Authors

Back in early January, with snow falling on our bare trees and the brisk cold of a northeastern winter defining our days, I wrote a post for this blog about “Nesting.” The title referred to what Nancy and I had been doing around the house — unpacking, finding places for our stuff, making improvements to the new house.

That process has continued in the months since. While we have also done other stuff — editing, music, birding, and other pursuits on my part; weaving, knitting, and getting her last academic paper published on Nancy’s part — we (mostly Nancy) have still been working on the house. My hands are not (and never have been) steady enough to paint the trim around the interior of the house, so Nancy has carried the bulk of that burden. And with the onset of spring, my multi-talented spouse has also been planning her approach to landscaping our new yard. And I have done more unpacking and have been slowly hanging our art around the house.

I posted a couple of photos of the new place back in January, but wanted to follow up with a few more today.

And I wanted to say a few things about this blog, which I seem to be struggling to keep up with consistently. I am trying. Truly. A lot of the time, though, I just don’t want to write. It really is as simple as that. Most days, I wake up, confront the newest atrocity committed by this hateful, cruel, criminally incompetent Administration, and am torn between wanting to write yet another outraged screed and wanting to ignore politics altogether. I don’t want this blog to become nothing more than a nonstop critique of all the current occupant of the White House is doing to undermine the strength of our republic. But I also don’t want to post about birds or baseball or our latest favorite series on Netflix when the country is burning down. And so I go for weeks without posting at all, which isn’t an answer either.

This is actually symptomatic of a larger problem. I’m not writing much of anything — not blog posts, and not fiction. I did some fiction writing early last year, when I was hired to write something in someone else’s world. But the truth is, I haven’t written a word of fiction that was really my own since we lost Alex back in October 2023. Will I write again? I hope so. That’s all I can say for certain. I want to write again. But I don’t want to write now, and I feel that I owe it to myself to take this time to continue healing. I have no idea how long this feeling will last. A month? A year? A decade? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. All I know is, I need to take care of myself.

Because I AM healing. I’m doing better in most ways than I was a year ago, and far better than I was a year and half ago, when the grief was fresh and I thought it would never ease.

Watching the house come together has been good for me. Watching spring touch our little slice of the Hudson Valley has been lovely. Trees are blooming. Flowerbeds are revealing themselves. We moved in late in November, so the arrival of warmer weather has been a revelation for us.

I saw Erin in March. I will see her again in May. And then June. And then maybe later in the summer. And then . . . soon after that. Being with her is a balm for both Nancy and me. And so is Nancy and my time together. The love tying our family together remains strong, and in many ways missing Alex, loving her, grieving her, has become one more unbreakable filament binding us to one another.

So we nest. We heal. We love. And we continue to ask your patience and support.

Have a wonderful week.

Since essentia capacity is so strongly linked with the mass of the skeleton & skeletal muscle, how much does a person’s essentia change as their skeleton & muscles change?

For example, as we get older, bones become less dense & muscle mass/strength tends to decline. But people can go the other way, too: they can “bulk up” through intense exercise & a high protein diet.

So, is a person’s essentia capacity a constant thing? Or will it gradually decrease as they age? And, if so, can a person stave off that age-related decline in capacity through exercise & calcium supplements? Can they increase it through weight-bearing & muscle building exercises?

Two Rings For The Cats In Their Servant’s Laps

Did you just add a verse to Tolkien’s Ring Cycle?

Yep, she did.

I like rings. Especially nip donuts!

I used to have four paws, but there was this thing with the silmarils…

Galadon is now in Kindle Unlimited!

In reply to Benedict.

I presume theres a way to keep a drucrafter personal level lows by external means – to limit their action potential – when holding someone against their will?
And knowing the wickedness of the world this can evolve into torture?

Or is it purely up to the person themselves?

Over the last few weeks, the rights to the Schooled in Magic books has started to revert to me. This is an ongoing process, at least partly because I’m trying to line up the old reviews and audiobooks with the new e-books, but I have uploaded the first six to Amazon and placed them all in Kindle Unlimited, in hopes of attracting more readers <grin>.

If you haven’t seen or tried the series, why not try now?

But what is the Schooled in Magic series about, you might ask?

