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Forty-five-year-old Imogen has always struggled to fit in, never finding her passion in life. And while that may include having cold feet in her impending nuptials, that doesn’t mean she’s ready to ditch planet Earth—and her entire life—completely.

When Imogen is kidnapped by an alien prince in disguise, there’s nothing she can do to stop him. He’s sidhe—a being with powerful abilities—and he’s grown up used to getting what he wants. The prince is convinced Imogen will fall in love with him, and that her new powers, once she’s turned sidhe, will help his country win a centuries-old feud.

With the help of the prince’s much more tolerable brother, Imogen starts to get her feet back under her, but even he can’t protect her from those who would use her for her powers. If Imogen can’t find a way to fight for herself, she’ll become a pawn in a world that has already decided what she’s going to be.

As cool as it might seem, getting abducted from Earth isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

I did an ARC giveaway for A Dagger of Lightning recently. To enter, you had to answer one question, “Would you like to be kidnapped from Earth?� The overwhelming response was, “Yes, get me out of here.� However, my protagonist, Imogen can tell you, it’s anything but fun. Her autonomy is completely stripped, for one. She doesn’t get to say goodbye, her entire family likely assumes the worst, and the alien prince who kidnapped her keeps blithely reassuring her that she’ll get over it. Not to mention, the country he’s at odds with keeps trying to abduct her for their own purposes. Fortunately, his more empathetic brother is around to help her get her footing.

People are actually really interested in a middle-aged “chosen one.�

When I first got the idea for Dagger, I was concerned that no one would be interested in an older protagonist, but I couldn’t stop writing it. I finally showed the first few pages to a friend, eliciting promises of honesty if this concept was a waste of time. “It’s not stupid. I think you should write it,� she said. I wrote the first draft in twenty-eight days, which is insane and has never happened again. Of course, there were a lot of beta reads and rewrites over the years before it sold. One thing remained consistent, however, people loved a fierce, fully-adult woman main character. The early reviews have also been overwhelmingly positive in this regard.

Coming of age stories don’t have an age limit.

Not one aspect of a person freezes the moment they turn twenty-one. At least it shouldn’t. Personal growth should be continuous. I have reinvented myself professionally at least four times during my life, and I’ve experienced my share of internal growth spurts as well. Creating Imogen as she learns to fight for what she wants while slowly allowing herself to become emotionally vulnerable was one of the best parts of writing this book.

Sometimes not getting what you want is the best thing for you.

In the beginning, all Imogen wants is to get back to her life on Earth. Although change is foisted upon her in the worst way possible, she finds something worth fighting for in her new life and grows in ways she never would have on Earth. Likewise, A Dagger of Lightning grew in spite of my frustration—I wanted the book to sell right away—I continued to rewrite Dagger after each failed pitch. The book that comes into the world on April 1st is the same at its core, but it is so much more vibrant and nuanced than the original inception. Just as Imogen fails to get what she initially wanted so desperately; each rejection pushed me to make this book the best version of itself.

It’s okay to have fun.

Coming off my first book, Ghost Tamer—where, yes, there is humor, but it’s inserted intentionally to offset the exploration of grief, loss, and moving on—writing A Dagger of Lightning was honestly a joy. When I started writing, my intention was merely to explore what it would be like to be yanked from mortality and a normal life at middle age, I didn’t have any intentions to go deeper. The comments on misogyny, friendship, self-growth and so on emerged on their own. Mostly, I just wanted to have a good time and I think readers want that, too. But we can have a good time while raging against misogyny and the abuse of privilege. Part of the reader’s catharsis is watching Imogen establish a sense of self while fighting against a system that wants to use her and force her submission. Just like in life, the fight isn’t over with the final pages, there’s always room to grow and more battles to win.

Meredith grew up in New Orleans, collecting two degrees from Louisiana State University before running away to Chicago to be an actor. In between plays, she got her black belt and made martial arts and yoga her full-time day job. She fought in the Chicago Golden Gloves, ran the Chicago Marathon, and competed for team USA in the Savate World Championships in Paris. In spite of doing each of these things twice, she couldn’t stay warm and relocated to Nashville. She owns several swords, but lives a non-violent life, saving all swashbuckling for the page, knitting scarves, gardening, visiting coffee shops, and cuddling with her husband and two panther-sized cats. Her first novel Ghost Tamer is an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best SciFi Fantasy, an IBPA Benjamin Franklin Gold Winner for Best SciFi Fantasy, an IPPY Award Winner for Best First Book, and a Silver Falchion Winner for Best Book of 2023 and Best Supernatural. A Dagger of Lighting releases April 1, 2025, both with CamCat Books.

Meredith Lyons: | |

A Dagger of Lightning: |

[Delilah is not merely one of my BFFs in this life, and not only someone whose posts here from time to time are quite popular, but also, she’s someone who wrote that you should most definitely check out � but first, cover reveal + writing tips from The Delilah Her Own Self –]

1. Write what you know. For example, I now know that getting roofied SUUUUUUUCKS.

Back in 2019, my husband and I went to one of our favorite fine dining restaurants in Tampa. I ordered a drink, and someone (not my waitress), brought me a different drink because they were apparently out of some of the ingredients of what I’d ordered. No problem! I’m easy! It was a fancy restaurant with a great bar! I like adventures!

I did not like this adventure.

Because someone put something in that drink, and I blacked out while appearing fully functional, lost eight hours of my life, and woke up on the shower floor covered in puke with RACCOON BLOOD ZOMBIE EYES from the power of all my yarking. That experience heavily informs this book, but I’m not going to tell you why because [spoilers]. I will tell you this: You might think getting roofied is something that only happens to young party girls who leave their drinks sitting on the tables of clubs while they figure out how to pee in a jumpsuit, but if it can happen to me, it can happen to anyone. There are sociopaths out there, and they do not care if you’re in your forties with your spouse eating $40 scallops.

Does that make you mad?

Then you’ll like this book.

2. It’s okay to write from spit.

No. Spite. Write from SPITE.

