New Beginnings in 2019

2018 was pretty solid. I made a lot of progress on a lot of projects, personal and authorly! But this isn't a post about looking backward--this is a post about a fresh new start.

Earlier this month, El Husband and I packed ourselves up and moved half-way across the country from New York to North Dakota. Back to North Dakota, I suppose, since we met at the University of North Dakota, in college. But even so, neither one of us thought we'd ever be coming back.

But we're here! A new job for El Husband and a new office for me! I'm thrilled to finally have a dedicated space for writing--and once I have it all put together, there will be pictures of more than just Maya doing her best to keep me from working on the freshly delivered couch!

For now, we're still in the waiting for our stuff to arrive period, slowly acquiring the things we need to set up our new place. Including a new PO Box, which until I can nail one down, I'm afraid we'll be a little bit newsletter-less, so I apologize for the delay there, but I promise I'm doing my best to get things back in order and keep you up to date AMALIAD style.

In the meantime--if you didn't see it on facebook and twitter, I did a podcast interview over at THE ENDLESS KNOT, talking about writing myth with some of my favorite twitter folks. It was a lot of fun chatting about Freydis and Theseus, so I hope you'll check it out!

And don't forget to mark FROM ASGARD, WITH LOVE want-to-read on Goodreads!! I'm working my way through final edits right now, and if all continues according to plan without any more big cross-country-move-style monkey-wrenches, I'll have that available for you in the first half of February! So keep your eyes peeled and get ready!!!

(Perhaps by reading POSTCARDS FROM ASGARD? Or maybe DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS, which is on sale for the rock bottom price of 99 cents for kindle right now!)

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Amazon | Barnes&Noble 

Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Forged by Fate is now FREE!

Kindle | Nook | Kobo | iBooks | Scribd | Playster

In celebration of its 5th anniversary (!!!!!), Fate of the Gods is going back to wide release, and FORGED BY FATE is now FREE across pretty much every platform!

Grab your copy or share your #ThorLove with a friend! The more the merrier! Women's History Month is perfect excuse to explore a new interpretation of Biblical Eve, too. Fans of Timehop Romance, Fantasy, Mythology and even Historical reads will find something to love in the Fate of the Gods trilogy, and it doesn't get better than the non-existent risk of reading book one FREE!

And for those of you who loved DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS, but haven't checked out any Amalia Dillin titles yet--this might be the place for you to start, too!

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Amazon | Barnes&Noble 

Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Branching Out

It's funny how things turn out.

Newsletter subscribers already know I've been writing some contemporary romance--it started as a just for fun, and just for me project that I poked at during my downtime while I was working on By Helen's Hand. An idea that just wouldn't let me go, with characters who were electric and alive, and I couldn't entirely ignore.

Well, nearly three years later, I finished that manuscript, finally and at last. It became my burn-out recovery just for fun, just for me project--the project that I kept returning to, that kept calling to me, because it was just so much FUN. And after Daughter of a Thousand Years, I needed something fun. Something just for me, without any pressure or expectation.

In a lot of ways, writing Daughter of a Thousand Years felt like ripping myself open, but writing Kate & Sully, my first contemporary romance, and poking at its sequel, has been like stitching myself back up again. Healing the wounds that had been left open to fester.

I'm SO PROUD of Daughter of a Thousand Years. I worked HARD on that book, and I'm glad that I wrote it--definitely I think it is one of the most important books I've written, and it was valuable to me personally if nothing else--but I am LOVING writing these contemporary romances.

I forgot how much fun writing could be, and writing romance gave that joy back to me.

But never in a million years would I have thought I'd be here, deriving so much pleasure from writing in a genre that was so divorced from the things I loved--mythology, history, fantasy. If you had asked me in 2013 if I would ever consider writing a contemporary romance (without any kind of fantastic element) I would have laughed at the idea.

But when I look at my other work--Postcards from Asgard, Fate of the Gods, and Daughter of a Thousand Years to name just the ones that are published--maybe it isn't so strange. It's not THAT big of a jump from writing contemporary stories with mythic and fantastic elements to writing contemporary stories without them, after all. And I can't deny that Postcards from Asgard is absolutely a romance. I can't deny that Fate of the Gods has an epic love triangle at its heart as well as a significant contemporary story. And Emma's half of Daughter of a Thousand Years is unquestionably contemporary, too.  So maybe it was only a matter of time before I found my way here.

