New Sandu Christmas story for your holiday wish list! 🎁

💥Well, I have an exciting announcement to make—to my surprise 💥

Due to some other things that I still can’t yet announce [vibrates with frustration] there has been a thrilling development in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series stories

For Supah Sekrit Reazins, the period of time in Blood Ex Libris where Sandu disappears out of Noosh’s life for three months (right in the first chapters of the book) needed to be told from Sandu’s point of view, giving the full story of his capture, torture, and escape for the very first time…

And, since it takes place over the holiday season, well, if Die Hard can be an Xmas movie, this story should absolutely follow in that grand tradition 🧨🎄🧨

So, the first draft of the story is going to be complete before Turkey Day, and after that it will be beaten into shape by my amazing editor, and gotten out in ebook form in time for holiday shopping!

This was, as you will remember from previous emails, so very much NOT the plan. But since I need this story pronto, and since it’s being very obliging and damn near writing itself, I am not fighting the utter reworking of my life and calendar.

Those of you who have been grumbling about how often Blood Depths has been put off will be grumpy with me, I understand. However, I cannot deny the results of the last newsletter’s poll, wherein those of you who want to see rough snippets were very vocal and undeniable.

FINE THEN, but only because you insist

So, I’m going to bow to your demands—which is not easy for me because I really prefer to present finished drafts of things and pretend they were that good from the very start —and start including “The Raw View” into newsletters.

Because of the few of you who didn’t not want the slightest bit of spoilers, I will always put that section at the bottom of the newsletter, and give lots of warning in advance.

The 100 Minutes War

My pretty boy and me, in our Viking-era finest. Be terrified!

I would have spent the whole weekend on the computer banging out the whole story in just seven days, except for the fact that I had made plans I couldn’t get out of for last weekend. The SCA event called the 100 Minutes War happens this November weekend every year—generally taking over my birthday, but that’s not a terrible thing, because it’s one of my favorite SCA events of the year, and I get to see lots of people whom I adore.

I didn’t get a lot of pictures this year, because I was showing my bestie and her husband around their first SCA event, and working with Archie to set him up for success in being a good and happy Service Dog, so I didn’t have the phone out much for pictures. However, here is Archie and me in our matching Viking garb in a rare quiet moment in the day.

It was very good to be off-screens for the weekend, and the later good whisky and good mead fueled naked hot-tub-under-the-stars party was really a quite perfect way to celebrate a birthday! (There were three people celebrating their birthdays in the tub, so we had a fair bit of celebrating to get through! And, no, there will be no pictures from that 😂)

But now, rejuvenated by getting as close to an am’r sort of weekend as one can get and still be kee (there was a huge pitched battle plus dubious decisions in a hot-tub 😂) I’m getting back to work getting you the stories you need! Indeed, I would already be back in the Sandu Xmas story if I didn’t have to write this newsletter, so I’m going to keep it short and get back to what you really want from me…