I have an art degree and have dabbled in every artistic medium that doesn’t involve�

Well, no, I have used live fish as an artistic medium, so I guess that’s ALL OF THEM.

But while I was taking my umpteenth pottery class, I was reading a book that started with a potter in a pottery studio, and the book got every. Single. Thing. Wrong.

I threw the book across the room.

I mean, take a pottery class, or ask your artsy friend to do a quick read-through, or just watch a YouTube video. There’s no excuse for getting pottery SO WRONG. And that was part of the genesis of this book:

I wanted to write about a potter who knew about the pottery studio.

And a calligrapher and a fiber artist and a stained-glass artist and a sculptor�

So, yeah. It’s okay to be powered by spite. Or spit. That’s your personal business.

3. Go out and get some XP.

By which I mean EXPERIENCE.

See, I’ve done tons of different artistic media, but when I wrote It Will Only Hurt for a Moment, I’d never been to a retreat. Not an artists� retreat, not a writers� retreat; I had never retreated at all! And as mentioned before, I like to know that if I’m writing about an experience, I’m getting it right, because I don’t want you to throw my books across the room.

I mean, at least not until the end, and then only because I’ve blown your mind.

That’s totally fine.

Anyway, I needed to go to a retreat, stat. But I couldn’t find an artists� or writers� retreat during the right time frame, so I ended up going to a Spiritual Renewal retreat for women, which advertised yoga, meditation, reiki, sound healing, past life regression, and dance parties. I was open with the people there about my motives, but I am always up for healing, so I did my best to take part with an open heart—except for the dance parties, because there’s only so much time you can dance in a room with eleven other women while monks chant from a portable speaker. I studied how the retreat center was laid out, went on hikes, peeked in the kitchen, and even burned myself with tea while gazing off into the mountains.

It left a bitchin� scar.

4. Do your research, even when it makes you want to pull out your own hair.

It Will Only Hurt for a Moment takes place now, but parts of the book hearken back to an earlier time when women could be sent to an insane asylum for, oh, say, reading novels, talking back, or being in love with someone too poor. My main reference for this phenomenon was the book The Woman They Could Not Silence by Kate Moore, which chronicles the life of Elizabeth Packard, a nineteenth century wife and mother whose husband had her committed to an insane asylum to put her in her place. But Elizabeth, of course, was sane, as were many of her fellow inmates, and she dedicated her life to fighting for her freedom—and theirs. This book was one of the most infuriating things I’ve ever read, and it certainly helped fuel the fire of female rage that leads to my own novel’s cathartic end.

5. Do something audacious.

This book cover is undoubtedly gorgeous. It’s by one of my favorite cover mavens, Regina Flath, who also did the covers for my books Hit and Servants of the Storm. But as we learned once I started printing swag, the hardcover art disappears when it’s thumbnail-sized. Seriously, it just becomes a gray smudge. Thus, we’re spicing it up for the paperback with some brighter colors that will hopefully grab the eye from the bookstore shelves.

I’ve also been told this version is giving Wicked, which works.

There is a lot of defiance in this book, after all.

Point is, sometimes you’re chugging along while writing, and you’re not quite sure what happens next, and that’s a great time to do something unexpected and shake things up. What Lucas finds at the bonfire? I didn’t know that was going to happen. He just wandered off into the woods and screamed, and then I started the next chapter and had to figure out why. What Sarah finds in her cabin? Same thing. It’s a fun challenge, to figure out what will make sense narratively while also surprising both the author and the reader.

6. Rebel.

Yeah, it’s always five things around here, but I’m giving you six because the very nature of art is rebellion.

I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the paperback on July 1, or, heck, just preorder it now as a gift for yourself then. Or, if this listicle (a horrid word, that) is quite simply too enticing, it’s available immediately as a hardcover, e-book, or audiobook, and I bet your local indie bookseller or bookshop.org would be delighted to procure a copy.

Delilah S. Dawson: | |

It Will Only Hurt For A Moment: |

We are nearly one month out to the release of The Staircase in the Woods, and it’s very hard to get one’s head above the mad clanging din of news noise to deliver bits of cool news, and yet, I must try, so here we go �

First, hey, holy shit, Staircase is now a LibraryReads book for April! Libraries are amazing, librarians are amazing, and to have the support of them for this book is beyond amazing. (.)

Second, it landed in the New York Times as one of the , which � wow. It’s nice to see horror show up in a list like this, for one thing, and to also be paired with SGJ’s Buffalo Hunter Hunter? C’mon. This is dream-come-true stuff here.

Third, it’s also (alongside pal John Scalzi).

Fourth, I’m just seeing now that holy crap, � ahhhhh. Thanks to the ABA and to booksellers and bookstores for that, .

Speaking of that, at the Nashville Parnassus stop, I’ll be joined in conversation by super cool writer person .

Finally, Staircase gets a � “Wendig manages to shatter your heart and stitch it back together with this unique group of folks each complete with their own idiosyncrasies, flaws, and merits that feel so real. We all know the past comes back to haunt us, a truth that is all too real for these characters. Yet, we get a fresh spin on this narrative with a unique setting that lends itself to the feelings, thoughts, and emotions that fall through the proverbial cracks as we grow older. � To say this is a haunting novel is a vast understatement with every choice existing as a ghost that lingers much longer than the turn of the page.�

Oh and though it’s not Staircase-related � this next weekend I’ll be at the Lehigh Valley Book Fest! Saturday, 3/29, 4:15PM, . I’ll be hanging with Paul Acampora, Aggie Blum Thompson and Lisa Williamson Rosenberg to talk� thrilling and scary fiction? I dunno! It’ll be great!

Ummm. Is that it? For now? That’s it! For now! I’ll maybe have a few more tidbits and such before launch, and you can expect me to get steadily more noisy about the book as the day approaches�

To remind, too, if you wanna pre-order the book and if you’re not going to come get the book at one of the events I’m doing out in the world, then Doylestown Bookshop has you covered � you’ll also get some cool Staircase stickers and a special personalization. (Note that folks who see me on tour can also get those, too, though. Stickers long as supply lasts.) .

