🦄Secrets of Blackthorn Hall Returns!

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Hello and Happy 2022 to you! A short newsletter this month as I have a February 1st deadline! Ugh!

I rang in the new year in fancy unicorn pajamas, and plan to bring Fancy Unicorn energy into the coming year. Perhaps you feel inspired to join me in making the coming months both cozy and pointedly magical.

Today marks the return of Secrets of Blackthorn Hall! If you are behind, or haven’t started, now is a great time to get caught up. Emma and Julian are cleaning up crumbly old Blackthorn Hall, and need the help of some friends to be rid of a persistent ghost. Secrets of Blackthorn Hall bridges the stories of the Last Hours to the as yet unwritten/unpublished The Wicked Powers, and you can read it all here.

What's next?

Many folks have asked when the cover of Chain of Thorns will be released. Friends, that is not up to me but my publisher! I am very excited for you to see it so I’ll reveal one cool thing about it here: It’s double-sided, meaning there are in essence “two covers” — you will be able to flip over the cover and use the inside art as the cover if you want to. The inside art is also gorgeous. (This of course applies to the hardcover, since paperbacks don’t have jackets!)

Mostly right now I’m finishing up Sword Catcher — not that it will be done after it’s handed in; because it’s a totally invented new world, I’m going to be working with conlangers to invent new languages for the different countries that make up the world, and with mapmakers to create a map of Castellane, the city in which Sword Catcher takes place, and Dannemore, the continent that contains Castellane. (Castellane is a city-state, so is it’s own country and city at the same time.) I’m also working with a very cool artist to start debuting pictures of the characters, so you can start to get to know them a bit. March’s newsletter is going to be entirely devoted to Sword Catcher, so keep an eye out for that.

Meanwhile, here’s a tiny snippet:

It gave off a soft but potent light, in which Kel finally saw his companion clearly. He was dressed in black. Not Merren’s rusty student black: this man’s clothes were rich and expensive-looking, from his velvet frock coat to the blackthorn-wood cane upon which he rested his left hand. A gold ring bearing the sigil of a bird — a magpie, Kel thought — gleamed on his bare left hand. His eyes were the only thing about him that was neither black or white. They were a very dark green, and seemed to hold a strange light inside them. He said, “Do you know who I am?”

He goes round all in black, like Gentleman Death come to take your soul, and his carriage wheels are stained with blood.

“Yes,” Kel said. “You’re the Ragpicker King.”

Now on to Chain of Thorns! Currently chugging its way through the unfortunately still-in-the-middle-of-a-pandemic publishing tubes. Today’s snippet, seen below, has been illustrated with a gorgeous art piece by Alexandra Curte.

Cordelia and Matthew stood, arm in arm, watching the river flow beneath the bridge. The Seine rolled on from here, she knew, piercing the heart of Paris like a silver arrow just as the Thames did London. “We are not here just to forget,” Matthew said, “but also to remember, that there are good and beautiful things in this world, always. And mistakes do not take them from us; nothing takes them from us. They are eternal.”

She squeezed his gloved hand with her own. “Matthew. Do you listen to yourself? If you believe what you say, remember that it is true for you, too. Nothing can take the good things of the world from you. And that includes how much your friends and family love you, and always will.”

Reginald Update

Reginald has colonized an unpacked box in the kitchen and refuses to get out of it.

Happy Reading!

Cassie

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