BLACK LILY IS OUT NOW!

Cover model: Ingvild Eiring

Black Lily is the fourth book in The 9 Lives of the Outlaw Known as Crazy Cat series. It’s a fast-paced tale of daring to trust new allies, fighting boredom with bullets, and making plans for the future while hiding from the law.

Lee has teamed up with an old friend and is back at outlawing again. The duo gains a new nemesis in a ruthless bounty hunter, and new accomplices in an accidental killer and a stagecoach driver with a secret.

The outlaw known as Crazy Cat gets to prove what she’s made of in encounters with
tyro outlaws, a wounded gang member, and an aging horse, and worst of all: stagecoach passengers.

Get your copy here: Paperback or Kindle

BLACK LILY: THE SOUNDTRACK

Model: Ingvild Eiring

Y’all! Those of you who have been following me for a while knows what this means – this being the soundtrack to my next book… It means that I’m just about done with another book! That’s right. I’ve taken my sweet time with this one, but I’m almost done with Black Lily, the fourth book in The 9 Lives of The Outlaw Known as Crazy Cat series. We’re looking at release this year, late November/early December. All I have left to do is read through it one more time before I send it off to get proofed and… y’know, all the boring stuff, like formatting and getting it ready for publishing. In the meantime, here’s the soundtrack to Black Lily to get you in the mood for another adventure with the wildest cat in the crazy west.

If you want to be the first to know when Black Lily is available, be sure to sign up to my Mailing List.

Whiskey & Whiskers is Out Now

Whiskey & Whiskers collects the first three books in The 9 Lives of The Outlaw Known as Crazy Cat series.

Get your copy here: Paperback or Kindle

Said about Embers a Dawn, the first book:

“If you like your Westerns dark and morally ambiguous, J.C. Loen’s EMBERS AT DAWN is plenty of both.” –Charles Baker for IndieReader

Said about An Obelus Wheeze, the second book:

“To say I liked the lead character would be an understatement. The balance between her tough will to survive and her loyalty and gentleness to those closest to her is a joy to read and I found myself smiling, even laughing out loud, on many an occasion.” – Kenneth Wilson, Goodreads

Said about The 7th Bullet, the third book:

“I really enjoyed the strong female outlaw. The story kept me reading and wondering if I was right in what I expected to happen.” Lynn, Goodreads

 

Zerelda Exhibition

Yeee-haw! The exhibition of images from the photo book I made in collaboration with Ingvild Eiring kicks off at Cyan Salong in Oslo next Friday. Prints, originals and, of course, the book itself will be for sale.

Here’s what y’all need to know:

Launch party: Friday, September the 16th from 18.00.

Talk, yup… that’s right, Ingvild and I will be rambling on about the project on Thursday the 22nd from 19.00.

The exhibition will be up and running for two weeks, with regular hours from Saturday the 17th to Friday the 30th of September. Open Tuesday – Sunday from 12-15.00. Closed on Mondays.

Ingvild and I will be present at the launch party and the talk, and I will be present at the gallery on the weekends (Friday – Sunday). Stop by and and say howdy! 🙂

The 7th Bullet is Out Now!

The 7th Bullet is the third book in the The 9 Lives of the Outlaw Known as Crazy Cat series—a Gothic western that draws upon elements from both horror and crime. It’s a foreboding tale of friendship and grief, madness, and haunts, and seeing a man about a horse.

Lee is offered a chance at freedom—all she has to do is assist a Pinkerton detective during an investigation and sign a contract where she swears to become a law-abiding citizen. She agrees to help the detective, but will she sign the contract and give up her outlawing ways?

The investigation brings her to the arid Bonneville flats and a lodge run by a family of spiritualists. They may or may not be able to talk to the dead, but they certainly have a connection to them.

Get your copy here:

Paperback

or e-book from

Amazon(Kindle)

Smashwords

Barnes & Noble (Nook)

iBooks

Google Books

Ebok.no

or

Enter my Goodreads giveaway for a chance to win a signed copy of the paperback edition here.

 

Paws in the air!

My good friend and often partner in crime Ingvild Eiring does more than model, make-up and costume, she is a terrific sculptor as well. Her speciality is mice in victorian clothing. I asked her to make me a Crazy Cat inspired mouse… and then this happened. Mad Mouse came to life. I couldn’t be happier with the result, every little detail is perfect, from Lee’s (Crazy Cat) whisker scars to a pair of tiny spurs. Everything is handmade, even the clothes are sewn by Ingvild.

Ingvild takes commissions, if you want a custom mouse too, just send an email to: ingvild.eiring@gmail.com

The 7th Bullet: The Soundtrack

The 7th Bullet, the next installment in The 9 Lives of The Outlaw known as Crazy Cat series will soon be complete (within a few months). The story is edited into a cohesive narrative, what remains is polishing and proofreading.

While you wait for the book, I’ve made a soundtrack for it, like I did for Embers at Dawn and An Obelus Wheeze. After (almost) completing my third novel, I’ve found out that the story ain’t “there yet” until the soundtrack flows smoothly. Just like the book, the soundtrack has been put through a rigorous editing process where darlings have been killed and gaps filled. If a song feels out of place or forced, it might of course be the wrong song for the scene, but most often I find that the fault lies in the scene it’s meant to accompany. First and foremost I put together these soundtracks for my own enjoyment, but they are also a great tool to better understand the ebb and flow of the narrative.

Tintype

I did my very first tintype shoot last week. Ingvild Eiring modeled, and styled the clothes. As always, we had a blast! And the tintypes turned out beautifully, if I may say so myself. See more of my tintypes over at julieloen.com or even more at Flickr.

I used the Rockland Colloid Tintype Parlor Kit from Freestyle Photographic and borrowed my boyfriend’s Holga. The kit includes 8 4×5” black aluminum plates. I cut the plates into 16 smaller plates to fit the medium format camera, this also left me with 16 extra mini plates I used to test the exposure with. The kit also contains emulsion, developer, fixer and easy instructions – everything you need, except trays and safelight. I used cheap food container boxes from IKEA as trays, when I was done for the day I just put the lid on the chemicals.

The few glitches I encountered were all about the emulsion: getting the damn thing onto the plates evenly (I had to reheat it for about every 4th plate), and leaving the plates long enough in the developer – the three minutes the instruction suggested were far from enough, but then again, it might have been a bit colder than the preferred 20°C. When the plate isn’t properly developed the image will turn out blue, typically in the corners and around the edges. The blue is impossible to see under red safelight in the darkroom, so buckle up for surprises!