Scientist Beth Darlow has discovered the unimaginable. She’s built a machine that allows human consciousness to travel through time—to any point in the traveler’s lifetime—and relive moments of their life. An impossible breakthrough, but it’s not perfect: the traveler has no way to interact with the past. They can only observe.
Ìý
After Beth’s husband, Colson, the co-creator of the machine, dies in a tragic car accident, Beth is left to raise Isabella—their only daughter—and continue the work they started. Mired in grief and threatened by her ruthless CEO, Beth pushes herself to the limit to prove the value of her technology.
Ìý
Then the impossible happens. Simply viewing personal history should not alter the present, but with each new observation she makes, her own timeline begins to warp.
Ìý
As her reality constantly shifts, Beth must solve the puzzles of her past, even if it means forsaking her future.

HOW TO BUILD A TIME MACHINE

One of the first challenges when deciding to write a time travel novel is creating the machine. Because there’s got to be a machine, right? Of course there does. Whether it’s a Delorean or a hot tub, there needs to be the thing that gets your characters blasting through space time. For me, I knew some basics going in.

First, I knew it would be a traditional sci-fi machine, i.e., something built in a lab by an engineer and a bunch of smart people.

Second, I knew it would be the type of machine that stayed put. Ditto for the traveler. This was not a situation where the machine itself, or the person within it, would end up in an overgrown meadow with a smoking volcano in the background and a curious T-Rex sniffing at a possible new toy. I made the assumption that if time travel was possible then other stuff was possible as well: quantum computers, the harnessing of negative energy, impossible amounts of digital storage, light-speed data transmission, etc. Ergo, I used all the technological advancements of my near-future story world to create a unique machine that only sent a person’s consciousness through time, which ended up giving me a lot to play with (along with some challenges).

Third, I knew that traveling through time, despite what the super-smart scientists in my book thought, would mess up the present, and possibly (probably) the future. From a storytelling standpoint, I liked the idea that there were some “hard rules� that my characters believed as gospel, because I knew I was going to break the hell out of them.

Fourth and last, I based the mechanics of my machine, and some of the other technology in my story, on real science, which brings me to my next point.

KEEP IT REAL (UP TO A POINT)

My job as a fiction writer is to make stuff up. Whether it be monsters or curses or, you know, time travel, I have a ton of liberty when it comes to how much “reality� I want to infuse into my stories. Cloud creatures that make it rain bad dreams? Sure! Sounds fun. A witch’s curse that makes someone die horribly every time you sneeze? Hilarious. No notes.

For time travel, however, I felt it important to fuse my story with a little more reality. Much like my historical horror novels, Boys in the Valley and the upcoming Sarafina, I wanted to make the reader actually believe the stuff that was happening in my books was not just fun and scary, but actually plausible. With Third Rule specifically, I wanted the reader to think: Dude, this could actually happen, and not be wrong.

There’s a lot of future science in the book, and I knew that to make the story really sing, I’d need to do some heavy lifting on researching the theoretical possibilities of the science. In the Afterword of the novel, I list a few of the physicists that I drew from for the time machine, the digitization of a human consciousness, and the mechanics of sending data away from and then back to the earth in a way that the information itself would be stuck in the past instead of the present (which led to some key plot moments where reality was revealed to the characters in fun and alarming ways).

But to the point of this essay, what I learned was that there’s a point where you want to ground the reader in real science (or history or facts, etc.) so that the events of the book feel possible, and therefore make the reader connect more with the story and empathize with the characters. But there’s also a point where you want to let go. Where you push past the boundaries of reality and facts and hard science and you open the world up to the speculative and, perhaps, the supernatural. For me it was interesting to find that balance between the “real� and the “not real,� and the hope is to give the reader some footing in facts just before you blow their minds with ideas and events that can’t be explained.

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EXPOSITION IS A BALANCING ACT

Getting all that science into the book created another tricky problem: how do I let the reader know all the hard physics behind the technology without boring them to tears and stopping the pacing of the story dead in its tracks?

One option that I’ve used in the past is the “sprinkle� method. Apply a little truth here and there as the story goes along to let the reader know some real-life details. But while that might work with some stories, for this particular story I felt I needed to get all the heavy lifting out of the way early. That way, when my characters began to run into problems, or experience unforeseen plot twists, the reader would understand why BAD THING wasn’t supposed to happen, and why it wasn’t supposed to happen. In other words, I had to explain how my version of time travel worked before I could get into the meat and potatoes of my story.

And while any writing teacher worth their salt will beat it into a writer’s head to “show don’t tell,� I knew for this book I’d have to do some telling before I could do some showing.

The solution I came up with was to create an entire character to act as a sort of “reader proxy� for the book. In this case, the character I introduced happened to be a reporter writing a story about the time machine, ergo, they’d needed to know how it worked.

Voila!

Of course, that new character needed to have more agency than just being an exposition conduit, and I gave that to them, but I still had to balance how much info to give, how detailed to get, and when to deliver these parcels of theoretical physics and quantum mechanics to the reader in a way that wouldn’t create story speedbumps and keep things clicking along.

Ultimately, I feel I was able to find that balance, although I’m sure mileage will vary with readers. But figuring that all out was a big lesson for me as a writer.

MINOR CHARACTERS CAN BE COOL! (OR EVEN CRUCIAL)

It seems obvious, but the reality is that I’d never given a ton of thought to minor characters. I’m not talking about secondary, or B characters� I’m talking about folks who appear in one or two scenes throughout the entirety of the story.

But after I wrote Third Rule, I was caught off guard by people bringing up this one character again and again. The guy had like 2.5 pages of “screen time� in my novel, but he was mentioned by my editor, my agent, and even a movie director who I met with about a possible adaptation of the story. They all loved Jerry (that’s the guy’s name), and I was completely caught off guard.

