Ef Deal's Blog

Been a Long Time!

 Yes, I've been busy! Mostly being in and out of the hospital, defying death with a couple of DVT's, one of which broke off into my lung, hobbling with a wrecked knee, and getting not one but two trigger-finger surgeries. I couldn't sit at the computer, and my laptop is too slow to get anything done, so I've mostly been online via my phone! N.B.: Don't do it. 

In the meantime, I missed the tell-Tale Steampunk Festival, where The Order of Duval debuted. Yes! Book 3 of the Twins of Bellesfées series is now out in the world! I'm excited about this novel ~ Jack tells me it's the best so far.

You might recall the girls and young women that the vampire Mircalla ensnared in Book 2, Aéros & Héroes. Five of them were quite feisty, strong enough to defy Mircalla's orders to kill Jacqueline and Baron Vordenburg. Three of these ask to remain with Jacqueline as apprentices, and they are joined by a younger girl who had been flayed by one of Mircalla's minions. These four call themselves "The Order of Duval," as suggested by Têtue, the lycanthrope.

Book 3 begins with a missive to Jacqueline requesting her help with a haunted locomotive at the Paris-Orléans manufacturing plant. The apprentices insist on accompanying her, along with Angélique, her husband Gryffin, Jacqueline's lover Alain de Guise, and (of course!) Monsieur Claque. As they approach the city, they notice a heavy smog, more than the usual industrial coal smoke, stinking of burnt flesh. It hangs on them all like a shroud of dread, which doesn't bode well for the doughty crew.

I was blessed to receive accolades from Beth Cato, K.C. Grifant, A.C. Wise, Caitlyn Rozakis, and Randee Dawn. The bottom line is, it's a wonderful book about found family and finding one's place in a world where women and children are bartered, abused, and crushed by the forces of the Industrial Age.

I've also opened a shop on my website! You can find all my eSpec Books publications, and links to other anthologies with my stories. 

I've also begun printing up single-story booklets you can purchase. I'm getting set to make digital versions available as well. Who needs Amazon!

And finally, I've started a newsletter, and you can send me an email asking to receive it while I figure out how to get sign-ups on my website (Yes, I'm slow).

What a year it's been so far! And next week, I'll be reading my villanelle for the NJ Bards Anthology in Mt. Laurel, then heading off to Stokercon in Stamford, CT. Meanwhile, I'm writing book 5, since book 4 is now with my publisher and I have to hurry!

A Little Teaser!

The Buzz for Aéros & Héroes

 I was super thrilled last week to receive a glowing Kirkus Review, in which Aéros & Héroes was called "punchy and full of intriguing characters....The world presented is so unique and well-crafted by the author that it would be great to luxuriate in it a little longer. A compelling steampunk confection for readers who love the supernatural."

Coming hot on the heels of this, I also received an advance blurb from Beth Cato ~ yes, the Beth Cato ~ praising the upcoming book 3, The Order of Duval, expected this spring. I won't print the blurb here; you'll just have to wait to see the book!

And just the other day, I got word that Aéros & Héroes took first place as the Best Steampunk Novel in the Critters Readers Poll 2025, a banner follow-up to last year's win with Esprit de Corpse.

If you haven't gotten on board with the Twins of Bellesfées series, now is a good time to jump in. After all, I'm working on book 5 right now!

Jessica Lucci, Steampunque Extraordinaire

 The awesome Jessica Lucci discusses Esprit de Corpse!

Sunday noitcelfeR

 It's been a very real joy to have found a new church and church family. Jack is playing bass in the praise band for the contemporary service, and I am working on healing the body and getting back into a place where I can contribute.

One of the things I notice, attending the contemporary service, is that every modern (within the last ten years) praise song has the same format, and I'm beginning to find it annoying.

I say this still bearing scars from the Battle for Guitars in the Sanctuary back in the late '70s, when innocuous folks like Keith Green and Amy Grant were banned from most "Family" radio stations for their heretical devil music. Jack and I brought Petra, Stryper, Mylon Lefevre, and other radical Christian rock into our sanctuary with a teen choir that truly brought the Holy Spirit in with them wherever we went.

