Cozy-adjacent fantasy author
Back to the Future was intended to be a standalone movie. When it was a huge success, the studio asked Bob Gale and Robert Zemeckis for a sequel. The script for that sequel was so long that they broke it up into two parts. The first movie had wrapped up all of the loose ends…
I finished the (8th) draft for Talio Rossa and the Elixir of Life, the sequel to Talio’s Codex. My first sequel! And boy did I learn a lot. One of the most interesting things was that the book(s) before the sequel you’re writing start freezing certain details in amber. Mentioned how big a trial jury…
Here’s a bit I cut out of a very early draft of Talio’s Codex. Note that in the version Dovuta is the one accused of murder, ‘Magistrate Jilani’ is ‘Magistrate Palane,’ and ‘source and return gutters’ are ‘service and utility gutters.’ Lots of non-canon things in this excerpt. This scene was intended as worldbuilding to…
In this deleted scene from Talio’s Codex, Talio attends Clemente Jilani’s class, only to find himself quizzed on legal knowledge (in the final version, Jilani’s lecture is a bit more pertinent to the plot and much less technical…). This scene served a few purposes: to show Talio’s quick legal thinking, to show that Clemente is…
Talio’s Codex is a legal thriller and courtroom fantasy set in the secondary-world city of Nuciferia. When my publisher asked for a description of Nuciferia for cover art, I wrote: “Dreamy medieval Dutch/Venetian city of canals” is how I always pictured Nuciferia. Imagine my surprise when I got to the end of my first full…