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The Federation has endured for hundreds of years, but as corruption and decadence wear away the core of human unity, rogue admirals rise in rebellion. As the Federation struggles for survival, two officers, an old Admiral and a newly-minted Lieutenant, may be all that stands between the Federation and destruction.

Book One: Barbarians At The Gates (now on KU)

Book Two: The Shadow of Cincinnatus

Book Three: The Barbarian Bride

The weather elementals are not happy with High Wizard Elron at DOGE Supernatural, and they've retaliated with a tornado at one of his manufacturing plants. What kind of revenge will he enact for what they've done?

A few days ago, when the edits for This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me just landed in our inboxes, I made this candle with the idea that once this, final content edit was done, I would ceremoniously light it.

In all fairness, the candle looked prettier in my head, but I don’t normally make candles.

Well, guess what?

That’s right, the edits are done.

Here is the candle, burning in the study. Hopefully it will smell lovely.

The edit has been sent off and I’m going to take a couple of days to recover.

The post The Candle Is Lit… first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Interesting, how does the technology to ‘drain the well’ (and store it for later use) interact with sigil recyling?
Looks like one could ‘create their own wells’ by acquiring different sigils and capturing the essentia from them. With enough skills, research (of background of these sigils) and money, one could actually build quite a formidable well this way.

Some Thoughts On The Current European/American Situation

“Closing your eyes isn’t going to change anything. Nothing’s going to disappear just because you can’t see what’s going on. In fact, things will even be worse the next time you open your eyes. That’s the kind of world we live in. Keep your eyes wide open. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and plugging up your ears won’t make time stand still.”

― Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

Well, we can’t say we weren’t warned.

It was easy to believe, after the end of the Cold War, that Russia was a broken state and would remain so for the foreseeable future. This was obviously inaccurate. There was no danger in both expanding NATO and cutting European military forces to the bone, Europeans thought, nor was there any risk in becoming dangerously dependent on Russian gas and oil. The prospect of Russia being able to rejuvenate herself, as Germany had done after 1918, seemed increasingly remote. The chaos and corruption of the Yeltsin years left a lasting impression. Unfortunately, that impression was severely misplaced.

Since assuming power, Vladimir Putin has pursued a cold-blooded strategy of rebuilding military power, reassuming Russian primacy amongst the surrounding states and generally making it clear that Russia is no longer a military pygmy whose opinions can be safely ignored. To his credit, Putin played a weak hand very well. Russia crushed Chechnya, at appalling cost; Russia Georgia (the country, not the state) firmly in her place, Russia took over and annexed a chunk of Ukraine, Russia deployed a major force to Syria to support their allies in the region (a feat only matched by Britain and America in recent years), all the while manipulating the global economy to ensure that international opposition was limited and largely futile. All of this should have been a wake-up call.

Putin does appear to have believed, to some extent, in his own propaganda. The Russians appear to have developed an overinflated idea of their military prowess, and seriously believed that they could launch a blitzkrieg into Ukraine, capture the capital, and declare victory before any sort of international opposition could possibly be mobilised. In this, they were wrong. Far from being a three-day policing operation, or however else the Russians chose to spin it, the Ukraine war has bogged down into a conflict dangerously reminiscent of the First World War. Russian gains, such as they are, have come at appalling cost. Worse, for Russia, the fact that their military has been exposed as far less powerful and capable as everyone believed means that their neighbours and more distant opponents are more willing to risk conflict with Russia by supporting Ukraine. It was possible to believe that Russia would lose, quickly and badly, and the disaster would lead to Putin accidentally brutally shooting himself in the back several times.

I was not comfortable with that prediction. In 1939, for example, Russia invaded Finland. The initial invasion was a disaster, with the Finns brutally humiliating Russians time and time again. Their valour disguised the fact that Russia was far stronger, numerically speaking, and the natural selection of an ongoing war ensure that Russia would learn from her own mistakes, adjust her tactics, and resume the offensive. Finland did manage to convince Stalin that she was too tough a morsel to swallow, a remarkable feat given that Stalin was far more ruthless than even Putin, but she was effectively beaten. It could have been far worse.

The Winter War gave British, French, and German politicians a seriously understated impression of Russian military power. The British and French, desperate for a way to help Finland, came up with crazy plans to bomb Russian oil fields, convinced the Russians would not be able to retaliate in any substantial way. Hitler, at the same time, became equally convinced that Russia was a paper tiger, that the might of Nazi Germany could defeat the Russians in no more than six weeks (a delusion shared by some in Britain, who held out no hope of Moscow surviving German attack). This was a serious misjudgement. The Russians survived Operation Barbarossa, defeated the Germans soundly, and marched on to conquer Berlin. We all think twice about offending the mighty Russian bear because Russia held half of Europe in a grip of steel for nearly 50 years.

Or we did.

European politicians appear to have pursued a frankly bizarre policy towards the Ukraine War. On one hand, it is greatly to the credit of many politicians that they have offered Ukraine vast amounts of financial, military, and other material support. There is very little sympathy for Russia in Europe, nor should there be. On the other hand, they have refused to grapple with the implications of the Ukraine War, or to consider the very dangerous possibility that Russia will actually win the war, or at least come out ahead. There is both a firm belief that Russia can and must lose in Ukraine and yet, at the same time, there is a dangerous complacency lulling Europe to sleep even as the Russians finally start making some battlefield gains.

The blunt truth is that Europe has cut its military forces to the bone. Europe’s ability to project power outside its own borders is very limited. Europe’s ability to resupply its troops and replace ammunition expended in wartime (usage rates are always higher than predicted) is even more so. European deindustrialisation makes it hard to rebuild, let alone expand what little remains to Europeans. Protected by the United States, European politicians have indulged in fantasies of abolishing nuclear power, moving all those dirty industries to the Third World, and that soft power can make up for a lack of hard power. This did not work out well for Greece, when she was confronted by an expanding Imperial Rome, and it will not work out well for Europe. The key to preventing war is to be ready for it, and Europe is not ready.

How many wake-up calls do we need? Must we wait until the call starts coming from inside the house?

The rot goes deeper. Faith in governments is at an all-time low. Social cohesion is coming apart at the seams, the problem of mass migration and government unwillingness to deal with it firmly and decisively empowering more radical political parties; government censorship and two-tiered justice is undermining confidence in government, the media, and nearly everything else. It is difficult to believe that many Europeans will willingly fight for countries that appear to have turned their backs on the native population, and punish them for daring to complain. I think is fairly safe to say that patriotism is on the decline too, or that it is benefiting the more radical parties rather than centrists. But then, if reasonable voices refuse to acknowledge a problem and deal with it, unreasonable voices will take advantage of the problem to promote themselves.

It is difficult to believe, too, that conscription will ever be reintroduced in Europe. It would be extremely unpopular. Like I said, very few people want to fight for the current order. But even if it is introduced, how will Europe arm those soldiers? It is incredibly difficult to produce modern weapons, from main battle tanks and fighter jets to man-portable antitank and anti-aircraft missiles, without a major industrial base. The problem will not be solved by recruiting vast numbers of soldiers, willing or not. Those soldiers need to be armed, and that means Europe must build up its industrial base too.

But this too is a problem European politicians have chosen to ignore.

This leads neatly to a second problem.

There has always been a strong isolationist streak in the United States of America. It is easy for European politicians to forget this, because every president from FDR onwards has been an internationalist (including Trump, to some extent). America has hugely benefited from being the world’s policeman, but not unlike the European Union the benefits of this policy have not been spread evenly. A sense has been growing in American thought that argues, not unreasonably, that Europe should pay more towards her own defence, and build up her own military forces to the point they can serve as more than a tripwire. During the Cold War, the Europeans could be relied upon to give a good account of themselves. Now, it isn’t so clear they could. It may not be entirely fair to say that the Europeans are wholly dependent on America, but there is a great deal of truth in it.

