The Mirror of Yu-Huang goes on tour!

Last month I talked about how hard it was to be interesting. I think I said it came to me because I was working on something for May. It's May, so you all can know about it now.

This month my newest book, The Mirror of Yu-Huang (Library of Athena, Book 3), is on a virtual book tour! The tour is being sponsored by Pump Up Your Book promotions. There will be interviews, reviews, excerpts, guest blog posts, and giveaways, all over the internet.

The tour has already started, but you can catch up (the beauty of a virtual tour is that it doesn't disappear) and follow along with the tour schedule at my Virtual Book Tour page.

This is my first tour with Pump Up Your Book, but my second blog tour. Honestly doing it myself was SO MUCH WORK. This time I just have to keep up with all the interviews and guest blogs and get them done on time and try to be amusing and interesting and get people to want to read the book.

Hey, with the price of gas prices, it's much cheaper to do a book tour this way. And greener!

Come on tour with me!

Book Birthday!

Well, actually, the book 'officially' came out on Monday, I think. There were things that happened beyond the control of either the publisher or myself that held up the original release date, but yanno, stuff happens, so it's all good.

THE MIRROR OF YU-HUANG, (Library of Athena, Book 3) is AVAILABLE!!! I think that, last time I posted, I had seen the artwork, but it wasn't ready yet. I GUESS I can show you now...wait, have you all been good this year? Not TOO good, I hope ;). Okay, then.

It really looks better in person; and I know since I just got a box of books delivered by UPS yesterday! Squee!!! 

This little book has had quite a journey. I was thinking about it yesterday, and I think I started researching for this book in 2006. I remember sitting in one of the beach houses my aunt had rented for a brief vacation, poring over books of Chinese fairy tales and mythology, wondering HOW in the world I was going to make this work based on the rules I had set up in the two previous books. Much of Chinese mythology is made up of morality stories, whereas I had used 'hero' myths before. It took some digging, but I found a few suitable stories and after a few re-writes, magic happened.

This story is unlike the first two LoA books in other ways than just the mythology. This one has a different publisher, for starters. Zumaya has done a fabulous job, and I can't be more pleased with the results. And the story is set up a little differently (but it's JUST as exciting) But it's LIKE the first two in many ways also - there is mystery, and intrigue, and monsters (not just the mythological kind), and friendship. 

Here is the blurb from the cover (which is different than the blurb on the publisher's website and Amazon listing):

Confucius never said anything about this.

Megan Montgomery, spending her second Christmas in England, was expecting peace and quiet over the holidays. Unfortunately, that's not going to happen. 

First, the headmistress of St. Agatha's College for Girls, Megan's school, has strong-armed her father into hosting a huge New Year's ball at their home. Next, she winds up playing hostess to a Chinese ambassador, his family, and his staff. While the guests seem very pleasant, Megan is still uncomfortable. She's been unlucky with houseguests in the past - like the one who died.


Of course, he had also tried to steal one of the precious magical artifacts hidden in the Library of Athena, a cavernous room hidden beneath her home, so it wasn't totally her fault. Now hundreds of people will be crawling all over the manor. 


Megan tries to relax and enjoy the holidays despite her home being turned into Grand Central, but her worst fears are realized when she receives a mysterious Christmas gift, one that links her to the Library of Athena. Now she's on her guard, hoping to identify the culprit and learn just how much he or she knows about the Library, before someone gets hurt, or worse, she winds up inside another enchanted book. 


The book is available at the Zumaya Thresholds site,  Amazon (though for some reason it says ships in 1-4 weeks; I hope that changes soon) in both print and for Kindle, B&N in the NookStore, and of course can be ordered at any brick and mortar store. It will be on Fictionwise in a couple of weeks too!

Have a great holiday and happy reading!!!

Where the work all pays off

Last night my editor sent me a draft of the cover for the next Library of Athena series book, The Mirror of Yu-Huang. Nope, can't show it to you yet, but it made me excited all over again for the release of this book, which for a while I thought never would see the light of day. 

First of all, this was the most challenging book I've written to date. And I've written one and a half books since finishing it, so I can say that with confidence. I started researching it in 2007, when I bought a few Chinese mythology books. It is a complicated culture, mostly because it extends from the beginnings of time up to the present day. There are a bunch of different systems, between Taoism and Confucianism and Buddhism. Their fairy tales and mythologies are short and mostly morality stories, which complicated it even more, since I had been using 'hero' stories in the LoA books up until now. 

Not only that, but up until this point, I had written about mythologies from cultures that have faded from the modern world. But China and its stories still exist today,  and I didn't want to accidentally insult anyone. But I managed to hunt up a few older myths that I could use. Then I wrote. And I wrote. And I wrote TOO MUCH. Trying to put in everything I had researched, I got off the story track and ended up with 20,000 words too many. (That's when I started using the nine-block plotting system.)

So finally it was done and polished and sent out. 

And the publisher turned it down. Not for anything really terrible, but because they were moving away from tween books and didn't see it fitting into their new YA imprint (which hasn't gotten off the ground as of yet). Which was okay - it happens.  But here I was with a great book and no publisher. So I went on the hunt and put a distress call out to my peeps at Broad Universe.  The publisher at Zumaya offered to take a look, and the rest is history. 

And now, almost four years after I started thinking about this book, it has a cover. Which you will just have to wait to see.  :P