Imagine a person swept into another world, where she discovers she has magic and goes to a magic school; imagine that same person having the historical insights and technological knowledge to trigger an industrial revolution, a revolution that both allows magic and science to interact in ways previously considered impossible and also unleashes social change, from empowering peasants and commoners to demand better treatment to giving them the tools they need to demand freedom, liberty, and self-determination. In this series, Harry Potter meets Lest Darkness Falls: the war is not just against the forces of darkness, but also against everything that is held back the development of human civilisation and threatened the rights of man.

And in the first six books, Emily sows the seeds that will become a tidal wave of change.

In reply to Benedict.

Huh I guess Scar and Diesel were somewhat competent, it seemed kinda of odd that they were with House Ashford… unless Charles knew they weren’t that effective and did it to undermine Lucella seems like something he would do.

Did William, Stephen’s Dad get training and sigls from House Ashford despite his young age? If so I could see why Charles took him marrying his daughter so badly for some reason I got the feeling they saw each other as a surrogate father/son relationship for some reason.

In reply to Benedict.

Many thanks for that – Doh! I was thinking it was more complex – somewhat like that Tier specialist used.

In reply to Bill.

It’s pretty much exactly the same as making sigls. Anyone with basic shaping skills can take the essentia from a Well and crystallise it into a piece of aurum. And even if you can’t shape, there are sigls that can do the job instead.

In reply to Benedict.

Oh! That sound both interesting and very useful for Stephen!
At the moment I’m still not understanding how essentia gets taken out of wells and stored – perhaps you need an engineer and a machine as per the Tier raid…

In reply to Bill.

Depends on the armsman. New recruits don’t have sigls at all. Higher-ranked ones have continuous sigls that operate automatically. Elite, long-serving armsmen might eventually get tapped for drucraft training and would get active sigls that they could use on their own. This puts quite a lot of power (and wealth) into the hands of the armsman, though, so this is something you only do if you trust the person.

In reply to Jim Sackman.

Yes, there are Primal sigls that do exactly that.

In reply to Allan.

Pretty much, yes. There are some bad consequences that come from running too low on personal essentia for too long, but that’s a topic for another article (and it’s quite rare for that to happen unless you’re doing it deliberately for some rason).

Do the Armsmen actually have any drucraft skill or are their protection/attack sigls set on “automatic” and operate unconsciously?

While one can’t change ones personal essentia capacity by very much perhaps skilled drucrafters are able to design sigls that, while doing the same job, have a lower Lorenz rating? I’m thinking, for example about the Slam Sigl, where it could be set on continuous charge-up and only require attention from the drucrafter to activate the stored charge in a fight. Might this lower the Lorenz rating?

Since we know that essentia can be stored at least temporarily from the draining of wells, is it possible to provide a short term boost of essentia capacity using some sort of storage device.

Clearly this would be for a triggered effect but just thinking that this might be a way to boost an effect for a short period of time. Think of an extra strong push or light.

I opened my eyes. A jagged stone ceiling spread above me, glowing softly with swirls of alien growth.

I hadn’t imagined the nightmare. It happened.

I stared at the ceiling for a long breath and checked my watch. The digital skin was dark, with a spiderweb of cracks across it. Must’ve happened when I smashed into that rimstone after the blast.

Lying here would accomplish nothing. I had to get out of this hellhole.

I sat up slowly. The generator was still going, and three of the five floodlights had survived, illuminating the cavern with bright puddles of electric light. The inside of my head burned, my back throbbed, and my right leg felt like someone had rolled an asphalt compactor over it. But I was still breathing.

“Is anyone alive?”

Silence. Just me and the corpses.

“Anyone?”

Something nudged my side. I whipped around. Bear sat next to me, her smart brown eyes focused on my face with unwavering canine intensity.

I wasn’t by myself. The dog was with me.

“Hi Bear.”

Bear tilted her head. Her left side was dark and wet. Blood. It started near her shoulder and bled down over her leg onto the paw. Shit.

“Hold on, girl.”

I pushed to my feet. My right leg whined but held my weight. Oh good. I took two steps before I remembered the bone sticking through my skin.

I pulled my right pant leg up. An angry red welt marked my calf, smudged with dried blood. That was it. The wound was gone.

I’m losing my mind.

