Kathryn Troy's Blog

I'm preparing to launch a reVamped version of my dark romantasy series, starting with A Vision in Crimson. I am so appreciative of your review of The Shadow of Theron, and would love to have you be part of my ARC team for this upcoming series. If you like:

Brooding, bloodlusty vampire MMC
Ass-kicking, witchy FMC
Epic worldbuilding
Dual POV
Spicy NA/Adult Fantasy
Rival Lovers
Touch her and Die
Only One Bed
Blood Magic
Magical creatures & talking animals
Threats to the Crown
Pulse-pounding Action & Adventure

...Then this series is for you. You can sign up for the ARC team by using the Google Form below. Again, thanks so much for supporting indie authors :)

https://forms.gle/H3rQZ3gyzpUz9VXy7

 

The Shadow of Theron: Coming February 2023

The first book in the Age of Shadows duology that blends adventure and romance with sword and sorcery. Here's the blurb:

The powers of old are fading. A new Age is dawning.

Holy relics are all that remain of Theron's sacred legend.

Now those relics, the enchanted weapons forged by the Three-Faced Goddess to help Theron defeath the wicked Sorcerer Argoss, are disappearing.

Lysandro knows the village magistrates Marek is responsible, and he searches for proof disguised as the masked protector the Shadow of Theron.

But when Marek wounds him with an accursed sword that shouldn't exist, Lysandro must fine a way to stop Marek from gaining any more artifacts created by the Goddess or her nemesis. 

The arrival of the beautiful newcomer Seraphine, with secrets of her own, only escalated their rivalry.

As the feud between Lysandro and Marek throws Lighurma into chaos, a pair of priestesses seeks to recover the relics and return them from safekeeping. But the stornes warn that Argoss is returning, and they must race to retrieve Theron's most powerful weapn. But as they risk their lives for a legend, only one thing is certain. The three temples to the Goddess have been keeping secrets: not just from the faithful, but from each other. 

Wheel of Time readers and fans of Sebastian de Castell, Sarah Maas, Saladin Ahmed, and Trudy Canavan will delight in this fantasy adventure duology infused with romance. 

The Shadow of Theron: Coming February 2023

The first book in the Age of Shadows duology that blends adventure and romance with sword and sorcery. Here's the blurb:

The powers of old are fading. A new Age is dawning.

Holy relics are all that remain of Theron's sacred legend.

Now those relics, the enchanted weapons forged by the Three-Faced Goddess to help Theron defeath the wicked Sorcerer Argoss, are disappearing.

Lysandro knows the village magistrates Marek is responsible, and he searches for proof disguised as the masked protector the Shadow of Theron.

But when Marek wounds him with an accursed sword that shouldn't exist, Lysandro must fine a way to stop Marek from gaining any more artifacts created by the Goddess or her nemesis. 

The arrival of the beautiful newcomer Seraphine, with secrets of her own, only escalated their rivalry.

As the feud between Lysandro and Marek throws Lighurma into chaos, a pair of priestesses seeks to recover the relics and return them from safekeeping. But the stornes warn that Argoss is returning, and they must race to retrieve Theron's most powerful weapn. But as they risk their lives for a legend, only one thing is certain. The three temples to the Goddess have been keeping secrets: not just from the faithful, but from each other. 

Wheel of Time readers and fans of Sebastian de Castell, Sarah Maas, Saladin Ahmed, and Trudy Canavan will delight in this fantasy adventure duology infused with romance. 

   Curse of the Amber : Available Now from City Owl Press

































Curse of the Amber is my answer to so many “man out of time” stories that have such great potential, but always end up being rather flat. It takes as its premise the return to life of a bog body, slumbering in the peat of the Welsh countryside by pagan magic. He is awakened by a young, unsuspecting archaeologist with ghosts of her own. It has required the most preliminary research of any of my fiction projects to date. I’ve come to know everything about bog bodies, archaeological study and preservation, museum policy, archaeology in the academy, British paganism and lore, Egyptology, and Roman expansion in the British Isles, Aside from the material facts, this project will draw inspiration from M.Y. Halidom’s The Woman in Black and The Mummy by Anne Rice.


THE FROSTBITE SERIES- Coming in 2024 to City Owl Press! 
BOOK ONE: A VISION IN CRIMSON 

Too much in my head, this man

What was originally meant as a stand- alone novel, grown from a germ of fan fiction, has ballooned into an epic fantasy series, wrought with romance, adventure, classical myth, and a healthy dose of the gothic and paranormal.






BOOK TWO: DREAMS OF ICE AND SHADOW



I'm very excited about the second installment of this series. It's got action, danger, romance, magic-everything you loved about the first book, only more, and more of the world to discover. Grab your copy today!

