, lived-in, and slightly alarming to inhabit, this is likely your panel.

Tickets?

All of these sessions are free and open to the public, with no tickets required. Seating for panel discussions is first come, first served however, so if there is a session you particularly want to attend, arriving early is your friend.

Signed books?

Yes! After each scheduled appearance (so both panels as well as the Speed Matching), Ilona and Gordon will head to their assigned table in the 2nd Floor Reading Room for a one-hour signing session, where readers will be able to meet them and have books signed.

The festival bookstore will also be set up there, with new releases as well as back-titles from all the featured festival authors available for purchase. By buying books at the Official Festival Bookstore you are supporting your local independent book stores! It is a partnership between Cover to Cover, The Book Loft, Gramercy Books, and Prologue Bookshop.

The festival organizers will also be announcing the full author lineup, exhibitors, and updated festival information through the official festival website which is here.

Book Clubs

One more quick note while I have your attention.

If you previously sent a request for a personalised book club letter from House Andrews and did not receive a response, please resend it with the subject line: Book Club Letter Request.

Both Ilona and myself have been truly buried under a truly ridiculous amount of fake “book club” spam lately, the ChatGPT-written kind that promises followers, Hollywood connections, immortal Texan ferrets in space, the works.

Some of the legitimate requests may have been accidentally sacrificed during the cleanup. Using that exact subject line will help real requests stand out from the nonsense.

Happy BDHing!

The post House Andrews at the 2026 Columbus Book Festival first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Pressida grimaced and unhooked a small barrel secured to her saddle. Her Andican mare gave the barrel a derisive snort. Pressida had tied her on the other side of the log, well out of Keraengle’s kicking range.

“That is what I love about knighthood.” Pressida pulled a knife out, pried the lid off the barrel, and dumped two gallons of ripe fish entrails onto the beach. “The sheer glamor of the job.”

The post Snippet Wednesday: the Glamor first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

The Unbroken anthology – featuring an all new fantasy novella from me – is now live on Kickstarter. 

Unbroken features original, never before published stories from 36 of the most prominent SFF authors working today (and me). Here’s the full line-up:

My novella is entitled The Black Reivers and will appeal to those who like their military fantasy with a whiff of gunpowder.

To support this project head on over to the Kickstarter page:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unbroken/unbroken-new-tales-by-masters-of-fantasy

In other news, updated where-to-buy links for Upon the Forge of Battle, the third and final book in the Age of Wrath trilogy, are here covering all formats. The book will be released on August 25th. Buy here:

UK Hardcover: Amazon.co.uk – Waterstones – Blackwells

US Paperback: Amazon.com – Barnes & Noble – Bookshop.org

Ebook: Amazon.com – Barnes & Noble – Kobo – Bookshop.org – Google Play

Audiobook: Audible.com – Audible.co.uk – Barnes & Noble – Google Play – Kobo

Book description:

As the Age of Wrath reaches its bloody conclusion, the world will be reforged in steel and fire . . .

Thera Blackspear was once champion to the Sister Queens. Now she’s a queen herself, with Elvine as her spear maiden, wielding a weapon forged by the gods. But while the traitorous Sister Lore plots in the shadows, Ascarlia will never be safe.

Felnir has won a crown of his own and forged a kingdom at the tip of his divine blade. Yet his dreams are troubled by visions of the brother he thought long dead. A brother who needs his help, and whom Felnir would give anything to save – even his hard-won kingship.

Ruhlin’s many victories have made him a hero to the Morvek, who believe he is the prophesied saviour who will overthrow their Nihlvarian enemies. But now he finds himself a prisoner of the Vortigurn, the King of Nihlvar, who has secrets and schemes of his own.

Secrets that could unmake the world.

Upon the Forge of Battle is the epic conclusion to Anthony Ryan’s Age of Wrath trilogy, a gripping fantasy saga of bloody retribution, deadly intrigue, and soaring heroism.

