Writing

One Thing After Another

A couple of weeks ago, my parents emailed me with a picture of a big old pine wardrobe that someone in their condo building was giving away. I showed Ken the picture and he thought about it for a minute, then said, “You know that built-in cupboard in the upstairs hallway, the one made out of plywood that we keep sheets and pillowcases in?”

Me: It’s not plywood. It’s just not the best wood, but it’s not horrible.
Ken: I’ve always hated it. What if I rip out the built-in and we replace it with that wardrobe?
Me: It’s built right into the ceiling. You’d have to replace the drywall and then patch and paint behind it.
Ken: Cool!

We picked up the wardrobe from the very elderly parents of the guy who lived in my parents’ building. They were literally adorable, both in their 90s. He insisted on helping Ken and his son carry the wardrobe out to our trailer, while she insisted on showing me their house, including the rugs that she’d hand-knotted herself. We promised to send pictures of the wardrobe in place once we’d completed the project. And so the process began, as most home renovations do, in the ‘one thing leads to another’ school of fix-it projects.

1) Rip out the old linen closet. Discover a very cool hollow space at the base that would be perfect for hiding valuables, or love letters, or human remains, or old clocks. Discover that there is NOTHING in there. Wander the house in existential disappointment for 10 minutes.

2) Find some drywall for the ceiling. The old linen cupboard pre-dated the upgrade to the hallway, and the previous owners had simply drywalled AROUND it, which left quite a gap. Go to the store to buy drywall compound. Purchase Pokémon toys, shampoo, and chocolate in addition to drywall compound because I’m AT THE STORE, KEN.

3) Put up the drywall. Tape it and patch it, as well as all the holes in the wall where the nine-inch nails were holding everything in place. Not Nine Inch Nails the band, because that would have been super cool. But no—just stupidly long nails that ripped out pieces of lathe and plaster when Ken crowbarred the cupboard out.

4) Continue to apply drywall compound, because Ken is a fanatic.

5) Let the drywall compound dry. Search the house for the one can of paint that might match the rest of the walls in the hallway. Find three different cans, none of which match. Determine that now the ENTIRE hallway will have to be repainted.

6) Sand the drywall compound that coats the walls like a powdery white lover until you’ve almost scrubbed into the next room so that the walls that will be hidden behind the new wardrobe will be supersmooth. Spend half an hour vacuuming up all the dust.

7) Contemplate the waste of opportunity around having a very large space that would have been perfect for gold bullion, a severed hand, or even a rat skeleton, but which has been squandered. Realize that reality is never as good as your imagination and that you may be obsessing just a tad.

8) Mix two colours of paint together to get an approximate match. Decide that it’s not approximate enough to avoid having to repaint the ENTIRE hallway.

9) Curse the wardrobe. Curse it long and curse it deep. Rip a small piece of painted wallpaper off to get a match at the paint store. Meet a girl who is a WHIZ at paint mixing and who makes you paint that is indistinguishable from the rest of the hallway.

10) Realize that, if nothing else, the whole experience has provided you with a writing topic in a week in which not much happened.

In other news, there are less than 3 weeks until At The End Of It All, my new short story collection, drops. I’m super-excited. I don’t know how these things work, but if you want to host me on a blog tour once it’s out, I’ll repay the favour by promoting you and your own work, or posting a review, or whatever you like. I’ll even come to your house and look for ghosts, or name a character in my next book after you. I’m easy. And if you want to grab At The End Of It All as soon as it’s released, you can go to the Potter’s Grove website, or pick it up on Amazon.

