Arkham Files: Strange Signals

Neal Carter has now known for a year that he's an alien hybrid. After the initial shock of discovering that his mother had Celaenian DNA and his father was a shapeshifting Meropian, life hasn't been too bad. Neal looks completely human. True, he has an aura but only a few alien species can see it. His sensitivity to algolnium isn't likely to cause any issues since only a few colleagues know of the element's existence.

Ringing in the Year of Baby Bear

That's right, Penna and I decided that 2024 will be the Writing Year of Baby Bear. You may remember that Baby Bear was the nickname Irene Caffrey gave her grandson Neal when he was an infant. In honor of Penna's 10th Anniversary of Caffrey Conversation (October 2023), what better choice could there be? It's a year when we hope to have so many plot ideas, we'll need two names for them—berries for fluffy ideas and cubbies for the angsty ones.

2023: The Year of White Collar finale stories

Eeek! I've neglected this blog terribly! I've been posting a lot on Tumblr, so you can check out what I'm up to there. 

Something that surprised me in my writing this year is that not only did I finally write a story about the White Collar finale, but I wrote three stories related to the finale! The latest one was posted today in honor of the anniversary of the finale airing. 

** Warning for major finale spoilers. **

Straddling Two Worlds: The Woman in Violet

Two of my series—Arkham Files and Tales from the Library—feature librarians and portals to other worlds. So you probably aren't surprised to hear that I've often daydreamed about the characters having joint adventures. I'd already tested the waters by having the Arkham Files crew visit their counterparts in Caffrey Conversation. There they learned about the dangers of crossworld contamination. The resulting chaos that can ensue is a concept that Irene is very familiar with. The possibilities for collaboration finally became so enticing that I couldn't resist giving it a whirl.

The Iron Brotherhood

The Iron Brotherhood marks my return to Tales from the Library, a series based on The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman. The first six stories featured the mysterious Count Lecerf. The Fae had somehow managed to create magical illustrations in novels that acted as portals to other worlds. The sixth story, Merlin's Cave brought the collection to a resting spot. At that point, I took a break from writing the tales. But recently, Irene and Kai visited my writing cave, insisting that the adventures were just getting started. How could I ignore those enticing dangling threads in Merlin's Cave?

Six-Crossed Knot: Harm's Repair

By the start of Harm's Repair, Jack has reunited with Diana and Matthew in the present time. A few weeks earlier, Diana had given birth to twins. The newly enlarged family is now gathering at Sept-Tours for the christening. But simmering underneath the happy events are unresolved issues. Baldwin has yet to get his blessing to the proposed Bishop-Clairmont scion. As for Benjamin, nothing has been heard from him since he attacked Phoebe. And you just know that won't last for long.

Six-Crossed Knot: Tangled Knots

With Tangled Knots, I've reached a milestone in this series based on the All Souls Trilogy. In Deborah Harkness's second novel, Jack Blackfriars is an eight-year-old child in Elizabethan England. He reappears in the third novel as a young adult who's been a vampire for over 400 years. The author sketched in a few details of his life, but left most of it a mystery for us to speculate about. And that's what I've been doing for the past 18 stories. It's now time to merge the timelines!