I just dropped From One Moment to the Next (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.5) (aka Kandy 0.75) into the inboxes of my newsletter subscribers, and as promised, I actually remembered to start a discussion thread!
The short (2600k) is just a sweet (well, my version of sweet) glimpse into Kandy’s life. It is set between her leaving her first pack and the events of Dowser 1. And features two other reader fav characters.
Please assume that there are spoilers for the short, as well as any Kandy book, in the comments below.
Feel free to discuss among yourselves (I believe there is a follow comments button? So you can see if anyone replies, etc?).
… digging through every mention of the Llewellyn family in my master Adept Universe bible, then every mention of uncles and cousins in a specific book – this time it was I See You (Oracle 2). All to roughly sketch out a family tree in order to verify that the current (previously unnamed) alpha of the California pack (aka Beau’s uncle) is actually Desmond’s second cousin.
Then correcting Gabby’s short. As well the short I’m currently writing.
Hastily scribbled Llewellyn family tree. Incomplete.
That second cousin thing always screws with me. Of course, the fact that Robert is Ada’s older brother apparently never occurred to me. Which would have made for far, far less work. Sigh.
😂
So yeah – spoiler alert – that means Kandy’s third Moments of the Adept Universe short is dropping in my newsletter on the last Thursday of August. And it may contain a character you’ve all been begging to see againaching for missing.
Some sweet peas from Hey Day Farm to add a bit of colour to my other Archivist ‘touchstones’ – my version of Infinity and a brass dragon (see the page breaks in the books).
I’m all geared up to work full time, hopefully with no other distractions, on the second book in the Archivist series for the entire week. Though I’m slightly apprehensive about my second Covid19 shot on Wednesday. The first shot pushed my Chronic Daily Headache into (at least) six weeks of ramped up pain during which very little writing was accomplished, putting me far, far behind my schedule for 2021. But, as I understand it, many people react differently to their second shots and I hope that is the case for me as well.
Other than that, there has been a tiny bit of knitting, and an even tinier bit of gardening. And a ton of other books/stories thrashing around in my head (don’t worry I’m making notes) such as a couple of more Kandy shorts (and an Audrey short), leading up to Misfits 1. As well as more brainstorming for the new Multiverse series (long term project, urban fantasy). If the headache would just give me some peace, I have a ton of books aching to get out of my head!
The first three Moments of the Adept Universe shorts (previously released in my newsletter) are with the editor for story editing. I’ve finished the first draft of what was supposed to be Burgundy’s second story (the first is outlined but not written) but I’m a little torn about ‘releasing’ it next because it falls forward in the timeline (after Misfits 1 but before Archivist 0) and therefore might be a bit confusing. So I might need to hold it back for a bit. Memo is taking break from the sketches for the Adept Universe bible until September, because she is crazy busy, but there are more coming – yay!
I’ve been reading the Psy-Changeling series by Nalini Singh finally (Amazon USA link, for ease of sharing). I just finished book nine and am still really enjoying the sexy, sexy series. I would call it paranormal romance because each book ends in a HEA (Happily Ever After) EXCEPT there is a ton of world building, and a larger overall plot threading through the background of each book, which makes it more of an urban fantasy series.
Okay, wish me luck with the second Covid19 shot, and I should get back to writing Archivist 2!
A brief addendum that I can’t believe I needed to write: I’m not interested in being sent anti-vaccine propaganda. I believe in science and that my medical system/government is interested in keeping me alive, even if only for the taxes I pay. And I cannot believe that anyone would suggest that so-called ‘lifestyle’ changes (rather than a doctor or ‘pill’) would be all it would take to cure my headaches. Do you actually think that anyone would be in this much pain, for almost two years, and not have tried EVERYTHING, including diet and massage? No one with a chronic illness sits around hoping a ‘pill’ will cure them. But! Amazingly enough, because science is cool like that, sometimes the right ‘pill’ actually works.