Here’s A Tip

Recently, I started tutoring to earn a little extra money, now that I’m no longer working at the antique market. I still have a lot of teaching resources, including children’s books, in one of the guest bedroom closets, so I went through the stack of books the other night, looking for something that might interest one of my new students, a child in grade 2. I found a couple of cool I Spy books and some other fun reads, and then I found a book called Dinosaur Bob And His Adventures With The Family Lazardo. I couldn’t remember ever buying it or even reading it to Kate when she was little, and I started flipping through it. Here’s the gist of the story: An American family named Lazardo goes on safari and finds a dinosaur which they bring back to the States and it causes a lot of issues but in the end, (spoiler alert), the dinosaur helps their town baseball team win a big game. And that explanation is only slightly longer than the title of the book. But that’s not the weird part. The fact that they go on an AFRICAN SAFARI with their small children and find a dinosaur isn’t even the weird part. No, the thing that absolutely confounds me is this. On the cover of this book, which was written in 1988 by the way, and on almost every page, there is a man wearing a regimental uniform and a turban. He is briefly described on the first page, when the family initially encounters the dinosaur thusly: “Jumbu, their bodyguard, said nothing.”

Okay, first, why the hell does this family need a bodyguard?! And why is he some kind of Sikh warrior? But then things get even weirder because based on the illustrations, it turns out that he’s not really their bodyguard—he’s actually their MANSERVANT, and on the second page, the Lazardos are lounging on the dinosaur’s back in their swimsuits while Jumbu is in some kind of ceremonial beachwear and he’s SERVING THEM ALL DRINKS. This book was published by Scholastic and can you imagine the pitch meeting?

Author: So there’s this white family and they find a dinosaur…
Scholastic: Like, dinosaur bones?
Author: No. A real dinosaur. And they bring it back to the United States to play baseball for their hometown team.
Scholastic: Interesting. Are there any quirky unexpected characters?
Author: Well, they have an East Indian manservant–
Scholastic: Manservant? That might be perceived as racist. This IS 1988 after all. Better call him a bodyguard.
Author: Oh, okay.

Throughout the entire book, no one talks to him, no one mentions him, even though he’s on almost every single page serving drinks to the family, playing catch with the kids and whatnot, and no one even thinks to ask “Hey Jumbu, you’re a bodyguard, right? Do you think it’s safe to bring a dinosaur back to the Unites States to play baseball?” Because I’m sure all the chaos could have been avoided by letting Jumbu do his damn job. The only time we hear about Jumbu again is on the last page where the family is celebrating the big baseball game win and “Jumbu brought out the musical instruments” so the family could sing and dance. But then it felt like there was some ominous foreshadowing because right at the very end, “Jumbu smiled.” I’ll bet he did. And the sequel to this book is called, Jumbu Gets Even.

The other thing that completely befuddled me the other day happened when I went into the cannabis store. That’s it. That’s the story. No, I’m kidding. I went into the cannabis store, because I live in Canada and we like weed so much that we have government-licensed and regulated places where you can legally purchase it. I don’t smoke it or anything—I use CBD gel caps to help with my shoulder pain. I ran out of pills, and walked into the cannabis store to buy some more. On the counter at the till, there were two jars. These jars are TIP JARS. Every month, this store and others like it, have a question that prompts you to leave money in one of the jars. Last month, the question was “Is the Earth flat?” and terrifyingly, there was almost as much money in the YES jar as in the NO jar. Like, how stoned ARE you if you think that gravity, physics, and every explorer who circumnavigated the globe are just LYING TO YOU? But this month the question was “What TV show was better?” and the choices were Friends or Seinfeld. However. The questions are NOT the point. The point is, Why is the staff in a government licensed and regulated business asking for tips? First, they get paid $15.50 an hour at the very least because that’s the minimum wage. Second, it’s not like they cooked me food or brought me a drink—like, all the woman in the store literally did was open the locked cabinet that I pointed at and hand me a bottle of pills. And she wants a TIP for that? But I guess people are very grateful to cannabis store workers because there were a LOT of tips in those jars. More tips than I bet Jumbu ever got anyway.

Creative Wednesdays: My Spooky Six Interview with Willow Croft

Thanks to my good friend Willow Croft of Willow Croft: Bringer of Nightmares and Storms for her unique and very fun interview with me for The Horror Tree’s Spooky Six Interview Series. I hope you enjoy finding out more about me, especially the reason why I never dangle my arm off the bed. You can read it here on The Horror Tree!