My leg was broken. I had looked at it and then hid it with my coveralls. The pant leg was stained with dark red, the result of a massive bleed. I’d left a blood trail half across this cavern. I looked up. There it was, a ragged chain of dark smears.

I felt the edge of rising panic and shoved those thoughts right down before they dragged me under. It didn’t matter right now. I had to see what was going on with Bear’s shoulder.

I made my way to the nearest pond. A bright turquoise hard hat lay on the rocks. I had a sick feeling that Stella might have been wearing it.

Nope, not going to think about that either.

“Come here, Bear.”

The shepherd padded over.

“Stay.”

Bear sat.

I needed to clean the blood off her, but who knew what the hell was in this water. 

I flexed.

The water looked perfectly clear to my enhanced vision.

My talent pegged it as clean, but there were limits to what I could sense. If Bear had an open wound and I dumped a bunch of alien bacteria into it… But then I crawled all over in that water with an open wound – which was mysteriously not open anymore, and yeah, not thinking about that – and I almost drowned in it. I was pretty sure I’d swallowed a bunch of it. Which was neither here nor there, except if there was some vicious pathogen in it, we were both fucked.

There was water in the canteens. All miners carried some. We would have to save that for drinking. There was no way to tell how long it would take us to get out of this cave.

Suddenly my mouth was dry.

I dipped the hat into the stream, scooped some water, and gently poured it over Bear’s flank, half-expecting the dog to bolt. Bear sat like a rock.

“Stay. What a good girl. The best girl. So good.”

Three hats later, the water ran mostly clear. A gash carved Bear’s skin over her shoulder. It was shallow and not too long. Most of the blood must have come from somewhere else. Someone else.

I exhaled. One of those carts should have a med kit on it.

“Let’s get some antiseptic on that.”

I needed to get across the stream and the slight wobble in my leg said that if I fell, I would regret it. The best place to cross was still the same – the shallow part where Aaron lay in two pieces.

I picked up Bear’s leash and made my way to the crossing. If she yanked me off my feet, there would be hell to pay. I waded into the stream, ready to drop the leash at the slightest tug. Bear whined and followed me. I slowly shuffled across the stream bottom.

“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

The words came out like a curse. Melissa’s face was branded into my memory. I could replay it in my head like a recording. Six years. I couldn’t even remember how many breaches together. She knew my children’s names. She looked straight at me and yelled at London to throw the grenade.

“I thought she was my friend, Bear.”

Bear didn’t answer.

“I saw Melissa push Anja out of her way. And that over there is Anja’s body. She was twenty-six years old.”

Sanders, Hotchkins, Ella Gazarian, they were in front of me when I was sprinting for that exit. My memory served up Sanders being swept away by the blast.

“They were her guildmates. They trusted her, and she fucking left them, and worse, trampled over them trying to escape. Sanders is probably the reason I survived. He took the brunt of that aetherium grenade.”

We cleared the stream and carefully went up the shallow slope to where the carts waited. Water sloshed in my boot. The other one was wet, too.

I tied the leash to the cart, found the first aid kit, and flipped the heavy latches open. A nice big bottle of antiseptic rinse. We were in business.

“Stay, Bear.”

The shepherd sat.

I opened the antiseptic and poured it over the wound. Bear shook but stayed.

“You are so good. Such a good dog.”

I capped the bottle and grabbed a tube of antibacterial gel.

“Melissa’s priority was the mining crew. But London’s priority was keeping everyone safe, and if that failed, keeping me alive.”

I remembered the cold calculation in London’s eyes, too. The way his face iced over when he hurled the grenade. The set of his mouth. I squeezed the gel onto Bear’s wound.

“He was looking straight at me, and his eyes said, ‘Fuck you. I’m not dying here today.’ I was halfway across that stream when he bailed. Five more seconds. That was all I needed. Five seconds, and I would’ve been on the other end of that cave in. What was left of the mining crew would’ve been on the other side. They weren’t even paying attention to us. We could’ve ran all the way to the gate.”

Bear tilted her head, looking at me.

“You know what he said to me? He said, ‘I’ll get you out of here in one piece. The only way you go down is if I’m down, and I’m really good at surviving.’ Well, we know he didn’t lie. That fucker is excellent at surviving.”

