Bound by His Oath started with tropes. Specifically, the trope referenced in the blurb -- the medieval lady forced into marriage against her will who falls in to with her new lord in spite of his controlling and overbearing nature and the loss whatever hopes she'd had for her life before her marriage.

I wondered if there was ever a time or place historically where the reverse could have happened. I knew there were times and cultures where ruling ladies were possible, could there be a story about a man forced to become consort to a ruling lady and accept a life a subordinate to his wife? I knew that pre-Norman Conquest England was one place where women could occasionally inherit land, property and rank if their father had no sons. And I knew that in Norman England, rights for unmarried noble women were basically non-existent. So immediately post-Conquest Norman England was one possible time and place where high ranking women who expected to have some rights and high ranking men who expected to have all the rights might end up pushed into marriage. If the woman was smart enough, and the man was both honorable and in a bad enough position...

Well, my research skills weren't up to my standards. I simply didn't have the spoons or knowledge to do the in depth knowledge to pull of a historical novel. (I've always known this, but had to try anyway.) Once I accepted that, no, historical fiction authors really are people to be in awe of and I never want to do that again, I changed directions. Bound became the kind of 'lost colony scifi' folks have been using for years to tell stories in historical-sounding settings that have nothing to do with real history. Because why not?

When the story comes together, and everything is flowing, the writing feels like flying, and a scene just hits me in the middle of the gut, and I know in that moment speaks to something deeper than just the story.

My writing process has changed a lot in the last few years, mainly because I switched to focusing on writing serials. I try to keep a buffer going, but I'm always writing on a deadline -- at least 2000 words of two different stories twice a week. (I... am not as good at staying on deadline as I would like to be.) Oh -- and 8 different stories a year.

For new stories, I try take time to do some solid world building, character creation, and at least a rough outline. But there've been a few times where I've been "Okay, I have a story idea. 1000+ words written and edited within 24 hours. Go!"

I've had to stop a few serials mid-story when I wrote myself into a corner. Mostly it works out sooner or later.

Each story is divided into 'seasons' of about 3 months. Planting Life in a Dying City is going to be about six seasons long and posts in Winter. That story will wrap up in, oh... 2026 or so. That's the longest story I have planned so far. Other stories, like Bound by His Oath, are only a single season. Kind of like a tv minseries instead of a full show.

After a serial is finished, I'll pull it all together and start revising it for publication as an ebook.

That means I'll mostly be publishing short stories and novellas the next few years, but sooner or later I'll finish longer serials that get into novel-length territory.

No. The last time we talked, my Mom still had a few homemade 'books' that I wrote with crayon. She says that I would write stories for fun the way other kids drew pictures. The first story I remember writing was for English class. We were supposed to write a short story in the style of Rudyard Kipling's Just So stories, I wrote a silly thing about How the Hammerhead Got His Hammer.

As for my first attempt to write a novel, well... lol. It was a sci-fi retelling of one of the rebellions against Napoleon crossed with the Man in the Iron Mask, by a teenager who did not know nearly enough French history. Or any history. It's probably just as well that I lost it, but I had fun writing it.

I've got two desks, one in the living room and one in my bedroom.

I try to do most of my work in the bedroom. It's a split top double desk, I'm on the left and my partner is on the right. Unlike every other desk I've ever had, I'm a bit of a bear about keeping this desk clean. My current hand-me-down laptop, a few plants on the upper shelf, my medicine, and my BuJo. Right now we've got a sweet potato in solitary splendor on the upper shelf -- a kitchen science experiment that took on a life of it's own. (Literally). I didn't realize sweet potatoes were vines, and this one needs re-planting soon.

My living room desk is SUPPOSED to be for gaming, internet browsing, and the kids' school stuff. It's a mess. but those hand-me-down laptops only last so long, and sooner or later I'm back here writing amid the hecticness of our kid-consumed living room.

I don't think i have any favorites at the moment.

Over the years I've enjoyed Xan West, Courtney Milan, TJ Klune, Patty Briggs, Ryk Spoor, Linda Lael Miller, Anne McCaffery, Andre Norton, Mercedes Lackey, Robert Heinlein, Elizabeth Kelly, Elizabeth Moon, Noel Figart, Wen Spencer, Joel Rosenberg, Patricia Bray, Shakespeare, Danielle Leafty, Duranna Durgin, John Ringo and John Scalzi.

Among others.

I suck at delayed gratification, and I'm a control freak. With a choice between spending months or years sending out query letters and when I finally get a publisher needing to give that publisher control over so much of my book, or being able to publish as soon as the book was ready and keeping control of everything myself, the choice was a no brainer. Of course, now that I'm writing serials, few trad publishers would be willing to sign me anyway, because the work is 'already published'. So it works out.

Um... lots?

Okay, as I write this the serial is running The Bargain (my third revision of my first novel, Glamourhai) and Last Lady of Luna (a vampire why choose). The first season of The Bargain will be wrapping up in a few weeks and i'll start on Meadowsweet (Firefly why choose) and when L3 is done for the year it'll be How NOT to Save the World (tongue in cheek science fantasy about the man who conquered the world to save it, the folks who are fighting against him to save it, and aliens who are coming to save it... yeah, this doesn't end well).

The next ebook will be First Came Trust, first in a trilogy of romance stories about three siblings. The sequel, Next Came Respect, will be coming out in serial this fall.