I keep getting asked about … well, every novel (from every series) that random readers seem to want (which is lovely, but seriously impossible). Short answer? Yes, the Dowser, Oracle, and Reconstructionist are all complete series. Archivist 2, Amplifier 5, Misfits 2, and numerous Moments of Adept shorts are in the works, to be released as soon as I’ve written each (in the above order). I do try to keep the bottom of my About Meghan and TBR page vaguely updated, as well as the Reading Order. Just FYI.
I submit the following snippet as evidence that words do continue to be written.
🙂
A page from MCD’s Moments of the Adept 1 notebook.
Chuckling, Kandy placed her hands on the ground and levered herself up into a crouch and then to standing.
The skin across her upper chest and arms was darkening, reddening, then rapidly blackening.
Crying out despite myself, I flung my hands forward. The outer circle responded instantly, reaching out for the injured werewolf and gently enfolding her upper torso in the healing I’d instinctively cast. I’d had no idea I could manipulate a barrier in that way. Though perhaps sitting in the middle of the epic flow of the ley line had something to do with it.
Kandy giggled, rolling her shoulders back and stretching as if she just gotten a great … well, I was going to say massage, but I doubted the werewolf luxuriated in anything less than mind-blowing —
“Ooo,” she purred, leering at me, and completely ignoring the interlopers. “That tickles all the right places, healer.”
Every single one of the interlopers turned to look at me. Even through my barrier I could feel their regard.
“My turn,” Kandy said, bouncing in place with anticipation. The burns had completely healed, and not only thanks to my spell, the werewolf healed quickly on her own. “But, let’s make it a party, otherwise I’ll just hear … yadda, yadda … so freaking bored … yadda, yadda … why do you get to have all all the fun … yadda, yadda … Text the dowser, Burgundy. Tell her to come play.”
She turned her attention to the heavily armored interlopers. “But … while we wait …. six … five … let’s see how many of you I can grab on my little, tiny lonesome … four …” Energy swirled around her, brightening and expanding. “Three … two …”
The leader threw an arm up to shield its face. Yes, I assumed there was a face behind the faceplate of the helmet. Anything else was far too creepy to contemplate at the moment.
“One!” A behemoth creature tore through Kandy’s clothing, then skin — all gray, patchy fur, thick muscle, and sickled claws. Standing easily seven feet, she lowered her large head between her massive shoulders, lips pulling back along an elongated snout to reveal wickedly long, sharp teeth. She had a strip of bright pink hair, like a mohawk or a mane, snaking across her head from her brow, down her neck, and along her spine, ending around the middle of her back.
The monster that was now Kandy cackled. Gleefully dark. The sound somehow amplified, brutally eager and malicious.
Fear grabbed hold of me, freezing me in place. Not that I’d been planning to move — what with being a three-hour hike from civilization and facing off with six armed, armored foes with unknown intent — but being able to breath was always nice.
The leader opened fire …
– excerpt from Momentary Incursion (Moments of the Adept, Burgundy 0.5), first draft
I just dropped In Less Than a Moment (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.3) (aka Kandy 0.5) into the inboxes of my newsletter subscribers, and as promised, I actually remembered to start a thread where you could discuss all the secrets it reveals as a group.
The novelette (15k+) cracks Kandy’s background wide open – a large piece of the puzzle leading to the events of the Dowser series, as well as the upcoming Misfits 2. Yep, the Kandy stories are most definitely prequels to the second novel of the Misfits of the Adept Universe.
I’m making this tidbit of sunshine my desktop photo for the day – aka a little yellow daffodil that has braved the still-chilly morning temps to bloom – because I’m about to do a second pass on Kandy’s second short, In Less Than A Moment. And I know I’m going to blubber through it. Again.
I’ll just keep reminding myself that Kandy has found her pack, her family. Not that life is ever without strife but it can be filled with love and laughter at the same time.
***
In other news, I’m (slowly) putting together a Frequently Asked Questions, Spring Edition blog post so if you have any burning questions – LOL – drop them in the comments below and I’ll add them to the list (as long as it’s not too rife with spoilers).
