Touchstone Trilogy - French Edition

Some news for the Touchstone fans. The wonderful Justine of Seraminda Editions has faced down the truly daunting task of translating Cass' Aussie ramblings into French!  And Stray is only a handful of days away from release!

You can hear/ask more about the translation process and release at Justine's Insta, or even pre-order the Kindle edition at Amazon FR.

This is my first translated volume to make it to the shelves, and I'm tickled at the existence of a book I wrote, that I can't read.  

[French is actually one of the languages where I can get the gist of quite a few of the sentences, but not necessarily end up understanding what's going on.]

Anyway, thank you Justine for all the amazing work that has gone into this translation!

Status update

 On the good and bad news front.  I have written quite a lot this year!  I have continued to make forward progress on Tangleways (finally getting past a small hurdle that was stopping me).  But I don't think I'll have any new books out this year.  Next year should be a bumper year though - I'm absolutely determined to get Tangleways out as my next release.

Writing progress

Just checking in.  Making steady, if slow, progress on Tangleways.  I'm still aiming to finish it this year, but haven't been nearly as quick as I like.

My speed on different types of stories, and sections in them, can vary wildly.  Second books in a series are particularly hard because it's necessary to introduce the existing world and through-plot while carrying the new one in an interesting way, and avoiding it turning into a dull info-dump.  So the establishment chapters of Tangleways have been particularly challenging for me (bringing in enough of the world without weighing everything down), with such a complex world as the Trifold.

I also needed to settle some plot details before I could start writing toward them, and fortunately have figured out some of the major ones.  I tend to look forward to and plan out 'fun scenes', and am soon to reach some of them, which will be nice.

Anyway, still here, still going!  My philosophy on writing is that as long as I keep adding new sentences, even if it's only one a day, I'll eventually end up with a book.

Four Kings Release!

Here at last!  Sorry for a slow writing year.

In a huge contrast to Firsts, Kings has only a single (somewhat involved) sex scene.  It has a lot of extended family though, and we (technically) meet all the parents.  That's a lot of parents!

Four Kings

Continuing the story of 'The Book of Firsts'.

Mika Niles always thought boyfriends way too much effort.  Now she has three of them.

While Mika has a habit of making life look easy, maintaining a balance between three boys who refuse to become rivals would be a challenge all on its own.  Adding to the mix apparently infinite family drama, and the inevitable backlash brought by living with three extremely covet young men, may be enough to threaten Mika's lifelong dream.

When it's no longer a game, and not nearly enough of a secret, can Mika find a way to stay with her Kings?

Out now in the following stores (and more to follow as it slowly makes its way through the various distribution chains).

2023 will be primarily devoted to Tangleways, with occasional breaks to work on a lit rpg side project.

Ebook:

Amazon (US, AU, UK, FR, DE etc)

Kobo (US, AU, UK)

Google Play

Smashwords

Paperback:

Amazon 

Getting closer

Maybe three chapters to go? Am aiming toward a first draft toward the end of November, and then beta readers, editors, etc. So end of year is possible (but never guaranteed!).

Also started a side project today which I'll write on and off to take mental breaks. 'Firsts' was a side project that sat on the back burner for a couple of years, until I suddenly decided to finish it. This one (working title 'Three Lives') is a system apocalypse heavily based on the Chinese webnovels I've been reading about holographic games. It'll remind people a little of 'The Starfighter Invitation', but is more traditional to the sub-genre than TSI. One of those stories I write purely because I want to read another in the style, but can't find anything that suits me. Don't expect to see it for years.

First sentence: Dying wasn't fun, but being reborn managed to be worse.

Auto-art

Checking in to say still here, still working on Four Kings!

After coming across a few videos of people using AI art generators, I couldn't resist running some of my book titles through the prompts to see what I got.  I used https://creator.nightcafe.studio/ 

Here's the results!  Comment if you can guess which book titles they are!  [Or hover over the picture for the image name!]

I'd not be likely to use any of these as a cover, but some of them are very interesting!

Status update and gardening

Just checking in to let you know I'm about halfway through "Seconds" (now probably called "Four Kings"). Will be out this year, I expect, though a very odd book it's shaping up to be. Kind of a musing on different types of caring. And, possibly, a sign that I played a little too much My Time at Portia and similar games.

In the meantime, here's a photolog of the only gardening project I've managed to complete in the last year.

Dead Tree

No Tree

Trusty Sledgehammer = No concrete

Railway Sleepers, Manure, Sand and Dirt

Pretties

Water it and wait

Bee Refuelling Station

The teen years

Young Adults

Big and tall

Not tall at all

Passing Californians (unfortunately drowned in two straight months of rain)

Mid-sized, profusely flowering variety

I now have a completely different set of plants in there (foxglove, violas, dianthus and poppies) since the only perenniel was the Californian Poppies and they (like my hardenbergias and a couple of other Australian natives) couldn't take the megajillion litres of water that fell on them over the opening months of the year.