I screwed the cap back onto the gel tube.

“The Cold Chaos assault teams are good at clearing the prospective mining sites before moving on. I’ve never seen their escorts deal with anything more serious than a skirmish. The most London had to do was to cut down an occasional left-over creature popping out of its hiding place. This – everything that happened – was the reason why Cold Chaos sent him into the breach. When the worst-case scenario hit, he was supposed to step in. He was supposed to protect us. All those people…”

A sob choked me.

I shut up.

Being an escort captain came with a lot of responsibility, and you didn’t just become one. It wasn’t enough to be powerful or trusted. The position required experience. London had put in years with the primary assault teams. He was seasoned. He looked at those hostiles slicing people like cabbage in passing, and in a split second he knew that he had never encountered anything like them and nothing he had in his arsenal could stop them. He saw death, and he made a deliberate choice to save himself.

He could’ve waited. He could’ve stood in that gap for another ten seconds and let the rest of us escape, but it was a risk, and he chose his life over ours. The only reason Melissa made it out was because she happened to be close enough and he would need a witness to back up his story. When your job is to put yourself between noncombatants and danger, coming out of the breach alone wasn’t a good look.

Even if they fired him, he would live. That’s all that mattered to him. And if he had been one of the ordinary miners I wouldn’t have a problem with that, but he wasn’t a miner. He was a high-ranking combat Talent. We trusted him. I trusted him, and he threw an aetherium grenade in our faces and ran.

“When death stares people in the face, they revert to their true self, Bear.”

London’s true self was a cold, calculating coward.

I checked myself for scrapes and bruises. I didn’t find any. I had some red welts here and there but no broken skin. I’d crawled on my hands and knees across a rough cave floor dragging my broken leg behind me. My hands and knees should’ve been raw, but I didn’t find any abrasions. I rubbed some gel over the red mark on my leg just in case.

Don’t think about it. That was best.

The generator was next. The industrial model was rated for 7-9 hour run time. The fuel indicator was almost empty. I’d been in this cave for at least 7 hours.

If London made it out of the gate, he would immediately report what happened to the guild. London and Melissa didn’t stay long enough to see how the fight turned out, so for all they knew, there were still active hostiles in this cave. Bodycams didn’t work in the breaches. They still recorded, but you only got static. Cold Chaos would have to rely on London’s testimony, and I was sure that Melissa would confirm whatever he said. She wouldn’t just suddenly grow a heart and admit that she climbed out of the cave over her guildmates’ bodies. As she so often told me, she had mouths to feed.

This was going to go one of three ways.

One, London made it out and reported that I was dead. This was the most likely outcome, because otherwise he would have to own up to leaving me behind.

Two, London made it and reported he left me behind. Not likely. If the DDC found out that he bolted out of the cave abandoning me, Cold Chaos would face heavy sanctions.  There would be a fine at best and revocation of gate access at worst. The guild would cut him loose and blacklist him. He would never work for any of the main guilds again.

Three, London and Melissa died enroute. Like Elena said, this breach was a maze, and we had hiked for quite a while to get to this cavern. It was possible that something equally terrible burst out of a side passage and killed those two. The mining crew was required to report back every hour.  At least seven hours had passed without check-in.  Even if London and Melissa didn’t make it, the guild knew that the mining crew was either in trouble or dead.

No matter which of these three outcomes happened, protocol required the assault team to abandon their progress and address this mess. By now they should have been here to neutralize the threat and retrieve the bodies. Nobody came for the corpses or for the incredibly valuable adamantite, and the breach was still active. That meant only one thing: the assault team was dead.

Bear whined softly. I reached out and petted her back.

Right now, Cold Chaos was likely pulling a new assault team together. The level of threat in this breach was beyond anything I had seen. They would need their top Talents for this, and those people were usually occupied. High ranking guild members made more than celebrity actors, and the guilds worked them to the bone for that money. Getting them all in one place could take days.

The gate opened for entrance twenty-four hours ago. Judging by the power readings, Cold Chaos had anywhere between four to eight weeks to clear it. They thought everyone was dead, so they wouldn’t be in a hurry.