Jan-uary Ads

On Friday, I was surfing through ads on Facebook Marketplace and I saw something that made my heart soar. No, it wasn’t a clock. It was, in fact, an ad for a cabinet, but it wasn’t the cabinet I was taken with. I’ve become so used to people who can barely put two sentences together online, let alone describe a product they’re selling with any accuracy at all, that this ad description almost made me weep:

Capacious?! And an example in another colour for inspiration? I have found my people!

I immediately followed this seller and took a look at some of her other ads. One in particular touched my heart: “The camera doesn’t do the colour justice; see the close-up picture of the fabric juxtaposed against white paper for a more accurate sense of the colours.” She used a SEMI-COLON. And JUXTAPOSED things. Why can’t everyone be so literate AND courteous? Prior to Friday, I had become inured to the lack of simple spelling, punctuation, and sloppy descriptions that are par for the course on online buy and sell sites, particularly with a highly rated seller named ‘Jan’. The majority of Jan’s ads are an enigma. Yesterday, she was advertising “Decorations Puts”, which I can only assume means ‘decorative pot’, but with Jan, you never know—it could be some kind of insult or a strangely worded command. And right before Hallowe’en, this was a group of things she was trying to offload:

Now, call me crazy, and a lot of people do, but I don’t think that particular Hallowe’en staff deserves even minimum wage—I mean, they all look half in the bag. I appreciate that she managed to spell both outdoor and chair correctly, and I love that she named the bank:

Buyer: Hi, I’m here for the piggy bank.
Jan (cradling it in her arms): His name is PETE.
Buyer: Um, ok.
Jan: SAY IT. SAY THE NAME.
Buyer: …Pete?
Jan: MR. BANK TO YOU.

But I have no idea what ‘2 landre’ basket is, except ‘landre’ is French for ‘moor’, so I can only assume these baskets are to be used in gothic novels by heartbroken heroines who wander the moors in torrential downpours, kind of like an umbrella but with many holes. Sadly, it seems that Jan is almost as misguided in her efforts as this coat she’s currently trying to hawk:

I can imagine that living with Jan is an ongoing adventure, trying to decipher whatever madness comes out of her mouth, because if she’s this bad at written English, how on earth does she speak?!

Jan’s husband: Hey Jan, where are you off to?
Jan: Gone to stone. Bach will eat moussaka.
Jan’s husband: Delicious. Or terrifying. Only time will tell.

But at least Jan isn’t as morbid as this person, who’s selling Vintage Death. And I was like, who the hell takes a picture with some alive family members and some who look VERY DECEASED? I was sure those two Scottish children were just sleepy from the photographer taking so damn long to get the shot. But then I did some research on Victorian death photography and it turns out they REALLY ARE DEAD. And everyone else in the photo just looks casual, like “Och, it’s a lovely wee day for a pic of the fam. Come on, Mam. Gi’ us a wee smile. Let Dead Robbie lean on you so he don’t fall over.” Victorians. I’m currently writing a Gothic thriller called Charybdis (based on a short story in my new upcoming collection) that partly takes place in the Victorian period so I can’t wait to find a way to fit this bizarre practice in.

New Year, Same Me

It’s New Year’s Eve as I write this. I’m feeling slightly nauseated, not because I’ve been drinking—I mean, it’s only 11 o’clock in the morning after all. No, it’s because Ken decided to run some errands, and right before he left, he made himself a cup of coffee because he obviously HATES ME. The smell has permeated the house, reaching right into my office, and now I understand how the woman feels who posted this ad on Facebook Marketplace:

I don’t know what her husband did to her that he no longer deserves a wet/dry shop vac, but I’ll bet it involved a percolator. So right now, my house smells like a skunk died in the kitchen, and I’ve taken futile refuge in my office to think about the new year ahead. I never make New Year’s resolutions, as I’ve said before– mostly because if I want to change something about my life, I do it when I think of it, not on some arbitrary and imaginary date line. But still, the moving forward of time does give one pause, and by “pause” I mean “let’s stop and think about what the f*ck we’re doing and do we want to keep on doing that?” So here are a couple of things I will most likely be doing in 2023:

