The November Updates
Busy days
Undulating. That’s the word that came to me to describe the movement of a massive flock of birds across the sky. It’s the thought that crossed my exhausted brain as I drove the hour back home from Manor Mill’s wonderful writer’s retreat. You’ve seen those great dark clouds, I’m sure—what word would you use to describe their passage?
My newsletter always comes out on the 15th, which this month happened to coincide with the all-day retreat. I didn’t write and schedule the post ahead of time because the retreat is the thing I wanted to talk about. However, tomorrow I’ll be traveling all day and Monday I’m booked up, so it falls to this sliver of evening to write up my thoughts if I want to stay anything close to on schedule. So, here we go!
This month has been busy. Months of preparations for the Big Move will be coming to a head next week. The navigable space in my house consists only of a narrow corridor flanked by walls of boxes. We spent the entirety of last Saturday fighting for our lives against a fridge that needed to be moved across the state. That unfortunately means there hasn’t been nearly as much writing going on compared to driving or heavy lifting. I do, however, have one small thing I can show you.
Bookmarks! In lieu of business cards, I decided to make something with a use bookworms might appreciate, given most business cards I get usually end up as bookmarks unless they fall into the void that is the bottom of my purse. I’m really proud of how these turned out.
Come find me at my next event (or invite me to one) if you want a very special Dreams of Faerie bookmark of your very own!
A Day of One’s Own: The 2025 Manor Mill Writer’s Retreat
Maybe this makes me a bad writer, but I’ve never actually been to a writer’s retreat before, so when I was invited to speak at Manor Mill, I had no idea what to expect. In short, it was awesome. From seeing my own books on the table with everyone else’s to getting the opportunity to chat with some truly amazing people, it was well worth the hour-long drive at 7 AM.
Throughout the day, I sat in on sessions about perfecting that first page and crafting multi-dimensional characters that can drive a plot forward, as well as a fascinating talk by Rafael Alvarez and his relationship with the city of Baltimore.
The discussions and writing exercises today planted the seeds for at least two new short stories that I hope to nurture in the future, so keep an eye on my newsletter to how those evolve.
Finally, I partnered with Will Remains to talk about the basics of Substack. To sum up: I like it, hence why we’re here and not on my abandoned Facebook or Twitter accounts.
Before I left, I made sure to sign the copies of my books provided by the Ivy Bookshop. I believe they still had a few in stock at the end of the day, so you may be able to grab your own signed copies of The Forest of Forgotten Vows and The Queen of Dreams and Dust if you head over to their site.
November Reads
Unfortunately, my reading time this month was taken up by beta-reading the novel of a writer in my reading group, so I don’t have a review to share this month. However, I’m slowly creeping up on the library hold list for Katabasis and yesterday I picked up a copy of T. Kingfisher’s What Stalks the Deep, so I will be talking about at least one of those books next month, assuming I get a minute to sit and read in-between unpacking in the new house and the holidays.
That’s all for today, I hope you’ll stay tuned for next time!