He has been a welcoming voice for so many writers in the Pacific Northwest and a tower of cheerful humor. Pitts was one of my earliest writing friends.

It’s also one of the only books I’ve reviewed here that. SFWA President Mary Robinette Kowal commented, “John A. A Pitts’s Black Blade Blues remedies some of this gap with a conflicted, complicated and believable lesbian lead, Sarah Beauhall. Pitts brings Norse mythology into the modern world in this amusing debut. Her free time is spent mostly with friends in a a medieval re-enactment group. Tor, 25.99 (397pp) ISBN 978-0-7653-2467-2. Thats a part-time day job her night job is as a props manager for a low-budget movie. Pitts ( 98 ) 11.99 Sarah Beauhall has more on her plate than most twenty-somethings: day job as a blacksmith, night job as a props manager for low-budget movies, and her free time is spent fighting in a medieval re-enactment group. He also enrolled in the Oregon Coast Writers Workshop. Pitts Sarah Beauhall is a blacksmith in training, an apprentice to another female smith who mostly works on shoeing horses. Black Blade Blues (Sarah Jane Beauhall Book 1) by J. He earned a Masters of Library Science from the University of Kentucky, but wound up working in high tech fields. Pitts grew up in Kentucky with a love for books and reading, imprinting on the fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs and Robert E. From 2015 through 2016, he published The Cleric Journal, a sword-and-sorcery serial which featured daily additions and totaled more than half a million words. Pitts with Black Blade Blues, the first novel in his series about Sarah Beauhall.

He went on to write several short stories on his own and in 2010 began publishing novels under the name J.A. Pitts began publishing short fiction in 2006 with “There Once Was a Girl from Nantucket (A Fortean Love Story),” co-written with Ken Scholes.

SFWA Middle Grade and Young Adult Writers.

Operating Policies and Procedures (OPPM).

And the cherry on the sundae? The discovery that Sarah’s girlfriend is from a family that has been battling these forces for generations and they look to Sarah as their last best hope. Odin himself appears with ravens at his side and cryptic advice for the fledgling heroine. Fairies and dwarves and giants abound, the fault line of the Pacific Northwest is rife with ancient Norse magic. On top of all this, it appears that Sarah has managed to reforge an ancient sword that everyone suddenly wants… and those who don’t want the weapon want Sarah to take on her destiny and become humanity’s saviour.Īs Sarah tries to make her way in this new world, she discovers just how little she knows of reality. Her world falls apart when she discovers that dragons are real and live among us as shapeshifters in fact, it is they who have been the secret masters of our world from time immemorial. Sarah Beauhall is a blacksmith, has a night job as a props manager for a low-budget movie, and spends her free time fighting in a medieval re-enactment group.

Black Blade Blues by J.A. Pitts