Dear Readers,
Welcome to the September newsletter.
You may have noticed that August did not have one.
I would love to offer you a dramatic explanation. The truth is far more ordinary: I was busy, I was tired, and every time I sat down to write it, I discovered I had nothing cheerful to say.
June left more of a mark than I expected. The house was repaired within a week. I took slightly longer. I kept starting sentences about it and then deleting them, and eventually I decided that a newsletter written through gritted teeth was not something I wanted to hand to you.
So I skipped it.
Thank you to everyone who checked I was still alive. It was lovely, and only mildly alarming.
I am here. I am writing. The universe has, for now, forgotten about me again.
Long may that continue.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
🌱 A Change of Season
Spring has arrived on my side of the world.
Someone has finally located the thermostat.
The sun has been turned back up to a setting I would describe as "functional," and for the first time in months I can type without my fingers feeling like they belong to someone else. I have emerged from beneath approximately four blankets and rejoined society.
To my readers in the North: I am sorry. Your turn.
Enjoy your autumn. Enjoy the leaves, the jumpers, the socially acceptable excuse to drink hot things constantly. I will think of you fondly while sitting outside in actual daylight.
We are, as always, exactly six months out of step with each other, which I find quietly delightful.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
📚 This Month in the Stories
🎉 New Release — Beastkin Chronicles 1: The Exiled Princess
This is the big one.
A brand new book, a brand new world, and a heroine named Aeryn who has spent the past month refusing to let me think about anything else.
If you have room for one more story in your life, I would love for you to take a look. If you do not, that is entirely fine — I know how long a reading list can get. But if you have space, Aeryn would very much like to be read, and she has been extremely insistent about it.
More on why this book exists in a moment.
📖 Weaves of Ashes & Rebirth of the Technomage
To everyone still reading both of these, and especially to those of you who stayed patient through a very rough June and a completely silent August: thank you.
You have no idea how much easier it is to sit down and write when you know there are people waiting on the other side.
Both stories continue. Neither is being abandoned for the shiny new thing. I have simply acquired a third plate, and I am spinning all of them with what I would generously call competence.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
🎁 Reader Giveaway
ABDHY24PKY2SGUJEA
The code can be redeemed by:
◇ 10 readers
◇ 10 FP per reader
First come, first served, as always. Luck decides.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
💭 A Glimpse Behind the Curtain
Several of you have asked how I write, and why a new book appeared when I already have two.
I will attempt to explain, though I warn you now that the explanation does not make me sound entirely well.
First, a confession: I have no idea how other authors do this.
That is deliberate. I do not read about craft. I do not read interviews about process. I have, in fact, more or less stopped reading fiction altogether, which feels like a terrible thing for an author to admit.
The reason is simple. I am frightened of absorbing someone else's voice by accident.
Not through any grand principle. I just know myself, and I know that if I read something brilliant on a Tuesday, there is an excellent chance that by Thursday my sentences will have quietly rearranged themselves to sound like it, and I will not have noticed it happening. So I keep the doors shut and work with what is already in the house.
What is already in the house is quite loud.
The stories do not arrive as ideas. They arrive as tenants.
A story will move in and sit there for months, doing very little, while I go about my ordinary life. Then it starts talking. Then it starts talking during work. Then it starts talking at 2am while I am trying to sleep, and eventually it becomes so loud that writing it down is the only way to get any peace.
That is the entire process. I am not a planner. I am a landlord with poor boundaries.
Some days Jayde and her people take over completely, and I write nothing else. Some days it is Raven. For the whole of the past month it has been Aeryn, relentlessly, until I finally sat down and gave her a book of her own.
That is why Beastkin Chronicles exists. Not strategy. Not a plan. Just a woman who would not stop talking.
And I should mention, in the interest of full disclosure, that there is a fourth story currently whispering.
I am pretending not to hear it.
It is not working.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
✍️ The Website
Still happening. Still slow.
I continue to gather content, save what I can, and work on it in the gaps between everything else. Progress is being made, but at the speed of a woman building something one brick at a time while three books and six cats compete for her attention.
It will exist. Eventually. I am simply refusing to give it a deadline, because the universe reads my deadlines and finds them funny.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
🍫 A Brief and Bitter Word About Chocolate
I should warn you that I am mildly grumpy this month.
Winter has ended, and winter took with it any pretence that my clothing still fits. I have gained weight. This is not a tragedy. What follows the weight gain is the tragedy.
No more sugar.
For most people this is an inconvenience. For me it is a bereavement. I rank chocolate somewhere between water and oxygen on the list of things required to sustain human life, and I am now expected to simply carry on without it, like a normal person.
Which brings me to my complaint.
We have put a man on the moon. We have machines that can hold a conversation. We can photograph things that happened billions of years ago at the far end of the universe.