In Less Than a Moment (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.3) aka Kandy 0.5 – first draft. 13,099 words. Done!
A shot of my desk while in the middle of writing Kandy’s second novelette. I’m honestly never certain why I do these things to myself – things requiring so much tissue – but I write what the muse wants me to write … blubbering and all.
Sorry, I really couldn’t find an excerpt that wasn’t a huge spoiler.
Stop reading now if you don’t want to wait until the end of March to read the rest.
***
Justin was dead.
I’d dragged him behind an industrial garbage bin … or maybe it was for recycling. At least I thought it had been me that had dragged him … blood streaking away from us back out into the middle of the alley. Justin’s blood. From the three gunshot wounds.
They’d shot him in the back.
I think.
Though it wasn’t yet clear to me who they were.
He’d gone down without a sound.
We’d been chatting and laughing … and …
Now Justin was dead.
Vaguely aware that I was panicking, I rolled Justin, tearing his T-shirt so I could get a better look at his back. I accidentally scored his pale skin with wolf claws that I hadn’t consciously manifested.
Blood was just pouring out of him, pooling underneath him. I was crouching in it, kneeling in it. His warm lifeblood.
I’d thought … if I could remove the bullets … but the wounds were already blackened at the edges, that poison spreading in dark veins of death.
Justin was dead.
Three bullets to the heart would do that.
Even to a werewolf.
If those bullets were silver.
And wielded by a sorcerer.
– In Less than a Moment (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.3), first draft except
***
If all goes smoothly, the third draft of In Less Than a Moment should drop in the inboxes of my newsletter subscribers on Thursday, March 25 – headache dependant, as always (unfortunately).
Reminder: my newsletter is not the same as following this blog and getting notifications. It’s not the same as following me on social media. You can sign up following the link under the image of the Adept Universe cookbook, either to your right (if you’re on a computer) or by scrolling down (if you’re on a mobile device). And, once again, I cannot force your email provider to deliver my emails to you. You must make certain you’re subscribed and check all your own folders – spam, junk, promos – on your end. 🙂
But! Don’t worry if you do miss the unedited shorts. I will be bundling them for publication at the end of 2021.
I’m working on Gabby’s Moments of The Adept Universe short this weekend as a bit of a brain break from the Archivist series in between drafts. [I finished the first draft of Archivist 1 yesterday]. I’m trying to figure out if the age the Talbot twins were adopted is ‘in canon’ or just a note I made for myself (and therefore put in their ‘official’ bios). I’d like them to be older than age seven for the short. If possible.
Gabby’s short details an exceedingly important moment in the twins’ background, feeding into the idea I’m working on for the Misfit 4 storyline. When I outlined the story for Michael, he was a little doubtful I could fit it into a ‘short’ format. So … challenged accepted!
A series of Adept Universe notebooks and a touch of inspiration in the art of Jessica Growling (aka Nature’s my Friend) – an Iris for the month of February.
The first scene I found was, of course, the very first time we meet the twins through Jade’s perspective. Lots of great info in the scene – and some fantastic dialogue, if I say so myself – but no mentions of the age they were when adopted!! So now I scour Misfits 1!
“Introduce yourselves,” Kandy said, seriously peeved. “Then let us know why the hell you’re in a storage room with eight mundanes only one door over.”
The amplifier opened her mouth — but then snapped it closed after a look from her sister. They stared at each other for a moment, and a tiny taste of tart jam shifted between them.
“Communicating telepathically,” I said for Kandy’s benefit.
Kandy snorted. “Don’t make me teach you to obey your elders, my pretties.”
“We know.”
“We understand.”
They overlapped each other, nary a pause between one speaking and the other taking over.
“You first, sis,” the telepath said.
“I always go first.”
“You’re the eldest.”
“So they said.”
“Why would they lie?”
“I’m not having this conversation —”
“You!” Kandy jabbed her finger toward the amplifier.