It is difficult to understate how offended and hurt many Americans were by European reluctance to provide major support after 9/11. It is easy to make fun of people who renamed ‘French Fries’ as ‘Freedom Fries,’ or insist on pronouncing “European” as “Your-A-Peon,” but such humour masks a more serious reality. The political consensus that America could and should bolster European defence was severely weakened, with Americans openly questioning the value of NATO to the United States. Why should the United States send its young men and women to defend nations that were not only unwilling to defend themselves, but spent much of their time criticising the United States and/or take advantage of America to undercut its economy? This is not a new thing – similar concerns were raised about Japan, although those faded away after the Japanese crash – but the world is now a very different place. The American failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have given the isolationists good reason to think twice about foreign entanglements. What does the United States get out of them, except body bags?

You may be reading this and thinking that that is a stupid argument. You might be right. But others disagree.

Every American President since Clinton has tried to nudge Europe to spend more money on its own defence. Bush43 tried. Obama tried. Trump tried. Biden tried, and his arguments were backed up by a full-scale war exploding in Europe’s backyard. The response was always the same, more military cuts. It is a simple fact of life that people grow tired of giving, no matter how good the cause, and America was slowly falling out of love with NATO. To help someone get back on their feet after being knocked down is one thing – in fact, it is the core of right-wing charity – but to keep supporting them the rest of eternity is quite another. American Internationalists are slowly being superseded by American Isolationists, who are deeply suspicious of international involvements and have no particular interest in writing blank cheques.

It is easy to blame the current crisis on Donald Trump and JD Vance. Vance certainly fits into the American Isolationist tradition far more than Donald Trump. In Trump’s case, matters are made worse by the fact he genuinely did point out the dangers of becoming dependent on Russian oil and gas (as well as being one of the first presidents to send large arms shipments to Ukraine), and response he got from Europeans was largely mockery and casual dismissal. A stronger and more mature man than Donald Trump would find this very hard to take, and in Trump’s case he would have the grim awareness that he had been right all along and his detractors were not. (European governments supporting Kamala Harris in the 2024 election are another display of European complacency, a foolish move no matter what you think of Donald Trump and/or his chances of victory in 2024.) The combination of European complacency, refusal to believe that history has restarted (in truth, it never stopped), and head-in-the-sand thinking has produced a very dangerous situation, in which Europe is exposed to enemy attack while at the same time alienating the one hope of a conventional defence.

Let me be very clear on one point. Putin and Russia are in the wrong. The Russian justifications for the war make sense from a geopolitical point of view, but they do not justify a full-scale invasion and conquest of Ukraine. Might does not make right. But as anyone who has dealt with a schoolyard bully knows, the only way to stop him is to give him a bloody nose and the only way to do that is to prepare for conflict. We now have a situation where Ukraine cannot continue the war for much longer, cannot recover her territories through her own efforts (no matter how many weapons we send them), and we are unable as well as unwilling to send our own troops to drive the Russians out. It is possible, true, that Russia’s economy will collapse, or that some kindly soul will assassinate Putin, take power, and order a withdrawal. The former is unpredictable. The latter, as pleasant as it sounds, will mean that Putin’s successor (assuming he manages to take power without a fight, which isn’t guaranteed) will face the same dilemma currently challenging Vladimir Putin. If Russia gains nothing for her efforts, it will be fatal for her leader. Any successor will look at the example of 1918, where the German civilian government found itself forced to accept an extremely unpopular peace, and think twice about making any agreement that will look like a defeat, let alone a surrender.

In Europe, politics are genteel. In Russia, they can be lethal.

The blunt truth is that European politicians are no longer serious men. They have grown so used to the American umbrella that they have surrendered the tools they need to shape the world, even in their own backyard. Faced with a slowly shifting situation, a growing split between America and Europe, they have chosen to ignore the problem rather than take steps to address it. Faced with an outright war, they have made grandiose statements without taking measures to prepare for an expansion of the conflict. They have been long on words, and short on action. And in doing so, they have made the world a much more dangerous place.

In recent days, many commenters have raised the spectre of Munich. That is unfair. Neville Chamberlain was a fool who believed the Nazis were overwhelmingly powerful (they weren’t), that any war in 1938 would be long and bloody (probably incorrectly), and the cost of the war would doom the already fragile British Empire (probably true). If Chamberlain had stood up to Hitler at Munich, the world would be a very different place and much of the slaughter of the next six years would have been averted. But Chamberlain believed he was buying time to rearm, to catch up with the Germans and prepare for a war. He may have severely misjudged German military power, but he was laying the groundwork to defeat it. The same cannot be said for modern-day European politicians. They have created a situation in which they are playing poker with neither cards nor stake against an opponent who understands the realities of power in a way they cannot match.

Stalin famously asked how many divisions the Pope had. Putin could easily ask the same about European politicians who have no conception of how weak they have become, or that the wake up calls they have heard over the last two decades have become the howl of the approaching wolf.

We need a change. And fast.

We interrupt this scheduled broadcast with breaking news.

Text of the Announcement:

This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me by Ilona Andrews

Game of Thrones meets Outlander in This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

When Maggie wakes up, cold, naked, and filthy in Kair Toren, a city in the kingdom of Rellas, she recognizes it immediately. It’s the world she knows intimately from the pages of an unfinished dark fantasy series she’s been obsessively reading and re-reading while waiting years for the final novel. With no idea how or why she landed in this gritty, violent world, she’s determined to survive until she can figure out how to get home with her only tools – an encyclopedic knowledge of the plot, setting, and the characters’ actions, motivations, and fates: information she can sell to the highest bidder – all while staying under the radar so as not to change the very information she plans to barter.

Soon Maggie discovers another surprising “skill”: she cannot be killed (though many will try.) And as she becomes more attached to the motley band she’s somehow gathered – which includes a former lady’s maid, a deadly assassin, a dangerous soldier, and various outrageous magic creatures – she abandons all thoughts of lying low for her own good. Instead she finds herself trying to save them, and the Kingdom of Rellas from the cataclysmic war she knows is coming.

And then there is a nice paragraph about us and our writing stuff.

To reiterate:

Series title: Maggie the Undying.

Book 1 Title: This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me.

Book 1 Release date: March 31, 2026

Why is this announcement happening now?

Because TOR has learned that the Book Devouring Horde is not to be denied. They were planning to keep the title and release date under wraps until we had the cover, but it was concluded by all that since this book will be presented at London Book Fair next week, BDH will surely find out the details and will blast them all over the internet.

Congratulations, you are mighty!

How dark and gritty is this?

As we are finishing up the edits – page 649 of 808 – actually, not that dark and gritty. The Game of Thrones in the blurb above refers to the epic fantasy nature of the series and the Outlander reference is about the portal nature of the books, where the main character is transported into another world.

There are some tough scenes, but it’s nothing that exceeds our usual. If you’ve read Kate Daniels or Hidden Legacy, you should be fine. There is no on page rape, although sexual assault does happen in this world. The book overall has an uplifting trajectory.

Is this truly a fantasy?

Yes. Knights, assassins, weird magical beasts, swordfights, unhinged mages, the whole thing. This is meant to be a world of epic fantasy tropes.

Is there romance?

Yes. There is a romantic arc, but this is not a romance. This is an epic fantasy. That said, if you are a romance reader, you will likely enjoy this.

Is this one of those stories where it was all a dream and she wakes up and nothing changed and she is back in her own world…

No. I hate the dream thing. Not a dream. We would not put you through an emotional wringer to just then make it not matter.

That’s it. More to come, as our agent likes to say.

PS. Mod R has a fun post which will go out on Monday.

The post Maggie The Undying: Title Reveal first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

In reply to Tony.

*Essentia, stupid autocorrect

I thought the answer would probably have something to do with filling wells. Wonder if there’s a primal effect to help homogenise essentially as it’s added?

The White Mists of Power, Heart Readers, and Traitors made my reputation as a fantasy writer. Published worldwide to great acclaim, the books have been in print for years. But they haven’t been revamped since 2012. The interiors were old and tired, and the covers of the 2012 versions have not held up.

So we’re reissuing the books with a brand-new design. And, as we’ve been doing, we’re starting the relaunch with a Kickstarter. This Kickstarter contains more rewards than we usually have, because the original mass market books are part of the Kickstarter, signed by me.

As well as the very first edition of The White Mists of Power.

If you back the Kickstarter, you will get the brand-new ebook editions. You can get the newly redesigned hardcover or trade papers and…or…you can get the original older versions.