And yet nobody has produced a staple food that delivers every calorie, mineral, and vitamin a human requires while tasting exactly like chocolate cake.
I refuse to believe this is a technical limitation. I think we simply have our priorities wrong.
If any scientists are reading this newsletter, please consider it a formal request.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
🐾 The Cat Chaos Report: The Introductions
You have all met Nimbus and Powder, who remain exactly as they were. Nimbus still requires nightly rescue from locations approximately two metres from the door, and still looks at me as though I am the one with the problem.
But there are six cats in this house, and I have only ever introduced two of them. That seems unfair to the other four, who have been contributing to the chaos this entire time without credit.
So. Introductions.
🖤 Siren — The Lady of the House
Siren is the eldest. We found her seven years ago in an abandoned warehouse, a tiny scrap of a thing who has since developed the bearing of minor royalty.
For a long time she confused me deeply.
She is black. Except she is not. If you actually look at her coat, roughly three quarters of each hair is silver, with only the very tip in black. I spent an embarrassing amount of time unable to decide whether I owned a black cat or a silver cat committing fraud.
Eventually I did some research and discovered that she is a British Shorthair and the colouring is called black smoke.
I have read the explanation. I understand the genetics. I still believe she is a silver cat in disguise, and no amount of science is going to shift me on this.
Siren is extraordinarily ladylike. She is also the only cat I know who insists on skincare. She watches me do my routine every single day, and when I reach the end she delicately lifts one front paw, then the other, to receive her share of the face cream.
I have been doing this for seven years. I have stopped questioning it. She also has opinions about perfume.
She is the main reason I am so pleased spring has arrived. Siren despises the cold, and has spent the last three months in direct competition with my keyboard for possession of my lap. She has never accepted that a lap must be positioned underneath a desk in order for writing to occur, and she certainly does not accept that humans occasionally need to stand up.
Every bathroom break, every meal, every attempt to fetch a drink has been met with formal complaint.
She has now relocated to the couch behind me.
We are both much happier.
🧡 Lunabell — The Hunter
Lunabell is a tortoiseshell Persian who arrived as a temporary guest. We were asked to babysit her for a few weeks while her owner sorted out some personal difficulties.
Some months later, he collected her, kept her for one night, and returned her the following day.
She had, apparently, become too noisy.
That was two years ago. She is ours now.
Lunabell's greatest achievement to date is the capture of two crickets, both of which were large enough that I would have accepted "locust" as a description. On both occasions she screamed as though she were being actively murdered, which sent me sprinting across the house in a blind panic.
The first time, it took me an embarrassingly long while to work out what she wanted. Then the human brain finally engaged.
She wanted recognition.
She did not quieten down until I had told her, repeatedly and with feeling, that she was a magnificent hunter and I was extremely proud of her.
The flaw in this system is that she does not kill the cricket. She merely detains it.
Which means the ceremony is always followed by me removing a very much alive insect from the premises, while the great huntress supervises.
🐅 Archimedes & Hades — The Brothers
Two tabbies, rescued from a rabbit cage. It is a long story, and one for another newsletter.
Archie is convinced he is the master of this house. He spends his days on patrol, walking the borders of his territory with the seriousness of a man who has never been told his job is imaginary.
Hades is what I will politely call special.
I am reasonably confident he was a squirrel in a previous life. Unless food is involved, he appears to operate on a slight delay. When another cat attempts to pick a fight with him, his response is to flop over and give them a wide-eyed look of complete blankness, which is so confusing that the aggressor generally gives up and leaves.
It is not a strategy. He is simply like that. But it works, which is arguably worse.
He spends his entire day in whichever patch of sunlight is currently available. His only recorded exercise is the sprint to his food bowl, and heaven help you if that bowl is late. Sleeping in is not permitted. He will stand on your chest, yowling and patting your face, until you accept that the day has begun.
He is also overweight, and I have made several attempts to address this.
Every single time, the diet has been answered with dead mice. Not one. Three or four, deposited at my feet or outside my bedroom door in a single morning.
I have never been certain whether he was concerned that I could no longer afford to feed myself, or whether it was a threat.
I lean towards threat.
The moment his rations returned to normal, the mice stopped.
For the sake of my own sanity, I have decided to simply let the vet complain.
❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿ ❀ ✿
💭 Final Thoughts
August was quiet, and I am sorry for that. September will not be.
Three books, six cats, one very slow website, and a fourth story whispering at me from the corner of the room. It is more than I probably ought to be carrying, and I would not swap any of it.
Thank you for reading. Thank you for commenting, theorising, and continuing to catch the mistakes I am certain I no longer make. Thank you for still being here after a month of silence.
The story continues. It always continues.
May your September be filled with good books, warm drinks, and either the first flowers or the first falling leaves, depending on which half of the world you are standing in.
With love,
Tracy