BOOK THREE: NIGHT OF STORMS


This will be the third (but hopefully not the last) installment in the Frostbite series, recently acquired by City Owl press for re-release. Yay!!! And I swear, I will finish typing it up, even if my eyes fall out.
For those in the know: Alaric & Darien are key players, along with a certain vampire lord, and there's something lurking in the Indigo Forest. 


NOTES FROM THE UNDEAD: COMING SOON


                                 
Notes from the Undead is about a man who comes to think he has transformed into a vampire, and whose reality deteriorates in very short order. The idea came to me as I was reading Hideyuki Kikuchi's series of novels VampireHunter D when, once again, D cuts off his sentient hand, infested by a nameless symbiote, and sends it off like Thing from the Addams Family to do his bidding. “What if,” I ventured, “what if this idiot just thinks his hand will come back to him? What if he just maimed himself, and sent his dead hand flopping to the floor, with a ‘chop chop! Hurry up now!’” Insanely grotesque. Immediately I began imagining the possibilities to address the state of vampire fiction, and contribute something innovative to it at the same time. As I pondered the modern application of vampiric tropes in my fiction, I stumbled into one seldom used—displacement, the longing for home soil. This story has been boiling around in my brain for over five years, and has been in an out of revision as I constantly think of Rick and what his story needs to be complete. Rod is literally sucking the life out of me.  But I'll be goddamned if I'm not gonna do this one right. I'm exhausted. And proud.

                       Works in Progress


The Transported Man (Working Title): Outlining
I honestly didn't think this book was going to be next on the roster. More like the second one, after the gothic romance, but it's being REALLY push! More of the story is taking shape in my mind, along with more out characters and dialogue, which can only mean one thing: my mind has rested enough from Theron and is ready to start crafting a new story. It will likely be drafted very very son. This portal fantasy will be fun to write, with a blend of German superstitions, tarot decks leading to alternative dimensions, and a changeling princess. All at Coney Island. Go figure.   






The Winds of Summer: Outlined
This title will be dark and adventurous and romantic, with an empres taken captive and a trio of old friends brought back together by tragedy.





Only in My Dreams...For Now

I can't even begin to explain all the stories that are in "Raw Development," or, in other words, books that I'm thinking about but haven't begun outlining yet. Here are the only breadcrumbs I'm willing to divulge, to give you a window into my head and a sense of what's to come:

A Gothic romance or three: with a historical bent and a taste for the phantasmagoric, (this one is up next, I swear) the spirit world with a domestic mystery, & a cursed prince
A dark twist on a classic fairy tale with passion, politics, and poison
Two more horror tales on the way, one with mermaids and another in the Himalayas at the end of the worldA portal fantasy, maybe a short story, that examines how secondary worlds might be affected by our own climate change. An epic romantic fantasy inspired by the gret stories of war & love in AsiaA paranormal/New Adult fantasy investigating occult architecture
A dark fantasy romance by Orpheus and Eurydice
A period horror thriller with troupers, wolves, and a restoration
A dystopian romance where the humans are the infection
A foray into romantic sci-fi, influenced by my love of colonization and expertise in Atlantis
A couple of kids picture books about monsters & mice, one based on a true story

 I'm so pleased to announce that my latest series, THE SHADOW OF THERON, has found a home with City Owl Press. The first book in this planned duology will be released next winter. I'm honored to be working with the lovely and inestimable Tee Tate again, and so glad that yet another of my stories has found its home. This one is by far the longest book I've written to date, with all the things I love in books: fantasy, adventure, mythology and, of course, romance. I'm excited for all of the many stages between now and February, and will keep you updated about ARCs, launch date, and of course, what promises to be a beautiful cover!

For months, I've been saying to myself: I really should finish up the final draft of Night of Storms, the third book in my Frostbite series, which is going to be republished with City Owl Press starting in 2024. Which of course means that I don't need this manuscript to BE in tip-top shape for at least 2 to 4 years. YEARS. But it really is almost there, and it's nagging at me. I don't want to start something new in earnest until I know that Night of Storms is put to bed. But my brain has been in survival mode for so long now.

