The Girl from the Sea?
I've started dropping hints about this for a while. The Girl from the Sea is a novella, and also (gasp) the prequel to Children of the Shaman, which tells the story of how Yuste and Yuda met Aude d'Iforas when they were all thirteen years old.
It's a bit different to the others: shorter, and it has a less complicated plot. Rather like Tunguska, the sequel to Winterbloom, it's a fairly simple narrative.
I've been talking to people who read my books, because I'm always interested in feedback. One friend said that they were funny, and could I write books that were humorous altogether?
I wish!
It is a peculiar mixture, though. Unless you are writing comic fantasy, humour isn't supposed to appear, but I find it difficult to avoid it. One of the ways I cope with difficulty is by having a laugh, including when it is far from appropriate. (I am not advocating this approach!)
I am also conscious that the books can segue from funny to dark fairly rapidly. This has led me to wonder if I should describe my writing as "quirky".
The other problem I find is pigeonholing them neatly in any genre. They are definitely fantasy because they are set in an imaginary world in which magic is a Thing. It's a parallel or secondary world, a rather offbeat version of Earth, but in Winterbloom we learn that they are by any chance related, to misquote Private Eye, along with another world, Midgarth, where the people are generally bigger in stature.
(Eagle-eyed readers will spot that Midgarth refers to Middle Earth and Midgard, from Tolkien and Norse mythology respectfully. It's also named after the place where I live).
The Girl from the Sea is firmly set in the shaman world, and told mainly from the point of view of Aude. It brought with it some surprises that I wasn't aware of when I wrote Children of the Shaman; I can't mention them here because spoilers, but it does explain what happened to Aude and why she turned out the way she did.
I'm not certain yet when the book will appear - no announcements yet! - but I anticipate it's being around before the end of August. In the mean time, I am continuing to work on Tunguska, which looks as if it will be a regular length.
(If you haven't read my books and have no idea what I'm talking about, Children of the Shaman is the best place to start; the others follow in chronological order).
It's a bit different to the others: shorter, and it has a less complicated plot. Rather like Tunguska, the sequel to Winterbloom, it's a fairly simple narrative.
I've been talking to people who read my books, because I'm always interested in feedback. One friend said that they were funny, and could I write books that were humorous altogether?
I wish!
It is a peculiar mixture, though. Unless you are writing comic fantasy, humour isn't supposed to appear, but I find it difficult to avoid it. One of the ways I cope with difficulty is by having a laugh, including when it is far from appropriate. (I am not advocating this approach!)
I am also conscious that the books can segue from funny to dark fairly rapidly. This has led me to wonder if I should describe my writing as "quirky".
The other problem I find is pigeonholing them neatly in any genre. They are definitely fantasy because they are set in an imaginary world in which magic is a Thing. It's a parallel or secondary world, a rather offbeat version of Earth, but in Winterbloom we learn that they are by any chance related, to misquote Private Eye, along with another world, Midgarth, where the people are generally bigger in stature.
(Eagle-eyed readers will spot that Midgarth refers to Middle Earth and Midgard, from Tolkien and Norse mythology respectfully. It's also named after the place where I live).
The Girl from the Sea is firmly set in the shaman world, and told mainly from the point of view of Aude. It brought with it some surprises that I wasn't aware of when I wrote Children of the Shaman; I can't mention them here because spoilers, but it does explain what happened to Aude and why she turned out the way she did.
I'm not certain yet when the book will appear - no announcements yet! - but I anticipate it's being around before the end of August. In the mean time, I am continuing to work on Tunguska, which looks as if it will be a regular length.
(If you haven't read my books and have no idea what I'm talking about, Children of the Shaman is the best place to start; the others follow in chronological order).
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