Katie Cast

I’m tickled pink to announce that the YOU SLEIGH ME COLLECTION (with both You Sleigh Me and Desperately Seeking Vampire) is now available in audio form. Huzzah! The narrator is Cassandra Campbell, and you can dip your ears into a sneak peek here.

Because the Dark Ones series is being arranged into new, tidier series listings, I’m in the process of creating infographics that show people how to move through the books, how they’re connected, and what order they should be read in.

Here’s the first lovely graphic (to view it larger or save it, grab it here).

If you notice odd things happening around and near the Fireborn books, you can rest assured that it’s not you. The series rights were recently returned to me, and I’m in the process of uploading the books with their new gorgeous covers everywhere, so your patience while the books go live is much appreciated. Print versions with their alternate, equally gorgeous covers are coming soon.

Those of you with sharp eyes will have noticed some big changes in the books menu–I’ve been in the process of segmenting my longer series into groups that make sense based on the storyline. Since I know change is often confusing, fear not! I will be walking everyone through the changes in the series titles with fancy graphics, and easy explanations. Stay tuned for more!

Recently, the rights to the three Born Prophecy books–Starborn, Fireborn, and Shadowborn–were returned to me, which meant I had to get new covers made while I wait to reupload the ebooks.

My cover artist absolutely knocked the assignment out of the ballpark. I’ll alert everyone once the books are available again (it should be a matter of a week or so for the publisher to pull their ebook files, which allows me to upload mine), but in the mean time, enjoy the new ebook covers!

I will be soon rolling out some changes to series names, and while I’m getting my act together, I made a spiffy infographic of what books, and in what order, Finch appears. Click the image to enlarge the infographic.

Enjoy!

Your “Help Katie Decide” question of the week:

Jim’s You Slay Me-related short story is off with Editor Laura. Yay!
Drake’s You Slay Me-related short story is about at the halfway point. With luck, I’ll have it done later this week. It will *likely* be longer than Jim’s story simply because there’s more to explore with Drake & Aisling. It will, however, remain a short story.

I’m waffling on what to write next. I could move on to the next Aisling book and write Jim and Drake stories for it, or I could write a short for a different series altogether.

What short would you like to see next? Things that I’ve thought about:
A short devoted to Aisling (i.e. in between You Slay Me and Fire Me Up)
Shorts for all of the standalones (Men in Kilts, Corset Diaries, etc.)
Shorts for Time Thief series
Shorts for the first five or six vamp books (I can’t remember when I started adding in the hero’s point of view, but it was somewhere around there. I think. I’ll have to look…)
Shorts for any of other bazillion books I have.

Yes, the short stories will be collect into a print anthology, so you will be able to get it in print. And we’ll offer the stories to my German publishers, in case they want to pick them up. Likewise, once I have enough stories collected, I will offer the anthology to the audio publishers.

With all that, drop me an e-mail or hit contact and let me know what short you’d like to see me write next.

THE STARS THAT WE STEAL FROM THE NIGHT SKY audiobook has been released! I’m listening to it now, and I’m so pleased with Tavia Gilbert’s rendition. She narrated GHOST OF A CHANCE as well.

Go forth and grab it!

After taking a few days off, I’m back to work on the Ainslie Book That Will Not Die. Silly me, this morning I decided that the opening scene needed a bit more oomph, and I’ve spent the day reworking it. Muses can be such pains in the patootie.

In other news, my list of short story ideas for Jim and Drake has achieved an epic length, along with shorts for Improper English, Men in Kilts, Corset Diaries, Hard Day’s Knight, and Blow Me Down.

I haven’t even started looking at the rest of my backlist, but the ideas for a variety of scenes related to just You Slay Me is vast. Arguably, most of them concern Jim, but there are a handful of Drake’s point of view stories in there, as well.

Just as soon as I’m done with this book, I’ll dive into the shorts with abandon. Question – assuming each book has X number of short stories planned to be written as either alternative POV scenes, or entirely new material (like Jim working before Aisling summoned him), would you prefer:

1. All the shorts for each book released before moving on to the next book.
or 2. Release one short for each book, then cycle back to do the second story for each book, then third, etc. In other words, you’d get a short for You Slay Me, then one for the silver dragons, one for Baltic, on down through the rest of the dragons, vampires, Greeks, etc. until all the books have had the first story before moving on to the next round.

Let me know what you’d prefer.

Here’s a chance for you to influence what I write!

Video version with dogs (because who doesn’t want to watch puppos playing?) here.

I’ve been thinking hard about the fun I can have with short stories/short novellas with regards to existing characters. As I’m deep in a re-listen to my dragon audio books (mostly so I can refresh my memory, but also because I love listening to the dragons), all sorts of fun scenes are dancing around in the empty tuna can that is my brain.

But it also got me thinking that I could write alternate POV scenes from books where I didn’t have the male POV (think the first ten dragon books). Want to see what Drake was doing before he walked into G&T and Aisling called him Puff the Magic Dragon? Need to know how Baltic felt when he saw Ysolde for the first time? What Jim thought of Aisling the first time it met her?

The alternative POV shorts can work outside of the dragon books, as well. Corest Diaries, Men in Kilts, Blow Me Down…all my books written before I started including male POVs are fair game.

But! I don’t want to go to the trouble of writing scenes from ALL the books (which, honestly, I’m thinking about…yes, a short story for Every. Single. Book.) if it’s not something you’d want to read.

Would you read shorts if I wrote them? Would they make you happy to see old friends (and alternate points of view [note to self, learn some swearing in Magyar for Drake]), or would it not be as much fun because they weren’t entire books?

Let me know what you think (you can click on the contact link for my e-mail addy), and whose POV you’re dying to see first.