There was another unpleasant possibility. If London did own up to leaving me behind, Cold Chaos could choose to deliberately delay. If I was alive, they would face intense scrutiny. Things would be a lot simpler for them if I was dead. Given enough time in the breach, I would be.

There would be no rescue. I was on my own. If I died here, the kids would be alone.  Roger would let them go into foster care. I was sure of it. They were living reminders of his failure as a father, and he had very little tolerance for being held accountable these days.

I’d made a promise to my daughter. I would keep it.

Digging through the cave-in was out of the question. The integrity of the cave ceiling in that passage was shot, which meant moving any of the rocks risked another collapse. No, I would have to go around, through one of those passageways.

I glanced at the end of the cavern. The tunnels stretched into darkness. I would have to go into that darkness, make my way through the breach filled with monsters, ones that probably killed an entire assault team, find the gate, get out, and make sure Cold Chaos didn’t have a chance to stop me. Too easy.

I would need supplies. And a weapon. In a few minutes, the generator would die and take the lights with it.

I had to act fast.

The post The Inheritance: Chapter 3 Part 1 first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

I read a lot in January and liked a lot of it as well. Some truly marvelous books (which is not what I could say for February & March. More on that in those lists). I also finished my reading for the in-person space opera workshop I was conducting in the middle of the month. Honestly, I didn’t like much of what I read in the brand-new anthologies I found. The stories had no depth or no ending or both. So I don’t have a lot to recommend from those books. Usually I can at least recommend the introductions, but one stunningly left out all the great female space opera writers of the 1990s and barely mentioned the ones in the 2000s. I realize that bias happens, but that one stung on a bunch of levels. (I guess I expect it from old timers, most of whom are not with us anymore, but not folks who were active in those time periods.)

I haven’t yet finished reading  The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, because I needed to take a break. The book has a slant that is very white-male oriented. It’s also filled with some challenging pieces that aren’t holding up to the 26 years since the book was printed. (I swear, New Journalism is soooo self-involved.) But some of it is good and interesting and I’ll come back to it when the mood suits me. I doubt I’ll ever recommend the book, but watch: there will be a time when I recommend more essays from it.

I read one of the best novels I’ve seen in years and some great articles. So January was quite a success…which is why this list is so late. It took a while to chronicle my reading.

 

January 2025

Anders, Charlie Jane, “A Temporary Embarrassment in Space Time,” New Adventures in Space Opera, edited by Jonathan Strahan, Tachyon, 2024. I absolutely love this story. It’s everything a certain kind of space opera should be—fun, preposterous, believable, tense, and adventurous. All wrapped into a neat and well-written package. A wonderful gem of a story.

Crais, Robert, The Big Empty, Putnam, 2024. The best book I’ve read all year, maybe in the past few years. I love Robert Crais’s Elvis Cole and Joe Pike. Pike doesn’t show up until halfway through this book because Bob is so dang good at point of view and the way a story should flow. I don’t have a lot of time for leisure reading, and right now, my lack of time is significantly worse. So I did the readerly thing. I stayed up past my bedtime, and Dean literally had to pull the book from my hands. I still read it in two days. Fantastic. And no, I’m not going to tell you much more than “fantastic” because, as with all of Bob’s books, to say more is to ruin a surprise. (I might have already said too much, in fact.)

Deaver, Jeffery, and Maldonado, Isabella, Fatal Intrusion, Thomas & Mercer, 2024. Yep, I have an Amazon link only for this book, because I just discovered something very unpleasant. This book (and a bunch of Deaver novellas) are only available in ebook on Amazon. Sorry about that! I read the book in paper, which is how I prefer to read, so I had no idea that this had happened until the moment I was putting the book on the list. Sigh. It makes me, as a reader, more than mildly pissed off.

The book is good enough. It’s not as good as most Deaver books, but it’s better than a lot of thrillers. I’ll read the next book in the series, and if I like it, I’ll pick up one of Maldonado’s books. Collaborations are a difficult animal. They can be something better than both writers, especially if the book is something they wouldn’t have written without the collaborator. I suppose Deaver could argue that he wouldn’t have had a character like Carmen Sanchez, but except for a few chapters that I suspect were all Maldonado, she felt very generic. So I don’t think this collaboration enhanced the two writers’ work (I’m saying this without having read hers). But this is a good way to while away a few hours.