We have a lot of other fun items in this Kickstarter, so head on over and take a look.

We’re all sick of the villains, morally gray characters and the bad things we have to hear about constantly.

It’s time to switch things around and celebrate the best of the best supporting characters — they may not be the main protagonists, but they absolutely make every scene better just by existing. They’re the ride-or-dies, the problem-solvers, the comic relief, and we can trust they’ll never do things with evil intention.

While some heroes brood in the corner, these legends are out there actually getting things done. Vote wisely!

(And if you wish to revisit the results and heated discussion for the previous villain poll, you’ll find it here.)

The selection today:

Grandma Frida is the badass grandma we all wish we had. She can talk to tanks, fix tanks and drive tanks, but she also made her garage be the safe place for everyone to go when they need to pour their hearts out.

Orro is a seven-foot-tall, monstruous hedgehog alien chef who acts like Gordon Ramsay on a Shakespearean monologue spree. He lives for culinary perfection, feeding people until they levitate with joy and storming off into his Dramatic Woods. FIRE!

Leon lived his early teenage years thinking he was the only dud in a magical powerhouse family. Now, he’s an unparalleled killing machine, fueled by dead pan, sci-fi Westerns and the same big heart he’s always had.

Grendel is he a poodle? Is he an omen of death? All we know is he’s fluffy, even in nightmare Black Dog shape. His hobbies include vomiting, rolling in vomit, eating everything not nailed down, stealing our hearts…and being living proof that pets reflect their owners.

Gaston a gentleman of adventure, a spy, a gourmet smooth-talking rascal who could probably convince Death itself to take a vacation. If life were a swashbuckling novel, Gaston would be the one swinging from chandeliers mid-battle while winking at the enemy.

Andrea the sharpshooter ex-Order knight, now queen of the boudas – and she did it all in heels (whilst being a beastkin). She’s the kind of loyal best friend who brings snacks, shoots first, and asks questions if necessary.

Helen: we would fix all her ripper cushions! The adorable bacon menace who stole all our hearts also has a kill list, and is ready to defend her family with her Fangs, as any self-respecting warrior vampire princess would.

Cornelius impressed us with his ferrets, deadly frying pan skills, and pied piper song of grief. He is a proud father, a loyal friend and someone who could call on arcane animals to shred the enemy to pieces while sipping his tea. Terrifying? Yes. Lovable? Definitely.

Luther or Dr Loose Cannon to his detractors, is the scientist-magician-bestie every hero needs. His lectures, unexpected sass, hilarious T-shirts and ability to keep up with whatever post-apocalyptic Atlanta throws at Kate make him a true BDH treasure.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

The post Best of the Best poll – Sidekick Stars edition first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Sometimes meeting your soulmate happens under difficult circumstances.

Briella and Marcus, both suffering, find rays of light and each other, when events go horribly wrong.

A story of how love and caring win even over loss, and start to mend even the most broken hearts.

“The Mix-up” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

 

The Mix-up By Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Briella Wilder felt silly driving back to the Rolling Hills Pet Memorial Park with the small and tasteful gray bag strapped into the passenger seat of her six-year-old Audi. She had a slight headache from repressing tears which—she thought—was a lose-lose situation. If she cried, then she couldn’t see the road. And if she didn’t, she got the headache.

Of course, she almost always got a headache after crying, hence lose-lose.

And there really wasn’t anyone she could talk with about losing Rochester, not someone who would understand. Her more insensitive friends were impatient with her. After all, she had lost cats to old age before, and she had two perfectly lovely Siamese at home, so, really, what was the problem?

The problem was that Rochester had been beside her for the past fifteen years. He had shown up at her new apartment in her new city, when she had been shaky and terrified to live alone.

Until that summer, she never had lived alone nor had she ever moved across country before. She knew back then that she needed a new start. Her parents had divorced and started new families and she had married the wrong man in the middle of that, maybe to prove to them that marriage worked.

Instead, she had learned that marriage was hard, and she and Del did not love each other enough to weather the ups and downs. He liked to say he left first, but that wasn’t accurate. They left together, on the same day, walking down the sidewalk away from the townhouse that had felt so very sterile, the way that people walked down an aisle as they exited a church.

Reverse wedding march, she had called it, and Del had snuff-laughed, something she always liked about him.

She liked most things about him—still did—but she had never really loved him. They had remained friends, though, and he had been the first to call her when she had texted that Rochester died.

Rochester. Hard to believe he fit into the tiny cat-shaped urn Rolling Hills had given her.

Or hadn’t fit, as the embarrassed owner of Rolling Hills told her that very morning.

Because the cremains in the urn beside her did not belong to Rochester. They belonged to another cat named Rose Chester. The extremely stressed receptionist had misheard, and given Briella the pretty little gray bag without following procedure.

No doublecheck on the last name, no need to present identification. Just Briella’s signature on a fancy little document, and then the receptionist had gone into the back and returned with the gray bag, that Briella had somehow known from the beginning did not belong to Rochester.

But she had assumed she had felt that way because Rochester was gone. He had struggled so hard at the end—a bony pile of long black fur which was steadily getting coarser due to illness, pretending that everything was all right, until he couldn’t anymore.

Even then, on that last morning, he had gotten up off his special catbed (which Briella had moved to the end of the couch during those final two weeks so that he could always be with her) to greet the home-care vet who was going to put him out of his misery.

He had toppled over on his way to her, and Briella had to pick him up, cradling him as she talked to the vet. It was obvious to all three of them that Rochester had used up all of his nine lives and then some.

Briella’s two Siamese —Brooklyn and Bronx—watched from their favorite hiding place under the stairs. They were a bonded pair that had met at the animal shelter and taken to each other. They liked Rochester, but they had never loved him.

Not like she had.

She swiped at her left eye, because it was betraying her by filling with tears. Fortunately, she had turned on the wide side street that led to the memorial park.

The park was startlingly big, partly because it was almost as old as the city. The park was green, with actual rolling hills and large pine trees. There was a manmade pond in the center, with benches all around it. The benches had iron railings that were decorated with little cat and dog heads. The feet were, of course, clawed.

She had gone into the park three days after Rochester died and sat quietly, staring at the pond. That was the day Rolling Hills had called to let her know that his remains were ready. Or cremains, as they insisted on calling them.

She had gathered herself enough to go inside the little white building, when a couple stormed out, still screaming at each other. She had hoped for peace, and had instead found turmoil.

Turmoil everywhere.

And the poor receptionist tried her best that day. She had been shaking from the encounter, trying not to cry herself, and yet somehow remaining professional. She had even—with empathy—told Briella that she was ever so sorry for her loss.

Briella had believed her. But Briella had never believed that the little urn held her heart-cat. And she had told herself that the reason was because she had never received the cremains of a cat before, even though she had cremated three others.

She just couldn’t bear to part with whatever was left of Rochester. And yet, it turned out, she had.

She pulled into the narrow parking lot in front of the white building. There was another, wider lot, for people who wanted to visit their pets in the cemetery. She had seen the little headstones, some with lifelike statues of a cat or a dog or, in one case, a rabbit, but she couldn’t imagine leaving Rochester there. That felt like abandoning him.

He had hated the outdoors so very much. He never wanted to leave the warmth and safety of indoors, not after she had rescued him.

Another car, a newish dark blue sedan, sat at the other side of the narrow parking lot. For a moment, Briella stared at the vehicle, trying to see if someone was inside. As emotionally fragile as she was at the moment, she didn’t really need to see another screaming fight outside of this building.

But the car appeared empty, and it was parked far away enough that it might have belonged to a staff member.

Briella sighed, and stepped out of her car into the spring sunshine. The sun wasn’t warm, but its thin light was comforting. She wiped at her eyes again, then reached back inside the car and removed the tasteful gray bag.

The braided handle was soft between her fingers, and the bag itself was thick and pleasant to the touch. It struck her that this was not the type of place that made obvious mistakes, particularly ones that would cause the pet parents even more grief.

The owner had to have been mortified.

Briella took a deep breath, and crossed the lot. Last time she had been here, two days ago, she hadn’t noted how clean the white exterior was or the beautiful calligraphy in the same gray as the bag which suggested the rolling hills of the business’s name.