1) I will finish the book I’m currently writing by the end of February. I have to, because I quit my job at the antique market to focus on it. Also, the antique market was no longer a fun place to work, and Ken and I promised each other that when we retired, we would only work at jobs we enjoyed doing. Not that I didn’t enjoy the work I did BEFORE I retired, but moving forward, I will only work at things I really, REALLY enjoy, like driving a forklift around the neighbourhood helping people move picnic tables or whatnot, or petting kittens and puppies. And writing. Writing is definitely something I enjoy. The new book is called Charybdis and it’s a gothic thriller that takes place in two different time periods involving a little-known reclusive Victorian poet and the modern-day graduate student who’s researching her life. What horrors will she discover? If you know anything about me at all, you’ll know there will be several! And then, once Charybdis is done, I’ll be starting on the third book in The Seventh Devil trilogy. Book 2, The Devil You Know, will be out this summer, and Book 3 will be called The Devil You Don’t. And of course, there’s At The End Of It All, which will be out in February and I can’t wait for you to read it. I love writing short stories, and I already have some more stories in the planning stages, which is to say I have notes on my phone like ‘laces where joints are supposed to meet’ and ‘Glitter for Brad’ and I have no idea why I wrote that down but it’ll make a great story once I figure it out.

2) I will travel more. I will have to do this spontaneously, because whenever I PLAN to travel, I instantly regret making travel arrangements and would rather just stay home.

Me: But what’s the use of being retired if I can’t travel?
My mind: Where do we want to go?
Me: I don’t know. Somewhere fun.
My mind: Home. Home is fun.
Me: No, NOT HOME! We need to see more of the world!
My mind: We’ve already seen plenty. The world is too scary now.
Me: Sigh. You have a point.

3) I will buy more clocks if I want to. You can’t stop me, KEN. In honour of clocks, I promised to show a picture of my favourite:

But I WILL make Ken a deal. I’ll stop buying clocks if he stops drinking coffee (at least in the house). Tick tock…

Anyway, Happy New Year. Let’s hope 2023 is a little more sane that the last few years.

Pressing Questions

A couple of weeks ago, I was getting ready to set up a WordPress post, and I suddenly noticed that below the place where it says, ‘Add title’, there was some faint text. I looked more closely and the text said, “What are your feelings about eating meat?”

And I was like, Are you judging me, WORDPRESS? Because the post I was setting up was fairly bacon-heavy, and how the hell did they even know that, let alone start pestering me about it? For the record, I would prefer NOT to eat meat, but I’m realistic in that a) I like the taste of most of it (organ meats aside, because they are extremely gross), and no one has yet to discover a vegetarian bacon that tastes as good as the real thing. On the other hand, I had an experience not long ago when I called a government agency to complain about the way that a truck I was following on the highway was transporting turkeys, presumably to the slaughterhouse, and it was so awful that I called Ken crying. The so-called veterinarian that answered my call was less than helpful, and told me that the turkeys were “probably huddled together for warmth rather than being stacked on top of each other”, and that didn’t make me feel any better AT ALL.

But I don’t want to get into the complexities of eating meat versus being vegetarian, because WordPress is still doing that weird thing right now. I started to set up my post for this week, and right below ‘Add title’, it says “Tell us one thing you hope people never say about you.” And my response is “Who the f*ck is US?!” Is this WordPress trying to make some extra cash by blackmailing random bloggers?

Random Blogger: Ooh, good question. Hmm. Well, I hope people never say I’m a murderer, because THAT was in self-defense.
WordPress: Self-defense, you say? We’ll see about that.

5 minutes later…

WordPress: According to our investigation, it was NOT self-defense. You owe us twenty-five thousand dollars to keep quiet about this.
Random Blogger: Damn.

All I can think is that WordPress is playing the long game, hoping that some blogger desperate for a topic will fall for their ploy. Does anyone really open up the site without a topic in mind, just praying that WordPress will provide inspiration? And yes, I see the irony in this whole debate, because I wouldn’t have a topic MYSELF if it wasn’t for these bizarre WordPress prompts. So with that in mind, here are the things I hope people never say about me:

1) I’m good at math (because that would be a LOT to live up to).
2) I’m not funny (but I’m not actually that funny in person so it’s ok).
3) I have too many clocks (I just bought another one at the antique market where I work and it’s so gorgeous and it was so cheap that I carried it downstairs cradling it in my arms like a baby).
4) My nickname is NOT Player One (because it totally is, even if I’m the only one who thinks so).
5) I’m too old to dance like no one is watching. (I regularly dance behind the till at work when no one is watching, although sometimes customers see me and give me a thumbs-up, and yes there’s music because we have a radio playing behind the till just in case you thought I was one of those people who dance to music in their own heads, which I also do sometimes but just not at work).