Fekadu, Mesfin, “The Loophole That Landed Muni Long a Grammy Nom,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 20, 2024. The online version of this article has the title “Muni Long Explains How She Made It,” and I think that is a better title for the content here. Muni Long has been around for awhile, and she has followed her own path. There are some great quotes in here, but the best was her response to how she got paid for her streaming content:

Sometimes you look at your quarterly statement and you’re like, “Oh wow, $1,000 for 500 million streams. Great. That’s awesome.” The sheer volume that I have to write in order to make an income that makes sense [is insane]. What saved me is that I have quality and quantity, whereas some of these people, all they have is one or two records.

Quantity and quality. She’s right. We’re doing the same. Take a look at this one, even if you’re new to Muni Long.

Harris, Robert,, Vintage Books, 2016. I really like Robert Harris’s writing, although his topics don’t always interest me. I picked up Conclave after seeing a review of the film. A lot of my favorite actors are in it, and since I like Harris, I thought I should give the book an eyeball before watching the film. Glad I did. There’s a nice moment toward the end of the book, something completely unexpected and yet set up. It worked for me, and might not have worked in the film (which I have not yet seen). Of course, that had me looking through more Robert Harris for the books I’ve missed. I mostly didn’t order the ones on the topics that I don’t care about, but I did preorder the next. I love his courage as a writer. He’s always doing something interesting. This is a novella, filled with his great characters and marvelous writing. Oh, and for the interested: I am not Catholic, although I was in and out of Catholic churches as a kid because so many of my friends were Catholic. So I have a passing familiarity with some of the rituals, but no great interest in the church or its habits. I still found this fascinating.

Heinz, W.C., “Brownsville Bum,” The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam with Glenn Stout, HarperCollins, 1999. I had never heard of W.C. Heinz before reading this book. Yet many of the other writers in the front half of the book (at least) mentioned him as the best of the best. Well, this is my favorite piece in the book so far. It’s a 1951 piece about someone named Bummy Davis who was a fighter back in the day when fighters could kill each other in the ring. This one reads like a short story—the life and death of kinda thing. The writing itself is sharp and crisp, the events breathtaking. The murder, at the end, shocking because it happened in a bar, not in the ring. If you find the book, read this one first.

Rose, Lacey, “Selena Gomez is Waiting For Your Call,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 20, 2024. Last fall and early this year, there were a lot of interviews with Selena Gomez as the Oscar and Grammy hype heated up. She has a good team. But she’s also a great interview because, as young as she is, she’s had an amazing career. She knows who she is, and she’s blunt about it. I can’t encapsulate this long piece in any coherent way, except to say all writers (and Selena fans) should read it.

Royko, Mike, “‘A Very Solid Book,'” The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam with Glenn Stout, HarperCollins, 1999. A lot of the work in this book is dated. So dated, in fact, that I had to look up some of the rivalries just to see what was going on. But this piece by Mike Royko from 1987 is familiar. I was 27 at the time, and aware of the Mets/Cubs rivalry.

Some idiot at some NY publishing house asked Royko to review a book about the Mets. And oh, did he. This piece is not dated, once you knew about the rivalry, and it is one one of my favorites. I just read it again, out loud this time to Dean. It’s a very short piece that is, ostensibly, a review of a book by Mets first baseman (at the time) Keith Hernandez. And Smith was a Cubbies fan through and through. The book is solid, you see, because it can survive being thrown against a wall…

Really worth reading

Score, Lucy, Things We Never Got Over, Bloom Books, 2022. Okay, this is annoying. As I set up this post, I discovered that Lucy Score’s ebooks are exclusive to Amazon. Same thing as the Deaver/Maldonado above. Grrrr. You can get the paperbooks anywhere you want, but to get the ebook, you have to go to Amazon. You can’t even go to her own website/store to get the book. Sorry about that. Get the paper. She has some lovely deluxe editions.

However, I did find the book on Amazon. I had just finished something else (what I can’t remember) and the algorithm suggested this book. I did what I often do and read the first chapter. And wowza is it good. Seriously, this first chapter is worth reading even if you don’t pick up the book. The chapter is a masterclass of information flow. The chapter title is Worst. Day. Ever. The first paragraph is a perfect hook:

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked into Café Rev, but it sure as hell wasn’t a picture of myself behind the register under the cheery headline “Do Not Serve.” A yellow frowny face magnet held the photo in place.

