Coming Soon: A Tibetan in Oz and the Regency with a touch of magic

In my zeal for my research involving my historical products, it's sometimes lost that I'm working on other projects. Two of these writing products are coming to fruition (i.e., on the final stages of editing and proofreading). Now that I have the cover for one, it's starting to hit me that I'll be releasing books soon. Let the panic begin! It's all well and good when you're in the self-flagellation of writing-self-editing-beta reading-editing-rewriting and all that, but actually sending your precious baby to the harsh world of the general public is a bit unsettling.

At the end of January, I'll be releasing a book that I've previously discussed on my blog, The Emerald City. The story is a somewhat loose and modern young adult urban fantasy reinterpretation of The Wizard of Oz centered around a Tibetan-American teen from Kansas who ends up at a more than a little strange boarding school in Seattle.

It's actually a bit surprising, when I think about it, that my first release is going to be a young adult urban fantasy. Although I read plenty of young adult books, I never had any intention, when I began writing, of producing young adult work. Mostly, I intended to produce work in my favorite genres: historical fiction (as one might have surmised by my main blog content), historical fiction with magical elements, and adult fantasy.

I happen to really enjoy musical theater, though. In the course of satisfying that particular interest, I had the opportunity to see Wicked. So, I ended up inspired to write a reinterpretation based on another reinterpretation. The Emerald City will be out at the end of January. This book also benefited from being written after I'd written several other manuscripts. The old saying is that it takes a million words before you produce something worth reading. In my case, that's pretty much true.

The finishing proofreading and editorial touches are also being put on my sweet Regency paranormal romance, A Woman of Proper Accomplishments. Alas, I don't have my cover yet for that one. It was fun, but also a bit challenging, producing a Regency story where a type of reliable supernatural ability exists that still preserved the social atmosphere of the Regency period that interest readers. I think I succeeded (at least some of my beta readers claim I did), but I suppose the general reading public will have to decide here come February.

While I'm on the subject, I have an adult fantasy project, Mind Crafter, coming down the pipe, but it is still in first phase of editing.

Of course, I have a wonderful (I hope) Heian mystery coming out, hopefully, in fall of 2012.