Two New Stories!!
I’ve been aiming for one new story a month this year.
First up was Letter from the End of the World, a Threads of Dreams flash fiction at the end of January. The translation, Lettera dalla fine del mondo, comes out at the end of March. I managed to wedge these two right in between:
The Unsought Light: A Japanese Fairytale Retelling with a Gothic Twist
Daughters don’t get to choose their fate. But there’s one choice no one can deny her.
Promised from birth to the son of the clan lord, Hana’s only joy is gazing out over the lake beyond her window. She dreams of floating away on the breeze like the cherry blossoms, but when an otherworldly stranger offers a chance at escape, duty and desire collide in a war that threatens to bring down her family, her clan, and her village.
Freedom. Passion. Family. Fate. What do you do when there are no good choices left?
A gothic retelling of the ancient Japanese folktale The Maiden of Unai, this short story explores the untold perspective of the “maiden” destined for an arranged political marriage in a time and place where family fortunes mattered more than individual happiness or choice. A historical romance in the vein of Rome & Juliet with a supernatural twist.
Trigger warning for suicide.
This is a standalone short story (the setting might have tipped you off?) and it is also, at least for the moment, exclusive to the Kindle Unlimited program, so you can get it on Amazon as of today.
(Pro tip: Kindle Unlimited books are always free to KU subscribers, but one advantage of the program is the ability to do dramatically lower pricing or even price to free every so often, so you might want to follow me on Amazon to get alerts about sales.)
Under
So, I’ve been promising you guys a prequel novella since last summer and it’s (past) time to deliver.
The reason you didn’t get Under last July is that I finished drafting it, replotted it, and came up with a much bigger story to tell, and one which needed tweaks to fit properly into all the complexity of the Threads of Dreams series. That story is Below the Surface, and it’s going to have to wait its turn (lol).
But Under is a fun, fast-paced little romantic thriller all on its own, so I cleaned it up a little and made it into a newsletter subscriber freebie!
Sibling rivalry takes a new turn as sisters fight for love, identity, and survival in a monster-infested drowned city.
The twins’ bond kept them together through everything the Towers of Refuge could throw at them. But when Ange fakes her own death in a rash attempt to protect her sister, her twin runs away to join a secret club in the abandoned levels of the tower below the floodwaters.
Ange is determined to bring her sister back. But the secrets—and the strangers—they discover below the waterline could sever their bond for good.
This SFF/spec-fic prequel story takes place less than a decade before Blind the Eyes and blends monsters and magic with near-future post-eco-disaster cityscapes for a fast-paced, genre-bending romantic thriller.
Join the newsletter to download a free complete copy of Under and an extended preview of Blind the Eyes.