So Much Has Happened Since September

When I wrote my last post in September, I was keeping almost everything about THE VEILED a secret on purpose. I told you her name was Alara and that was about it. A lot has happened since then, so let me catch you up.

The books are out in the world. Blackthorn Academy and What Lies Beneath, the first two books of THE VEILED series, are published and in readers' hands. And on October 23, I published Book Three, The Threads We Carry, the biggest book of the three and the one everything has been building toward. Holding the finished book in my hands felt like the end of a very long road and the start of a new one at the same time. Alara's story is not over, not by a long shot, but I will say more about what comes next when the time is right.

The kitchen hasn't gone quiet either. My cookbooks, Homestead Farmhouse Recipes and Holidays at the Homestead, are both out, full of the kind of food my family actually eats around our own table. And I am already deep into my next big project: THE COMPLETE HOMESTEAD HERBAL APOTHECARY. Fifty herbs, every single one you can grow in your own garden, and one hundred preparations, from teas and salves to tinctures and vinegars. I am writing it as a beginner learning alongside you, because that is exactly what I am. My one real success so far is basil. Everything else I ever planted died, and I am not ashamed to say so.

That is the short version of my last two months: three novels published, two cookbooks out, one herbal book growing page by page, and a whole lot of flour on the kitchen counter through all of it.

Thank you for following along, whether you came for the food or the fantasy. There is room at my table for both.

— Maria