This is the blog for everything related to my first book, The Problem With Black Magic, and it’s forthcoming sequels in what I’m tentatively calling The Familiar Series. I wanted to call it The Modern Magic series to keep all my bets covered, but fortunately I was persuaded to abandon that dumb idea:).

As I write this, the book is going through a short waiting period before becoming available on Kindle. It’s priced at the lowest price point, $2.99, because I believe ebooks should be cheap in comparison to print copies. Plus, I’d rather price low in the hopes that more people will give the series a chance.

The book and series are urban fantasy in genre, similar in some respects to popular series like The Hollows by Kim Harrison, The Mercy Thompson Series by Patricia Briggs and The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. It also has some things in common with The Twilight Saga, although I hesitate to say that because that series can be so polarizing, but what can you do: it’s the truth. I like to think it’s a lot better, but of course I’m biased.

If you’re browsing here wondering whether or not to plunk down $2.99 to try the book, probably the most important thing for you to know is that I’m big on continuity and things making sense. That may sound Captain Obvious, but so often when I read fantasy books I find myself screaming “Wait, why can’t so-and-so just do the thing he did before to get out of this situation?” and even more often “Why doesn’t Mr. Powerful Villain just KILL HER ALREADY?!” so avoiding that sort of illogical plotting is very important to me. I try to avoid writing things that I know annoy me as a reader, so hopefully I’ll also steer clear of the things that may have annoyed you in the genre.

I consider the first book YA appropriate, but keep in mind the same may not be true of later books; I don’t want to take this series in an Anita Blake direction (and anyone who’s read that series should know EXACTLY what I mean!), but sex is part of life and it’s going to play a role in the story.

A print version of The Problem With Black Magic will likely soon be available from Createspace; I’m tempted to include extra content, but I should probably resist. There’s always more books:).

This was my first attempt at a cover, which I liked at first but the text was too difficult to read. I knew I wanted to go for something simple and hopefully memorable, but sometimes simple can just be TOO simple…

The cover to my first book, The Problem With Black Magic, now available on Kindle. Despite having some background in illustration, I was apprehensive about making my own cover because I don’t really do the kind of style you see on most urban fantasy covers. Usually it’s photo-realistic paintings of the heroines (think The Hollows by Kim Harrison or the Mercy Thompson Series by Patricia Briggs), and while I’m not completely incapable of that, it would take a LOT of work! More importantly, I wasn’t sure if picturing the heroine is something I even wanted to do at this point.

Instead I focused on the amulets, which play an important role in the story, and came up with this after manipulating some photos I took myself. The amulet came out looking a little bit different from how it’s described in the book, but I think this image suits the story pretty well.