She Lights Up the Dark Blog Tour

I am bouncing all over the internet for the next week, as She Lights Up the Dark (November Snow Book 2) makes its debut on April 19.  These lovely ladies, all brilliant writers themselves, are being kind enough to host me on their blogs.  Please visit all the stops on my tour, and feel free to leave comments and questions. Some will be interviews, others essays.  Some are written from the point of view of some of your favorite characters.  Check back here each day for the day's direct link, and don't miss any of the fun!

Saturday, April 16

Fionna Guillaume

Sunday, April 17

Aditi Chopra

Monday, April 18

Odelia Floris

Tuesday, April 19

Jolie Mason

Wednesday, April 20

Pandora Spocks

Thursday, April 21

Patient Lee

Friday, April 22

Corrissa James

Saturday, April 23

Eeva Lancaster

Review of Rannigan's Redemption Part 3 by Pandora Spocks

At the end of Rannigan's Redemption Part 2, Pandora Spocks left us with a blooming romance between Maggie and Bobby and a cancer diagnosis for Michael.  She left us all desperate to know how those two issues will be resolved in Rannigan's Redemption Part 3: Ransoming Redemption.

In the new release, Maggie and Bobby deal with issues that face most new romances: work-life balance, meeting family, building trust.  Their progression is complicated by Michael's battle for his life.  Michael, in turn, has to adjust to his illness and to decide just what he wants to do with however much time he has left.  And Michael, as we know, doesn't do things half-way, especially when it comes to his best friend Maggie.  The pace is just right, and the resolution is both emotional and earned.

Spocks manages to combine explicit sex and real emotion in a very natural way and also executes the occasional rebellion against romance lit convention.  The whole series is very well done, and I'm a bit sad to see it go.  Get your copy while the getting's good!  

Settings: Oakland, California

I love Oakland. I used to teach high school in the Oakland district, and I go to church in Oakland every Sunday. So, when it came time to write my new novel, She Lights Up the Dark, I wanted to set part of it in my favorite Bay Area metropolis.

Oakland gets a bad rap, but it is such a vital, energetic, interesting place. The scenes I set there all take place in the Uptown and Lake Merritt areas, in and around one of the city's historic churches. The particular church on which I based the unnamed location in my book had its heyday in the decade after the 1906 earthquake. In my novel, the church provides both literal and symbolic sanctuary for characters who find themselves in a great deal of trouble with nowhere else to go. Time is a very fluid thing for the vampires and fairies that populate my books, especially for the psychic main character, November Snow. I thus fancied the notion of using an historic location, a place that looks ancient and permanent but is actually ever-changing.

See if you can figure out which Oakland landmark November's church is based upon. You can leave your guess in the comments. And if you have the money and inclination to give something to a welcoming, progressive church working to serve its community, I know for a fact that they wouldn't turn down a check. ;-)