Issue 22

Hello wonderful subscribers! You may have noticed there was no September newsletter. Well, September was absolutely packed for me—all good things, but enough of them cumulatively that doing a newsletter slipped to the bottom of the priority pile. Thank you for sticking with me!

In a personal update, I spent a week in September visiting the Grand Canyon for the first time in my life. This has always been a bucket list item for me (and a health scare in 2023 has had me ardently pursuing the completion of those since), but also, it was a personally meaningful assignment. I studied geology as an undergrad, and my advisor, Jan (the department professors all went by first names), was an incredibly inspiring person who also taught the intro to geology class. At the end of the class, she told us our final assignment was to go to the Grand Canyon. I kept up with Jan semi regularly after graduating and always wanted to tell her I’d completed the assignment.

Sadly, Jan passed away unexpectedly last fall. I didn’t get to tell her I finally went to the Grand Canyon. But I thought of her while I was there, and I like to think she somehow knows.

News

For those who have been following along with the ENTER HERE anthology, we’ve announced our final lineup of authors! ICYMI, CJ Subko and I are co-editing an anthology of speculative fiction on the theme “a door opens.” The collection is shaping up to be amazing and I’m so excited for everyone to read it!

If you’d like to grab a copy, you can still do that through the Kickstarter!

Writing updates

This month has been all about revisions! I have just finished my first round of revisions with my editor on This Treacherous Night, and I’m simultaneously working on my second contracted adult book, getting ready to turn them in to my editors. I’m having a lot of fun with both—including the pleasure of being able to write two very different projects! (They both feature queer and disabled characters in fantasy settings, but the adult book is a cozy fantasy rom com, while TTN is an action-packed heist story about found family and forms of power—the romance in it is very much a subplot.)

While there are certain themes and archetypes I’m drawn to, I’m definitely not a writer who just sticks to one subgenre—so I’m really excited to get to stretch my muscles this way! I’m also commissioning some lovely character art for TTN and am planning to share the first piece once it reaches 100 adds on Goodreads.

Events and appearances

On October 11th and 12th, I’ll be joining HearthCon to chat about spicy cozy fantasy and humorous cozy fantasy (two different panels). Registration details here! It’s all online and it’s free!

I don’t have any other events on the schedule just yet, but I will very likely at least be dropping by a few at Protagonist Books and will possibly be participating in a few in the future! Protagonist is a women-owned, queer-owned independent bookstore that just opened in Dryden, NY (very close to Ithaca). If you’re in the area, definitely check them out—it’s a lovely and welcoming space (and their selection of gluten free baked goods is the best I’ve found, unparalleled). I had a fantastic time doing a fantasy panel there in September and will absolutely be going back regularly!

Crafty Corner

Between the Grand Canyon and revisions, I’ve been thinking a lot about layers. Bear with me for an extended metaphor.

The Grand Canyon, like so many geological phenomena, looks straightforward if you don’t know how to interpret it, but is in reality the result of a stunningly complex series of processes. First the sediments were deposited in the shallow seas and dunes that once covered portions of North America—a process that took hundreds of millions of years. Then those sediments were compressed into rock, buried deep beneath the surface. Finally, they were uplifted back to the surface and scoured away by millions more years of erosion. (This is an extremely simplified version of its history, by the way.)

The Grand Canyon is a lot like writing a good book: it doesn’t happen all at once. First you have to deposit the sediments of words and sentences and chapters (drafting). Then it undergoes metamorphosis into a more cohesive and durable form (initial revising). You cut away the pieces that aren’t working until you expose the beauty (more revising). In the end, maybe it looks nothing like your first tentative layers. The end product that readers see is just one part of many, many steps, the cumulation of adding and refining and sometimes cutting away entire subplots and scenes (did you know the Grand Canyon is missing hundreds of millions of years of history in its layers? It’s called the Great Unconformity, and it’s really cool). And people will spend just the tiniest fraction of the time you spent with it, and return to their normal lives with wonder in their hearts.

All this to say: writing a good book takes time, patience, and a lot of change. (Fortunately, our books don’t have to spend hundreds of millions of years becoming themselves, even though publishing can feel like it moves at glacial speed. Which is actually pretty fast in terms of geologic time.)

Is there a craft or publishing topic you’d like me to cover? Hit reply or leave a comment!

Book recommendations

I really loved A Marriage of Undead Inconvenience by Stephanie Burgis! It’s a fantasy rom com novella set in an alternate historical England with nods to Beauty and the Beast, only the “beast” is a vampire who is not thrilled about being rudely awoken to be married off, and the “beauty” is a scholar who’s an expert on magical artifacts. If you like the Emily Wilde books, this one is for you.

I’ve loved every Stephanie Burgis book I’ve read and this one was no exception! There’s also a sequel, A Honeymoon of Grave Consequence—I was lucky enough to read an arc and loved it even more than the first! It doesn’t seem to be on Bookshop.org yet, but it can be found elsewhere.

To see all my newsletter recommendations, visit the full list here!