I started 2024 hungry for stories, and I read (and reread) more books this year than I have in a decade or more. A few that have stayed with me, for one reason or another: May 2025 be filled with stories as well, and may we lean into the comfort and the challenge that they […]
Reading my way through 2024 Read More »
So there I was, scrolling through social media, when an ad popped up on my feed. “Write blog posts 10X faster with robots!” it said. O-kay, I thought. Sure. What could possibly go wrong? A bit of googling later, I’d fallen down the rabbit hole of AI content generation—sites that promise to take the pesky
Writing is a strange business sometimes. We think we’re writing for readers, and then it turns out we’re writing for ourselves. We think we’re writing for our present selves, and then it turns out we’re writing for the children-we-were or the adults-we-will be.Or both. Today I came upon ”Seal Story,” a selkie short I wrote
“Once long ago, there was a seal who loved the sea…” Read More »
Life isn’t a story. This is, for the most part, a good thing. Stories need conflict. Stories need drama. Stories need, more often than not, for the worst possible thing to happen at the worst possible time. No one wants to live in a well-written story. The pandemic isn’t a story. But if it were,
Life isn’t a story. That’s probably a good thing. Read More »
“We love the things we love for what they are.” That’s from Robert Frost’s “Hyla Brook.” Variations on the line had been bouncing around in my head for a while before my husband and fellow writer, Larry Hammer, reminded me where it came from. I’d been thinking about Frost (without knowing it was Frost I was
Love and Perfection Read More »
Bones of Faerie, the first book of my Bones of Faerie trilogy, is about uncontrolled growth: plants that bloom in every season, crops that fight their harvesters, trees that seek human blood and bone to root in. Faerie Winter, the second book of the trilogy, tells the opposite story. It’s about endless winter, failure to
“Do you believe that spring will come?” Read More »
Because as powerful as the “I Have a Dream” speech is, many of Martin Luther King, Jr’s other words were powerful, too. “A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, ‘This way of settling differences is not just.’ This business of burning human beings with napalm, of
Some less frequently quoted words from Reverend King Read More »
Hostile Trading I’m not a fool. We want to do business with them. Obliteration like you’ve never seen, I’m not looking to do that. I may, I may, If you’d like me to, I’ll do that. No, no, I have the right to do that. But I haven’t. Poem found in “Trump Shrugs Off Khashoggi
Hostile Trading (a found poem) Read More »
Faerie Winter has a new look—and new paperback and ebook editions! If you missed this sequel to Bones of Faerie the first time around, now is your chance to revisit Liza’s post-apocalyptic world and its treacherous, haunting magic. Order the new Faerie Winter paperback online or from your favorite brick-and-mortar bookstore (ISBN: 978-1798950708). Order the ebook edition from Amazon, Apple, Barnes
Faerie Winter’s new edition Read More »
Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer is now in paperback! Order a copy your favorite young adventurer online or from your favorite bricks-and mortar bookstore (ISBN 978-1719955553). Originally published as Secret of the Three Treasures, this classic book about a would-be adventurer who isn’t about to let anything stop her has a new look and has been
New in paperback: Tiernay West, Professional Adventurer Read More »