Screw you, WordPress—I’ve fallen for your little game.

In other news, if you read my post last Monday, you’ll know that my new short story collection At The End Of It All is now available for pre-order but I posted the wrong link. It would be a great Christmas gift for you or someone you love, so if you want to order it, you can go here: At The End Of It All.  Also, in honour of the new collection coming out soon, Potter’s Grove has put my first short story collection, Feasting Upon The Bones, (which got some very good reviews and would also make a great Christmas gift) on sale for a limited time and you can find it here: Feasting Upon The Bones

Marvelous Monday: My New Book!

Just a quick surprise post to let you all know that my new short story collection, At The End Of It All: Stories From The Shadows is now available for pre-order from Potter’s Grove Press! I’m super-excited about this collection, which features a foreword written by my friend and writer extraordinaire, Steven Baird from Ordinary Handsome, and if you haven’t read him or follow his blog, you definitely should–he’s the kind of writer I love to read. His work leaves me breathless, every single time.

At The End Of It All has been my heart’s work for the last year; I started writing it not long after Feasting Upon The Bones was published. It contains 27 short stories, some flash fiction, some a little longer and some shorter, and I’m extremely proud of it. And I’m especially thrilled by the cover image that Potters Grove has chosen–they really are the best, and possess a tremendous creative vision that aligns perfectly with my own. As you know, Christmas is coming and what a perfect gift a spooky collection of stories makes! So if you’d like to give the gift of literature, you can pre-order here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPTQC5DM

Congratulations To Us All!

When I first started blogging, there was a plethora of “Blogger Awards”. Over the past 8 years, I personally have been nominated for the Liebster, The Sunshine Blogger, The Mystery Blogger Award, The Golden Bloggerz Award, and several more. Now, this doesn’t make me special—from what I understand, a lot of people got nominated and a lot of those people viewed these awards as bothersome or annoying and that’s because those people probably have LOTS more to write about than me, and I always looked at these nominations (did anyone ever actually WIN an award?) more as a fun way to generate content in a week where maybe nothing funny happened. But lately, there have been no nominations, and it’s either that my content is boring and non-inspiring, or that these awards no longer exist. I follow a LOT of other bloggers and there’s been nary a whisper of an award to be had, although I just did some research and found a blog written by someone who got nominated in September for a Liebster and wrote an ENTIRE post about how much she hates the Liebster award. And it was a loooonnnnngggg post where she actually tagged the person who nominated her, and that person was VERY unhappy in the comments. Next time, just say thanks and move on, lady.

At any rate, considering the dearth of awards lately, I’ve decided to invent my own. It’s called the Fandangly Award, and here’s how it works:

  • You can award it to yourself whenever you don’t have anything else to write about. Like maybe you’re a humour blogger but you’ve had a sh*tty week and you don’t have anything funny to work with. Easy—just award yourself a Fandangly–but you can say it came from me if you’re shy.
  • Ask yourself as many questions as you want and then answer them, either seriously or humorously. Here’s an example: If you were to invent your own reality show, what would it be? Here’s my answer:

The show is called Stick It To Me and in this show, the competitors have to make everything out of popsicle sticks and the host is Alex Trebek and yes, I know he’s dead but he’s still the best at hosting everything.

Alex Trebek: All right, contestants! This week’s challenge was “Iconic Buildings”. Donna, what happened here?
Donna: Well, Alex, I tried to recreate the Eiffel Tower, but as anyone who’s ever participated in a team-building exercise knows, popsicle sticks aren’t stable at great heights, especially when all you have to attach them together is masking tape.
Alex Trebek: That’s a shame. Bob, tell me about your structure.
Bob: I built a scale model of the Globe Theatre.
Alex Trebek: Didn’t the Globe Theatre burn down?
Bob (*lights match ominously*): That’s right, Alex.

