It's been a wildly busy time for me. I'm completed my first contemporary fantasy, The Grimoire. It will be the first book in a series called The Foreseers, which is an international coven of witches with a history stretching back thousands of years. What's particularly fun for me in this project is that my husband Eric has partnered with me on all the research. While we were in graduate school at Yale Eric was the teaching assistant for a political science course titled Intelligence and Covert Operations more commonly referred to as "Spies and Lies." We took his knowledge of the intelligence community and international political economy and used it in creating The Foreseers organization. The missions and functions of The Foreseers mirror the real-life functioning of the intelligence community.

Once we were rolling on creating this secret world (the first book is set in Virginia), we decided we needed orders of magical creatures to be aligned with The Foreseers or their magical enemies and maybe a few species being recruited by both sides! Thus we researched various cultures and mythologies around the globe looking for similarities between creatures appearing in multiple cultures across history. Thus, we were able to create magical creatures which are known throughout history and thus can function in various cells around the world. We spent over six months "world building." Our date nights were pretty exciting. Anyone overhearing us was probably a bit confused hearing about secret missions, spells, and griffin attacks!

In The Grimoire Gemma Morrin is a talented witch who shares her family's ancestral home with a perfect roommate, her great-grandmother Fiona. Fiona cooks, loves to garden, and has a wonderful, irreverent sense of humor that is in no way affected by the fact that she's a ghost. When a witch from Fiona's ancestral coven, The Foreseers, shows up bedraggled and frightened, Gemma's calm world is shattered. The Foreseers have been decimated by the wizard Cathaoir in his pursuit of a key central to the coven's power. The Foreseers convince Gemma to protect the key from Cathaoir while they regroup, but to stop his search she must get close enough to him to use her unique ability to alter perceptions without being killed. Cathaoir meanwhile has begun a campaign of escalating terror attacks on Gemma's family and town to coerce her into revealing the key. To add to the chaos, Connor Hogan, a mortal man with whom Gemma is falling in love, discovers her witchcraft. Once he gets past the initial shock, he is determined to help her. This girl has definitely got a lot on her plate!

Eric and I have had a wonderful time with The Grimoire, combining magic, action, intrigue and, of course, a touch of romance. Stay tuned for a release date for The Grimoire and the next book in The Foreseers series.

My best to all,

Mary