Mental Health Month

May is Mental Health Month, so I'm going to do something a little different. All* of my book royalties for this month will be donated to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).

Why am I doing this? Many of my books, especially The Bacra Chronicles, were born out of my own struggles with prenatal and postpartum depression, anxiety, and depersonalization-derealization. Writing these stories helped me climb out of the depths of my own personal darkness, and now I want to try to give something back to help other people through their own journeys. May is also the birth month for both my youngest child and me, so it seems fitting to do something that honors both her and the people who held lanterns for us during those months when I wasn't sure if I'd ever be able to escape the cave I was lost in.

*This includes ebooks, paperbacks, and KU page reads for all fourteen of my books. Not included are the three multi-author anthologies (Trick or Treat!, HOBOF, Infinite Dysmorphia) since they are through other publishers. There is about a two month delay between book sales/page reads and receiving royalties.

New Book, New Site

I have a new book, but I also have a new website! I've copied this blog over to my new Wordpress site, so join me there!

Happy Valentine's Day! Spellkeeper, Book Three of The Bacra Chronicles has been released into the wild. The ebook and paperback aren't linked yet, but they should be soon.

Love is at the core of this book, but it's not all romantic. Old love, new love, romantic, platonic, friendship, familial, redemptive, even learning to love oneself. Spellkeeper is often dark and violent and devastating, but can also be sweet and funny. One of my beta readers described it as "a real emotional roller coaster."

I highly recommend reading Cavelost and Faelost before Spellkeeper, but the same things I said above can be said for them. Love and survival are the driving forces for my characters, but those two things mean something different to each of them. All three books of The Bacra Chronicles can be read for free if you have Kindle Unlimited!

The Bacra Chronicles is an epic fantasy series, but it's a little different from much of the genre. The books are about dragons and magic and adventure, but they're also about living with chronic pain and mental illness, families forged by both blood and choice, struggling through that awkward cusp between adolescence and adulthood, and clawing our way out of the darkness to become better than those who hurt us. The cast is diverse, the language tends toward snarky and colorful (especially once the mercs arrive in the second book), and the journey is a wild ride through a world inspired by locations that include the American Southwest, California, and the Pacific Northwest. I don't particularly recommend The Bacra Chronicles for readers offended by: queer heroes, mental health/chronic pain talk, soft men, assertive women, blood, explosions, casual profanity, blatant insolence toward authority, or weaponized forks. Everyone else, good luck and have fun!

I hope you take a look at my odd little fantasy world. It's quite a ride and I love it just as much as I love my first series, The Malora Octet. I'm writing Book 4 now, and I think the series might finish at Book 6. Who knows, though... The Malora Octet was nothing but a short story that got out of control, after all.