Yes, I'm almost 70, so this probably sounds like a "these kids today" rant, but it's not. It's the fact that I don't think church should be a place where anything is routine. Yet, every praise song seems to be constructed as ~

verse * chorus * verse * chorus twice! * a mantra repeated many times * finishing chorus!

If you're a church-goer, do you ever tire of this? I'm restless when we recite the Lord's Prayer, since it absolutely isn't the prayer Jesus taught, it's the prayer translated into King James English. Nobody Thy's and Thou's or Art's these days, and if you read the most up-to-date translation of the Bible, it's a lot easier to understand what Jesus said. It certainly makes it more accessible. Ironically, the phrases within the Lord's Prayer were already phrases used in the temple. The key, Jesus said, was not to recite them mindlessly, but to pray them.

I pray my praise songs, so I like them to be (a) praise to God for being God (b) scriptural and (c) edifying. When I compose my praise songs, I don't stop to ask myself, "What's a good mantra I can throw in here? Did I remember to repeat the chorus the second time?"

I never want my relationship with God through music to be routine.

Thoughts?

Short and Sweet

 

I had some serious back surgery a few weeks ago, and it's taken this long before I could sit up long enough to write this.

Actually, I am recording it on my phone while in bed, and I'll copy and paste it into my blog once I get to my computer.

Knowing I'd be laid up a bit, I got all my writing tasks completed and sent off before I went in. Thank heaven, because rather than "a night or two at the hospital and then right to a rehab center," as I was told ahead of time, I was nine days in the filthiest, most vile and disgusting hospital room, where I developed a virus that compounded the intestinal blockage that developed from surgery. 

(Fun Fact: an ileus is a blockage that stops solid matter from passing, so the food gets ground and ground until it's liquid enough to get past the ileus.)

One thing I will say, a bad case of uncontrollable projectile diarrhea and vomiting makes for excellent physical therapy practice. Just make sure someone is there to clean you, the floor, your gown, and your bed afterward—things I didn't have.

All that is behind me now, mostly. The hospital is apologizing, my insurance tells me (3 weeks later) that I can go to rehab now that I don't need to, and I am able to shower, walk, and do very small things without bending, lifting, or twisting my body. I get frequent muscle spasms as the nerves that had been crushed begin to waken again.

So I'll be back to the blog when I'm up to it.

Meanwhile, please support our newest campaign on Kickstarter! Just $7 will get you so many great bonuses and reading fun, but more importantly, you'll help us get 7 great books out there, including book two of my series, Aéros & Héroes ~ vampires, assassins, and werewolves, oh my! Just click below and see all the goodies you can get the further we go.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE!

Plus, some Ef Deal specials:

Where Have I Been?

This has been a tough few months.

The fracture in my femur didn't really heal entirely, and I have a torn meniscus that my knee doctor didn't tell me about. Trying to deal with that on my own hasn't been successful, and instead, it has thrown a lot of stress onto my hip. The result? I'm going to get a new knee.

But before that, I'm having surgery on my lumbar, a laminectomy and a medial facetectomy, all to relieve the pressure on my spinal cord so I don't go numb in my legs anymore. 

My hope is that all of this will get me back on my feet and walking again, exercising again, moving again.

In between all of this planning, my oncologist called to say I had a nodule in my thyroid that required a biopsy. That weighed on me like neither of the other issues, but I thank God the results came back negative.

So all of my mental efforts are going toward the upcoming surgeries. I'm keeping myself distracted by monitoring the live updates on the hush-money trial, a misnomer given it's actually election interference.

Meanwhile, despite saying I'm not even going to think about writing until all this is done, I've been having more and more ideas for book 5 in the Twins series.

And did I show you my incredible wolf statue from the Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival? My story, "The Night of the Howling Wind" features my Twins of Bellesfées, along with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's grandfather William Foley in a mystery of murder on the Night of the Big Wind, or Oiche na Gaoithe Moire in Irish, an historical event of January 6, 1839, wherein a sudden drop in barometric pressure brought in a hurricane to flatten all of Ireland.

