Hello all!

I hope you are enjoying your holiday weekend (if you’re in the US) and not going too crazy with Black Friday madness. I myself may have just bought a new computer (gulp!). My current one had a nasty crash during a storm earlier this month, and so I decided to bite the bullet and get an upgrade. Especially since I’ve already worn out the keyboard on my current one, so that the “e” key tends to stick to my finger and lift right off the keyboard. Not a good thing, let me tell you.

All this has not, I am pleased to announce, stopped me in my mad quest to achieve a Double NaNo this month. I’m currently at just a shade under 97k words with three more days to go (counting today), so it’s very possible, the NaNoWriMo gods willing! You can check out my progress here.

And I do have more stuff to say about my NaNoWriMo project, but first I wanted to let you know about a little Black Friday deal I’m participating in myself. Kobo is running a bunch of Black Friday/Cyber Monday specials this weekend, including $2.99 deals on the omnibus editions of The Midnight Land and The Breathing Sea. These are special short-time deals only at Kobo, so do take a gander at them if you’re interested.

It’s fun to look back at my previous works. It’s even more fun to look at what I’m working on now. My NaNoWriMo project, The Singing Shore, is a continuation of the story begun in The Breathing Sea, with the same heroine, Dasha. I’m developing the storyline of the “Viking” raiders that Dasha’s homeland has to deal with. 

(Check out my Viking Longship board on Pinterest if you’re into that kind of thing–they’re fascinating!).

I’m also developing the story of Dasha’s, ahem, romantic flowering. If you’ve read The Breathing Sea then you know that Dasha is in her late teens–she’s about to turn 18, in fact–and is fairly ignorant about matters of the heart (or other body parts), but is starting to develop quite an interest. I knew when I started The Singing Shore that I wanted to carry on with that plot arc, and have her, you know, take the next steps in her development.

Of course, once I had that thought, I immediately came up with a love triangle that turned into a love quadrangle. Then I was all like, “Whoa, Dasha isn’t even 18, I don’t want to let this get too 18+ rated. We’re going to go for the slow burn, like in the Twilight books. Right? RIGHT?”

Well, so far I can say that things are, you know, technically not X-rated, but it turns out you can go pretty hot n’ heavy with a little handholding. I don’t *think* The Singing Shore is going to be as racy as The Dreaming Land, but at this point, all bets are off.

I have to admit that this is a bit of a surprise to me, since I was never that into the romantic subgenre of fantasy. I was always mostly a hard-core epic fantasy fan. But it seems when I actually go to write it, romance–and other things–will keep inserting itself.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d ask: any fantasy romance fans here? What authors do you recommend? And how spicy do you like your romance? Apparently my characters are determined to crank up the heat level pretty dang high, so I guess I should look into what other people are reading and writing in that department. Your recommendations would be much appreciated 🙂

No matter what your spice level is, I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

All the best,

E.P.