--By Kirsten Weiss
I know it's trite. I know everyone says it. But I can't believe the year is halfway over.
So far, I've mostly managed to stay on track with my writing schedule. In case you missed it, I published The Bantam Menace in the Wits' End Series, The Sword in the Scone and The Mysteries of Tarot in the Tea and Tarot series, and The Banshee Detective, a Riga Hayworth short.
Huh. Putting all that in writing makes me feel very productive. And tired.
Then I went crazy writing four Paranormal Museum mysteries in a row. Two of them were short reads, but it was still a lot of time in the paranormal museum. I don't know if a long stretch of work on one series was a good or a bad idea. But I had an idea for major changes to the museum and for Maddie, had taken a class in curation, and wanted to get it all out before I forgot. So coming up are: Deadly Divination (a short read), Dead End Donation (a novel), Sins of the Sarcophagus (a novel), and The Cannoli Caper (a short read).
Next, I've got another Wits' End short coming up, Revenge of the Ziti. Susan and Arsen are going on a Sicilian honeymoon, and naturally, there's a murder... in a UFO-themed B&B. Heh heh. It turns out there actually is a UFO town in Sicily, though I invented the B&B.
In June I working on a new book in my Doyle Witch spin-off series. For those of you who've read the Doyle Witch/Riga Hayworth crossover novel, Unbound, you know that the witches started their own mystery school. The upcoming novels are paranormal mysteries from some new mystery school students, with cameos by the Doyle witches (and maybe Rocky Bridges). I'm using some experimental elements, so readers can see some of the mystery school lessons and explore more visual and written clues, including the school's own oracle deck (like a Tarot deck, but without suits). I'm not sure if I'm going to sell decks or just include the images in the books. But I've printed out the first 25 cards to play with just because they're so pretty. Also, I can tell myself it's work, haha. Which reminds me, I need to add bees to one of the cards...
Anyway, the first book in the series is tentatively titled Seeker. I may try to come up with something more murdery, because these days it's all about the keywords. But I also might not. Look for them in 2024.
Wow. It feels weird to type "2024." Time is flying...