Happy New Year!

Hope 2015 is off to a great start for everyone! I'm extremely pumped for a lot of reasons. 1) It's a whole new year full of possibility (and new episodes of Arrow); 2) The weather will be warm again soon; 3) Ember's Secret releases in 32 days. And yes, I've been counting down.

I've said before that Ember is a return to my roots of sorts. Playing with mythology has always been fun for me, and the Maori culture is full of these beautiful myths and stories. The backbone of the entire series (and any others I might write with the wereswans) is the story of Tane, the Maori god of birds and forests, and the Matariki, also known as the Pleiades or Seven Sisters.

According to the version I found, the Sisters started as one incredibly beautiful--and incredibly vain--star, so kinda like Kanye West. Unlike Kanye, this star was actually liked by people, regardless of how many times it might have interrupted the god Tane during an acceptance speech. Tane, however, was not impressed. It's said that, in a fit of jealousy (or just having enough of this star's shit), Tane threw it out of the sky, where it crashed and broke into seven pieces that became new stars. But of course, as vain things go, the star found itself to be even more beautiful as seven parts. So thanks to Tane, there are seven Kanye Wests staring down at us every summer. Thanks, bro. Really.

That's an incredibly loose interpretation (in case you didn't notice). There are a several versions of this myth, some of which paint the Matariki as a beautiful maiden refusing Tane's advances. Regardless of the version, Tane's jealousy remains in tact. Not cool for the god of my wereswans.

So how does this all fit with wereswans? Pretty well, actually. You'll have to read Ember's Secret to find out!

Also, the blog tour is currently under way!

I'm over at I Smell Sheep with a very interesting blog post. And by interesting, I mean weird.

And don't forget you can still preorder Ember's Secret at Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play.