Albert’s mother championed Earth Day and its environmental causes. The cause became her first priority, almost an obsession. And Albert’s obsession? His mother. In her honor, he will Save The Earth…maybe not in the way she expected.

“Earth Day” is free on this site for one week only. If you just want a copy of this story, download it on any e-book site or by clicking here. Enjoy!

Earth Day Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…personal documents identify him as Albert Suttles, but in his statement, he repeatedly referred to himself as Raymond Bilojek…

My mom had an obsession with Senator Gaylord Nelson. Nobody remembers him any more, except in dusty old history books, not that there are dusty old history books any more. Everything’s online now. Even our confessionals.

Here’s mine.

Let me start again.

Mom had an obsession with Senator Gaylord Nelson. Not a stalkerish obsession, but one of those I-think-this-man-is-the-greatest obsessions. She used him as an example all the time, particularly in the dysfunctional early decades of this century.

There are no more men like Senator Gaylord Nelson, she said to me on her deathbed—not that I was with her at her deathbed. I was a full professor by then, supervising more research than I truly had time for, living in Berkeley, and enjoying it. Especially the weather. California weather, for a good Wisconsin boy, is like an early glimpse of heaven.

Not to mention that I spent my formal education in cold places. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yale, MIT. If it weren’t for my second post-doc at Cal-Tech, I would’ve thought that you had to nurture scientists in the cold in order for them to flower.

But I promised myself no jokes in this manifesto. Not that people get my jokes anyway. I’m too quiet. I think of the joke, turn it over in my mind, then inject it too late into the conversation. People have looked at me funny my entire life.

I long ago gave up trying to impress the unwashed with my conversational skills, even though I admire folks who have them. Earliest influences for me include comedians, especially the really brainy ones—George Carlin, Dennis Miller, Lewis Black—the ones who can quip their way out of anything. Or I thought they could, until I saw Carlin in his dotage, just out of rehab, working off a paper script, telling the audience honestly that he was testing material for an HBO special.

You remember HBO, right? That’s where I first saw the “Seven Words You Can’t Say On Television” speech. I must’ve been ten, maybe, one of those years when we could afford premium cable. 1977? Something like that. We were pretty itinerant, and I didn’t see much television at all, especially premium television as it was called then. So I remembered seeing Carlin on HBO.

But his other routines? I didn’t see those until later. And his influential “bad case of fleas” routine? I didn’t see that one until maybe mid-2007, on the Internet. Ironic, right?

Anyway, Mom. Senator Gaylord Nelson. She met him, you know. One of those Earth Day rallies back in the day. Said I met him too, back when Earth Day was a movement, and she was part of it. Not that she ever left the movement.

The movement defined our lives. She’d say, we moved for the environment.

Not for the weather, like normal people. But for the environment. Someone needed a volunteer to coordinate rallies? Mom was there. Someone needed a volunteer to post flyers? Mom was there. We lived off the kindness of strangers, she’d say, and it took me years to understand that she was quoting a Tennessee Williams play.

The kindness of strangers got me into a science-only high school. We need scientists, too, the man who fronted everything said. He was one of those truly rich bastards, the kind who gave his money to all sorts of causes. But his favorite was Mom’s favorite: the environment.

Everything from the Sierra Club to some wacky fringe organization (Save The Cockroaches!), this guy gave it money. And he funded Mom for years, which is something I don’t want to think about even now. Because I don’t know why Mom in particular, even though I have a hunch.

It does go back to Mom, you know. I’m smart enough to know that. The therapist I hired at my first tenured position told me I was “unhealthily obsessed” with her, and we had to break the obsession. That therapist couldn’t divorce me from Mom entirely. I recognize that too. Because without Mom, I wouldn’t be a tenured professor with a large research staff and grants for fifteen different projects, including the private one you’re seeing today.

Or will see today.

But I digress.

My digressions are why I’m not doing this as a video. Or a holographic video. Some kind of statement broadcast on every single remaining broadcast channel.

