Raven Oak's Blog, page 2

For the Honor of…Amaska?

Sorry, my 80’s child is running rampant today so of course I’m thinking of He-Man and Castle Grayskull… but I’m also thinking about Amaskan’s Honor and the end of the Boahim Trilogy because it’s almost here!

I’ve been a bit busy prepping for WorldCon and everything happening in September, so much so that I forgot to post that not only is Amaskan’s Honor done but it has a release date. Amaskan’s Honor will hit bookshelves on:

September 16, 2025

That’s right! Not only is the book coming o...

WorldCon Schedule

The 2025 Seattle Worldcon programming schedule just dropped so I can now share my schedule for the convention.

I’ll be in the Dealer’s Hall with Books & Chains. My art will be in the Art Show and will have some brand-spanking-new art that I’ll be adding prints and stuff of to my shop soon. 

Here’s my WorldCon Schedule for when I’m not in the Dealer’s Hall.

WEDNESDAY 8/13

7:30-8:30 PM    They Said WHAT? Panel – Room 431-432

THURSDAY 8/14

4:30-5:30 PM Table Talk (Come sit at my ...

Educated

NOTE: I’m going to talk about a memoir I just read that deals HEAVILY with religious, physical, verbal, and emotional abuse. I’m going to be making a few references to that abuse. If that’s not something you wish to read about, you do not have to read this post. Self-care is the best care.

While I mostly read speculative fiction, memoirs are a genre I greatly enjoy as well. Something about diving into someone else’s mind and history makes for quite an intimate read and experience. I love ...

Proliance Surgeons

I could write an entire second memoir about navigating the US healthcare system while: 

FatAFAB (assigned female at birth)Nonbinary/TransAutisticImmunocompromisedMedically ComplexQueerDisabledSuffering from Long-COVIDStill Masking

Truly. Rather than take on something of that…size, I figure I’ll write about one particular element in this chaotic hellscape, which is: Proliance Surgeons. I’m going to give you a bit of backstory before I get to the colossa...

Art in Progress

I just finished a new art piece for the Seattle Worldcon Art Show coming up in August, which I’ve titled Freedom. The piece is a mix of sci-fi and fantasy as I pulled in one of the cat-like creatures from my Boahim Trilogy because who doesn’t love cross-genre?

I love doing these “art in progress” pieces because it lets you into my process and my brain. Working digitally means that besides hitting the “undo” key, I can zoom in a LOT and work with much finer details than I could with a canvas, ...

Riley Loves Cheese

Riley loves cheese and not just the kind in Beth Cato‘s new book, a cozy mystery involving lots of cheese and cheesy murder. If he could, Riley would eat cheese until he popped. In fact, if Molli and I have any sort of cheese, he is all up in our business trying to steal a piece or three. So it fits that he sat beside this book I just finished…

Beth’s tales are always good, as are her blog posts about cheese and baking bready things. I’m fairly picky about cozy mystery as too many of them...

Speed Date a Book

Last December, I was part of Strong Women, Strange World’s Holiday Extravaganza Event, which included my participating in “Speed Date a Book,” in which folks who attended got to speed date Amaskan’s Blood.

It was a ton of fun and I didn’t do too badly considering I was barely a week out from major surgery to remove a necessary organ! I was so swollen and my voice really scratchy, but it turned out good! They just uploaded the video clip of my speed dating portion to YouTube for you all to see...

Cycles

Most authors have cycles or a process they use when writing a novel, myself included. Over the years, mine has changed here and there as my abilities and knowledge in my craft changed (aka improved), but nothing changed it more than COVID. (I promise this is not a post solely about the pandemic.)

Prior to COVID, my novels ranged from 80,000-140,000 words depending upon the genre and reader expectations. Something of that length took me four months to create. For a book that’s 100,000 words or...

Your Best

All you can do is your best when it comes to your family. Molli and I try our absolute best to do right by our three kitties—goodness knows we’ve spent enough money on them and their medical issues over the past eighteen years—but sometimes we goof. Like yesterday morning…

Medicating the cats is an ordeal that takes place four times a day. Two of the times are easy-peasy, but the other two times are complicated. I’d like to say that mistakes don’t happen but they do. It’s occasional, but some...

A Journey

I’m about to say something really cliche, but bear with me. 

Writing is a journey, and it should be.

So why the cliche? This comes from a conversation I was having this past weekend with my wife, Molli, about how challenging it is to write a novel or a story. Even when the words come speeding out my brain like I’m on a race track, the process isn’t easy, and I don’t believe it should be.

If I’m doing my job correctly, telling a story shares pieces of myself with you. If the soul is an a...