I spent the afternoon picking out a photo for Light's Bane's cover, and all I can say is wow. I never thought being a romance writer would be so hard, what with writing about sex and viewing photos of gorgeous male chests. Yup, it's a dirty job, but somebody's gotta do it...

Actually, writing sex scenes is a lot harder than it sounds. Viewing photos of delicious man flesh for covers? Not so difficult.

***

Today's issue of the Imaginarium included the first installment of the Daughters of the People vignette, "No Good Deed." 

I'm a little nervous about this one. For one, it's a serialized story, so there are, by necessity, a lot of cliffhangers. For another, I'm not so certain readers will enjoy a historical paranormal romance that is essentially a prequel (in many ways) to The Prophecy. Plus, there's the whole tragic ending thing...

***

On the research front, check out this cool series of videos produced by the National Museum of Ireland on Viking Ireland. 

Like many people, I've always been a bit fascinated by the Vikings. I even took a class in college a few years back that was devoted to studying and understanding this culture and its impact on history. (I also took the Celts class taught by the same professor.) It should surprise no one that I'm using that knowledge and fascination in the stories I write now. 

"No Good Deed" takes place during the Migration Period (which began roughly around the time of the fall of the Roman Empire), a few centuries prior to the official start of the Viking culture. Since the MP cultures were precursors to the Vikings, it stands to reason that the two share similar cultural traits. Of course, I'm researching the MP cultures on their own [1], but to make the story and its setting understandable to modern readers, I'm drawing more heavily on aspects of the Viking culture, with which most readers are familiar.

***

[1] See, for example, Andres Tvauri's monograph, Estonian Archaeology 4: The Migration Period, Pre-Viking Age, and Viking Age Estonia published by Tartu University Press in 2012.