This is Angélique! Notice the bloody dress at her feet? Murder most feral!

BHOF Jack'n'Ef

What did you do last weekend? Jack and I did this!
And this happened!

We had our annual trip to Jamaica at the beginning of Ma...

 We had our annual trip to Jamaica at the beginning of March, where I discovered the knee pain that was crippling me was a torn meniscus, putting me in a wheelchair at the resort.

Now, it turns out the tests I'd had showed a torn meniscus, but my knee doc never discussed it with me! So I Dr. Googled it and took care of myself, so I'm much better now. 

I saw the neurosurgeon again, and he thinks we won't need the screws and rods, which is a HUGE relief! Meanwhile, he also recommended me to a brain specialist to take care of the trigeminal nerve impingement. That's a scary prospect, cutting into my neck to move an artery, but I have faith.

The writing life continues! I've submitted a story to Speculation Publications' next anthology of Grimm fairy tales retold. I had a very satisfying experience with that tale and I think you'll all enjoy it. It combines drum corps with horror with Grimm with PTSD.

I've also been invited to submit to a Time Travel anthology from Celestial Echo Press, which is funding now on Kickstarter. Head on over and kick in some bucks! It has a great line-up of authors already signed up, but it won't happen unless they're fully funded.

All of the eSpec Books funded books are now completed and ready for pre-order and will be launched at the end of April at the Tell-Tale Steampunk Festival in Baltimore. They are all three amazing books, so you should run, not walk, to pre-order them! A Cry of Hounds and Other Aether feature two stories featuring Jacqueline Duval, so take a look!

Seriously Twisted

 

When a spine gets seriously twisted, it's called scoliosis. When the lumbar and sacral spine get so seriously twisted they squeeze the nerves that go into the legs, it's called neurogenic claudication. These are common ailments that afflict habitually seated people and those who carry a heavy pack on one shoulder. 

In other words, me.

A neurosurgeon has finally figured out that these two conditions are the cause of a few of my health issues, particularly the problem of my feet and lower legs being paralyzed after about ten minutes of standing or walking. Now he wants to open up my entire back and screw with my spine. Literally! He's going to shave the arthritis off the vertebrae and screw them into place, plus clear out the shifted deposits that are crushing the nerves.

Am I scared? Heck, yeah.

If you've followed this blog, you know my health has been messed up for a long while. The stress fracture in my knee is healed after 4 long months, but there's still pain there. My heart continues to pump more blood than it can receive, so I'm still having trouble breathing when I do any kind of work or exercise... except for writing, of course, where I sit all day long reading, researching, editing, and composing, which contributes to the claudication and scoliosis.

This has led the orthopedist to try a course of a powerful level of prednisone to calm all the inflamation. What I didn't know is that steroids not only mess with the heart, they cause a seriously ugly rash on people who are prone to rashes (e.g., me) called perioral dermatitis - yup, "a rash around the mouth." No one knows what causes it, but evidently steroids trigger it and exacerbate it. So here I am with my heart beating like someone threw a drum set down the steps, and my chin covered in tiny red bumps.

It interferes greatly with writing, let me tell you!

But in other news, the seriously twisted decision of the Supreme Court in the case of Dobbs v. every woman in America inspired the amazing collection from Speculation Publications called Incubate. Now that we've had a year to see everyone-but-men's gender rights steamrolled, I want to call attention to this book again. A woman was bleeding out in a hospital parking lot and could not be treated for her miscarriage. A ten-year-old rape victim had to travel out of state to get rid of the rapist's baby. Transgender teens have been denied the treatment that will allow them to settle into their bodies. Bounty hunters have reported their neighbors for miscarrying babies at home and cleaning up the mess, leading to felony charges of "abusing a corpse." 

If that isn't seriously twisted, I'm on the wrong planet.

Go read Incubate. You'll see what grows from rage. It's a good book, with great stories.