Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 4
October 25, 2022
Comic Sans – The ABCs of Spellcraft 13
If a man’s home is his castle…then his stash is his treasure.
When a traveling comic book auctioneer comes to town, Dixon is thrilled to hear his father’s beloved basement stash might contain something valuable after all: a mint condition copy of the rare Eel Man #1.
But when they unearth the comic book, Yuri ends up finding a lot more than he bargained for. Now he’s no longer sure if Dixon is really the product of a loving, happy home…or if Spellcraft is the only thing holding his family together.
To make matters worse, the comic book has a major “issue” of its own.
The quest to restore the comic takes Dixon and Yuri from one wonky end of Pinyin Bay to the other. Can they salvage their big find and save a marriage—or is their copy of Eel Man #1 worth nothing more than the paper it’s printed on?
Find Comic Sans at your favorite online store
October 22, 2022
A Bucket of Differences
Don’t miss the wacky Spellcraft find-the-differences puzzle in today’s JCP Saturday Snippet!
October 15, 2022
JCP News Oct 2022
Read about my latest goings on in this month’s JCP News
October 14, 2022
Making Traditions
Does your family have any traditions? One tradition my family practiced nearly every Easter was forgetting we’d bought a butter lamb and leaving it in the fridge, then finding it later that night while we put away leftovers. (This sounds like a very Penn Family tradition, except the part where a Handless religious holiday is involved!)
Bucket List gave me the opportunity to create lots of new Scrivener traditions. There’s the ceremony in the opening scene where Dixon and Fonzo get their promotions.
Then the superstitions taken to the nth degree by the Joneses. And finally, the “pitching woo” gifts showing up on Fonzo’s doorstep. Imagining how traditions like this would evolve, and how they’d play out in a modern world—the Spellcraft world—was one of the great joys of writing this series.
I hope you’ll have as much fun delving into the tradition-rich Scrivener culture of this story as I did in writing it!
October 12, 2022
Pinyin Bay Musings
One of the things that makes “cozies” popular is the quirky small town. Pinyin Bay has definitely become a character in its own right in The ABCs of Spellcraft. Initially I just thought of it as being on a body of water and having a tourist area that was pretty dead in the winter. Maybe I was thinking about poking around Lake Mendota when I lived in Madison and watching the muskrats.
But the Pinyin Bay Boardwalk soon played a bigger part in the story, giving it some local flavor. At that point the city was feeling more like the Niagara Falls of my childhood (I grew up just down the river), or maybe like Wisconsin Dells. Tourist trap places with all kinds of oddball shops and attractions…some of them a little ragged around the edges, but still good fun.
My favorite neighborhood in Pinyin Bay has definitely come to be Scrivener Village. I think I’d love to live there, even if it probably meant my plumbing wouldn’t always work and I’d be privy to the arguments of all my neighbors.
What is the quirkiest place you’ve ever lived?
Spellcraft #12, Bucket List, Just came out! Find it here.
September 1, 2022
The Tinker’s Apprentice
Magic lovers – have you checked out my free standalone novella, The Tinker’s Apprentice? You can find it in the Your Book Boyfriend’s Boyfriend giveaway at Prolific Works. https://claims.prolificworks.com/gg/ybf1faNIu2uLbtwGNE7E
August 6, 2022
Cover Reveal: Subtle Bodies
Are you all caught up on your PsyCop reading? Subtle Bodies is coming out in ebook and paperback August 22 (and, holy heck, August is just flying by.)
Audio is planned as well, I’ll keep you posted.
Right now the preorder is at Amazon only, but by release day Subtle Bodies will be available at all the usual booksellers. No Kindle Unlimited availability is planned at the moment, because Amazon demands exclusivity, so KU enrollment would mean my wide readers couldn’t get the book at their preferred seller. But I’m doing my best to make the books available to everyone where they prefer to read.
April 30, 2022
A Seasonal Word Search
What do a mustache and a potato have in common? They appear in the PsyCop Seasons word search in today’s Saturday Snippet email!
https://preview.mailerlite.com/a6q6n7h8h2
April 15, 2022
My First Sci Fi Novel
Celebrating 20 years writing MM Romance with a deep dive on my first SF novel, Zero Hour, in this month’s JCP News!
March 13, 2022
JCP News March 2022
What was the first Jordan Castillo Price story to appear in print? Find out in this month’s JCP News.