The telepath flinched. “She’s even more growly than Bitsy.”
“She’s older.” The amplifier shrugged, eyeing the pissed-off werewolf at my side.
“I swear to God,” Kandy growled. “I’m going to teach them some manners.”
I quashed a grin, looking pointedly at the amplifier. She squared her shoulders, intoning with exaggeration. “Gabrielle Talbot. Commonly known as Gabby. Amplifier. Sister of Margaret.”
“Talbot?” I asked. “Daughter of Angelica?”
Gabby scowled. “Adopted daughter of the sorcerers Stephan and Angelica Talbot.”
“Margaret Talbot,” the telepath said, picking up practically on top of her sister’s final word. “Known as Peggy. Telepath … truth seeker.”
Gabby shot her a look.
“Well, there’s no point in lying to a dowser, is there?”
I didn’t correct Peggy’s assumption that I could wield my skills to distinguish magical abilities that finely.
Gabby looked from me to Kandy belligerently. “We won’t be used. The Talbots won’t allow it. Never again.”
Kandy cackled. “You think two sorcerers could stand against Jade Godfrey, dowser, alchemist, wielder of the instruments of assassination, if she wanted you?”
“Plus, I’m not interested in using anyone,” I said mildly.
“Not the point,” Kandy said. “It’s the principle. They come into your territory and question your authority.”
Peggy looked stricken. “We certainly weren’t.”
“Henry Calhoun said we’d be safe here,” Gabby said quietly.
That gave Kandy pause. She glanced over at me.
I nodded.
“Henry sent you to Vancouver?” the werewolf asked.
Gabby and Peggy nodded in perfect unison.
Kandy grumbled under her breath, retrieving her phone from her back pocket and opening her texting app. I had a feeling there would be T-shirts for the amplifier and the telepath in the near future.
Kandy’s self-assigned pack was rapidly expanding. First Rochelle and Beau, then Mory — though the necromancer might have nominally been under the werewolf’s protection first. Then a fledgling vampire, and now an amplifier and a telepath. If Kandy ever needed to invade a small country, she was collecting the army with which to do so. With at least a dozen more years of training, of course. And that wasn’t even including Drake, Warner, and me.
Either that or the US Marshal, Henry Calhoun, who most assuredly belonged to Kandy by way of her bite and the transfer of magic that had come with it, was about to get an earful.
I gestured toward the green-haired werewolf. “Kandy, enforcer of the West Coast North American Pack.”
Gabby and Peggy exchanged another look. Then, by seemingly mutual decision, Peggy spoke. “The pack has a presence in Vancouver?”
Kandy paused her texting to growl. “Why do you care?”
Neither Gabby or Peggy answered.
“Can you tell us why your magic went … awry?” I asked.
“It didn’t. Not really. It was just intense and out of the blue.”
“And you normally have trouble getting it under control? Or mitigating its effects?”
Another glance passed between the twins.
“No. Not for a long time, I guess.” Peggy twisted a large moonstone ring on her left index finger. Gabby wore the same ring on her right index finger, making me wonder if that indicated the twins had different dominant hands.
They spoke with American accents, completely different from Angelica Talbot’s. Gabby’s intonation was more abrupt, while Peggy had a softer, smoother tone.
“I have a brown spot in my left eye,” Peggy said. “If you’re trying to tell Sis and me apart.”
I smiled. “Your magic tastes different.”
“Yeah,” Kandy said. “You can’t fool anyone who can smell magic, fledglings.”
They glanced at each other, and this time even I could see the look of disappointment that passed between them. Maybe tricking people into thinking you were your twin was a fun game?
“You haven’t been by the bakery yet,” I said.
Gabby shifted uncomfortably. “We were going to come …”
“Mory said we should …” Peggy added.
“But we were waiting until everyone was in town, like officially, so we could all come together. As a family. You know? But Stephan is still transitioning his work.”
“No one is going to hurt you in Vancouver,” I said gently. My odd conversation with Angelica Talbot was suddenly showing itself in a new light.
