Hello, I’m Effie, and for the last eleven years, I’ve crafted what everyone called “The Book,” an epic fantasy I named The Outlaw King.
Storytelling was always the yolk of my egg. My earliest writing was poems, but stories were always there, and history was my favorite subject. Now, as a medievalist, I use that knowledge as a scale to write a book in a world created for you.
I was born in the USA, but have lived in multiple countries and traveled as much as most people buy their morning coffee. As a young girl, I was a tree-climbing, lizard-catching tomboy, and I am still very much that person at heart. Eventually, I grew taller, which some might call growing up, and became a restaurateur during that time. I played guitar, wrote, composed, and sang for charities. I was advised to study opera, become a translator for the Chinese Embassy, and even worked for the sheriff’s department at one point. That’s a story in itself.
It was after becoming a single mom that I became a content writer, and gave up a promising new career that I hated for the love of writing. Go figure why I threw that opportunity away. Yet, a starving artist with a great pen indeed became my sigil.
Throughout my eleven-year book-writing journey, which spanned the years I was a single mom to a wonderful son, I juggled a full-time job, wrote every day, but almost gave up. I tried burying “The Book” many times, but each night as my head hit the pillow, there was the demon with the shovel!
So, there you have it, eleven years of demons, determination, education, and many tears balanced out by the laughter of my son, cheering me on, and all the incredible elements of the book that I wanted to explore. And all the cool things in the book that I could write about.
I broke my teeth on Patrick Rothfuss, Michael Sullivan, Brandon Sanderson, and Anthony Ryan, and I kept reading. Edgar Alan Poe and Shakespeare were like pepper on food, then came Game of Thrones, which stole my heart, along with countless other books that filled my shelves. At one point, I had nearly three thousand books!
On a personal note, what I think is cool is farm life, chickens, goats, a great dog, horses, some cool cats, and picking olives and lemons off my own trees. When I’m not writing, I sketch, roast coffee, cook fabulous meals, and obsess over history as a medievalist. Give me a sword and I’d trade my jewels for it.
You might wonder, “Why did I choose indie? I believe in myself and in you. Who needs a middleman cutting out our favorite parts, deciding prices, and strangling us with book politics? We want the stories and great fantasy covers. If I learned one thing in these last eleven years, it’s “Don’t cave.”
See you over the pages,
Love Effie
BARD
The sound drove through me like spikes, cold and hard. How... how would I pry the secrets from my mind and move them to the page? How to tell the world this epic story... I wasn’t sure, I wasn’t, but I did because I am, in my soul, a bard.
King Odo, a rebel outlaw, refused the throne and is now king. Healer Zeb has no idea how he heals—he just does. Fisher, an old butcher turned squire, does nothing extraordinary, or does he? Commander Rhon has secrets he only tells Crossbow, his Rapicon wolf. Jon the Big, a scholar skilled with an axe, too large to mess with, and too smart to die. Mistra, the last surviving Protector with power jewels and deadly wings, wants to keep them alive. And Vica, the aging Traveler, with a mouth like a pirate and sworn Lawkeeper, uses her position to keep them out of the dungeons to do the impossible and save the last Dragon Kowal.
Royal Shadow Chieftain Draglar, the most feared of his kind. An enemy who has met him rarely lives to remember. Lawkeeper Honara, evil, unpredictable, and creatively cruel.