Wake up. Work. Homeschool. Grade. Work. Grade some more. Remember that it's now 3pm and you haven't eaten jack. Scarf something down while watching something mindless on TV because anything I really WANT to watch is not suitable for my children's eyes or ears. Swallow. Prep next day's work. Take a screen break, translated as: do strenuous yard work until the sun goes down. Imbibe caffeine. Clean INSIDE the house. Break up children bickering. Eat. Watch some REAL programming. See if reading is possible. Try to sleep.  My creative action is winding down.
During the time I should be sleeping is when I've been doing my most creative thinking lately. That is usually true, but I also generally engage in a heavy amount of daydreaming/mental writing that leaves me distracted from actual work until said writing is memorialized on paper or my lifesaving note app on my phone. It happens for new story concepts, which I add to the gigantic pile. It happened for a whole new scene to add for The Shadow of Theron, because apparently it wasn't already big ENOUGH at 119-150k, depending. The entire next day, the rest of the world was in a haze until I penned the last period. And Holy Moses, did it feel good. It felt like "normal." It happened again last night, when some of the pieces for Theron's sequel Argoss Ascendant became clearer. Bits and pieces only, but really clear ones, including dialogue, that I write down to a)stop myself from forgetting and b)to stop being haunted by it until it is written down and I don't HAVE to remember it. 
This is how it is now, apparently. I guess all my neurological/muscular issues are waning just enough to let some creativity slip by, albeit at the expense of my much-needed sleep. We read all the time about how more people who had always aspired to write books were completing them than ever before, due to extra time at home during the pandemic. For me, and for millions of other people (women) too, I've never had LESS time to myself, to be inside my own head and let my imagination run wild. I am needed too much in the here and now, and I'm 'effin exhausted. I'm feeling the December crunch for grades coming due and getting my kids ready to finish up homeschool and go back to face to face learning with their peers (fully vaxxed as of today! Just in time for the next wave of terror!) But my brain can see the light at the end of the tunnel- that blessed month of January where the kids will be in school, there is no more gardening to be done, and I will not be at work. Thank Jesus for Intersession. I finally feel like I can breathe. Just a little. Because other than my wonderful family, I really do live and breathe my stories, and I've been a bit down and lonely without them. Life's much more fun when you live inside your head and have the godlike power to make all the rules. 
As I emerge from finishing my stories to a polish that I can live with, and until further publication announcements are forthcoming, I will be dedicating myself to getting more of my "in my dreams" list to a "work in progress list," and slide something more firmly in front of my desk to work on. Likely, The Transported Man: See the WIP list in my bio for more details. One thing that gets me excited is that NONE of them will ever have to be as long as The Shadow of Theron ever again. It makes the work ahead seem so much simpler.

Hello! Curse of the Amber got a new release today on the KISS App- you should check it out. They even gave me some cool new images to show off! If you leave a comment on this page, you'll automatically be entered in a giveaway of 20 Kiss coins to use to read free romance titles, like this one by yours truly. You can find me on KISS by going here.

It's been forever since I last posted here. I know. My life is insanely busy. I'm still working from home, working on my home, homeschooling, (yes, I went there-in case you haven't noticed we're still in a pandemic, and there's still no vaccine for kids), all while trying to shop 2 books, promote a bunch more, and you expect me to still have room in my brain to write???!!!

Well, maybe you don't expect that. But I do. And only being able to dedicate a certain number of hours to reading, researching and writing is always a struggle, but people like me, who yearn to write, find the time. If I don't get the ideas and the words out of my head and onto paper, I will go insane. I've never really had what one would traditionally call "writer's block." I always know where I want my stories to go, and there's just so many of them they won't let me slow down. 

But this crazy life I'm living is a new kink. My brain is in survival mode, and that means the creative gray cells have moved aside to make room for teaching, classroom planning, pruning schedules, etc. etc. etc. I'm lucky if a book can hold my interest these days for the 10 minutes it takes for me to get dizzy. But of course, just as I said to myself, "this is a thing, and I should blog about it because it's related to writing," lightning struck. New scenes for a new story played out in picture perfect clarity, dialogue and all. Those little gray cells are waking up. Maybe it's a sign that my chaos is settling into a routine, and my brain can stop figuring out how to do all the shtuff on my plate and start thinking again about what I love: new places, new characters, new stories. I'm getting there. In bits and pieces. And I couldn't be more excited. 

 Happy March!

A few new updates this month, the first of which is that my Frostbite series has been acquired by City Owl Press, in my first official three-book deal. A Vision in Crimson, Dreams of Ice and Shadow, and Night of Storms will make their way onto City Owl's catalogue starting in 2024. I'm very excited to be working with them again to bring this series that is near and dear to my heart to even more readers. 

And because City Owl is just so good to me, Curse of the Amber has a splashy new cover. Take a look!

My horror novel Notes from the Undead and the EPIC fantasy The Shadow of Theron are on their way to finding their homes too. I'm very focused on polishing up Night of Storms, the third book in the Frostbite series, but in the back of my head, other stories are fighting for the privilege of being the next WIP. I have a pretty good idea of what's going to win out, but I'm not telling! Not yet.