It got to the point that when I did initial edits I was asked to add more Jerry! As in, I gave him a whole chapter where he spills all sorts of tea to my protagonist.

After some discussion, I realized that people didn’t like Jerry because he was funny or smart, they liked the character because he was disruptive. What I mean by that is that the story goes, and goes, and goes� and then, WHAM. Who’s this person? Why are they acting like this? And isn’t it cool how they kickstart the story a little bit?

I’m not suggesting a random character has to show up midway through a western novel wearing a giant bunny head and gunning down the cranky old sheriff with a laser bazooka from the future (or am I?), but what I am suggesting is that sometimes even a brief scene can add some needed texture and depth to a cast of characters and, quite possibly, provide some key piece of knowledge (make sure it’s earned � easy on the dues ex machina!) that propels the story forward in a fun, unexpected way.

From now on I’m going to be paying a lot more attention to my tertiary characters, because those guys recently became a whole new tool in my storytelling toolbox.

DATES MATTER (aka SPREADSHEETS CAN BE FUN!)

We’re gonna wrap it up on a very practical tip, because I’m boring that way.

In screenwriting it’s important to keep track of your days and nights, your dusks and dawns. But there’s a second layer to that, which is keeping track of your dates. Knowing if it’s a Tuesday or a Saturday, if it’s January 4th or June 11th, and whether it’s been a week since the BIG INCIDENT, or a day, or a month. Is it snowing or raining or sunny? What time does the sun set? Is someone’s birthday coming up—and if so, will the party be an outdoor affair?

It sounds obvious (and trivial), I know, but it’s not something a lot of new writers think about when writing a story, and believe it or not, it can mess you up if you’re not careful.

One might be surprised at how many times you’re at the keyboard, about to give your character a day at the beach, and go: Wait, is it even a weekend? Because my character mentioned how much he hated Mondays in the last chapter. And then you have to go back and read-through your work to make sure all the timing works out and that can suuuuck.

With Third Rule, this went to insane extremes. Without divulging spoilers, suffice to say that there are a few different realities in play in the story, so keeping track of days and dates became something that could only properly be tracked in a spreadsheet—a reference for me to know that when Character A went to the park, it was definitely a Saturday, and when Character B had a one-year anniversary of an INCIDENT, that it tracked to the proper calendar day. Meaning, if a scene takes place on February 3rd, 2025, it better damn well be a Monday, because that’s what the real-world calendar says.

In my case, I was dealing with key incidents taking place in 2044, and on my initial drafts, I wasn’t paying attention to whether February 3rd, 2044 was on a Monday or Friday.

But here’s the crazy thing: that came back to bite me. BIG time. During the editing process, sharpshooter copy editors were breaking my brain with incorrect date usage (yes, even 20 years in the future), and it kinda messed my story up a smidge and led to some frustrating nights at the keyboard.

So moving forward I plan to be way more cognizant about those pesky days and dates, especially when dealing with the past, or the future (or both).

Or you know� multiple realities.

PHILIP FRACASSI is the Bram Stoker and British Fantasy Award-nominated author of the story collectionsÌýBehold the Void, Beneath a Pale Sky, and No One is Safe!ÌýHis novels includeÌýA Child Alone with Strangers, Gothic, Boys in the Valley, and The Third Rule of Time Travel. His stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, includingÌýBest Horror of the Year, Nightmare Magazine, Interzone,ÌýandÌýSouthwest Review. Philip lives in Los Angeles and is represented by Copps Literary Services, Circle M + P, and WME.

Philip Fracassi: | |

The Third Rule of Time Travel: | |

Saturday, 4/26, Los Angeles

I’m going to the LA Times Bookfest (the LATFOB)!

2:00 PM � 3:00 PM, I’ll be at Taper Hall 101 on the Don’t Touch That: Magical Objects, Mysterious Portals in Fiction panel with:

Ivy Pochoda

Danielle Trussoni

Nikki Erlick

Tickets are, I believe, required for that event.

Monday 4/28: Phoenix, Poisoned Pen � 7 PM

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Tuesday 4/29 � San Antonio, Nowhere Books � 6PM

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Wednesday 4/30 � Chicago, City Lit � 6:30 PM

In conversation with Cina Pelayo!

Thursday 5/1 � Nashville, Parnassus � 6:30 PM

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Friday 5/2- Concord NH, Gibson’s � 6:30 PM

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Saturday 5/3 � Philly B&N � 5PM

In conversation with M. L. Rio!

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Wednesday 5/7 � Doylestown � 6PM

In conversation with Clay Mcleod Chapman!

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Thursday 5/8 � Midtown Scholar � 7PM

In conversation with Nat Cassidy!

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So, there we have it � the official book tour where I show up and do my little BOOK SONG and my LITERARY ULULATIONS. I hope you’ll come by!

Some quick As to your potential Qs �

Why Not My Town??

Well, the world is home to a lot of places and I cannot go to them all. I would like to! I’d love to do a huuuuuge book tour where I hit every state in the country and even some international pockets but that’s just not feasible. Plus, I try when possible to cover territory I either haven’t been before or at least haven’t been recently � next book tour would likely look very different!

Listen, if I could come right to your house, I would. I’d come over for dinner! It’d be great! But I can only go where I am summoned by the ancient rituals.

Why Should I Come?

Bookstores are cool! Booksellers are cool! Buying books from bookstores makes you cool by proxy. More to the point � hey, there are billionaires out there, and huge corporations, and isn’t it nice to be able to buy from smaller bookstores as a bit of counterprogramming? It won’t save the world but every little bit helps, and buying from bookstores is good for the store, for me, for you, for the overall bookish ecosystem. Support bookstores!

What If I Can’t Come?

The bookstores I’m visiting are likely able to hold a book for you and I can still sign it � many will even ship directly to you if you aren’t near to any of these. In fact, my own local, Doylestown Bookshop, will ship to you and I will give you a unique book-specific personalization alongside some very cool stickers by Natalie Metzger which maaaaaaay be these �

And all you gotta do to get a copy from D-town Bookshop is .

