The last two years: the Cliff Notes version

Well, it’s been a hot minute, hasn’t it? I’ve been busy, though you wouldn’t think it to look at my website lately. Let me give you the Cliff Notes version of what’s been  happening since I last posted.

In 2022 I started a new pen name. As Emerald Finn, I write cozy mysteries set in a coastal Australian town, with nary a dragon in sight. No fantasy at all in these books, though there is a very loveable golden retriever and a bunch of fun and quirky characters.

Emerald had a very big year, publishing four books in 2022. If you’d like more details, check out Emerald’s website here: Emerald Finn.

But I was so busy writing cozies in 2022 that there was no time left for any books under my own name. In 2023, the tables were turned. Emerald had no new releases, and Marina published the first two books in a new urban fantasy series, The Cartomancer’s Guide to Werewolves. (Is it weird to talk about myself in the third person?? Probably. Moving on …)

Magic on the Cards features Sunday, a witch who uses the Tarot to work magic (otherwise known as a cartomancer). Sunday’s going about her business, just trying to catch a rogue monster that is threatening her friends, when she knocks a hot dude off his motorbike. When Mr Tall, Dark, and Suspicious refuses medical aid, Sunday takes him back to her place, where she makes the horrifying discovery that he’s a member of a werewolf brotherhood dedicated to hunting down cartomancers like herself. She’ll be toast if he finds out what she is, but she still has a job to do, even with distractingly handsome enemies in the picture.

If you’re looking for a feel-good enemies-to-lovers fantasy that will make you laugh out loud and keep you turning pages until late at night, this is the book for you!

The sequel, Magic in the Flesh, picks up the story after the GINORMOUS twist at the end of the first book, with Sunday now living surrounded by her werewolf enemies. No one is happy with this situation—not the wolves, who keep trying to kill her, not Sunday, who’s walking around with a giant target on her back, and certainly not Conal, the aforementioned Tall, Dark, and Handsome, who’s got the job of keeping her alive. So he proposes they pretend to be mates so the pack will accept her. Cue fun fake dating shenanigans, a threat to magic itself, and a whole lot more laughs and adventure.

Which brings us to this year. Happy New Year! I hope 2024 is good to us all. I’m planning to write the final book in the Cartomancer’s Guide series, plus a couple more cozies. Given that my eldest is getting married this year, that will probably be quite enough to keep me busy, though I’m already pondering which direction I should strike out in next. Perhaps a romantasy, or a fairytale retelling? Or another urban fantasy? If you have any preferences, let me know in the comments.