It’s a Southern Arcana world, and I’m just living in it.

Donna and I like having a number of series going on at once.  Since we’re two people, we multi-task well, and we enjoy the ability to shift gears every once in a while.

However, every once in a while everything lines up, and right now is one of those times.  A few months ago I was living Red Rock Pass. We had a June release, an October release, and we were writing the fourth book and planning our historical spin-off.  Everything was werewolves and witches and old laws and blood bonds and oh my GOD I’m sure our husbands don’t want to hear any more about Cindy’s insecurities or Adam’s twisty past.

We’re still finishing up the end of our historical novella, and Sanctuary Unbound edits are yet to come, but now I’ve shifted focus.  Crux is out in print.  Crossroads is going to be out in digital in under five weeks.  We’re working on the third book, Deadlock, and now everything is spring in New Orleans and psychic training and shapeshifter politics and if you thought they were tired of Cindy & Adam, you have no idea how much our husbands don’t want to hear any more about Alec and Carmen.  (Ooops, did I let it slip? I let it slip.  The heroine of book three is named Carmen Mendoza.  No, you won’t meet her in book two, but if you pay verrrrry close attention near the end, you’ll know why she’s trouble for a man who wants to stay out of shapeshifter high society.)

Southern Arcana is a comfortable world.  It’s the one we built over the lazy summer of 2007, after I’d somehow wrested a computer science degree from my college and was stunned by my sudden ability to read and write again.  No more nights spent sweating bullets because I had to build a perl interpreter if I wanted to pass Programming Languages! I could start reading new authors again, instead of rereading favorites and sneaking in new Anne Bishop, Kelley Armstrong and Patricia Briggs books when I was supposed to be studying for finals.

It doesn’t seem like it was really that long ago, except now it’s 2010, and we’ve spent two and a half years discussing everything from the most minor characters to ancient worldbuilding truths that our characters will never, ever know.  Writing these books is comfy, and awesome, and okay, maybe I’ve been dreading having to take on Alec as a hero since pretty much his inception (I was complaining to an author friend & critique partner about him yesterday, and she pretty much asked When has Alec not been a pain in the ass? Answer: never) but there’s something so fun about being back in this world.

So.  Here we are, reveling in the Southern Arcana.  We haven’t done a freebie story in this universe yet, and I’m thinking maybe we really should sometime.  So if any of you out there have read this far and are familiar with Crux, who would you like to read a quirky short story about?