She opened the door and stepped inside, then blinked at the sudden dimness. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust.

The entry was clean and wide, with a few seats along one wall. There were pamphlets on grief and a display of urns that looked like they had been taken from a museum.

A small door opened into a hallway Briella had never ventured down. If the tiny map on the corner of the desk was accurate, they included viewing rooms and places for families to mourn, just like a human mortuary had.

A man was standing near the reception desk, blocking Briella’s view of the receptionist. The man was wearing a shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders. His dark hair rested on the back of his collar a bit unevenly, suggesting that it needed a trim. He was taller than she was and looked strong, but nothing in his posture suggested that he was angry.

Briella hung back, so that she wouldn’t call attention to herself. At first, she thought there was going to be conversation, but there wasn’t: no one sat in the reception chair.

A woman that Briella hadn’t seen before came out of the back area, and said as she did, “Mr. Chester, if you’ll just wait in the back. It’ll take a minute—”

“Mr. Chester?” Briella blurted before she could stop herself. “You’re Rose’s…”

She let the name dangle, because she wasn’t sure what to call him. Some people objected to owner. Others thought pet parent too precious by half.

The man turned. He had a strong face, with flat cheekbones and a square jaw. His skin was light brown and he had deep circles under his eyes.

He looked as sad as she felt.

“Yes?” he asked.

She held up the bag. “I think this might be yours.”

“Let me.” The receptionist hurried over and took the bag. She was an older woman, wearing tan dress pants and a blue and tan patterned blouse that would hide any stain.

Briella recognized her voice. This was the woman who had called that morning.

“Let’s get you to the back room,” she said. “I need to confirm…”

And then she shook her head, as if somehow, she was editing the experience as she was having it.

“I’m so sorry about the confusion,” she said. “We don’t run our business like this. I don’t know what happened, but I can assure you, it won’t happen again.”

“I know what happened,” Briella said. “You had a couple in here that was having a screaming fight over their pet. I got the sense they were no longer together. It felt…”

She wasn’t sure how to finish that sentence either. The word she wanted was violent and it seemed like a violation of the peace in this place.

But the other two waited, until she finished her sentence.

“It was scary,” she said, deciding not to go with violent. “I saw them on the way out.”

Mr. Chester nodded, his gaze meeting Briella’s. He seemed to understand what she was saying.

“I was here when they arrived,” he said. “They were furious with each other. Your poor receptionist wouldn’t give either of them the cremains they asked for, because apparently, there’s some kind of legal battle…?”

“Oh,” the owner said. “I know who they are. And yes, there’s a legal battle. They’re not supposed to come here in person anymore. I didn’t realize…”

She closed her eyes, catching herself. Then she shook her head again, and opened her eyes, not looking any calmer.

“But that’s not an excuse,” she said. “We try to make your experience here as smooth as possible, and we failed that. When we call you, we set your loved ones in a different area, alphabetically, and we—”

“It’s all right,” Mr. Chester said. “Really. Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Yes, but this…” The owner’s voice broke. “We’ve never had this happen before.”

“And I’m sure it won’t happen again,” Briella said. “I used to do crisis management for businesses—” and she had hated every minute of it, which was why she quit. “—and we found that when a serious mistake happened, the business put new systems in place to make sure the mistake would never happen again.”

The woman nodded, then her expression changed, becoming just a bit hooded. Her professional look, most likely.

“For what it’s worth,” Briella said, “I never even opened the bag. Everything here is exactly as you gave it to me.”

“Me too.” Mr. Chester swept his hand—also square with long fingers—toward a bag on the table. “I wasn’t…I don’t know.” He smiled, but it was an uncomfortable smile. “I didn’t…um…I don’t know if I wasn’t ready to face the loss of Rose or…it just didn’t feel like her.”

“Yes,” the woman said, and it was clear from her tone that she had launched into her canned speech. “These are just reminders of loved ones.”

She leaned forward and took the bag that Mr. Chester had brought as well.

“If you would like,” she said, “there are family rooms in the back, if you want to wait in private. I know how hard this is.”

But something in the woman’s eyes said she didn’t know, that this was still new.

“We have markers on each urn to ensure that the right one goes to the right family. I just need to check our system, which is also in the back. I’ll take you back there, if you would like.”

“I don’t mind waiting here,” Briella said. She really didn’t want to see all of the workings of a pet mortuary. This experience had been tough enough without putting images in her head that might never go away.

“I’ll stay too,” Mr. Chester said, then looked at Briella. “If you don’t mind…?”

“I don’t mind,” she said.

“It might take fifteen minutes or so,” the woman said. “You might be more comfortable.”

“Take your time,” Mr. Chester said, and somehow managed not to sound like a man who wanted to add and get it right.

The woman nodded, then disappeared through that door clutching both bags.

Briella had a hunch the woman would check and double-check and go through each system as carefully as possible, before she brought the bags back out.

Mr. Chester moved to the display of urns, hands clasped behind his back. Briella sat in the chair closest to the window. The chair was on the same wall as the door that the woman had gone through. Briella did not want to watch the door, as if she were in a hurry.

She really wasn’t. She worked at home now, in the quiet, and could adjust her day if she needed to. She had promised herself that she would take it easy after Rochester died, and not put pressure on anything.

After a moment, Mr. Chester sat in a chair across from her. The entry wasn’t that big, so they weren’t sitting far from each other.

He looked over at the reception desk, with its empty chair. “You don’t think the receptionist got fired, do you?”

“I hope not,” Briella said. “Everyone’s allowed one mistake.”

He smiled. This time the smile was soft, and suited his face. “Let’s hope this doesn’t get counted as two mistakes.”

Briella nodded. “I’m Briella,” she said. “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

“And yours,” he said. “I’m Marcus, by the way.”

“It’s nice to meet you,” she said, and then realized what she had said. “Despite the circumstances.”

His smile faded just a bit. “I left work to come here. No one there seemed to understand why I thought it was important to bring the bag back. They thought it could wait.”

“Yeah,” Briella said. “I kept thinking about someone else, wanting their pet, and not getting even the right…what do they call it?”

“Cremains,” he said in a tone that suggested he didn’t like the word.

“So I came right away too,” she said.

“Good thing,” he said. “Then we don’t need to make a third trip here, not that this is a bad place.”

“Exactly,” she said. “When the mobile vet told me about it, I was picturing, you know, horror movie crematoriums.”

With smoke coming out of the roof and a dirty trailer park front office, a man smoking a cigarette who took the body and tossed it on a pile.

She didn’t say any of that, but maybe she didn’t have to, because Mr. Chester—Marcus—smiled.

“Me too.” He leaned forward just a bit. “What was your cat’s name?” Then he caught himself. “Cat, right?”

“Cat,” she said. “His name was Rochester.”

“Rochester,” Marcus said. “Rose Chester.” He nodded. “I can see that.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“Why Rochester?” he asked. “The name?”

“That’s where I was living,” she said, “when he showed up. In New York, not Minnesota. All my cats have New York names now.”

“All?” Marcus asked. “You have other cats.”

“Two,” she said. “They’re bonded pair. Bronx and Brooklyn. I’m not sure they care that Rochester is gone.”

He rubbed a hand on his knees, a bit nervously. “Rose didn’t like other cats. Just me.” He shrugged. “I suspect she would consider it a betrayal if I got a cat, even though she’s gone.”

“Or maybe she would want you to be happy,” Briella sa.

“Naw,” he said. “She really wanted me to herself.” He chuckled, lost in a memory. Then he sighed. “The place is quiet without her.”

“It’s not quiet at my place,” Briella said. “Those two play a lot. But Rochester followed me everywhere. He was my shadow from the moment we met.”

“Sounds like he had a lot in common with Rose,” Marcus said.

“Was she jealous of you spending time with people?” Briella asked. She had heard about cats like that.

“She hated my last girlfriend,” Marcus said. “Turns out, Rose was right.”

Briella nodded. “Yeah, Rochester had a radar about anyone I brought home as well. I’ll miss that. The two Bs don’t have that kind of radar.”

