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Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate

A novel of the Spell-Wracked Lands Bucking thousands of years of tradition, Flame ran away from her elven heritage, her glorious destiny, and her arranged marriage. Now she’s an expert treasure-finder in the human world, one job away from buying out her indenture and setting up a tower somewhere full of pretty things and pretty men. Just one more job–but her employer doesn’t know exactly what they’re questing for, and also the world has changed since his map was drawn. Flame can handle all that with her usual sarcasm and skill, but when her intended husband turns up at the fateful meeting of the moons, ready to fulfill his destiny and help her save the world, she really just wants to run again. All Flame really wants to do is nothing, but failure in the quest means a price on her head. Failure in the world-saving would be even worse. Why can’t everyone, fate included, just leave her alone?

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Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate — Sneak Peek

You may think you’ve read this, but actually you haven’t. Please enjoy the expanded adventures of Flame Isfree and the Feather of Fate. The full novel will be available for purchase December 15th. Scampering through the treetops, never worrying what was happening on the ground—squirrels knew how to live. Flame ran among them, heart thudding and brisk air in her lungs, the sun shining through yellow- and red-edged leaves. All that and a deep blue sky, the wind in her face, the ground far below—it had been far too long since she’d run through a mountainside forest. A squirrel dropped onto a branch beside her and flicked its tail. Flame accepted the implied challenge, running past it. The beast bolted past her and leaped and Flame followed as best she could, ran along a branch and leaped again when the squirrel did, but even she couldn’t leap where it did, so it gained on her with every tree. Off in the forest, something screamed. Flame hesitated. The sound came again. Well, she was losing anyway. Flame tossed a salute to the squirrel and slowed, listening. The sound came again. Something in distress, that much she could guess. Flame took her bearings from the sound and trotted on. A frantic rustling at the foot of an oak brought her down to a young fox, wrapped nose to back legs in a cord tied to a sapling. The animal saw her and opened its lips to growl at her. It couldn’t do…

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The Pitfalls of Research

It’s probably safe to say that every writer does research. It’s fun! It’s important! It takes a lot of time that could be wasted staring at your (lack of a) plot! This year, for the first time in a while, I’m doing NaNoWriMo. Since I’ve got big gaping holes in my plot that I don’t want to think about, I’ve been doing a lot of research. Alaska. Kayaks. The behavior of moose and orcas. What do rich people do all day? What’s the temperature of Resurrection Bay in June? My NaNovel will be contemporary and not speculative, so there’s a LOT to research, of course. The last time I researched for a contemporary story, in the author notes I left the disclaimer, “KD wishes fervently that she had found more time to research rock-climbing, the Civil War, the Underground Railroad, video production, colleges in Western Pennsylvania, visa requirements, Danbury, Connecticut, Civil War re-enactors, and navy slang, but hopes there are not too many factual errors.” People have interests! Things are done differently in different places! You have to get it as right as you can, or people who are enjoying the story get tossed out of their suspension-of-belief and that sucks. I, personally, hate when it happens to me. I don’t want to do it to anyone else! Of course, then you can run into things like the Tiffany problem. Or how, after reading one story I wrote, people found it impossible to believe that a young man went all…

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