The Birthday Present and the (at that time) accompanying Millhaven Castle weren’t published to tell similar stories. In fact, I meant them to contrast. So when I set about smoothing awkwardnesses between my differing versions of the Alyce world, I substituted a sample from The Prince’s Ball for that Millhaven Castle story. But that didn’t change the idea of contrast. The Prince’s Ball is not related to TBP and doesn’t have a similar point. That was part of the book’s structure.

The Birthday Present is about taking physical situations in this life too seriously. The humans, now represented by Lucy and a tiny group hiding in a mountain, accuse the more advanced GMFs of being materialistic and soulless. The GMF society values strength and physical power over emotional development, and ironically the GMFs are a bit inferior even though they can live for hundreds of years.

However, as Lucy reveals, it was really the humans who are obsessed with these things. In the past they didn’t think there was much outside this life. What was physical was absolutely important--and since humans age and are weak and clumsy, it was awkward to emphasize the body so much. And they still don’t seem to think there is much outside the body and human relationships. This is not shown as part of Lucy's worldview at any time, in spite of her constant discussion of emotions.

There’s a lot of rhetoric about the GMFs needing to turn back into more emotional, more sensitive humans, but the GMFs we see don’t seem particularly shallow. The humans appear just honestly jealous that the GMFs are superior and the humans are right back where they started—preoccupied with this life, with the body, and with relationships. Aure sees this and is gracious to Lucy, pretending to accept her demands and change back. At least, that’s how I interpret it. When of course he’s not going to be affected at all. Lucy has sensitive feelings about this topic, and you have to be polite when you see that in someone. Because it’s—well, it’s very human of them.
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And there will be more updates.

It still seems hard for people to believe I’m not a new writer. Even though I’ve been writing my whole life and publishing for 10 years (TEN YEARS!) there remains a perception that I’m in some way “new.” New to the field. New to the craft. New to the social scene. New to marketing. And I am not. If people haven’t seen me before, that’s their fault. I’ve been steadily ticking away and have become more developed with each year.

Actually, by the end of the summer I hope to have 1 book published for each year. Not bad. And on a pace with most typical career authors. I don’t do the churning of several books a year normally. This year I’m working fast because a lot of the books weren’t presented right the first time. (Which might be one of the reasons people didn’t see they were there.) I’ve been accumulating a body of work and here’s the timeline on it.
 

• The Birthday Present (2008.) First published with a small “Millhaven Castle” story. Now contains a teaser for The Prince’s Ball instead. Book was unpublished for 8 years before returning this year.
• Facets of Fantasy: Burgundy Cover (2009.) Collection of 5 novellas that formed the basis for later stories. Now retired, but still available on the specialty page.
• A Year with the Harrisons (2010.) Formerly called “American Homeschooler” and released weekly on my FB page during 2010. It never came to print. I’ll be publishing it this year, but view it as a book from 2010, so it can fill this slot.
• Facets of Fantasy: Blue Cover (2011.) I often altered this book and uploaded or removed stories. Now it contains 2 of the first Facets stories, as well as Victoria. Victoria was published in 2014, but was created and based on a trip during 2011, so I’d certainly put it with the 2011 slot.
• Ryan and Essie (2012.) This book was resurrected from my childhood and finished in 2012. It took 3 years to come to print, but it was written in 2012 so I’ll put it for that year.
• City of the Invaders (2013.) This was an expansion of one of the stories in the 2009 Facets books. It was unpublished and fell off the map until this year, when I brought it back and started a series.
• Consuela (2014.) Originally the second part of a defunct “fake-history” story with a fairy-tale bent. It likewise vanished and was unpublished, but was rewritten this year. It will be the second installment in the Invaders series. They did belong together. I just didn’t know it when they were first presented.
• The Test of Devotion (2015.) A western that got off to a rough start because I marketed it as western romance, not true western. Written in 2015, published extreme early 2016. Now it has a new cover and a bit of a remake.
• Everwood (2016.) This was my least productive year, one of the reasons being so much time being taken with Bellevere House. I rewrote Bellevere during this year, but had to redo it again the next year, so this doesn’t count. However, I did produce a short story.
• Bellevere House (2017.) Published in the summer and then moved to a contemporary setting in December. The “vintage” version has been retired. The contemporary one is still available.
• The Prince’s Ball (2018.) The book for this year will be The Prince’s Ball, but it’s still old material. I started the story almost 20 years ago. In a way it is also a replacement for “Alyce,” which was published in 2014, so again it’s not entirely new.

After all of that is in order, I’ll work on new books. But you see I’ve definitely been producing steady work, once it’s organized in a way people can find. And I’ve certainly been on the scene for a while. 

​And there will be more updates.

​It's time to dig deeper into this book. It's one a lot of you might not know anything about and it has two parts. The first story, The Birthday Present, was a futuristic idea that I actually wrote pages and pages and pages about. But it resulted in this shorter story instead. Originally I wanted to create a themed series, but I went on to other projects and this book became a stand-alone, so--no series. (But that might explain the "Homeschooler Fantasy Series Volume One" you'll see burned into the print edition.) I'll enlarge on it in an upcoming blog post.

Millhaven Castle, the second story in the book, was a bit of a problem because I went through 3 different-yet-very-similar versions of this story. Each one equally boring, I might add. After sorting all my stories, I've repackaged, rearranged, or rewritten almost all of them. But only the Millhaven/Alyce stories got actually trashed as just plain boring and useless. They had none of the strengths of the original story idea and were padded with unproductive areas that make me wince now.  Which is funny because people I knew always seemed to praise them. But then, I've often found people praise the weakest thing, so I should have known. But I must go back to explaining what I did next.

One of these boring little Alyce stories was published with The Birthday Present and I can't get it out of the volume because it's burned into the title. So I've rearranged the content and substituted 3 chapters from the full-length The Prince's Ball. It's now a trailer for the book, as well as 3 almost stand-alone funny chapters you can read in addition to The Birthday Present. Why is this important? Because I'll be publishing The Prince's Ball next year (if all goes well) and it's nothing like the 3 previous versions: Millhaven Castle 2008; Millhaven Castle 2009; and Alyce 2013. It is the original, going back over 15 years, and has a load of characters and situations that put Alyce and her friends in perspective. And--of course--it's a lot funnier. And longer. As you'll see immediately if you pick up The Birthday Present and read the trailer.
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And there will be more updates.