The woman came out of the back with two bags. They were two different shades of gray. One was slightly darker than the other. She set them on the desk.

“I was as careful as I could be,” she said. “I put everything in new bags. Yours is the darker bag, Mr. Chester, but if you would like, you can go through it and make sure.”

Marcus stood, and walked over to the bags. He picked up the tag on the side. Then looked inside. “It appears to be in order,” he said.

“And Ms Wilder, if you want to look at yours,” the woman said.

Briella stood. She didn’t have to look. She knew, somehow, that bag belonged to Rochester, just as surely as she knew that the previous one hadn’t.

Still, she looked at the tag and then peered inside at the pamphlets, the framed paw print, and the tiny little urn with a cat face along the top that looked nothing at all like Rochester.

“Would it make you feel better if we checked the numbers?” she asked the woman.

“No, no,” she said. “I had my assistant help me. Not the receptionist you saw, but the one…”

She mercifully let that sentence trail off. Briella didn’t want to know what all of the jobs were in this building.

“I don’t need to double-check,” Briella said, and knew better than to ask Marcus if he did. She didn’t want to put pressure on him.

“This is Rose,” he said and hefted the little bag as if it held the weight of a gigantic personality.

“All right,” the woman said. “Again, I’m so sorry for the mixup and if you need anything from us or the next time—”

“It’s fine,” Briella said, not wanting to hear the end of that sentence either. It was probably something like the next time you need our services which was not anything she wanted to think about. Not this week. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” the woman said. “I appreciate the understanding.”

“I’m glad you cleared it up,” Marcus said, and then he walked to the door. He pulled it open, letting the lovely spring sunshine inside. He held the door for Briella, and she walked through, stepping into the faint scent of roses. Only then did she realize some were blooming near the door.

Marcus followed her out. He looked at the other car in the lot, so obviously his. He was about to say something, but Briella spoke first.

“I, um…this might be odd, but would you and Rose like to get some coffee?”

He glanced at the bag as if he were checking with it. “We would love to,” he said. “But I suspect Rose will remain in the car. She was never the adventurous type.”

“Neither was Rochester,” Briella said. “We passed a coffee shop about a mile from here. If you want…”

“I’d love some,” Marcus said, “if you don’t mind me boring you with Rose stories.”

“Only if I can counter by convincing you how brilliant Rochester was,” Briella said.

He smiled. She was beginning to like how easy his smile was and how often he was willing to share it.

“I would love to hear about Rochester,” he said. “I’ll follow you to the coffee shop, since I don’t remember seeing it.”

Something in that sentence let her know that he had been too upset to notice. Something else they shared.

“You just hit the main road and turn left,” she said. “I promise I won’t drive too fast.”

“All right,” he said, and headed to his car, carefully putting the bag with Rose into the front passenger side. When Briella saw him put the seatbelt over the bag, she knew that they had a lot more in common than the loss of a special pet.

She went to her car, and strapped Rochester in. Then she backed out, saw that Marcus was waiting, waved, and headed down the street.

She was most of the way to the main road when she realized that the tears no longer threatened. She had no idea what would come of coffee with Marcus, and she wasn’t sure that mattered, not in the long run.

But in the short run, it would be lovely to discuss Rochester with someone who understood the loss of a family member—and felt it, as deeply as she did, every single day.

 

For Cheepy

___________________________________________

“The Mix-up” is available for one week on this site. The ebook is also available on all retail stores, as well as here.

Copyright © 2025 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Published by WMG Publishing
Cover and Layout copyright © 2025 by WMG Publishing
Cover design by WMG Publishing
Cover art copyright © Canva

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.

 

People often ask why Nancy and I moved to New York when we left the Appalachians. We could have settled pretty much anywhere, but we chose an area — the Hudson River Valley — that few think of as a retirement destination. The fact is, a main reason we came here was to be near my brother and sister-in-law, whom we adore.

Jim and me, birding in Arizona.

As it happens, this is my brother’s birthday week, and so I am afforded a wonderful opportunity to embarrass him.

James Coe — Jim to me; Jimmy when we were much younger — is just about my very favorite person in the world. He is older than I am. I won’t say by how much, but trust me, it’s A LOT!! When we were kids, I wanted to do everything he did, often to his dismay. He was my babysitter, my early-life mentor, occasionally my tormentor, but throughout all my years my best friend. He was the one who interested me (and our oldest brother, Bill) in birdwatching. He shaped my early musical tastes, introducing me to James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, the Beatles, Crosby Stills and Nash, Carole King, Simon and Garfunkel, not to mention the Monkees and Young Rascals. Later, as I got older, he was my guide to jazz. He saw to it that I discovered pizza. He risked parental sanction by lighting off firecrackers for my entertainment (and the satisfaction of his own pronounced pyromaniacal tendencies).

Jim is a remarkably talented artist — you can find samples of his work, as well as his very impressive biography, here — and all kidding aside, his courage in pursuing his own unconventional artistic career emboldened me to do something similar in pursuit of my passion for writing fantasy. In a sense, I owe my career to his example. His art is all over our walls, and for all of my adult life, the best gift I could receive for any birthday has been an original James Coe painting. Over the years, he has been incredibly generous in that regard.

He is a bold and creative chef, an accomplished baker whose from-scratch bread rivals Nancy’s (and that, my friends, is saying something). He is wise and caring, a wonderful Dad to his talented, beautiful children, Jonah and Rachel, a loving spouse to his spectacularly brilliant wife, Karen, and a marvelous uncle to our girls. He is, to this day, my favorite birding companion, my constant partner in silliness, my beloved big brother.

So, please wish Jim a happy birthday, and really do check out his website. He is annoyingly talented.

Love you, Coe.

Confession time, guys. I think I might have a drinking problem.

Really? No one could have guessed that. I’m surrounded by idiots.

There’s one above you.

And one below you.

We are legion. Also, why are you all upside down?

>the provisional release date is 4th November, 2025.
Let’s go!!!

In this episode, High Wizard Elron is upset with a trio of 100-year-old ghosts for not sending an email listing their five accomplishments of the week. They've also failed to haunt certain annoying members of Congress adequately.

I've been hard at work on The Pilot for quite a while now, but "real life" has been beating me with sticks all year. The calendar keeps trying to insist that it's only the second month of the year, but I don't trust it. I've been beaten with too many sticks to fit in just two months. At least four months' worth of sticks.

Here's an example of a stick that's been beating our entire family:

My 24-year-old cousin was diagnosed a few weeks ago with what ended up being Stage 4 ovarian cancer. She's struggling to survive as we speak. I know that's a very serious shift in tone for this blog, but it is true, and things are still very difficult for her and her immediate family right now.

That alone is enough to make it a long year already.

But on a lighter note, I am making progress on writing! Book 4 of The Last Horizon proceeds on schedule, and an early draft has even gone out to some of the beta readers.

I also almost forgot to blog this month because time passes so quickly. And because I forgot this month only has 28 days. As the rhyme goes, "30 days hath September, plus the ones I don't remember. All the rest have 31, but when you know the month is done, February steals the sun. March and April steal it back, then May stabs April in the back. For August, that ungrateful hack."

-Will

There might not be a Hughday next week. We have to push through on the editing. But meanwhile we offer extra today.

Totally not my chicken. Stock Image.

Bucky clopped down the road, stamping his hooves into the old asphalt with cheerful abandon. The day was bright and lovely. A clear blue sky, flooded with crystalline sunshine and feathered with white clouds, stretched overhead. The magic hit about ten minutes before they left the castle, and Bucky’s coat glowed an ethereal white.

Hugh watched the autumn woods pass by them, awash with yellow, gold, and scarlet. Behind him, Bale rode on a chestnut Morgan mare, and behind the berserker, the delegation from Aberdine chugged along on their horses, grim-faced and looking like someone pissed in their cornflakes. Five Iron Dogs brought up the rear.

Bishop nudged his gelding and caught up, drawing even with Bucky.

Hugh waited.

Bishop cleared his throat.

“Something on your mind?”

“I know your people are good.”

“They are.”

“I mean no disrespect, but there are at least seventy mercs camped out in our field.”

“You mentioned that.”

Bishop glanced behind them.

“You’re bringing six soldiers.”