Peggy nodded. “That’s why we’re here … Because we were bred for our magic …”
“… and whored out.” Gabby twined her fingers through her twin’s, but she kept her steady gaze on me.
“Mother … fecker,” Kandy snarled, modifying her language at the last moment.
Gabby narrowed her sky-blue gaze at the werewolf. “We aren’t seven.”
“Yes.” Peggy nodded helpfully. “We just look young for our age.”
“A bonus for our breeders.”
“You mean it would have been a bonus, Gabby. If the Convocation hadn’t rescued us.”
“Eventually.”
“It was a large prostitution ring, difficult to track and crack.”
“We agree to disagree.”
“Yes, we do. Anyway, we were pretty damaged by then, as you can imagine.”
“So no one wanted us.”
“Except the Talbots.”
“Yeah, except Stephan and Angelica.”
The twins looked at each other for a moment, then turned their expectant gazes on us.
I stared at them, processing this new inundation of information — and catching Kandy doing the same thing in my peripheral vision.
***
In other news, before I quit work for the day I’ll schedule the next audiobook giveaway – Tangled Echoes (Reconstructionist 2) – so check back at 2 pm PST tomorrow to grab a copy!
I don’t usually open up discussion threads on my blog, but I just dropped In But a Moment (Moments of the Adept Universe 0.1) (aka a Kandy prequel novelette) into the inboxes of my newsletter subscribers and realized that you all might like have one place where you could discuss it as a group.
The novelette reveals lots of little bits of the ‘evolution’ of Kandy from an 18-year-old to the 31-year-old who appears in Misfits 1 (as well as all the Dowser books and Oracle 1, of course). I’m planning on at least one more story from Kandy’s POV in 2021 and she also narrates the upcoming Misfits 2. The shorts are most definitely prequels for the plot that unfolds in the second novel of the Misfits of the Adept Universe.
I launched into January 2021 with a multi-tiered plan. Not resolutions, but a tweaking of a few aspects of my writing life. Okay, I’m always attempting to reduce portions sizes and get back to daily yoga/pilates. But those are continual personal goals that I’m pretty good at maintaining unless something extreme happens, such as my hip bursitis flaring.
Yes, I’m a 47-year-old with a bad hip. It’s freaking hilarious.
Anyway, I digress.
One of the ‘tweaks’ involves switching up how I do giveaways in 2021. Not all giveaways, but most. I’ve decided to focus more on the digital realm so I can reach (and hopefully treat) more of my readers at once. And, in switching up my giveaways, I’m also putting more focus on writing and less on the effort it takes for me to manage a physical giveaway.
The idea is to set a couple of Saturdays aside a month to write (and rewrite) a random short story set in the Adept Universe for my newsletter, one per month. Most of the shorts will be prequels to the currently published books. At the end of the year, I’ll bundle all the shorts, get them properly edited and proofed, then publish them on all retailers.
Today was my first Saturday devoted to this new endeavour. I intended to draft the entire story in one day, using a second Saturday to redraft, and a third to proof/polish. But apparently Kandy’s tale needs more than what I can give in a single day because I wrote 6165 words (read: a really good writing day for me) and it’s still nowhere near finished.
So … only two days into January, into my multi-tiered plan, and I’m behind schedule.
Typical freaking werewolf. Always taking over every scene she’s in. I really should have known better.
😂
So … I’ll write the rest of the short tomorrow. Because on Monday I’m supposed to be working on Archivist 1, not playing around with a snarky werewolf who, when bored, apparently enjoys getting herself into entanglements that completely screw with her worldview. And yeah, the first short is going to come with a content warning. Did you expect anything less from Kandy?
In case you missed it, I released the first chapter of Awakening Infinity (Archivist 0) yesterday. Also, Kim, over on the reader run fan group, is hosting a discussion of the new book, chapter by chapter, if that interests you.ETA: as of Feb 26 these chapters have been removed, pending the release of the book on all retailers!