Each paragraph builds on that. With each page, the situation gets worse and worse and worse. You—well, I—had to go to the next chapter immediately. The book ends up being a tiny bit long, and for a moment verges on “if you two only talk to each other, this would end” but by then I didn’t care. The book is fun, the writing is great, and the characters are a hoot. So pick this one up…or at the very least (writers) read that first paragaph.

Smith, Red, “Next To Godliness,” The Best American Sports Writing of the Century, edited by David Halberstam with Glenn Stout, HarperCollins, 1999. My father, who was born in 1914, used to talk about the great sports writers and announcers from his life. He also talked about great players, so many of their names are familiar to me. Others, not quite as much. But Red Smith was quite familiar. His name was in the air all the time in our family, and also in the various writing classes I had. Red Smith was one of those writers even non-sports fans enjoyed.

Back when my father imprinted on baseball, there was radio, but it was local only. So games played outside of the area weren’t aired. The readers had to rely on the print media.

“Next To Godliness” describes an entire game in maybe 1,000 words. It also describes the reaction to that game from Smith himself. It’s lovely and well done. There’s a reason this man’s work was remembered—at least for another 50 years.

Smith, Thomas, “Dua Lipa Talks 2024,” Billboard, December 14. 2024. I love Dua Lipa’s stuff. I run to it. I also enjoy how she’s running her career, in the same way that I admire the way Taylor Swift is. These women are taking charge in a way that most musicians do not. So read this. She’s interesting and what she’s doing with her business is also great.

Verhoeven, Beatrice, “John M. Chu,” The Hollywood Reporter, November 13, 2024. Fascinating interview with John M. Chu, released just before Wicked came out. (If you haven’t seen Wicked, oh, you must! It’s marvelous.) Lots of great material here, mostly about being courageous. Lots of behind the scenes on his various movies as well. In The Heights, Crazy Rich Asians, and more. Read this one.

Weir, Keziah, “Give And Let Give,” Vanity Fair, October, 2024. I’ve been thinking about this interview ever since I read it, particularly as one particularly nutty billionaire chainsaws his way through American government, another sends his fiance into space, and the rest don’t seem to give a rat’s banana about actual human beings.

Melinda French Gates, former wife of Bill Gates, is also worth billions, and she’s giving it away, systematically, to charity after charity. She says it’s not easy, because she had to have the right organization in place to help funnel the money, and then she has to figure out where she can do the most good. Note the difference: Do The Most Good. Yeah, she’s not the only ex-wife of a billionaire doing this.

It’s fascinating to me that the wealthy women understand their social responsibility and the bulk of the men…do not.

 

 

Ada before the gate dive. (Link for those of you getting this in your newsletter.)

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I’ve had a rough night. It stormed very heavily, and Sookie the Old Bulldog decided to hide by my side of the bed breathing heavily. Between that and deafening peals of thunder, I must’ve woke up 5 times. ::looks at a cup of black tea:: Work, damn you.

And I am posting this much later and now the above paragraph makes it seem like I slept past noon. If only. I actually had to get up very early and go to the airport to apply for TSA PreCheck.

Mod R sent over a list of questions.

When will we be able to buy The Inheritance? (this year, this summer, even general estimations would be appreciated)

Should be this summer. I’m annoyed with it right now, because we were trying to finish it before the vacation next week, but doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. We may need another week. The Inheritance will be available in ebook, either by itself or as a part of a collection.

What is the release schedule?

A scene will be posted every Monday and Friday. Meaning that if Chapter 3 has two scenes in it, one will be up on Monday and the other on Friday.

Will it be a series? This is less a question and more an emphatic declaration…BARSA BARSA

I swear, Mod R is the worst series rumor enabler. Right now it is planned as a standalone.

Do I need to read other LitRPGs to get this?

I don’t think so. The Inheritance uses LitRPG tropes, but it interprets them in its own way. It doesn’t hit some of the more genre-specific LitRPG milestones such as system, levels, numerical stats, level overseers/observers, and so on. You should be safe.

So is Ada a pink lantern now?