Hugh pretended to frown. “You think it’s overkill?”

“You know what I mean. They’ve got this guy, Silas. He’s as good as any of yours.”

Silas, huh? “Did Silas do that?” Hugh nodded at Bishop’s arm.

The lawman grimaced. “No. That was Falcon’s personal goons. He’s got these three guys that follow him everywhere. Not especially good, but big and happy to hurt people. You can always tell the types who are in it for a chance to dish out some pain. They get off on it.”

“Good to know.”

They rode for a bit more.

“We could turn around and get more people,” Bishop said.

“No need.”

“I don’t want any of you getting hurt for nothing.”

“Ah, that’s sweet. I didn’t know you cared.”

Bishop heaved a sigh and dropped back.

Bale chuckled softly.

“You watch yourself,” Hugh told him.

“Poor fella is worried about our safety.”

“He is the chief of police. He gets paid to worry about things like that. Besides, you heard what he said. They have Silas.”

“I heard that.” Bale’s eyes lit up. “As good as one of ours.”

“We’ll have to test that.”

The trees parted, and the road unrolled into the open, with Aberdine rising in the distance. Before the Shift, it was a typical small Southern town, with a handful of street lights and gas stations, a Wells Fargo, a firehouse, a school, and too many Dollar Generals. Now a sturdy wooden palisade, reinforced with steel beams, guarded the few blocks inside the city’s center, with scattered homesteads and farms crowding around it.

Like most modern settlements, Aberdine kept a cleared kill zone between the town and the few surrounding farms and the forest. Coller Road, on which they now rode, cut right through that cleared land, leading to the city gate. The gate was shut. Old tents were pitched on both sides of the road, some military issue, others the civilian camping type. People mulled about, dressed in random gear, unshaven, looking hungry.

Hugh scanned the camp. Sloppy. No guards or sentries posted. No signs for designated latrines, no cook tent, no mess hall. No cleared spots for drills and training.

The wind brought a whiff of shit and other human body odors.

Lovely.

The mercenaries glared at them as they rode past.

“Ooh, so much hostility,” Bale said. “I’m beginning to feel unwelcome.”

The bell on Aberdine’s fire tower pealed, ringing out three times.

Hugh looked at Bishop over his shoulder.

“I didn’t tell them to do that.”

So much for the element of surprise.

A group of men moved in front of the gates, blocking the road. The one in front was tall and beefy, with reddish hair cut regulation short, so close cropped on the temples, he looked like he had a short mohawk. Heavy jaw, almost no neck, small cold eyes. The man stared at them like a gator watching a deer sneak in for a drink in his lake.

The five mercs around him didn’t seem any friendlier. They were cleaner than the rest, better fed, better equipped, with some remnants of military bearing, but there was no doubt of it. This wasn’t an organized, disciplined unit with hierarchy and defined roles. This crew was run like a gang, with the clique at the top making all of the decisions. The best possible scenario. 

Lamar had been right once again.

They were about twenty yards away from the mohawk and his entourage. Hugh stopped. Everyone behind him halted as well.

“You must be the man in the castle,” the mohawk said.

“You must be Falcon,” Hugh said.

Around them the mercenaries drew closer.

“I am,” the leader said. “Now that we know who’s who, what are you doing in my town?”

#

Elara layered mushrooms and chopped parsnips in the bottom of the Dutch oven. She tossed a few sprigs of rosemary, fresh sage, and thyme on top of that, and reached for the garlic cloves. One, two, six, eight…

“Don’t you think that’s enough garlic?” Savanah said.

“No.”

Ten, fourteen. That should do it. She poured about a cup of white wine into the pot, picked up the chicken, and set it on top of the vegetables. She’d already seasoned it with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika.

The older witch shook her head. Her dark curly hair was wrapped into a tight bun today. She’d recently bought a new pair of glasses with bright red frames that complemented her warm brown skin, and her hair clip matched the scarlet shade exactly.

“Why do you even bother?”

Elara washed her hands and dried them on a blue kitchen towel. “He’s my husband and he asked for something delicious for dinner.”

Savannah rolled her eyes. “We have a fully staffed kitchen.”

“He didn’t ask them. He asked me.” Elara put the lid on, opened the oven, and heaved the heavy cast iron pot into it.

“You could have made something easy. Why this?”

“Because he’s French and Chicken en Cocotte is the only French main dish I know how to make.”

“What is happening to you?” Savannah demanded.

Elara leaned back. “It’s a bargain. I make this and he comes back safe.”

“Who are you bargaining with?”

Elara waved the kitchen towel around. “Fate, the Source of All Life, everything. Whoever is around.”

Savannah threw her hands up. “What about the budget projections?”

“I have them right here.” Elara pointed to a stack of paper on the table.

“In the kitchen?”

“The budget projections don’t care where I read them. I have fifty minutes until I need to take the lid off and turn the fire up. Plenty of time. Just let me get the potatoes cut up.”

Savannah gave her a resigned sigh. “I’ll brew us some tea.”

#

“It’s not your town,” Bishop said.

Falcon squinted at him. “I thought we had an understanding. Instead, you went behind my back. And this was all you could get? Seven men?”

“Hope it was worth it,” a large dark-haired man offered on Falcon’s left.

Falcon glared at him and turned back to Bishop. “You and I are going to have a long talk after I deal with this. It seems to me you still don’t understand the chain of command.”

“I’ll make this short,” Hugh said. “My wife is cooking a delicious dinner, and I don’t want to be late. Aberdine doesn’t want you here. You have an hour to clear out.”

Falcon smiled. Behind him a couple of his heavies chuckled. “Is that so?”

“It is.”

Falcon squinted at him. “The folks in town tell me you’re some kind of a big deal. Well, that doesn’t mean shit to me.”

Why was it always the hard way?

Hugh let out a bored sigh. “We can kill the lot of you, but it would take a while and I’m getting hungry. Why don’t you pick your best guy, and I’ll pick one of mine. Sound fair?”

The mercenary leader gave him a calculated look, surveyed Bale and the five Iron Dogs behind him, then glanced at the tents. Falcon was not a complete fool, or he wouldn’t be able to hold this lot together. Bishop had left to get help, and now seven soldiers rode straight into Falcon’s camp. The numbers were clearly on his side, yet this new group was unbothered and their leader was now giving him orders.

Hugh could practically feel the wheels turning in Falcon’s head. The merc leader was thinking that the magic was up, so it was likely a factor. He had to suspect that they had an ace up their sleeve, and Hugh had just handed him a chance to see what it was. In Falcon’s mind, they could see what they were up against and even if they lost, they could always swarm them after. They had ten times as many warm bodies.

“Cherry, go get Silas,” Falcon ordered.

The dark-haired man who ran his mouth earlier took off and disappeared between the tents.

A minute passed. Another.

Cherry double timed back, slightly out of breath. A blond man followed him, carrying a katana in the traditional saya scabbard. He wore a black turtleneck, loose-fitting athletic pants, and dark tennis shoes. His hair was cut short, his jaw was clean shaven. He glanced at Hugh, his expression flat, and stopped in front of Falcon.

“Here he is,” Cherry announced.

“They want to put one of theirs against one of ours,” Falcon said. “I need you to explain to them why that was a bad idea.”

Silas turned and took five steps forward. He stood about five ten, with the kind of build that came from living by the sword – lean, spare, but strong, as if he was twisted together from steel cables.

Bale got down from his horse and made a show of loosening up his shoulders and back. “So, you’re their secret weapon?”

Silas didn’t answer. His gaze was fixed on Hugh as if Bale didn’t even exist.

Bale lumbered closer and scrutinized the swordsman. “What is this shit you’re wearing? Must be very high speed.”

The look on Silas’ face turned slightly desperate.

Falcon grinned in anticipation. The man was clearly loving this.

“Get them, Silas,” Cherry called out.

Silas held still.

“Have you got anyone else?” Bale leaned to the side to look past Silas at Falcon and his mercenaries. “This one looks a bit beaten down and half starved.”

“Silas!” Falcon snapped.

Silas didn’t move. He seemed in pain.

“What are you waiting for?” Falcon snapped.

Enough was enough. It was time to put Silas out of his misery.