(Note: the cool stickers will also be coming with me on tour, obvs.)

So, if you can come to the events, please do. I figure I’m going to be wading out into the chaos factory that is America, so it’d be great if you swam out through the madness to say hi.

Failing that, buy from one of these stores! They’re where the books live. My books. So check ’em out. OKAY LOVE YOU BYE

Nassau Court is an attractive subdivision in Bethesda, Maryland that’s perfect for families —Ìýnice homes, plenty of space, good schools, and friendly neighbors. Couples Scott and Aimee,ÌýLisa and Marcus, and Gwen and Anton socialize every weekend, help out with each other’s kids,Ìýand are good friends.Ìý

But when one of the husbands is found dead, the layers of artifice are quickly peeled back, and what once looked like perfect lives begin to fall apart, piece by piece.

The genial, sociable atmosphere quickly turns dark, with steadily escalating tension, unexpected twists around every corner, revelations about how dark human nature can be, and an ending that is as shocking as it is shattering.

Trust the process (i.e. yes, it’s okay to feel seasick and gloomy when you start).

After having written four books, you’d think I’d know that I always start each new book reluctantly, the words coming begrudgingly, accompanied by a vague sense of nausea and the feeling that I have no idea what I am doing. Yet it hits me anew each time. One day, in the midst of writing YOU DESERVE TO KNOW I entered the kitchen and my husband took one look at my face and said, “Let me guess, you have no idea if this novel is going to work.� Turns out, I say that every time I write a book. I am currently in the queasy stage of my fifth novel, but I am better able to see it for what it is � a necessary phase, not a determination on the worth of my project.

If you build it (your fictional world), they (the ideas) will come

I am not a writer who writes every day between 8 a.m. and 2 p.m. with a pee break at 11, no matter what. There’s nothing I hate more than sitting in a chair, staring at a blank screen, except maybe having to toss out thousands of words I wrote because I didn’t know where I was going with my story. I only sit down to start a novel when I have a general idea of the whole thing � plot, setting, main character, tone. Until then there are dogs to be walked. Yet, I am not a detailed plotter. I have had to learn to trust that once I have built up enough story pressure in my imagination to start writing, like a tea kettle that starts whistling, the rest will flow. My characters get more interesting the deeper I get into the book. Take my murder victim in YOU DESERVE TO KNOW. He got his start as “husband no. 3� but after a few pages he emerged a writer, and not just any writer but a failed one, with great literary aspirations (yet little to back it up), and a dead mother who wrote beautiful prose that he may or may not have cribbed. The more I wrote about him, the more interesting and complicated he became, but it was only through writing about him that he was revealed to me.

Writing is great therapy (aka living well may be the best revenge but writing comes close).

Someone did me dirty once. Maybe someone did you dirty once as well, and you, like me, wondered if there was going to be any cosmic comeuppance for this evil-doer, any karmic retribution or at least acknowledgement that they did a bad, bad thing. Maybe you too experienced a profound sense of unfairness when you realized that was not going to happen. But did you sit down and write a novel and, inspired by your tormentor, create a character so vile and twisted that you cackled with glee as you wrote? I did, and it felt great, and my therapist called it sublimation, which is a fancy word for using your pain productively for your art. And it’s cheaper than therapy, too.

Genres are like lines in a coloring book, some people like to scribble outside of them

What kind of books do you write? I always hesitate a nanosecond when people ask me that. If I say mystery, they might imagine Hercule Poirot, with his ever-present pocketwatch. And no that isn’t right, but neither is the term thriller, conjuring visions of Jason Bourne racing through the streets of Berlin. Psychological thriller often means unreliable narrators (mine tend not to be) yet I resist th term domestic suspense as too small, cramped, claustrophobic. A reviewer once described my books as “suburban noir� and I loved it. The dark side of suburbia. Of course, there is no officially sub-genre called suburban noir. The Library of Congress categorizes my book as suspense fiction. I’ll take it. I’ve learned to write what I want and let other people worry about labels. I cannot imagine trying to reverse engineer a book to meet a subgenre’s conventions, although I feel like I have read a book or two that fall into this category.

Start the next book is almost always the answer

When you are in the dark about sales � as in how many, and where, and what moves buyers? Or when you want to tear your hair out and scream WHY when your book club raves about a terrible, awful, no-good book. Or when you’ve found an incandescent little novel that makes it worth getting up each morning and you realize no one else has ever heard of it and you wonder how can such genius go unheralded. When you worry if your agent will ever call you back. When you try to figure out what strategy you should take on Facebook/Instagram/X/TikTok that won’t make you want to drink arsenic. When you think the font on your last book is why it might not be selling so well. When a celebrity chef/athlete/influencer writes something in your genre and gets a seven-figure advance. Start the next book. The answer is always start the next book. Edited to Add: sometimes the answer is chocolate.

Aggie Blum Thompson is the author of four novels of domestic suspense that are set in the D.C. area. Before turning to fiction, she worked as a reporter, covering cops, courts, and trials, with a healthy dose of the mundane mixed in. Her writing has appeared in newspapers such as The Boston Globe and The Washington Post. She lives just over the Washington D.C. line in Bethesda, Maryland with her husband, two children, small cat, and large dog. She is currently at work on her fifth novel.

Aggie Blum Thompson:

You Deserve To Know: | | |

Something wicked is going on in the village of Ascension. A mother wasting away from cancer is suddenly up and about. A boy trampled by a milk cart walks away from the accident. A hanged man can still speak, broken neck and all.

The dead are not dying.

When Rabbit and Sadie Grace accompany their friend Rose to Ascension to help take care of her ailing cousin, they immediately notice that their new house, Bethany Hall, is occupied by dozens of ghosts. And something is waiting for them in the attic.

The villagers of Ascension are unwelcoming and wary of their weird visitors. As the three women attempt to find out what’s happening in the town, they must be careful not to be found out. But a much larger—and more dangerous—force is galloping straight for them�

It’s not that I’m forgetting how to write. The books are actually getting harder.

