Witch’s Daughter

So today is release day for Witch’s Daughter and I’m feeling lazy. You can of course discuss whatever you want in comments. There’s lots of good stuff in the news today, and some weird stuff. (Like when isn’t there.)

Witch’s Daughter was started, I want to say ten years ago, just as the wheels were coming off my ability to work, with a series of illnesses and frankly just coping with the altitude, though I didn’t know it was that. For explanation: Other than sending my auto-immune through the roof (Since we’ve been at low altitude I haven’t needed my inhaler, except when I’m ill with something that brings the asthma up) it seemed to be doing something to my cognition, and I have no idea what. Doesn’t seem to be oxygen, or at least my oxygen measured by the finger thingy never got that low. What I can tell you is that while driving to Las Vegas for the con, if we hit above 6000 feet something happened. First I became very confused, as though drunk, and then at 9000 feet I fell asleep. I could not stay awake. No clue what causes that. Sure it’s a form of altitude sickness, but not sure what.

The problem is our last house in Colorado was on a ridge and over 6000 feet, and apparently I was going… um… Odd. I held it together enough for posts and short stories, but I couldn’t carry the idea through for even short novels.

I started them. I mean, the ideas arrived on schedule and were compelling, but I’d get either to the middle or in the case of Witch’s Daughter about 2/3 in and I’d glitch and couldn’t figure out how to close it.

In the case of WD, as you know, if you follow my substack, I had so many internal contradictions and failure to follow through that I couldn’t close if I tried. It took me racing to the finish, then doing a FULL correction and fixes rewrite. Now it’s actually all working and makes sense. (And yes, I’m going to try that with Winter Prince, done on my substack, too.)

Anyway, I have… well, 10 novels off the top of my head that are half or more done, and I’ve declared this year “The year of finishing everything.” (I actually think more novels are waiting in my files, and that this will turn into the “years of finishing everything.”)

Don’t panic thought, Orphans of the Stars (Second of the Chronicles of Lost Elly) advances. The slow down on that was being sick, not the other novels. I’m treating the other novels as the morning/early stuff, then Orphans.

Anyway, you can treat this as an open thread if you wish, but I’m going upstairs to work on Rhodes to Hell. Right now reading back into it, and cussing myself for all the dead ends I dropped in. Need to clean that up. Also, why didn’t you guys tell me the WORLD is profoundly evil? (World as in the world-build.) Apparently I didn’t notice. I’m not saying I won’t write more. It’s a noir, so the evil is there for the pure of heart to fight against, but yeeech.

For now, I leave you with a book that deserves some press on its release day. (And no, you don’t need to read Witchfinder to get this. Regency with magic, tight close in third person, same as Witchfinder, but in this case only two POVs, a self-contained adventure and much shorter. I hesitate to label it a YA because the series isn’t, but it kind of is.)

Paper editions release tomorrow and the day after.

Witch’s daughter – by sarah A. hoyt

Some letters come from the living. Some come from the dead. This one comes with a formula that turns a rowboat into a miracle.

Seventeen-year-old Lord Michael Ainsling — youngest brother of the Duke of Darkwater, builder of mechanical marvels, survivor of fairyland — receives a letter from a man sixteen years dead. The inventor Tristram Blakley has not perished; he has been imprisoned by his own genius and begs the one mind in all of Avalon brilliant enough to understand his work to set him free. All Michael has to do is find seven missing brothers first and walk a magical path..

Fifteen-year-old Albinia Blakley has spent her whole life under her mother’s iron thumb — and her mother is a witch. The day Al finally escapes down a rope of knotted sheets, she lands in a world she doesn’t recognize, with no money, no magic kit, and no idea that the stranger who catches her is about to become her greatest ally.

Together, a girl with more secrets than she knows and a boy who builds machines that try to murder him must outwit a sorceress, navigate the treacherous courts of Fairyland, and unravel an enchantment years in the making — before a family is lost for good.

Witch’s Daughter is a gaslamp fantasy brimming with wit, warmth, and wonder, for readers who love their magic wrapped in velvet and their adventures served with morning tea.