Oh damn! Nine years later and it STILL left an impression. I'm honored.

Blood and Tines (formerly Stag) will make its debut this Fall. The manuscript is with my editor as we speak! Once they're through I'll be doing an ARC launch for anyone interested in an advanced copy and then a formal launch with merch and special editions (i.e. hard cover, sprayed edges, shirts, acrylic standees of the main cast, that kind of thing).

I'll be making a formal announcement once I've gotten the go-ahead, so keep your eyes on me here, Twitter, or Tiktok.

Blood and Tines: Spring/Summer 2024

Mal knew fire. She'd worked it all her life. Breathing pieces of her soul into the glowing embers as she shaped her tools and worked her magic. It had been a friend. A reliable companion she knew more intimately than herself. The taste of it. The smell. The feeling of its heat in all its incarnations. And here it was in its feral beauty, unchained and wild, hunting for a fresh place to spread hungry roots.

Bracken is one of my favorite characters. He's such a chaos fae and wickedly lethal too. I know there are a few of you who remember this cantankerous old man, but I've got some surprises in store 😉

Blood and Tines: Spring/Summer 2024

Some of you have waited 8 long years for this story to come to fruition. Now, I can safely say that Blood and Tines will have a Spring 2024 release.

Until then, enjoy a little side project I'm working on 😉 Every epic story needs an equally epic trailer, don't you think?

As imperious as any freshly crowned royal, Ria looked down at the woman, letting the oddity of her eyes and the weight of her driftwood antler crown speak her mantle of power into existence. Steam leaked between the seams of her teeth, too thick to be exhaled air.

Blood and Tines chapters 1 - 4 are available for free on my website here

"Please," Orin wheezed between tremors, bloody spittle dribbling from his lips. He could feel his body swelling and splitting as a new form pushed its way free. "It w-was a...m-mistake."

"A mistake you will rectify. One you will dwell on for a lifetime to come."

Blood and Tines chp. 1 - 4 out now!

Blood and Tines Snippet...

The heat pouring from Ashling as she stepped into Mal's personal space was the kiss of sunlight after months of deep winter. She could feel it through the fabric of her tunic and squeezed her eyes shut, struggling to close the doors of her heart. Push and pull. Give and take. She wanted to push Ashling away as much as she wanted to pull her close. The strong hands of another made that decision for her. Gentle fingers on her chin brought their eyes together, capping any further protest. Mal's mind said no but her heart contradicted, stranding her body in the middle.

"I told you when we started this that wolves mate for life," Ashling whispered, eyes so yellow they might have been liquid gold. "You're in my blood, Mal. You've infected me in the best way, and I revel in it."

Ria coming out swinging like...

"You've been spared the horrors of our people's genocide while creating a massacre of your own, and your willingness to eat the living is unbecoming of someone who calls herself a Green Witch.”

BaT WIP snippet

Ria knew the shape of this heartbreak. It was the kind that squeezed a heart until it shattered, driving the bloody shards of a stolen future and all the love that might have been deep into the flesh of the soul. This was the kind of heartbreak with the power to kill, and it called to her like the winter cold called to old wounds and aged joints.

Hey my old readers, you remember this scene? <__<

For once, the vacuum of his mind didn't suck the knowledge away, letting it bloom in the bright sun of recognition. Orin remembered a hand cradling the instrument's slender neck. Fingers pressing against tawny strings. Smooth wood grains held between thumb and forefinger. He remembered the horsehair bow polished with rosin, and music. Such beautiful music. 

I remember this. 

He rested his chin against the built-in catch, the cool pocket caressing his stubbly skin like a lover’s palm. His right arm lifted, bow gently clutched between fingers that remembered the shape they needed to take. 

I remember music.

The first notes were low and resonating like a cold wind heralding a storm. Orin held it for an impossibly long moment, feeling the vibrations as the rosin gripped the strings, making them shiver against his calloused fingers. The note pushed a breath through his body, blowing the dust from his antique mind and waking once-dead embers that cast shadows of a past long since forgotten.

Blood and Tines - Spring/Summer 2023

Ria slipped down to her moss bed and attempted to squeeze a few hours of rest out of the remaining darkness but couldn't find it in herself to settle. Not after witnessing first hand the miracle and horror behind the inner workings of Tree Spring. Healing and torment grasped hand-in-hand, fingers laced in a grim lover's clutch.

Mal stood in a pocket of roiling heathaze at the mouth of their hearth, the sleeves of her white tunic bunched up around her elbows and a calfskin apron tied snuggly over a pair of sensible black trousers. At nineteen, she stood nearly as tall as their father, broad through the chest and thick in the arms. The back of her neck, visible due to how closely cropped she kept her orange-red hair, shone with beads of sweat streaked through with smears of charcoal.

Blood and Tines - Spring/Summer 2023

“Lo, I walk the path of my Mothers, their wisdom the sun to my darkness. Lo, I drink the teaching of my Sisters, honey wine upon my lips. Lo, I sing the Green Song and the Earth sings with me, opening her garden touched only by my hands."

Blood and Tines - Spring/Summer 2023

Can you feel it? 

The cold winds of winter whispering fatal promises against the back of your neck while the warmth of spring curls catlike around your ankles. Can you taste the magic on your tongue? Bitter and sweet. Iron and pine. Love and loss. Can you hear her calling? The voice from beyond. The woman in the tree. The beginning and the end. 

Do you see Tree Spring? You will. Oh....you will. 

We’re going back, family. Back to the beginning. Back to our roots. Back to where this all began almost a decade ago. 

Blood and Tines - Spring/Summer 2023

“As imperious as any freshly crowned royal, Ria looked down at the woman, letting the oddity of her eyes and the weight of her driftwood antler crown speak her mantel of power into existence. Steam leaked between the seams of her teeth, too thick to be exhaled air. “

Orin and Ria have taken on several incarnations as Blood and Tines has unfolded over the last several years, but I think I’m finally at a place where they’ve solidified into their final forms. I’m thrilled to share them with those of you who remember this story.