I’ve written eight novels (eleven, if you count my drawer/trunk books), and each one has been harder to write than the one before it. Every time I start writing a book or story, it’s like I’m starting a jigsaw puzzle, and each puzzle has more pieces.

It’s my fault. I make it harder for myself. I lay down some new gauntlet every time to make it interesting. This time I challenged myself to try two types of story structure in one book, and I dared myself to switch back and forth between third- and first-person perspectives. I think it turned out pretty well. I’m happy with the end result. But for a while as I was working on this particular thousand-piece puzzle, I wished I had chosen one of those board puzzles for toddlers.

Of course, the book I’m working on now is even more of a challenge.

I am not just one thing.

Since you read authors� newsletters (at least one author’s newsletter), you probably already know the difference between a “plotter� and a “pantser,� but just in case� Plotters are writers who outline their books first, then go back and flesh their stories out once the broad strokes are in place, while pantsers fly by the seat of our pants (get it?), diving into a story, often with no idea where it’s going or how it will end.

I’ve always been a pantser. I don’t usually know how I’m gonna wrap up a story until I’m about two-thirds of the way through. I genuinely think my subconscious figures things out while I’m merrily typing away, and springs the ending on me when it decides I’m ready. It’s a fun way to work, and I hope that if I can be surprised by my own story, maybe you’ll be surprised by it, too.

But I got two-thirds of the way through Rose of Jericho and realized I still didn’t know how to end it. I kept writing and writing, knowing full well that I was stalling for time, filling up pages that wouldn’t survive the next draft, trying to figure out what my subconscious had in mind (so to speak).

So I did a thing I’ve never done before: I went back through and summarized each scene with a sentence or two, and printed them out, and cut the pages into strips, one strip per scene. I laid them out on our bedroom table (the only table that wasn’t piled with books, or magazines, or mail, or our son’s crap) and moved them around, removing some and writing new scenes on blank strips of paper. I figured out my structure was all wrong just by looking at the thing physically.

Plotting backwards! Pantsing forward!

My books aren’t one thing either.

Sales & Marketing would like it if my books were one thing at a time. Westerns or Horror or Fantasy. They want to be able to sell my books. And I want them to do that. I want people to read my books! That’s the whole point! I could shout my stories into the void at the edge of town if I wasn’t looking for a conversation with my readers. (The void screams at me to join it.)

It’s easier to sell a book if you can sum it up neatly, but Rose of Jericho is a Weird West adventure, a Haunted House Horror story, and a Romantic Fantasy, all in one.

This book made me actually think about what I write and who I write it for. I wrote Historical Thrillers for a long while, then wrote a contemporary thriller, then I jumped to Horror/Western/Fantasy, but my thrillers all contained elements of horror and/or fantasy, and I never gave it any thought at all. I didn’t mean to mash things up so thoroughly, but I’ve always done that, and I’ve decided to make my peace with it. This is what I like to write. I hope this is what you like to read.

Sales & Marketing will always be frustrated with me. I don’t think there’s anything I can do about that. One genre isn’t enough. The story wants to be what the story wants to be.

Go easy on the spices.

I actually learned this with my second book then forgot it and had to learn it again. The first draft of my sophomore novel, The Black Country was twice as long as the final published version. I whittled away at it, and I whittled, and I whittled. Whole characters and chase scenes and subplots disappeared. I was miserable about it, and I vowed to be more focused in the future.

That lasted five whole books before I did it again. The final version of Rose of Jericho is about half as long as the first draft. I cut out a major character, and assigned his scenes to other characters, cut out unnecessary chapters and superfluous themes (see above for my genre problem). I didn’t need any of that stuff, and the book’s better without it, but it sure seemed right at the time.

Lesson learned. Again. I’m sure I’ll unlearn it in another book or two.

Rose of Jericho is amazing.

I mean the plant this book is named after (though I do hope you like the book).

There are witches in this novel, and each of them has a slightly different skillset, but they all derive their power from the earth. From herbs and wind and sun and seasons. As with my previous book, Red Rabbit, I spent a lot of time researching plants and a lot of them are absolutely incredible organisms. Case in point, Selaginella lepidophylla (also known as rose of Jericho, or the resurrection plant) can go years without water. Years! It can completely dry out, be damaged and burnt, then spring back to life minutes after being exposed to water again.

Sure sounds like magic to me.

Alex Grecian is the New York Times bestselling author of The Yard and its sequels, as well as Red Rabbit, Rose of Jericho, and the contemporary thriller The Saint of Wolves and Butchers. He has also written several award-winning graphic novels, including Proof, which is currently being developed for Fox. He lives in the American Midwest with his wife and son, their stinky dog, and a tarantula named Rosie.

Alex Grecian: |

Rose of Jericho: | | |

Hey! A brief announcement here � I’ll have a couple more official details later in the week, but I wanted to let y’all know I’m going on tour woooo and sure everything is chaos out there and sure I’m going to have to get on planes and catch the new sexy superbug FLUSLES (aka Bird Flu and Measles), but whatever. I gotta sing for my supper, dance for my dinner, and I will do it in front of you, embarrassingly, if I have to. So where will I be?

Saturday, 4/26, Los Angeles

Details incoming!

Monday 4/28: Phoenix, Poisoned Pen � 7 PM

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Tuesday 4/29 � San Antonio, Nowhere Books � 6PM

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Wednesday 4/30 � Chicago, City Lit � 6:30 PM

In conversation with Cina Pelayo!

Thursday 5/1 � Nashville, Parnassus � 6:30 PM

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Friday 5/2- Concord NH, Gibson’s � 6:30 PM

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Saturday 5/3 � Philly B&N � 5PM

In conversation with M. L. Rio!

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Wednesday 5/7 � Doylestown � 6PM

In conversation with Clay Mcleod Chapman!

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Thursday 5/8 � Midtown Scholar � 7PM

In conversation with Nat Cassidy!

