
The Candlefrog Chronicles is a fantasy novel I'm currently writing.
The Candlefrog Chronicles takes place in the Land of Gand, in the country of Ohio, where the Storm Church controls the weather and rules over the Patchlands, and where cats, whose dark magic was once feared by all, are now extinct.
Or so Ohioans thought.
Then a black cat named Vanderbell Witherwisk visits Pella P’taleon at midnight on Stormday eve, and gives her a little red book. Her life will never be the same.
Joined by Ully Elynod, a wide-eyed and wonder-filled Candlefrog, and Mirielle Cray, an old woman who lives in a grasshopper, Pella’s adventures take her to the Whoostling in the Windyhills, to Doquilozond, the grand library of the Candlefrogs, and face to face with the dark truth about Ohio, and the future of her soul.
Vanderbell looked at the Tabberwoosh and then back at Pella. His green eyes met hers, but he spoke to the Tabberwoosh. "The girl knows cat magic. I don't know how, and I don't why. But I intend to train her. It may be our only hope."
While writing this novel, I’m also making up, mapping, and illustrating the Land of Gand, which has existed in my head and on paper for about seven years. If you might be interested in an empire of pigs who worship technology (the Tilhilnilians), tamarins who live in turtle ships (the Sobaloopsians), and time-foxes who tend the hour-gardens in vast underground caves (the Cadazquilazians), then you’ll love Gand, the strangest, most wonderful world you’ve ever visited.

This is an oil painting I did in 2016. I wrote the first draft of The Candlefrog Chronicles in 2019.