ODIN’S MURDER is no longer in print. I’ve left these entries up for those readers who have copies and enjoy Easter eggs and background info. I still have a few trade paperbacks squirreled away–catch me in person and I might have one!

“Being near her is a lot like the knife blade in my pocket; one careless move and I’m sliced open in a very personal manner.”

Ethan Tyrell has no idea how he got accepted to the Scholastic Honors Program for exceptional students, but going to college is a hell of a lot better than going back to a prison cell. Keeping his temper isn’t easy though, and keeping his hands to himself is especially difficult when he’s around his roommate’s sharp tongued and glamorous sister.

Memory Erikssen is not the kind of girl a boy can forget; she makes sure of that. Quick with both a charcoal pencil and a lipstick, she won’t draw the same line or walk the same path twice. The tension grows explosive between these two when members of their team go missing, and they must learn to trust each other as they unravel a dangerous mystery that spans centuries of local and distant legends.

The cover of Odin’s Murder got some buzz. We even got a hysterical mention on Cover Snark.
When I show it to friends, I invariably get 3 questions:

When is the book out? (eta: The book ran from September 10, 2013 to March 5, 2016.)

Is it about the Aaron Hernandez case? -No. We picked the title over two years ago. The story has nothing to do with the tragic death of Odin Lloyd.

Where did the bracelet come from? -I made it. My step-daughter is the hand-model on the cover.

On occasion I make “prop jewelry” to complete a costume design, so I tried my hand at a representation of the bracelet in the book. I made two similar ones; the first went to Angel. This is the second:

I love the weirdness and the hand-craftyness of the little charms. The pewter skull came from MoonRaven designs, and the runes from Rekon, but over all, it’s a really complicated piece, and too delicate to represent our story.
So on the next I went a bit darker and more jumbled:
This one has a solid feel that I liked–the young women in this book are not wilting flowers–but the runes themselves are difficult to see. There’s also a steampunk vibe that is not our genre. So I started over, and went big:

These have weightiness that the Viking influence has on our story, but they are huge! The half-dollar sized pendants swallowed my teen thing’s hand, and my awesome raven charm is lost in the metal behind him. Also, it weighs almost a pound.
I gave up for a while, but then last April I was in Stockholm, and I saw these sterling charms from across the entire shop. They were perfect–modern, pretty and bold–like our girls–and a good fit with some enamel crows I’d found online. And so the cover bracelet was born with the help of a needle nosed pliers:
The turquoise color motif works well against the skin tone, and is a great contrast with the red nail polish. AngstyG did the rest of the work.
(The bracelets on my wrists, they are a-jingling!)

A bit that seemed too esoteric for the flow of the scene, but gives some fun details-

Musings:
(outtake)

“The runes themselves have inherent meanings, too.” Faye turns back to the drawing in the book. The cuff of her sweater has begun to unravel, the piece of yarn an even squiggle of not brown, but many multicolored fibers spun together. “They aren’t just letters with sounds.”

“The way a Chinese character for strife is a house with two women in it?” my brother asks. He reaches for the book again, and I smack his wrist away.

“That’s not quite true, actually. Though there are characters that do have specific connotations.” She smiles at him, a wide grin, shocking on such a little face. My brother blinks, and his teeth click together. He’s not used to being told he’s wrong. “It’s more like comparing “jingle” and “jangle.” Both are basically the same word, but the “i” makes it a happy word, and the “a” a discordant one.”

“So when translating this stuff, you know that words can mean just by the letters alone?” Ethan’s face has lost his usual scowl.

“Yes. Exactly. See, look here.” She points to a word. “There are a lot of ways you could write the word “death”, but whomever carved this used the runes hagalaz and nauthiz.”

“So what does that mean?” I ask Faye.

“Well, I don’t think the woman named Kaunan died of natural causes.  This infers that she was killed.”