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More details to come! And some of these may require tickets and what-not, so if you’re planning to come, please check out the details page and see what’s up with that. Don’t forget too if you’re preordering and if you’re not coming to any of these, because you get VERY SPECIAL PERSONALIZATION and also VERY SPECIAL STAIRCASE STICKERS by Natalie Metzger

OKAY LOVE YOU BYE

Darkness is interpretive. It’s in our nature to explore the shadows. Through the 13 stories presented in Black Magick, compiled and edited by award-winning occult author Raven Digitalis, the reader is transported into mysterious settings that blur the line between fiction and reality.

Each story uniquely integrates occultism and magick, deepening the mysteries of the shadow. By acknowledging darkness through the written medium, we can better come to terms with the darkness within ourselves.

These haunting tales are finely crafted by a wide variety of writers, and each story is uniquely different from the other. When we bravely explore the darker aspects of life, we more accurately come to know what it means to be human.

Black Magick is dedicated to author Storm Constantine, whose story “Candle Magic� opens the anthology.

IT’S OKAY TO REVIVE AN OLD PROJECT

I can’t believe this book is finally printed. I was convinced for years that Black Magick would never see the light of day, but lo and behold, it’s alive! It turns out that, well, creative visions just sometimes need a bit of time to gestate.

I originally conceived of this short story anthology back in 2008, in between the releases of my first books, Goth Craft and Shadow Magick Compendium. Something like 30 publishers rejected the project back then. This was due to its content: sex, drugs, occult terror � things like that. Since, at that time, my mind was moving on to the next nonfiction Pagan guidebook I had in mind, I set the project aside and let it gather virtual dust.

It wasn’t until 2023 that I had a dream where the project was revived. So, I just went with it! Half of the original authors stayed on board, while the other half dropped their story for one reason or another (or were impossible to get in touch with). New authors jumped in fast, and, after a few more US publisher rejections, Moon Books picked it up. Moon Books is a Pagan, Wiccan, and metaphysical publisher in London, and are a branch of Collective Ink.

Hot damn; a British publisher wants to print it? Let’s get ‘er done! Thankfully, Brits tend to be a bit more lenient about controversial literary expression, trigger warnings and all.

EDITING AIN’T EASY WORK

When Black Magick was revived, I was lucky to be in between projects. At that point I had begun co-creating decks of divination cards! My Empath’s Oracle had recently been printed, and plans were in the works for my Gothic Witch’s Oracle deck, which also recently got published by Crossed Crow in Chicago.

Editing the short stories, as well as reworking my original tale, proved to be an exhaustively lengthy process, not least because I had to educate myself about editing fiction writing specifically. Fiction is an entirely different beast from the nonfiction I had become accustomed to penning.

Many of the stories required multiple revisions and meticulous editing. Everyone was great to work with, luckily, from the contributing authors to everyone at the publisher. Writers, artists, and creative visionaries like to get things just right � and that we did!

Thankfully, my oldest friend in the world, Miranda S. Hewlett, not only contributed a story to the anthology, but stepped in as the book’s Associate Editor. Being an English professor and a literary genius in general, her skills picked up where mine left off. Another longtime friend and fellow contributor, S.M. Lomas, also stepped in to perform valuable proofreading for selected stories. With all our powers combined, the final form of Black Magick became one damn fine, spooky, and gloriously unusual piece of work.

DIVERSITY IS A VIRTUE

When one of Black Magick’s contributing authors dropped out for personal reasons, I needed a quick replacement. After some meditation and reflection, I realized that there wasn’t a Black voice in the anthology. A quick internet search revealed the work of Tracy Cross and her first novel, Rootwork. I contacted Tracy, who lives in Washington, DC, and she was happy to write a brilliant, futuristic Hoodoo tale just for the occasion!

The only thread running through every short story is the concept of “black magick,� the term itself being a bit tongue-in-cheek and sensationalistic. Otherwise, I encouraged authors to let their creativity and imagination run wild! No homogenization found here.

I’m amazed at the anthology’s diverse scope of material; I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so diverse, and at one time thought it might be too all-over-the-place. I soon came to realize that this is part of the book’s charm. Some of the stories are written in first-person, and others in third. Some tales are straightforward, while others are creepily obscure and hellaciously abstract. The breadth of subgenres contained include dark fantasy, erotica, sci-fi, mystery, folk horror, queer storytelling, period pieces, and a whole bunch more. Still, all of the tales stay firmly grounded in the genre of occult horror. Mission accomplished!

NORMAL PEOPLE ARE EASILY FREAKED OUT

Like I mentioned, Black Magick was originally rejected by a wide array of publishers due to some of its shocking content. When Moon Books picked up the project, however, their art, design, and marketing departments were all on board for creating one delicious, eye-catching, spooky-ass cover. What’s more sinfully stereotypical of so-called “black magick� than a so-called Voodoo doll?!

It turns out that both the book’s cover artwork and title haven’t been entirely received with open arms, but my guess is that it’s because ordinary, everyday folk just aren’t the book’s demographic! It’s easy to forget that superstitious beliefs permeate every culture to one extent or another. This was especially surprising to a person like me, who is deeply involved with real-life Witchcraft and occult spirituality. Indeed, more than a few folks have found the very idea of the project to be off-putting and frightening; even heretical. Oh well� their loss!

OUTSOURCING IS SMART & EFFECTIVE

I had never given a thought to the prospect of outsourcing. At the same time, I’ve longedÌý for years for a secretary, an assistant â€� anything, anyone â€� to help with scheduling, promotion, advertising, and so on. I’m lucky enough to have all my books published traditionally; I don’t know how folks do it independently.

I just don’t have enough time in the day to promote myself properly. Between writing books and articles, a professional Tarot reading career, and keeping up with a handful of side jobs, it was a blessing to discover and employ an outsourced assistant! As it turns out, my online Pagan buddy Alex J. Coyne in South Africa not only performs writing and editing, but is also proficient in the arduous work of publicizing! Since asking him to become my official Publicity Assistant, I’ve been blown away by his ability to create succinct lists of new contacts and his skill at cold-pitching the book to reviewers whose content is published on numerous mediums; print, podcast, YouTube � you name it! Even my lovely overloaded Publicists are happy with his work, and are relieved that he can dig a bit deeper into forging new contacts and impressively think outside the box.

