Researching Your Own Culture

When I first started writing the book that would become A CURSE OF ROSES, I thought I could get away with doing minimal research. After all, I was writing about my own culture, using my hometown’s most famous story. I grew up in Estremoz, so I thought all I had to do was read more

The Book Deal!!

I know I don’t update this page often (hence the name–never say I don’t live up to my promises!) but this is still the most, um… “website-like” presence I have, so I kind of have to show this: A MIRACLE OF ROSES will be published come Fall 2020 by Entangled: TEEN! This book’s journey was

Have some FROSTBLOOD Fanart!

Meet my version of Ruby, Frostblood’s fiery heroine! For those interested in specifics: this took me around 20 hours on Photoshop. I used my go-to stock account, faestock, for a pose reference because hands and I do not get along well. FROSTBLOOD will be out in January 2017 from Little, Brown (US) and Hodder &

So, I’m a grown-up now

Not that I haven’t been an adult (technically, anyway) for seven years now. But I have a grown-up job that finally allows me to be monetarily independent. YAY! And since I’ve been quiet for a while, here are some illustrations I did for Withering Spring (Belladonna) and for Sightless 2.0, the game.

What I’ve been doing… part deux

So, for Game Design and Development, we had to submit a game idea of which the nine most voted by the entire class would be made into game prototypes. I subbed an idea I had based on a re-write of Sightless and it was the third(!) with more votes.So yeah, we’re making it! One tiny

Book Review: BITTERBLUE by Kristin Cashore

In Bitterblue, everything is connected. Old characters return in an amazing fashion (particularly Fire). Characters you might overlook become important when you least expect them and character who’s endeared themselves to you in the beginning, might not to matter much later on. But, like the title says, the novel is about Bitterblue and, while you

Book Review: SPECIALS by Scott Westerfeld

Tally’s brainwashing is sublime. You can feel it, taste it even and it’s repulsive – even more so because you know she’s wrong and you can’t do anything against it. She is disgusted by Zane, someone she loves, and she can’t do anything about it. It’s revolting that they took something like that away from

Book Review: WITHER by Lauren DeStefano

, I found the premise to be quite captivating, especially the part where people know their time is ticking away. There’s an urgency to everything Rhine does, all because she knows she only has four years left to live. Of course, there are people trying to find an antidote through some grueling methods and while

Book Review: PRETTIES by Scott Westerfelt

From there, the novel flows quite nicely. Like in Uglies, there is never a dull moment in Pretties. The plot is tight and intriguing and the way it ends is even more fantastic than its predecessor’s. You might even say I enjoyed Pretties’ plot even more than I did Uglies’. The first book was good,

Book Review: A GREAT AND TERRIBLE BEAUTY by Libba Bray

The book is terrifically well-written. The prose is fluid and the descriptions are quite nice. It’s also very accurate historically, from clothes to customs to the way people talk. For instance, women are only supposed to learn what they need to please a husband, a thought that was quite common in the 19th century, and