New Fantasy Novel Spring 2026

If you’ve followed my blog for any length of time, you may have noticed something…

I sort of vanished.

Back in August 2024, I cheerfully announced I was heading off on summer vacation, and then apparently decided to take the scenic route back. What I didn’t anticipate was how much my other hobbies would distract me from writing. I dove head-first back into painting, and some of my artwork got accepted into shows, pieces sold, and I spent more hours than I can count happily splashing color on canvases, wondering where the day went.

Somewhere along the way, my musical interests expanded, too. I started learning the ukulele, which is exactly as joyful and fun as you might imagine. Then I discovered handpans and tongue drums, which feel less like instruments and more like ethereal portals disguised as metal. There is something deeply calming about creating sound with your own hands; sounds that vibrate through your core. And it’s also not nearly as easy to play them as it looks!

All of those creative paths have something in common, though. They feed the same place that writing comes from: the urge to be express myself. To create something from nothing, whether it be music, art, or entirely new worlds.

The writing never stopped.

It just took longer than I expected.

But now, I’m very excited to announce that my next novel, a fantasy, Daughter of Two Realms, is scheduled for release in Spring 2026. I know, I know. You thought it was going to be another murder mystery, didn’t you? Frankly, so did I. And I’m still working on a sequel to The RH Factor. You’ll hear more about that in my next blog. And I promise, it won’t take me a year-and-a-half to write it!

I started Daughter of Two Realms back in 2017. Another NANOWRIMO draft. But I wasn’t sure if it was worth finishing. So, I set it aside. It was a flicker of an idea that I wasn’t sure was worthy of my time. And this year, for some reason, I pulled it out again and had a friend read it. Her reply was, Yes! Finish it! So, I reread it, and slowly, it wriggled its way into my soul. It grabbed me and wouldn’t let go. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. It tapped me on the shoulder while I was driving, interrupted my shower with plot solutions, and refused to let me sleep until I wrote one more scene, made one more note.

I’ve always loved speculative fiction. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been drawn to anything mysterious, eerie, or otherworldly. Vampires. Ghost stories. Demons. Witches. Creatures lurking just outside the edges of what we understand. There’s something irresistible about exploring the unknown from the safety of a story.

What I love most about the fantasy genre isn’t just the supernatural elements, though. It’s the freedom to ask enormous questions inside an adventure. Questions about identity. About belief. About morality. About who decides what is right or wrong. About whether light and darkness are truly opposites…or simply different expressions of the same thing.

Daughter of Two Realms grew out of those questions.

At the center of the story is Kendra Swift, a woman who studies faith the way a scientist approaches a specimen: with curiosity, analysis, and a comfortable emotional distance. She’s never believed in God or Satan, Heaven or Hell, and she’s perfectly content with that, much to the disappointment of her devout mother.

Until she discovers something that turns everything she believes on its head.

What follows pulls her into a reality far stranger and far more dangerous than she ever imagined. A hidden world exists alongside our own, shaped by forces that have influenced humanity for millennia. As Kendra uncovers the truth, she realizes that the lines between myth and reality may not be as clear as she once believed. And that she herself may be connected to that world in ways she never could have predicted.

I know you probably want more, but that’s as much as I want to divulge. One of my favorite moments as a reader is discovery; that spark of surprise when the story turns and you suddenly realize things are much bigger than you thought. I want you to have that experience with this book, so I’m being intentionally vague. I want the reveals in this story to land with full impact.

What I can say is that this new fantasy novel explores themes of belonging, free will, personal responsibility, and the search for truth in a universe where certainty is hard to find. There are moments of danger, moments of humor, moments of wonder, and moments where the characters have to rely on nothing but their own courage and intelligence to move forward.

It also contains some of my favorite characters I’ve ever written.

Kendra is stubborn, impulsive, and sometimes reckless. She doesn’t accept answers just because someone in authority gives them. She pushes back. She asks why. Sometimes that gets her into trouble. Sometimes it changes everything.

And there are others who walk beside her, some trustworthy, some not, some whose motives aren’t immediately clear. Relationships evolve in ways I hope readers will enjoy discovering without me spoiling them here.

If you’ve read my previous books, you know I like taking familiar ideas and looking at them from new angles; twisting them into something different. That’s definitely true here. This novel draws inspiration from mythology, theology, historical texts, and centuries of evolving belief systems, but it’s ultimately a work of fiction built around a lot of “what ifs.”

What if the stories we’ve been telling for thousands of years contain fragments of something real? Or what if everything we’ve believed in is wrong?

And what if understanding that truth changes everything?

After such a long creative detour into painting and music, returning to announce a new novel feels a bit like coming home with pockets full of strange new treasures. Over the next few months, I’ll be sharing more updates as I move toward release, including cover reveals, the final synopsis, and interviews with some of the characters.

I also can’t wait to tell you all about my next mystery novel, which continues the adventures of Pax and Regina.

For now, I just wanted to reconnect and let you know that I’m still here.

Still creating.

Still exploring strange worlds.

And I can’t wait for you to step into this one.

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