The Internet.

No one’ll see this until after.

But then, no one will see it after either.

Heh. Just realized.

This is all for me.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…his research assistants, graduate students, and post-doctoral candidates weren’t hard to find. All wore Earth Day T-shirts, modeled on the first Earth Day poster from 1970. Separate interviews attached. Each mentions Suttles/Bilojek’s insistence on the Earth Day experiment, which most participated in for a grade or because they were terrified of losing their research posting…

My influences:

1. Comedians (see above).
2. Space photos, particularly that one from the late 1960s—you know, the beautiful blue-and-green globe? That was Mom’s favorite too. But for different reasons. Me, I like the vivid colors, the rocks against the blackness, the vibrant life that we don’t recognize as life—you know, the sun big and deep like an ocean, with storms and spots and—I could go on forever. But we don’t have forever. ?
3. Great scientists from the past. The unassuming guys, at least in the beginning. Archimedes in the bathtub. Galileo dropping balls from the Tower of Pisa. Einstein contemplating the universe from the silence of the patent office.

They didn’t have grants and grad students, publish-or-perish mandates, the necessity of finding the smallest niche in the large world of science just to get someone to fund a project. They didn’t have to write grandiose papers before their discoveries. Sometimes they didn’t even write grandiose papers after their discoveries.

So of course, in this modern era, I decided not to write a grandiose paper either. I got dozens and dozens of smaller grants, on smaller topics, and isn’t it ironic that if you Google (Google. Heh. Created outside the system.) my professional name, you’ll see article after article, interview after interview, with me, whom they call the Scientist of Small Things.

Apparently I did find notice. Someone—maybe a scientifically minded clerk, handling grant applications for the U.S. government—noticed my name originating most of them.

No one put together all the topics, though.

No one except me.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…appended to this file a report from several different departments in Homeland Security, as well as reports from similar bureaus in Germany, Russia, China, South Africa…

Senator Gaylord Nelson, founder of Earth Day and, some say, the founder of the modern environmental movement, was a saint. George Carlin, comedian, the enemy.

At least according to Mom. On her deathbed. Or what I call her deathbed—that dreadful nursing home bed she didn’t leave for the last few years of her life. I saw her a year before she died—2007—and after that I discovered why Carlin was the enemy.

In that wonderful, eye-opening routine, he said he hated Earth Day. He said, and I quote: “Environmentalists don’t give a shit about the planet. You know what they’re interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat.”

Ah, it rang true. It rang so true.

That’s when I realized all my degrees, all those little environmental things I was doing weren’t for the planet. They were for the environmentalists. Like Mom.

And then, in that same routine, Carlin said, he said, the planet will be here after we’re long gone. And he added the inspiration: “The planet’ll shake us off like a bad case of fleas.”

That was my Eureka moment.

I know how to get rid of fleas.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

…when the FBI received a notice from the Patent Office, delineating several patents that returned to the same man, known as the Scientist of Small Things. The small things, when combined in the proper order, could be seen as a potential terrorist threat. The patent office employee [name redacted] did not contact the FBI immediately. After some thought, however, she determined she could not remain silent….

It took very little tweaking to move from “Save The Earth For Environmentalists” to “Save The Earth.”

Because to save the earth for environmentalists, you have to know what will kill the little buggers. Instead of getting rid of those factors, you add to them. You tweak them.

You make them stronger.

I figured out the balance. Tweak this and touch that and you make the planet shake off the fleas a little faster. It is a multidisciplinary approach. To understand how water reaches entire populations, one must know the engineering of water treatment plants as well as urban planning. One must also learn the details of water processing in each community.

Tiny things, small things, all reported back to the one man who can understand it all.

Amassing small bits of data into one large experiment. Only large minds can understand this.

And there are very few large minds around any more.

Almost none.