“I’m waiting for you to put one of your men up for the fight,” Hugh said.

“Are you stupid?” one of Falcon’s men demanded.

“My man is standing in front of you,” Falcon said.

“No,” Hugh said. “These are both my men.”

Something broke in Silas’ expression, as if a wall inside him came crashing down.

The mercenaries stared at them.

“Dog!” Hugh called out.

Silas snapped to attention. “Yes, Preceptor!”

“Kill the next man who steps forward.”

“Yes, Preceptor!”

Silas pivoted around, faced Falcon, and unsheathed his sword.

Bale draped his arm around Silas’ shoulders. “You remembered how. See, I knew it would come back to you.”

“What the fuck is going on?” Falcon roared.

Hugh put some steel into his voice. “Put a soldier up or concede.”

Falcon stared at Silas. “Have you lost your fucking mind? What do you think is going to happen to your wife after we kill these assholes? Do the fucking math –”

Bale charged forward, mace in hand, the muscles on his right arm boiling and ballooning into a massive limb. None of the mercs had time to react. The berserker swung, monstrous muscle flexing. The mace whistled through the air and smashed into Falcon’s face. The mercenary leader’s skull cracked like an egg under a hammer. Chunks of brain and bone exploded, splattering onto the other men.

Bale twisted. Flesh rippled across his frame. His voice was a low inhuman growl.

“Who else wants to threaten my sworn brother’s family?”

He pointed the mace at the largest merc. “Is it you?” The mace moved to Cherry. “You?”

They backed away from him.

On the left, one of the mercenaries in the field by the tents raised a crossbow. On the right a mage was chanting, building up power and winding it into a bow like cotton candy on a stick.

Hugh pulled the magic to him and opened his mouth. “Osanda sapawur daas kair.”

Kneel before me and be silent.

The power words tore out of him, shaping the very matrix of magic. Power pulsed from Hugh, exploding in all directions like a blast wave from a bomb.

Seventy pairs of knees hit the dirt. The entire camp knelt as one. Only Bale, Silas, and the riders stayed where they were.

The mercenaries’ faces contorted.  They were trying to rise, trying to scream, and couldn’t do either. 

Silence claimed the field. You could hear a proverbial pin drop. Above them a hawk swooped, crying out.

This was the ancient power he had inherited from the Builder of Towers. He shouldn’t have been able to use it. Roland had purged him, ripping that gift away from Hugh, and yet there it was.

He’d been practicing for the last month, and the magic was getting easier. Every time he used a power word, it hurt less. He’d timed this one for about 10 seconds, because he wanted helplessness to sink in until it birthed terror. To the mercenaries kneeling on the field, every moment would stretch into eternity. They were panicking now.  He saw it in their glassy eyes.

“One hour,” Hugh ordered. “Get your shit and be gone.”

The magic ran its course. The spell collapsed and the entire camp fell to the ground.

Bale hefted the mace onto his shoulder. “Silas, we looked for you everywhere. Look at you! You got married and none of us were invited. Introduce me to your wife, you bloody ass. I can’t wait to meet her.”

Silas turned to Hugh, his eyes still haunted and desperate.

“Preceptor, there is something wrong with my wife.”

Of course, it couldn’t be that easy. Hugh swung out of the saddle. “Lead the way.”

Elara’s Chicken en Cocotte with Roasted Young Potatoes

Modified from Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street recipe. The original is behind a paywall, but I highly recommend the subscription.

Chicken

• 1 3-4 pounds whole chicken
• 10-12 garlic cloves
• 3-4 parsnips, peeled and cut into large chunks
• 1 lb brown mushrooms, sliced into large chunks or whole if they are small
• 3 thyme sprigs
• 1 sprig sage
• 1 cup white wine (I used 2021 High Planes Rose from Lewis Wines)
• 1 small bunch of parsley
• butter, salt, pepper and smoked paprika

Roasted potatoes

• 1 5lb bag of young gold potatoes
• 1/4 cup of animal lard (if you are not BFFs with Grace Draven who sent me Wagyu beef lard, any lard will do. Duck fat would be great. You can do butter. You can also go with the olive oil for a healthier spin. But Wagyu lard was to die for.)
• A dash of Italian seasoning
• salt, pepper

You need a large Dutch over for this.

1. Heat the over to 350 degrees with the rack in the center. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and smoked paprika.
2. Throw mushrooms and parsnips into the Dutch oven, arranging them in a single layer if possible. Scatter whole garlic cloves and sprigs of herbs on top of the vegetables.
3. Pour 1 cup wine and 1 cup water over the vegetables. Place the chicken on top of the vegetable layer and put the lid on. Bake at 350 for 50 minutes.
4. Remove the pot from the oven. Melt some butter and brush it over the chicken. I ended up using around 1/4 cup of so. Return the chicken, uncovered, to the oven and turn it up to 450. Cook, uncovered, for 30 minutes or until the temperature of the thighs or breast reaches 175. The chicken will brown and develop a nice crust.
5. Remove the pot from the oven. Using tongs, place the chicken into a deep platter or baking dish, tent with foil. (The original recipe used leeks and returned the Dutch oven to the over for another 10 minutes. I hate leeks, so my vegetables were perfectly cooked.) Discard herbs and half of the garlic. Remove vegetables to a serving platter. Mash the remaining garlic into paste in the Dutch oven.
6. Turn off the oven – super important step I sometimes forget.
7. After the chicken rested for about 10 minutes or so, remove it onto the cutting board. Pour the drippings from the platter into the Dutch oven. Set the Dutch oven on the stove and bring to boil, whisking the sauce. (Because I am a savage and I know my family’s tastes, I whisked about 1/3 packet of powdered turkey gravy into the sauce, but you can skip this step.) Cook until thickened. Mix in finely chopped parsley.
8. Carve the chicken to your preference and arrange it on the platter on top of potatoes and vegetables. Or serve everything separately. (I served separately.) Pour the sauce over the chicken – it will be divine – and definitely serve it at the table.

Potatoes

1. While the chicken is baking for that initial 50 minutes, wash the potatoes and slice them in half. Place the potatoes into a bowl, season with salt, pepper, and a dash of Italian seasoning, mix well, add you choice of melted fat or olive oil, mix again. dump the potatoes onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper for the ease of cleaning. Arrange them cut side down. You wouldn’t think they would brown with paper, but they do.
2. When you remove the chicken from the oven for the first time and turn the heat up to 450, pop the potatoes on the bottom rack. They will need roughly 40 minutes to bake, but you might want to check them at 30, depending on how small your potatoes are. The cut side should be crispy and the top side should be soft.

Grace Draven made her chicken with leeks, so if you want to ask her about it, here is her website and Facebook.

The post Oh no, not the Hughday? first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

In reply to Celia.

We give them swords and let them fight to the death?

In reply to Cindy Houghton.

I really like the body piercing aspect but would go one step further with direct implants into the skin. Wonder if that would work? Maybe allow you to keep a certain powerful sigl close to an area of the body that it needs to sit in to work correctly. Has anyone brought this up already and I’ve missed it?

Please note: This originally went live on my Patreon page on Sunday night, February 9, 2025. If you want to see most of my business posts these days, you’ll find them on Patreon. I’m only going to post a handful here.

Doing The Work Amid The Noise

There are times in life when being a writer is hard. I don’t mean real-world hard. Real-world hard is when your job is so important that one small error means someone else dies. There are a lot of real-world hard jobs in the world, and they keep the rest of us safe and alive.

As I said in a post a few weeks back, entertainment is important as well. We have an obligation to help those who are doing real-world hard jobs by giving them some kind of respite at the end of their long days.

But that means we have to do the work, and the work comes out of our brains. When we’re panicked and distracted—checking the news every fifteen minutes, looking at our social media, worrying aloud with our friends about what is going to happen next—it’s difficult, if not near impossible to concentrate on our made-up worlds.

They feel so small and unimportant.

We don’t see readers enjoying our work. We have no idea that a reader will close a book and hug it, like I did a week ago when I finished Robert Crais’s latest, The Big Empty. I know that Bob is a slow writer, and I wish he wasn’t, because I would love another of his books right now.

