Autumn From Grace

 The next book of the Man Flu Series is well under way. When I first imagined the series, as I said in a previous post, I had a number of different story shapes in mind. I wanted the transformation mechanism to accommodate variety . This particular story will unfold in a slightly different way to The Wildest Pitch . Some elements are the same. The main character is still in the entertainment industry, although Harmon is a musician rather than a sportscaster. There is still an element of popularity and publicity. However, I wanted there to be a new twist, a new aspect to the story, that shows some of the potential of the initial design. The question I asked myself this time is "what if a number of people caught GV from the same spreader?" Naturally they would all take on aspects of that spreader's appearance. They'd all start to look the same, or very similar. What would that  be like? That's where I'm going now. Reverse Harmony  is a story about a garage band ...

 Tea is a wonderful and warming drink on an autumn or winter day. Or, if you’re Ted Lasso, it’s garbage water. And that’s the point of my rhetorical question. Everyone has a preference for how they like their tea, or if they indeed like it at all. Some people want milk, some sugar, and some both or neither. Some put the milk in first. Others say the tea goes first. Iced, or hot? Oolong or Earl Grey or Darjeeling? Orange Pekoe? How many times should you stir? If you don’t like tea, transpose this question to the typical martini and all its myriad of options: shaken, stirred, olives or gin, dirty or dry, vodka or vermouth. Avid readers of any genre have preferences. If you read romance books, you might enjoy — or turn up your nose to — various tropes you find. Friends to Lovers, Enemies to Lovers, Fake Marriage, There’s Only One Bed at the Inn, and so forth. The only true constant is the Happily Ever After part. I write stories that involve some physical change. It might be a body sw...

As punishment for killing the six sons of King Eurystheus, Hercules was set to a task of twelve labors. The second was the slaying of the fearsome hydra, offspring of Typhon and Echidna. For every head he cut off, two sprouted forth in its place. The only way to defeat the beast was to cauterize each of its stumps with flame so new heads could not grow back. This is, in many respects, like writing a story. Instead of heads, we have choices. Instead of flaming arrows, the author wields a pen. Instead of beginning with five heads and watching them multiply, we begin with a hundred — a thousand, a million — and we whittle down to one. However, the process for doing so is much the same. To keep the possibilities from multiplying out of control, the author must wield flame and hot metal and sear off parts of the story so it cannot grow in that direction. Choices must be made. The hero cannot both answer  the call as well as forever refuse it. Bitter smoke will rise from the grave of all...

The Wildest Pitch  is my second book, and the first in the Man Flu Series, which is more of a common universe for multiple tales. In this world, humankind has to face a disease as old as influenza or polio. It is called by many names, including the gametovirus, the man flu, ladyware disease, the Queen's complaint, and others. It targets the patient's sex and transforms them, over about two weeks, into the opposite; and it makes them take on a similar appearance to the person they caught it from. It lasts about a month, and then takes another two weeks to change back. In certain rare cases, it's permanent, and the person is fully transformed and fertile! The first story in the series is about Kyle Masterdale, a statistical analyst for Sports Network News. Kyle covers the college baseball beat.from the crowded broadcast truck, but he really wants to be an on-camera personality. The current locker room reporter, pretty blond Alyssa, catches gametovirus and wants to stay out of...

My first book, The Mirror of Midwinter , was something like a test. I promised myself I would write every day, and I wanted to see whether I could develop the discipline to be a real writer. I also had stories I wanted to tell. Plus, who doesn't like a feeling of accomplishment? Mirror  is a story about a brother and sister, Matt and Kim, who travel to Fairbanks, Alaska for Kim's upcoming wedding to Dan. They stay at a lodge that was once owned by friends of their grandparents who previously lived in the area. Kim wanted to celebrate the end of the millennium, so scheduled her wedding for the time of the winter solstice, which also happened to be a full moon. It was going to be enchanting in more ways than she expected. When they get there, they discover a mysterious artifact has been moved into the honeymoon cabin: a large golden mirror. Any two people who look into it will switch bodies, but only at certain times. Nobody is really sure when or how it works, but now Matt and K...

This is a blog about change. Since I enjoy writing about change, and the season of change is autumn, and my name is Grace, this is your autumn from Grace — so welcome. Could I have named this blog Fall From Grace? Yes, but I didn’t, because I don’t want to write about failures and depravity and corruption; I want to write about people who become new and different. They turn over a new leaf, as it were. And because words are important to a writer, and images have hidden meanings, we will embrace the autumn theme here. Change is everywhere. It happens all the time. When I said that autumn is the season of change, it is really only one of four. Change happens in every season. Sometimes it happens so slowly that we don’t notice it, like frost creeping in overnight. Sometimes it passes overhead like a hailstorm. Other times, it arrives suddenly like a blanket of snow and remains in our lives. And sometimes, change grinds like a glacier. When I write about people who change, I often mean tha...