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Excerpt:

… the case built slowly. The initial investigator retired, and Agent William Franks took over. Franks had received a Masters in Biology from Harvard before joining the Bureau. He did not like the coincidences either, and talked off the record to two of Suttles/Bilojek’s graduate students. That raised enough suspicions to bring in additional field agents….

My pet graduate students run all of my projects. I have developed a multidisciplinary department, highly regarded, since most of my students go on to so-called great things in the so-called real world.

My current graduate students and post-docs are doing a one-day experiment for me, or so they think. They are not large minds. They are useful small minds. In the years I have planned this, it has always helped to have useful small minds.

It has also helped that in 2007 my mission changed from Save The World For Environmentalists to Save The World. Because of Mom, because of my initial environmentalist approach, I know how to talk to small minds, to make them believe I am on their side.

And I am. Truly I am. I do want to save the world.

In fact, my pet scientists and I are doing exactly that today.

My pet scientists have tweaked the ground water, and the air filtration systems. They’ve added toxins to all the poisons we already touch, from oil to Styrofoam. They’re adding viruses to enclosed spaces, like airplanes and ships. They’re even coating restaurant surfaces.

I don’t care how we get the fleas off the planet. I just care that we do.

And now we will.

As the first Earth Day T-shirt says, “We Have Met The Enemy and He Is Us.”

Case Number: HSFBDC42225I17

Homeland Security, FBI Division

Arresting Officer William Franks

Excerpt from Franks’ verbal message, attached to the huge packets of reports submitted to the U.S. Justice Department:

…gotta say, Dave, it’s a good thing guys like this are rocket scientists. If they understood people, they wouldn’t confess before the crime. Whenever I feel down about humanity, I gotta remember that good citizens saw this manifesto and reported it. Dunno if we got everyone, but I hope we did. If nothing else, the outbreaks will be isolated now. This guy had a good plan. He almost killed millions.

Creepy bastard. When I locked him up, he smiled at me like we were old friends. Then his grin widened to crazy. You know. You’ve seen it on the face of so many of these bastards.

Usually you can dismiss them. But I’m having trouble shaking this one. Because of what he said to me I started to walk away.

He said, “So, flea, how does it feel to save the world?”

 

Earth Day

Copyright © Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Published by WMG Publishing

Cover and Layout copyright © by WMG Publishing

Cover design by WMG Publishing

Cover art copyright © Matthew Trommer/Dreamstime

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

Any use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (“AI”) technologies is expressly prohibited. The author and publisher reserve all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.

Happy Monday, BDH!

A couple of quick updates to start the week.

First, for everyone asking about purchasing the commissioned This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me artwork:

If you are looking for prints of the character art, Helena Elias’ store is open and she has a special Ilona Andrews page.

Luisa Preissler announced that her store will soon be carrying character art cards, and she showed the proofs on Instagram yesterday.

If you’d like to know when they go on sale, please sign up for Luisa’s newsletter here.

Candice Slater is also currently working through options for the Kair Toren art, which you can admire here.

If you want prints and cards and probably calendars, please buy them from the artists directly. The Ilona Andrews merch store will focus instead on book tie-in items, such as vellum inserts meant to go into the hardcover, bookmarks, and similar goodies.

And speaking of goodies, here is the Zoom recording from Saturday, where Ilona and Gordon answered your questions about This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me.

If you would like to use the transcript function on YouTube, click on the video description or the three-dot menu, and select Show transcript.

Thank you all for the incredible enthusiasm, the thoughtful questions, and the general release-week chaos. The BDH has been in magnificent form.

The post Art & Zoomies first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Is that…MY TAIL?! AAAAAAAAAH!

…the everloving hell?

She does that. Don’t worry about it.

I kinda am.

Who’s the new guy?

I have queeestions.

It is great to hear everything is working out smoothly.Lets hope the edits you need to do just superficial. Like you said your half way through book 5 lets get cracking on the rest of the book(1st draft). Keep up the fantastic work