Everyone by now knows about the Green Lanterns, which are a group of guardians policing the Galaxy in DC comics. They get their powers from a magic green ring. At some point DC decided to add more colors. There are Red, Orange, Yellow, Blue, Indigo and Violet, Black, White, and Ultraviolet powered by Emotional Electromagnetic Spectrum (???). Pink lanterns are part of the Violet Corps, and they are powered by love.

This is what happens when you try to squeeze as much out of a franchise as you can by writing too many sequels.

Ada is not powered by a pink lantern.

Does Bear die?

Read on to find out.

How long with this novella be?

Not sure yet. Maybe 35 K or so. We really do not want to cross into short novel territory. It does have its own folder now. It was in Short Stories folder, but now it has its own Dropbox folder, which is a sing that it’s turning into a bit more of a project. We will see. 35K for now.

A small note, because it’s been a little bit since the last serial

Mod R is there for when BDH needs real life help like when you are having technical difficulties. Please respect her time. If you have a story-related comment, please use the comment section instead. In other words, please do not email her to complain about fictional people.

But what about the theory I posted in the comments? Are you not going to say anything about it? It was a good theory!

Given that when BDH was presented with two men and a daughter, they defaulted to magical male pregnancy instead of adoption, nothing surprises me anymore. Bring it on!

Click this line to read spoiler responses to some interesting ideas.

No, London wasn’t saving the Earth, because the monsters cannot exit the gate and are trapped there. Melissa does not have telepathic powers. Being handsome does not make you a good person, and at the end of the last scene, there was only one being left alive in the cave who saw Ada being kind and could’ve said anything to her. You guys are so much fun. You think of so many interesting things.

Admin note:

We are going on vacation next week, if everything goes well. The Inheritance will continue while we are off. All of the story segments are already uploaded to the site, and Mod R will publish them on schedule.

Love you, BDH! You are still and always the best readers an author can wish for.

The post Can I Pet That Dawg? first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

Ready for more dragon action with a spicy romance story? Check out the details about Galadon with retailer links included.

Tor released This Kingdom for preorder and did not warn us. We found out 30 minutes ago, and Mod R tells me that the links are already up in Discord and fan groups. BDH: zero chill.

Zero.

The EBOOK is up everywhere.

The PRINT EDITION is up at other places but not up on Amazon US because Amazon US only allows hardcover preorders in 300 day window before release. Oher country Amazons already have it (UK, Canada, Germany etc). It should be up everywhere some time in the summer. We will remind you again when we have the cover. THERE WILL BE A PRINT EDITION.

The AUDIO is not up anywhere except BN because it has not been recorded yet. The book is still being copyedited. THERE WILL BE AN AUDIO EDITION.

If you are ordering from BN: Members Save 25% Off Pre-Orders With Code: PREORDER25.

BOOKSHOP

Synopsis, once again:

Outlander meets Game of Thrones in this blockbuster new epic fantasy series from the #1 New York Times bestselling author duo Ilona Andrews.

When Maggie wakes up cold, filthy, and naked in a gutter, it doesn’t take her long to recognize Kair Toren, a city she knows intimately from the pages of the famously unfinished dark fantasy series she’s been obsessively reading and re-reading while waiting years for the final novel.

Her only tools for navigating this gritty world of rival warlords, magic, and mayhem? Her encyclopedic knowledge of the plot, the setting, and the characters’ ambitions and fates. But while she quickly discovers she cannot be killed (though many will try!), the same cannot be said for the living, breathing characters she’s coming to love—a motley band that includes a former lady’s maid, a deadly assassin, various outrageous magical creatures, and a dangerously appealing soldier. Soon, instead of trying to get home, she finds herself enmeshed in the schemes—and attentions—of dueling princes, dukes, and villains, all while trying to save them and the kingdom of Rellas from the way she knows their stories will end: in a cataclysmic war.

For fans of Samantha Shannon, Danielle L. Jensen, Sarah J. Maas, and isekai and portal fantasy, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me is the beginning of the most epic adventure yet from genre powerhouse author duo Ilona Andrews.

At the Publisher’s request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Also, different retailers are showing different page count. Nobody has the manuscript yet. These are placeholder page numbers.

The post This Kingdom Is Up for Preorder first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.