This doesn't change anything in regard to Orc 3. It doesn't change anything about my plans for this year, really, except that a little bit more is happening in the background while I try to find the path forward for this new side of my authorself. It's just going to be another facet--because I still love myth and fantasy. I still love Bolthorn and Arianna and the world I built for them. I still love all the things I loved before, and I imagine I will absolutely want to come back to them, that I will never actually leave them at all, judging by the number of projects that are not contemporary romance in my writing spreadsheet right now.

But I have found something new that I love. Something new that is feeding me something I desperately need right now. And I hope that maybe, when and if, it might be something you'll love too.

The author journey is always evolving, for me, it seems. And I can't tell you how grateful I am for all of you who have been journeying, all this time, alongside me! I hope you'll follow me on this new adventure, too.

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Amazon | Barnes&Noble 

Amazon | Barnes&Noble

Notes From the Writer Cave I

So far this month I have gone from extreme optimism to extreme pessimism. I trust you won't be shocked to learn that this is entirely normal for me, in relation to writing and publishing. It is the BEST and WORST parts of my life.

But I'm writing! And your Orc Saga short has become a novella of 17,000 words and counting, with a title! And also a cover, which I'm going to hold back on sharing with you until it is Newsletter time. (Have you signed up for the Amaliad yet? I didn't even send one in December because nobody needs another email during the height of holiday season, let's be real. That's how considerate I am of your inboxes! Also you get to see things first like snippets of Works in Progress and cover art! And you'll get the Orc Saga novella FREE when I release it ONLY through my newsletter.) But the titlework is a go at last and if you follow me on facebook you probably already got a glimpse:

I've also been doing some reorganizing of my life/books/workspace, in the spirit of getting a fresh start with the new year.

Also my desk was a fire hazard. Literally, because I have a candle on it and sometimes I light it and it was getting to be a really questionable life choice with all the papers crowding around it. It is probably STILL a little bit of a fire hazard, if I'm being honest, but far less of one at least, now, and I have a place to keep the books I need at hand for easy reference and some of my earliest arcs, to remind myself how far I've come, and some fun action figures and figurines because who doesn't need a place for that? And a much less likely to be knocked off and smash on the ground location for my back-up harddrive which somehow is approaching 50% capacity even though it's a full terabyte and I really do not understand how this is happening.

That last part, the I really do not understand how this is happening--that could probably be applied to a lot in my authorlife. Alongside I really do not understand how this isn't happening, probably, in equal measure. But sometimes something not happening is the clearest sign that it's the wrong thing--like this scene I've been plodding through for three days in TQahBH. (I'm not sure I love that, I think I will probably just keep calling it the Orc Saga Novella instead because nothing that starts with TQ is something that is going to flow out of my fingers.) A lot of times, when I'm writing, the biggest clue that the scene I'm writing is bad--as in, begins in the wrong place or addressing the wrong plot point--is my plummeting daily wordcount. When I go from thousands of words to hundreds, or tens, or find myself writing a blogpost like this instead of tackling it again the next day, that means I messed something up somewhere, and my brain is trying to figure it out, and maybe even trying to keep me from throwing good words after bad and getting in deeper when the mistake somewhere behind me is going to make it all moot anyway.

Sometimes, it takes me a couple days of stifled frustration to get the point, like this time. Other times, I figure it out on the same day, a few hundred words in, and am able to cut and course-correct pretty quickly. But it's never reliably one way or the other, and no story-writing experience is ever the same as the last, either, and 2018 is my year to forgive myself for not getting it right always on the first try, rather than letting it turn into a thousand pound monkey of recrimination on my back.

So to soothe you, and me, here is a picture of my TBR pile, all one one bookshelf, unmixed with already read books, as I have dreamed it should be--a glorious triumph of this new year's organizational expeditions.

I hope you are having a satisfying and productive first weeks of 2018 as well! Or at least that you are enjoying it in good health and/or happiness. I promise to keep keeping you posted on this Orc Saga not-so-short. And if it makes you feel any better--I originally thought I'd have finished it more than 1084 words ago. But uh, my estimate was not even close.

Oh! I almost forgot-- DAUGHTER OF A THOUSAND YEARS is on sale for just $1.99 this month on Amazon, for kindle. And I'm pretty sure it's also on sale over at Amazon UK, too. I'm still super proud of that book, and I hope if you haven't, you'll grab yourself a copy and see what it's all about. Especially if you love Fate of the Gods! DAUGHTER is just as full of Thor Love, in both the past and the present.

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Amazon | Barnes&Noble 

Amazon | Barnes&Noble