For those of you who just signed on – Welcome! Princess Cirilla the Jumping Spider salutes thee from her walnut castle.
She “waves” to me and wiggles her cute, tiny pedipalps. To be frank I never would have guessed I’d want a spider for a pet. But the first time I saw a video of a jumping spider tilting its head when its owner spoke to it, I fell in love. It’s so fun to watch her catch her prey and spin her hammocks.
For now she’s on a diet of fruit flies, which isn’t too difficult (i.e. gross) to manage. But I’ll need to add mini mealworms and crickets to her diet in a few weeks. That’ll be interesting, to put it mildly.
Bookish News: All ARC applicants to date have been accepted!
Half Moon Bay has also been submitted to my editor to work her magic. Naturally this will take a month or so to complete, then a few additional weeks as I tweak whatever needs tweaking and upload it for formatting. So if you signed up for the June 18th ARC, please note that it has not been professionally polished yet! I’m one of those writers who can’t help but try to fix as I go, though, so I trust it won’t be too jarring.
Once Half Moon Bay goes live on August 2nd, my scriberly focus will shift to continuing the rough draft for Black Magnolias (Southern Gothic fantasy horror for 2026). It turned into a disturbed sapphic Anne of Green Gables somehow, but I can’t say I hate it. In fact I’m kind of obsessed.
Schattengeist: A Gothic Romance is next in line for editing and on track to be published September 20th. It’s the sequel to my debut novel Waldgeist, so if you haven’t read it yet you’ll want to snap it up first! I recommend it for readers who enjoy the works of the Brontë sisters and would love to see a similarly stern FMC in a Victorian haunted circus with a handsome ringmaster. Yasmin and Erbanhue remain the most complex, morally gray couple I’ve written, and until the day I die I will harbor a special corner of my heart for those two.
That being said, Half Moon Bay has my favorite cover art for obvious reasons. I’ve been staring at it every single day as I await my poster printout to hang in my office.
Here, join me in worshipful staring:
Happy reading!
