#devil's luck

Yesterday’s announcement might have come as a surprise, but it’s been the result of some long consideration. The biggest, most obvious consideration? My unemployment benefits run out in November. [insert sweatdrop emoji here] 

But it’s not just money, for once! The next Songbirds book needs more work, and Devil’s Luck has been complete and trunked since I tried to sell it to traditional agents in 2010. It was written in 2008 for NaNoWriMo, and when I wanted to redo my work on the book that would become Evensong’s Heir, I polished DL up and shopped it to various agents as something a little more mainstream than magical castrati. (It’s fair to say that that experience, rather than trying to publish Evensong's Heir, is what really soured me on traditional publishing as a whole.) 

The Devil’s Luck is actually an older story than Songbirds, it first began as a loose idea sometime in 2001. But its roots go back much farther, all the way to a childhood wasted reading ghost stories--ones about card games with the devil and wastrels getting their comeuppance through supernatural means. It also, I feel free to warn you, owes a debt to a certain Coyote’s futile attempts to murder a roadrunner. 

The Devil’s Luck has a few edits in the works, mostly some expanded scenes and tweaks, and I hope to have it available digitally by Halloween for All Hallows Read. A print version will follow in a couple months!