  • Encourage other people to award themselves Fandanglies. I want this sh*t to catch on.
  • Press ‘publish’.

And now, in honour of me receiving my first Fandangly (applause and cheers ensue), here are the questions I’ve asked myself and here are the answers:

1) Who is your favourite drag queen and if you were a drag queen, what would your name be?

I have two current favourite drag queens and I’ve met both of them. The first is Kylie Sonique Love, the first transgender woman to win a season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I met her at a performance and at the end, I was able to go up to the stage and tell her how much I admired her. She took my hand and thanked me. It was awesome. The second is a British drag queen named Lady Camden. Ken and I did a meet and greet and she was there. I got to stand next to her and holy sh*t, she’s tall and gorgeous. And she’s also kind and lovely to talk to. If I was a drag queen, my drag name would be Mabel Syrup, because I’m Canadian. You can tell I’ve given this some thought.

Me and Kylie Sonique Love

2) Which customer at work creeps you out the most?

The middle-aged man who buys a certain type of doll designed for teenaged girls. He is so obsessed that the owners have him on speed dial and if a new doll comes in, they call him and he shows up immediately. And if you make the mistake of calling the dolls “Bratz Dolls” instead of the kind they are, he loses his mind and makes you say the proper name. I don’t want to think about what his house looks like, and I’m gonna bet he’s single.

3) Have you set fire to anything lately?

This might seem like a strange question but I’m sure you all remember the time not long ago when I was trying to get a picture for my literary magazine and almost set my neighbourhood on fire. And the answer to the strange question is unsurprisingly YES. On Friday night, I was making a brandy peppercorn sauce to have with the steak that Ken and I had treated ourselves with. I cooked the butter, onions, and peppercorns, then turned off the burner to add the brandy. Why did I turn off the burner? Because three times previously, I have created a brandy inferno in my kitchen so this time I was exercising extra caution. But when I turned the burner back on, everything exploded yet again. I screamed and Ken ran over, pushed me out of the way to grab a pot lid to smother the kitchen conflagration, and simultaneously threw it over the flames and turned the burner off. Luckily, no harm was done, my lashes and brows are still intact, and the brandy was successfully reduced, albeit a lot more quickly than it should have been.

The Fandangly Award. Because you deserve something nice.

Please feel free to use this very professional graphic.

Creative Wednesday Blog Tour: The Necromancer’s Daughter by D. Wallace Peach

I’ve always been a huge fan of fantasy fiction, starting with The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle, which I read when I was very young. I made my way through Lord Of The Rings, the entire Wheel of Time series, and still have a copy of Lord Foul’s Bane (the first book in the Thomas Covenant Chronicles) on the bookshelf in my bedroom. So imagine my delight when I realized that I actually know an incredible fantasy writer, D. Wallace Peach. I read her most recent novel, The Ferryman and the Seawitch and it was excellent, so when she put out a call on her blog Myths of the Mirror for bloggers to host her new book The Necromancer’s Daughter on a blog tour, I didn’t hesitate.

First, a synopsis of the book:

A healer and dabbler in the dark arts of life and death, Barus is as gnarled as an ancient tree. Forgotten in the chaos of the dying queen’s chamber, he spirits away her stillborn infant, and in a hovel at the meadow’s edge, he breathes life into the wisp of a child. He names her Aster for the lea’s white flowers. Raised as his daughter, she learns to heal death.

Then the day arrives when the widowed king, his own life nearing its end, defies the Red Order’s warning. He summons the necromancer’s daughter, his only heir, and for his boldness, he falls to an assassin’s blade.

While Barus hides from the Order’s soldiers, Aster leads their masters beyond the wall into the Forest of Silvern Cats, a land of dragons and barbarian tribes. She seeks her mother’s people, the powerful rulers of Blackrock, uncertain whether she will find sanctuary or face a gallows’ noose.

Unprepared for a world rife with danger, a world divided by those who practice magic and those who hunt them, she must choose whether to trust the one man offering her aid, the one man most likely to betray her—her enemy’s son.

