2012 has turned in the Year of Contagious Magic. Who knew?

Work has been progressing slowly but steadily here, as I get back into the swing of the 3rd novel in the CM series. I’ve gotten the opening nailed down, and just last Friday finished up chapter three. Woo!

In the spirit of the Free Fiction page, where I offer some free short stories and excerpts from various novels, you can now read Chapter 3 in its entirety.

It may not make a LOT of sense if you haven’t read the first 2 books, but I try to get folks up to speed quickly. This happens mostly in chapter 1, which is available along with the prologue and chapter 2 from the A Lasting Cure for Magic main page.

For some reason, this chapter took me a while to get through–I think it was because I had a lot of characters to coordinate–but now that it’s underway, I’m looking forward to chapter 4! I’m still on track to get this book done by the end of the year. Just need someone to slow that calendar down (mid-October, already?)

In other Contagious Magic news, narrator extraordinaire Alyson Grauer has completed the audiobook narration for the first book in the Contagious Magic series, A Sudden Outbreak of Magic.

I’ve been keeping up with her narration via the awesome Audiobook Creation Exchange (ACX) website, and she has done a fantastic job with the pacing of the book, and her handling of the various character voices is nothing short of amazing. Her Ms. Haze is just perfect. And she does a great Polly voice as well, along with all the other in the always-growing cast of characters.

The audiobook still needs to be processed and incorporated into the Audible system, but it will be definitely be available for sale and download soon.

And then we can start thinking about the audio version of book 2, A Wild Epidemic of Magic… Fun times, y’all. Fun times.