The synopsis for Portal Justicar2 is done. Yay! The final word count is at 2100 which makes it the longest synopsis I have ever written. With the exception of the synopsis for Daughter of the Dark. But that synopsis was pretty bad, and rambling.

This synopsis is much better.

So tomorrow I transfer the worldbuilding notes I have in Evernote to Scrivener and then I begin to write the first draft. Yay! It feels like it has been ages since I wrote something new.

I don’t have a release date for this book, but I do know that this book  will not be out before Summer 2016. ( I know. I should be faster, but I am a slow reviser.) But I am planning to release some short stories between the releases of the novellas.  Some will feature Jenny, some will feature other Portal Justicars, some will feature other characters.

I am doing world building for A Shadow of Frost and Ice now. Today  I began to think about where I get the ideas.  It is to 99 % my subconscious.  The notes I made today were a mix of things I learned at university and things I have read in the news.  And then the were the portion were I made things up. Like how magic affects concrete and asphalt, not to mention why it doesn’t affect wood and stone.

This might sound odd, but unless I write historical fantasy, I do very little research when I write the notes. Most of my notes are straight from my brain. I double-check if I am uncertain, of course, but I rarely have a pile of non fiction books next to my laptop.  Which is probably a good thing, since I would get nothing done then.

No, my research often happens a long time before I get the idea. At the time I am often unaware that it is research, to be frank.  In the case of this idea part of it comes from the submarine hunt during 2014. Not that I have a submarine in my book, it is an urban fantasy novel after all.

Everything I do feed the subconscious and it is likely to end up in a book. Sooner or later.

Yesterday, I sent the edited manuscript to Laura Anne ( and paid her.)  I took the rest of the day off.  Today I began working on the new shiny tentiatively titled A Shadow of Frost and Ice.  AKA The plot bunny Ruth Francis Long gave me. It features Loki. Well. The original plot bunny did. I am not certain how much Loki will be a part of the novels.  So right now, I am writing notes covering everything from why, to magic, to how elves rule Stockholm. ( Yes. My brain thinks Stockholm is fine as a setting as long as I wreck it.)

The other thing I did today was to drag Dad to a local store and buy a Macbook Air.  It feels a bit weird to use a Mac after using a PC for 12 years ( more, actually, since the computers in school was PCs.)  But so far I love it.  It will take some time to get used to the touchpad, though. LOL.

I am almost ready to publish Exile on Amazon,  which is a good thing since Amazon is a big market.   I am not going to hit publish today, though, for two reasons.

A) I need to enter my Swedish tax number, since otherwise they are going to take a chunk of the money for US taxes.

B)Amazon is  insisting that Exile should be 2.99.  Which means that I have to raise the list price through Publit and then wait until it has trickled through. ( Or I guess I can see if I can lower the price after publication on Amazon.)

So this an alert that Exile is coming to Kindle really soon, and that the prices in other places are going up.  Which I am sorry about, but I really don’t want Amazon’s price matching robots to  spot it and pricematch.  Since I have read that those kind of pricematches are really hard to undo.

Earlier today I remembered that Diana Pharaoh Francis Crosspointe books was re-issued last year, and decided to do a search for them at Kobo since I was checking up something else. They were. My plan to buy the Black Ship was derailed when I saw the categories it was in. Science Fiction and Fantasy, Fiction and Literature and Historical Fantasy.

I have no issue with the first two, but I just shook my head at historical fantasy. To me historical fantasy takes place in this world with magic and supernatural creatures. But I googled and it turns out there are two schools: One that thinks like me and one that has a much wider definition.

One that means that technically the Portal Universe books are historical fantasy. Do I think they are? Not really. Would I have any problems with classifying them as such? That is a much harder question and one I need to think about. Part of me recognizes that would be a good cheap way to get my books in front of a new audience. The problem is that to me it would feel like lying to my readers. And I don’t want to do that. On the other hand, Kobo’s historical fantasy category contains books that isn’t fantasy at all.

Oh well. It is nothing I can do anything about right now, since Publit’s current dashboard only supports one category. But that will change it March, I hope.

This is pre-edits, but I hope you enjoy it.

Moirin woke with a start, cold sweat running down her spine. She sat up and stared blindly at the dark cottage, still trapped in the vision. Her, a group of young warriors in a place that wasn’t the remote mountain valley she called home. A thread of darkness, of doom, surrended them. Moirin frowned. She wasn’t certain if the doom would be caused by her leaving her valley, or by her staying in her valley.
She shook off the last vestiges of the vision and pulled away the pelt. She briefly considered going back to bed when the cold night air hit her legs, but she dismissed the temptation. Experience had taught her that sleep eluded her after a vision. She slid out of bed, her bare feet hitting the stamped earthen floor. Shivering, she pulled on a deerskin tunic and a pair of moccasins, before walking outside.