A healer with the talent to unravel death, a child reborn, a father lusting for vengeance, and a son torn between justice, faith, and love. Caught in a chase spanning kingdoms, each must decide the nature of good and evil, the lengths they will go to survive, and what they are willing to lose.

As you can tell, this novel is packed with all the things that readers love about fantasy fiction: magic, intrigue, love and danger, strong characters, dragons, and even barbarians, just to name a few. I asked Diana about why she includes “barbarians” in a lot of her stories and she told me this:

“The term ‘barbarian’ isn’t mine but originates with the ‘civilized’ people of my fantasy world. You know, the ones engaged in power struggles and wars, the ones coming up with nonsensical rules, the ones hanging healers and claiming they know the will of the goddess.

I love having a sensible group of people who counters all the moral pomposity with obvious and simple wisdom. My barbarians accept others at face value. Well, most of the time. Nobody’s perfect. In this book, they’re members of the warrior tribes of the Forest of Silvern Cats. And more specifically, they’re represented by a character named Teko.”

My Review

I was hooked from the very first word as I entered the world of Barus and his mentor Olma. Diana is one of those writers whose descriptions are so vivid and sensory that you can imagine yourself sitting in the corner of their ramshackle cottage watching them, smelling the fire, and hearing the call of a distant voice in the dark, or walking beside Barus into the City of White Halls by the Sea for the first time and being awestruck by its beauty. The story is expansive, yet character development is never sacrificed in favour of plot, with even minor characters coming to life on the page. To me, this story ranks right up there with the best fantasy fiction I’ve ever read.

Here’s a little bit more about author D. Wallace Peach and where to buy this wonderful book:

A long-time reader, best-selling author D. Wallace Peach started writing later in life when years of working in business surrendered to a full-time indulgence in the imaginative world of books. She was instantly hooked.

In addition to fantasy books, Peach’s publishing career includes participation in various anthologies featuring short stories, flash fiction, and poetry. She’s an avid supporter of the arts in her local community, organizing and publishing annual anthologies of Oregon prose, poetry, and photography.

Peach lives in a log cabin amongst the tall evergreens and emerald moss of Oregon’s rainforest with her husband, two owls, a horde of bats, and the occasional family of coyotes.

Where To Purchase The Necromancer’s Daughter:

Global Amazon Links:

US: https://www.amazon.com/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

CA: https://www.amazon.ca/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

AU: https://www.amazon.com.au/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach/dp/B0B9FY6YZJ

IN: https://www.amazon.in/Necromancers-Daughter-D-Wallace-Peach-ebook/dp/B0B92G7QZX

Barnes & Noble

Kobo

Apple

Diana’s Sites:

Amazon Author’s Page: https://www.amazon.com/D-Wallace-Peach/e/B00CLKLXP8

Website/Blog: http://mythsofthemirror.com

Website/Books: http://dwallacepeachbooks.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Dwallacepeach

Creative Wednesdays: Tiger Lily Book Launch!

A little while ago, I got an email from a good friend, the amazing poet Susan Richardson of Stories From The Edge Of Blindness. She had just completed a collaboration with Scottish artist Jane Cornwell, and had almost finalized a collection that featured her poetry and Jane’s art. And she wanted ME to write the foreword. I was honoured, and a little intimidated—I wanted to make sure I did justice to the book, because it’s beautiful and profound and exemplifies the highest caliber of the written word and the visual image. Fortunately, they both were happy with what I wrote, and the book was finally finalized and now the launch is only a couple of days away! So if you’d like, you can join us on Friday, August 19 at 2 pm EST, which is 7 pm GMT in the UK where they both live, and enjoy our company, participate in a Q and A about the collection, listen to Susan read some selected poems and see the artwork that Jane created, and have an opportunity to read your own poetry at the end if you’re so inclined. The link to register for the event is here: Tiger Lily Book Launch – Poetry Party Tickets, Fri 19 Aug 2022 at 19:00 | Eventbrite

I hope you can join us, no matter what time zone you’re in. (Here’s a link to a time zone converter if you’re not sure.)