He lives in L.A. Not only are people there dealing with the chaos that is America right now, they’re dealing with the devastating losses of many parts of their community. I suspect he’s distracted.

I know that Connie Willis is because I’m following her Facebook page in which she aggregates all the news of the day. I have no idea how she finds the time to write fiction or if she even is. I hope she is.

I’m a former journalist. I love information, the more the better. But, after the election, I shut off all media. I canceled all of my major newspaper subscriptions, stopped watching everything but the weather on any news channel, and got a lot done. I needed to because of an ongoing business crisis.

But I also needed the rest.

And I knew if I didn’t figure out how to control the information that came to me, I would not write another sentence—at least in fiction.

Writing fiction, as unglamorous as it sounds, is my job. It’s what I do for a living. But it’s also what I would do if the world ended tomorrow (which has gotten closer, according to the Doomsday Clock run by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists).

I make up stories. I always have. I write them down and have done that since I was in grade school.

Storytelling keeps me sane.

After the despair of the election (not shock, because I kept saying all summer [hell, all year] that this was possible, even if I wasn’t really listening to myself), I needed that quiet. I needed to accept that the world as I had known it for years would change dramatically.

How dramatically? I had—and have—no idea. This post is not about what’s going on out there in the real world. It’s changing too fast. I sat down at 1 p.m. on a Sunday, knowing that by the time I finish, more news will pour in.

It might be good; it might be bad; it might be hopeful; it might be devastating. It might be all those things at once.

It’s too much for the brain to cope with—and right now, it’s designed that way. Which is why I urge you to take care of yourself and your family first. Then take care of your community, whatever that might be, and then pick one or two or three issues to work on and be part of the solution for. If all of us do that, our differences will make sure that we will cover the entire spectrum of problems that are popping up like weeds.

Yes, I know. People are dying. I know. The situation is growing more dire by the day.

One step at a time. That’s all we can do. See above.

The problem is, then, how to corral the brain and give it enough space so that you can write.

That solution is different for each and every one of us. And it’s different each one of us as an individual at different points in our lives.

I can only give you examples from my own life.

Example #1: I got very sick when I was living on the Oregon Coast. I’m already allergic to half the world; there, we later discovered, I was living in mold and was allergic to that too. We moved to the dry desert here in Nevada just in time. I doubt I would have made it through the year otherwise.

But, I was and am a writer. I wrote through all of that, and even wrote a book about my methods for writing when I barely had enough strength to get out of bed. The book is called Writing With Chronic Illness.

Some of the solutions in that book might work for some of you now. Doing the writing first, being happy with what you can accomplish, accepting your limits—all of those are important.

I did them as best I could there. Here, in Las Vegas, I’m healthier, although the chronic conditions do fell me more than I would like. I can get through them easier in this dry climate, so sometimes I forget what I had learned.

Example #2: Our close friend Bill Trojan died, and Dean had to handle Bill’s horribly messy estate. At the same time, my editor at one of the traditional publishing houses had a mental meltdown and spent a half an hour on the phone, screaming at me and telling me I was the worst writer on the planet.

No one treats me like that. No one. So I immediately divorced that publisher, offering to pay back the money they had invested in me and my work so that I could get the rights to my books back.

That was at least $250,000 that I would pay—even though we were embroiled in the estate mess and Dean was not working on publishing and writing, due to that big problem.

My confidence was shaken, and we were in financial difficulties. I had to figure out how to write a funny novel that was still under contract.

I did, a page here and a page there. I remember sitting in my office and writing long paragraphs about how awful that editor was to get her out of my head so that I could actually finish a book that was under contract for someone else.

I did it, but shutting out the noise was almost impossible. It took concentration. It took will power. It took a daily reminder to myself that writing is supposed to be fun.

And you know what? Many days, it ended up being that way, just because of the determination.

Example #3: As many of you know, the last two or so years of my life have been filled with turmoil. Dean lost much of his eyesight, which meant we had to make some massive changes in our lives. Then, just as he was getting used to the changes, he fell on a 5K race and destroyed his right shoulder.

He couldn’t do much work. He was healing. I cared for him and, as I dug deeper into the business at our publishing company, I realized it was sick too.

We had to make drastic changes there, and I had to take over the company completely.

Which meant it got run the Kris way—lots of questions, lots of systems, lots of data, lots of procedures. The old staff buckled under the Kris method (which had not been in place since I got very ill in 2015), and within 2 months, they were gone…leaving problems so massive behind that those problems either had to be solved or the company had to be dissolved.

Dean and I chose solving those problems, and we had (and have) great help in doing so. These sorts of events teach you who your friends really are.

I knew, as we dug in, that I was not going to be focused on the writing. I needed to figure out how to harness that focus in a different way.

I had a novel to finish as well as short story deadlines from traditional short fiction editors. I was not going to miss those deadlines, and I needed to finish that novel.

The problem was that in this small condo, I did not have a second business office. I had to do the work on my laptop and my writing computer in my writing office.

I knew I needed help.

So I set up a challenge with other writers. I made it costly for me to lose (not just pride—which, pardon my French, fuck if I care about personal pride). I started the first challenge in December of 2023, and continued the challenges through most of 2024.

I lost a couple of times. But the challenge was the only thing that got me to the computer. Daily word count…that I had to report (and God, I hate reporting). I couldn’t fudge it for my own sake, and I didn’t.

I finished that novel, and a lot of short fiction, before September hit, and the business stuff combined with some legal matters that were all do-not-miss and I had to miss some writing days.

It irked me—and kept the writing as a focus.

Usually I don’t bring others into my writing process, but I knew I would need it in 2024. So I did it.

I still have a writing challenge going, this one for short stories, because I know that now, I need to get back to massive novel production, and I didn’t want to lose my short story focus. I have to do both (which I have done throughout my career).

It’s not as draconian as the 2024 challenge, but my life is different now. The business has settled into a pattern. We’ve moved the main offices to Nevada, which means I have a business desk. (Yay!) And we’ve gotten through some of the mess left by the old staff, and what’s left we’re slowly wrapping our arms around.

One thing I noticed, though, in all of those crises, is that the world swirled around me, with its problems and its demands. In each of them, it felt like a massive storm pounding on the outside of my house—you know the kind: the rain is horizontal, the winds are devastating, and the view outside the windows is black and gray, with almost no visibility at all.

You just have to wait out those storms and know that when they’re over, everything will be different, but some things will still stand. There will be rebuilding. There will be heartbreak. But the sun will have come out to reveal what’s left.

In the middle of it, though, you just have to survive it and keep the important things safe.

Your writing is one of those important things. It will take effort to keep it safe. Effort on your part.

And you’ll have to figure out what it will take for you to do it. My methods might not work for you. Find what works. Realize that those things might not work in a different kind of crisis.

But you can find a way to be with yourself during these tough times.

Here are a few practical things you can do in most (not all) crises:

• Protect your safe space. For me, that’s my writing space. I couldn’t do it during this last crisis, but I managed somehow. It felt uncomfortable and reminded me yet again about the importance of having a dedicated writing computer.
• Shut off the internet. Dean uses a different computer for his internet research—one that’s just a foot or two away from his writing computer. I shut off my wi-fi, so that clicking over to the internet for research takes a conscious action, and often makes me realize that I was just heading over to distract myself. (Different strokes, y’know.)
• Set a daily writing time. Make sure your family knows what it is, and that you shouldn’t be disturbed. Try to pick a time when it’s not easy to disturb you (early mornings; late evenings)

There are so many other practical things you can do, but again, they become specific to you.

One other thing—a tough thing—is that sometimes the project you were working on when the crisis hit is not the project your creative voice needs right now. You might have to switch—something shorter, something longer, something that requires less research, something that requires a different kind of concentration.

It’s up to you.

But the key here is to remember that when you write, you’re inside and safe from the storm. It will rage around you unabated while you’re working. It’ll probably (sadly) still be there when you’re done with today’s writing session.

But you got that session done. It’s a victory.

Celebrate the tiny victories. Keep writing.

And remember, in almost every difficult time, the only way out is through.

 

“Doing The Work Amid The Noise ,” copyright © 2025 by Kristine Kathryn Rusch.