if you didn’t already know, i’m on a bit of a social media hiatus. there are a couple of reasons for this, but, funnily enough, being back on deadline wasn’t actually the impetus; rather, it was just a happy coincidence. really, i just realized i was spending hours — hours!!! — scrolling endlessly through twitter and instagram, to the point where — i kid you not — i think i sprained my thumb.
that’s right: the main reason i decided to delete the apps off my phone was because i was spending too much time scrolling in bed, my thumb bent in an awkward position, and it reached a point where i literally could not hold my phone up anymore.
it just so happened that on the same day i made this decision, my edits came in. thankfully, my editor is mostly happy with what i had assumed to be a very, very shitty draft, so now i’m going through the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb to pretty up the language that i just kind of just haphazardly threw in there, along with tightening up some plot and character stuff. minor things, overall, so i won’t lose my mind doing a structural edit.
still, it’s taking me a shocking amount of brainpower to get through it all; i seem to be averaging a chapter a day, and my chapters are really short (less than 3k words). at this rate i won’t be done until halfway through may, which is a problem, because these edits are due at the end of april, so hopefully once i get through the first (and most problem-filled) act, i’ll be able to power through two chapters in one day. of course, this is assuming that i will be working on edits every single day, and i’ve never been good at that sort of consistency. godspeed to me.
anyway, book 2 of the alamaxa duology is currently slated for march 2024, i think, though that’s not an official release date, so don’t quote me on this. we also have a title! i’m not totally sure if i’m meant to be revealing it, but i will if you promise not to tell. book 2 shall henceforth be dubbed:
THE WEAVERS OF ALAMAXA
my editors came up with it together, because i’m awful at coming up with titles (the daughters of izdihar is my agent’s creation). the cover is in the pipeline, but i haven’t seen any mockups yet.
what’s next, you ask, after i hand in my edits and can wash my hands of this series forever? well, my next project, which is already completed (i wrote it in 2019!), is an adult historical fantasy horror, tentatively pitched as the invisible life of addie larue meets frankenstein. or something to do with alchemy, haven’t quite worked out the pitch yet. i love it a lot and i’m excited to hopefully share it one day, but of course, as with all things in publishing, there’s no guarantee that anyone will actually want to buy it, so fingers crossed on this one.
other things:
since my last newsletter i’ve done three interviews, one with the nerd daily, one with the reading corner, and one with buzzfeed
i wrote a guest post for the fantasy book cafe called the doctoress on a donkey: finding transformative fantasy in history
i watched:
s5 of luther: very pleased that they brought alice back and we got to see flashbacks of her time with john off-screen, but also something felt a bit…idk, soulless about it all? i think they tried to do something cool with mirroring alice and john but i’m not sure it came off very well. anyway, i watched this because i thought this had just come out, but turns out it came out in 2019 and i’d confused this with marketing for the movie.
s3 of you: i don’t understand how this show is as good as it is. whenever i watch it i binge a full season in its entirety and i still want more. i love how absolutely unhinged this was, and the tense and steady escalation of events was spectacularly done. it’s all so outrageous and hilarious and unexpected. also victoria pedretti deserves all the awards and i’ll watch her in anything.
i might be doing two virtual events sometime in the near future, and i’ll update twitter with links once those are finalized!