Good afternoon, on this fine MLK Day. A vaccine is on the way, along with a new President, and I can bear to look at my computer screen for about an hour at a time. Progress. 

My vertigo is persistent but subsiding, some. Enough to get some writing work done, if not some reading. Fear not! When words swim on the page, that's what manga's for. And audiobooks. Nothing shall keep me from reading or writing, which is what I hope to continue doing as a new year dawns. Also, there's a puppy coming. I never post about family stuff, I know! But puppies are so very cute, and it's not something I can help. 

In the meantime, there are some updates to my bio to reflect the state of my writing. The Shadow of Theron is done and looking around for a place to call home, though interested betas are always welcome. I'm hoping to polish up book 3 of my Frostbite series, which, the more I think about it, is probably in better shape than I think it is to be rightfully called a first draft, and other standalone projects are pushing their way to the front of the brain. It may swim a little, but the noggin still works. 

In an attempt to unplug my head and enjoy the things I can do, my ability to read a book a week has been, shall we say, annihilated. As a result, I'm reverting back to being much more choosy, and therefore, reviews won't be the focus of this blog any longer. What it will be, only time will tell. A stronger focus on the state of genre writing and the writing process in general is very likely. Whatever I do read, you can see with my thoughts on the Goodreads bar running off to the right there- a line or two is about all I can manage these days, as are easy breezy regency romance reads. I have so many good fantasy books that I want to get into (Dragon Reborn is at the top of the list), but I'm just not there yet. And heaven knows how long it would take to listen to an audio of that.

Stick your head out the window, if you can, and get a gulp of some fresh air. That's what I'm going to do. And I may just take Giordano Bruno with me. 

Puppyyyyyy! This mini dachshund will be coming home by the end of the month, from the fabulous Dachshund Dude Ranch in TX

 

WORKS IN PROGRESSArgoss Ascendant: Age of Shadows Book Two Outlining
I'm not ready to divulge anything just yet. But it's coming along, faster than I thought it would.
The Transported Man (Working Title)  Outlining
I honestly didn't think this book was going to be next on the roster. More like the second one, after the gothic romance, but it's being REALLY push! More of the story is taking shape in my mind, along with more out characters and dialogue, which can only mean one thing: my mind has rested enough from Theron and is ready to start crafting a new story. It will likely be drafted very very son. This portal fantasy will be fun to write, with a blend of German superstitions, tarot decks leading to alternative dimensions, and a changeling princess. All at Coney Island. Go figure.   





The Winds of Summer Outlined
This title will be dark and adventurous and romantic, with an empres taken captive and a trio of old friends brought back together by tragedy.


Only in My Dreams...For Now

I can't even begin to explain all the stories that are in "Raw Development," or, in other words, books that I'm thinking about but haven't begun outlining yet. Here are the only breadcrumbs I'm willing to divulge, to give you a window into my head and a sense of what's to come:

A Gothic romance or three: with a historical bent and a taste for the phantasmagoric, (this one is up next, I swear) the spirit world with a domestic mystery, & a cursed prince
A dark twist on a classic fairy tale with passion, politics, and poison
Two more horror tales on the way, one with mermaids and another in the Himalayas at the end of the worldA portal fantasy, maybe a short story, that examines how secondary worlds might be affected by our own climate change. An epic romantic fantasy inspired by the gret stories of war & love in AsiaA paranormal/New Adult fantasy investigating occult architecture
A dark fantasy romance by Orpheus and Eurydice
A period horror thriller with troupers, wolves, and a restoration
A dystopian romance where the humans are the infection
A foray into romantic sci-fi, influenced by my love of colonization and expertise in Atlantis
A couple of kids picture books about monsters & mice, one based on a true story

Good morning.

For those of you who are regular readers of this blog, you may have noticed that a couple of weeks have gone by without a new review. That's for a few reasons:

One: I haven't been really reading, as I've been focusing so much on writing. I'm preparing the first draft of The Shadow of Theron for beta-reading, and whatever free time I have has been taken up by that. It's a beast - over 120k so far, and I'm not done typing it up yet. I'm really happy with it though, and that's what counts.

Two: Even that work is happening much slower nowadays, as a resurgence of vertigo keeps me from focusing on the written word - anybody's words.

Three: When I can read, I often put down books or just don't like them enough to put in the effort to review them.

So: this blog is going to go on a temporary hiatus. I'll still be around, and when I'm able to read/write/operate on some level of normalcy, you'll see more of me here. For now, take solace in the fact that there are lots of reviews and recommendations up in the past feeds. As updates make sense, I will make them.

For now - take care of yourselves- your bodies, your brains, your spirits. Take a walk. Read a book. Write a story. And for all our sakes, stay safe.