Community Spotlight

Champion Book Merch

Nov 12
1 min read

With Christmas quickly approaching I wanted to remind you of your options for bookish merchandise related to my books!*

*I (Kitty) do not receive any money from purchases made at these vendors, but I have given all of them permission to sell items inspired by my worlds. (All of them are Champions and made these products out of love for the books!)

You still have time to buy things you want delivered in time for the holiday, so enjoy this list and I hope you find some new merch you absolutely love!

Retha & Dragons - Ok, this first option isn't actually a store, it's a book written so you can run Dungeons and Dragons style campaigns in the Second Age of Retha world. If that sounds confusing you can listen to the Celebrity Retha and Dragons from the SheaCon recordings to get a feel for what it is like.

CVMG Studios - Cami John has tons of items in her store make sure you check out some of her other categories besides KM Shea Fan Stuff. She even has Christmas themed KM Shea products, and some Trash Panda items for the Retha fans!

PixlDust Designs - If you want a T-Shirt with a Magiford design you should definitely check Amelia's store as she has some really beautiful options including the crest for House Medeis and Queen Leila's person seal!

The Quiet Grove - If you like the popular style of mugs, stickers, or T-Shirts displaying books you've read then come see the super cute KM Shea themed items Julia has (plus other great items including ornaments!).

Turning OFF Blog Comments

Sep 3
2 min read

I have a sad announcement for my long time blog visitors. My team has made the difficult decision to turn off comments on the blog posts so you will no longer be able to leave messages on the posts.

This is necessary because my blog comments have become the target of spammers, some of which are using AI to make pretty convincing comments that talk about the post.

The spammers were also signing up as regular commentators which made it harder to track them. The cleanup and monitoring was taking up too much time from my team so we have decided to turn off commenting completely.

I know that some of you only use the blog to communicate so I'm sorry to take this option away from you, but here are some alternative choices to consider:

Facebook Group

If you use Facebook my group is a super fun and positive place that talks about their favorite books (not just my books)! There are usually only a few new posts a day so it's not overwhelming like some of those giant groups that post constantly.

Discord Community

The Discord chat server always had a fun discussion going and the topics are organized into different channels so you can focus on your favorite conversations. I admit that Discord can be a little tricky at first but this community is super welcoming and would be happy to help you! Signup instructions are on this web page.

Social Media: Instagram

The Instagram platform hosts a huge population of book lovers and the Champions who typically comment on my IG posts are just like you and love clean fantasy books! Come join the fun!

Social Media: Facebook Page

This probably sounds like an exaggeration with how much Facebook tries to hide Page updates from people's feeds but my Facebook Page often gets more comments than similar posts in my group! And they love reacting to my game posts every Saturday so if you use Facebook you should give my page a visit!

Drake Hall Vampires: Arts and Crafts

Jul 23
2 min read

The vampires of Drake Hall are initially introduced in the Hall of Blood and Mercy trilogy and even though most of them are initially standoffish with Hazel, the female lead of that series, you quickly realize that they don't always act like typical vampires.

They really give themselves away in the related Magiford urban fantasy series and I'm going to highlight two very specific ways because I happen to have "props" for both of these!

Custom Greeting Card for Leila

The Court of Midnight and Deception trilogy focuses on half-fae Leila and her journey as the new Queen of the Night Court. Near the beginning of the series she mentions visiting the Drake Hall vampires to get a training refresh but I didn't have a chance to include it in the actual book. So I wrote a short story about it instead!

In How to Train with Vampires you see Lelia training with the vampires, and it also jumps ahead to her opening a card from them once she is crowned Queen.

One of my reader Champions, RayJay, was inspired by the card description to mock up an example of what it probably looked like just for fun, and she kindly allowed me to share it with you! Click here to see it - you can also print it out if you'd like your own version of it!

Josh's Scrapbooks

The fact that Second Knight vampire Josh maintains scrapbooks for his boss Killian and send them to Considine was confirmed in the Magic on Main Street series. And if you read this short story: The Annoyed Eminence you get to see Josh hard at work collecting photos for a new scrapbook starring Considine.

One of the fun activities during SheaCon 2024 was a dedicated Discord channel encouraging everyone to make a "scrapbook" page that could be added to the the scrapbooks that Josh maintains for Killian and Considine's "growth".

My team tried sharing these on social media, but they aren't default social media size so Instagram auto cropped them. :( :( :(

Because of that we knew we had to share them here on the blog as well so you could view them in their full glory!