The exchange rate in this outsourcing has also been a pleasant surprise, and was a huge draw in my choosing to inquire about hiring his assistance. Just a handful of PayPalled bucks each month helps pay for his rent, food, and the expenses of life. It continues to be a result-yielding, mutually beneficial process.

In fact, Alex even wrote an article detailing his experience in becoming the Publicity Assistant for Black Magick, encouraging other writers to consider doing the same!Ìý (Link: )

Raven Digitalis is an award-winning author best known for his “empath’s trilogy,� consisting of The Empath’s Oracle, Esoteric Empathy, and The Everyday Empath, as well as the “shadow trilogy� of A Gothic Witch’s Oracle, A Witch’s Shadow Magick Compendium, and Goth Craft. Originally trained in Georgian Witchcraft, Raven has been an earth-based practitioner since 1999, a Priest since 2003, a Freemason since 2012, and an empath all of his life. He holds a degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Montana, jointly operated a nonprofit Pagan temple for sixteen years, and is also a professional Tarot reader, editor, Reiki practitioner, and animal rights advocate.

Raven Digitalis:

Black Magick: |

Stories in Black Magic:

1.ÌýCandle MagicÌýby Storm Constantine

2.ÌýSpanish Jones by Adele Cosgrove-Bray

3.Ìý3:33 by Rhea Troutman

4.ÌýEntombed by Corvis Nocturnum

5.ÌýFata Morgana by S.M. Lomas

6.ÌýAutomatic Writing by Gabrielle Faust

7.ÌýThe Black Cat by Edgar Allan Poe

8.ÌýDon’t Forget to Feed by Miranda S. Hewlett

9.ÌýThe Night Everything Changed by Raven Digitalis

10.ÌýReBound by Tracy Cross

11.ÌýCaptured by Jaclyn M. Ciminelli

12.ÌýRed Gifts by Daniel Adam Rosser

13.ÌýThe Iconoclasts by Mona Fitzgerald-King

ÌýStep into the twisted mind of Del Howison with this unflinching collection of dark tales. What Fresh Hell Is This? brings together stories from across Howison’s prolific career, each one exploring the eerie and the macabre, examining humanity’s deepest fears and desires. Drawing on his rich life experiences—from being baptized in a river and attending a private Christian college to his ownership of the famed Horror bookstore Dark Delicacies—Howison crafts tales that delve into the darkest corners of the human soul.

These tales push boundaries, blending the supernatural with psychological terror, and invite readers into worlds where the unimaginable becomes real. From paranormal happenings to supernatural horrors, Howison’s storytelling prowess ensures that these stories will stay with you long after you turn the last page.

Things appear different in a group. All the dark tales in What Fresh Hell Is This? were written at different times and even different years for anthologies, magazines, and e-books. They have never been compiled in one place before. My first viewing of these as a group opened my eyes to a cohesiveness in my tale-telling that I never realized. The way I end stories, the way I pace, the POVs I choose to reveal what is going on. I’ve found that I’m slightly askew. I think that’s a good thing.

Patience truly is a virtue, especially when it comes to publishing. The entire industry moves at glacial speed. To push it faster rarely results in a better product. Rewriting, reediting, reformatting, etc. only improves the product with each pass. Don’t be in a hurry. I might be antsy to get the story out there. But once it is out there, it is out there forever. The extra time you take might save an eternity.

There is no such thing as a perfect book. Every book contains a mistake, a misspelling that wasn’t caught or an editing error, possibly a formatting faux pas. It doesn’t matter how many times it is edited or rewritten, there is an error imp hiding amongst the lines of your tome. Upon receiving your book, he is usually discovered in the first place you open it to. It doesn’t matter how inconsequential the error is. It stands like Mount Everest on the page. Every author has a publishing disaster in their past that never leaves the back of their mind, clinging to their anxiety and fear with the release of every book.

You can write to any theme the editor gives you. The freedom to write your own novel or story is a wonderful thing. But many times, that is not where the money comes from. An editor tells you they need an article or piece of fiction about X. In your mind you say, “But I don’t write about X.� Yes, you do and Y and Z also. When you write it and turn it in for that sale there is confidence that you gain. You become a better writer for pushing yourself to the other side of your self-imposed barriers.

When doing research for your writing don’t look only at the item you are researching. If you pay attention you will find a mention or a hint of something connected to you research that you didn’t know, an idea you didn’t realize before beginning your search. Follow that thread and see where it leads. Many times it will take you through a doorway that opens up an entire room of possibilities. Don’t get tunnel vision. Don’t close yourself in.

Del Howison is an author, journalist, SAG actor including the upcoming horror film Big Baby directed by Spider One. He is a Bram Stoker Award-winning editor of the anthology Dark Delicacies: Original Tales of Terror and the Macabre by the World’s Greatest Horror Writers. He has written articles for Fear.net, Gauntlet Magazine, and Writers Digest among others. Del’s short story Cul-de-Sac appeared in Weird Tales Magazine #369. His western short story The Lost Herd was turned into the premiere (and highest rated) episode, The Sacrifice, for the series Fear Itself. His dark western novel The Survival of Margaret Thomas was shortlisted for the Peacemaker Award given out by the Western Fictioneers. He has been shortlisted for over half a dozen awards including the Shirley Jackson Award and the Black Quill. Del’s retrospective short story compilation of dark tales, What Fresh Hell Is This? was released in early 2025. He is the cofounder and owner (with his wife, Sue) of Dark Delicacies, a book and gift store known as “The Home of Horror,� located in Burbank, California. The store won the “Il Posto Nero� award from Italy and has been inducted into the Rondo Hatton Hall of Fame.

What Fresh Hell Is This: | | |