Writing

Natasha Valentine

In the lockdowns of 2020, Dr. Natasha Roule and I began a collaborative writing project under nom de plume, Natasha Valentine. As we longed for travel and adventure, and share a love of historical fantasy, we created two unforgettable characters and wrote two epistolatory novels set in an alternate, magical regency Europe.

Two scholars of obscure magic, friends since their school days, exchange enchant-mail as they run for their lives: one accused by the international academic community of an unspeakable crime, the other pursued by the secret magical police of the Austrian Empire for a dangerous object in her possession.

Their journey takes them on separate paths across Europe, from the famed universities for magic in Paris and Vienna to the salons of Rome and Florence, across the magically-war torn wasteland of Holland and the walled city-state of Amsterdam to the dangerous Iron Court of Berlin and the opulence of St. Petersburg. Using real historical figures, events and places, the Enchanted Letters infuse 1820s Europe with magic and a mayhem to create a Regency world filled with phantom musicales, dangerous alchemy, camel-loving dragons, air-schooner pirates, surly maids, a dashing opera-singing duke, a brooding inspector, delicious food, and one very curious parrot.

The first novel, Enchantmail, is complete at 104,000 words and magically floats in the historic fantasy genre. We would group our work with books such as Sorcery and Cecelia or The Enchanted Chocolate Pot by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell Susanna Clarke, and A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness.

Carver Raer

The pseudonym under which I write accurate, if sometimes scathing, restaurant, bar, and hotel reviews.