Drafting and Darning

Sales and Such:

Drafting and Darning:

I've started writing Love at Third Bite, the next book in the Sparks & Recreation series, and hoo boy, I'm loving it. As those of you who have already read Second Chance Charms know all too well, that book ends on a certain event and a massive cliffhanger, and I'm just sitting here cackling to myself as I do terrible, terrible things to my imaginary friends in the aftermath. (If you have read it, please review!)

All I want to do is write, which is inconvenient, because I have plenty of other things I also need to do. Wrapping up a Kickstarter, in particular, involves a lot of admin! But I am being very firm with myself and making the admin happen. Digital rewards went out yesterday, and today I've been working on the physical rewards process.

While I was doing this, I glanced at my to-do list, recognised that one entry was even more than usually illegible, and made a dumb post. It's now going viral on Threads.

"Spotify links" OBVIOUSLY
Answer in alt text.

It is giving me serious joy up that with all my recent efforts to market my work, it's my shitty handwriting that has cut through. The internet is weird! I can't make virality happen on purpose! So I'll just keep doing what I want and enjoy the ride.

Over on the Patreon, I just dropped "Going Down", an Olympus Inc. short story about five times Laodice and Telfer were inappropriate in elevators, inspired directly by this newsletter. It's exclusive to my Bonus Content patrons - and don't forget that for now, everyone who signs up to the Bonus Content tier gets access to the entire library of bonus content1.

Oh, and Patreon supporters of any paid level will also shortly be getting a nice little extra...

In between computer-bound stints, I have been binge re-watching The Great British Sewing Bee and restoring a moth-eaten wool blazer that I think is maybe thirty-forty years old.

I got the blazer for free at a work closthing swap, and I am determined to fix it without spending a single cent. This has involved some creative solutions, like piecing together interfacing and seeing if I have enough leftover binding to finish the seams (I do!). I also figured out how to darn woven patches, with embroidery thread I thrifted in a job lot of sewing notions, and a shoe polish tin for a darning mushroom.

Long stitches for warp, weaving in another colour for weft. That's it!

Author Spotlight

This week I'm highlighting Courtney Clark Michaels, who is an excellent person and someone I have been lucky enough to work with before. I first read Courtney's Pacific Passions series, which is a fantastic take on royal romance with a Pacific twist (my favourite couple are Manu and Clare of Crown Chemistry. I would commit some crimes for Clare.)

Right now, though, Game Changer, the first book in her Hot Rugby Knights series, is only 99 cents, and I think you should read it. Do I like sports? No2. Do I like sports romances? Not very often. Do I like Courtney's sports romances? Yes.

In fact, I'm a little mad about how much I like them. Exhibit A:

Actual extract from the chat

I am always down bad for a hero who has been pining for years after the subject of his affections. Finn Chalmers is a stellar example of the type, not just because he loves Cara so much, but because he genuinely wouldn't do anything to push their friendship without her sayso.

But the second he gets it... oh man. He's off like a rocket who's about to make some extremely stupid decisions, and I love it.

Cara is an early childhood teacher, aka, a goddamn hero, and she is stubbornly, rigidly independent in a way it feels both funny and painful to read about. (Another excerpt from the chat: "I would not be sad if Cara's dad fell under a tractor.")

Both Finn and Cara have good reasons to want love and to be wary of it. Courtney does an excellent job of showing how her characters' pasts have shaped their present, and I love that too. These aren't barbie dolls getting their faces smushed together, but characters with depth and history.

Also, the face smushing is seriously hot.

Recommend!

What's Kate Reading

  • I finished Katherine Arden's The Warm Hands of Ghosts, which was even better than the first 70 pages promised it would be. I did spend some time shouting, "You've read Paradise Lost! You know who he is!" but then I met Dr. Jones and stopped complaining.
  • I read The Green Man's Challenge, by Juliet E. McKenna, fourth in a fun, thoughtful series of English folklore urban fantasies, which star carpenter/caretaker/dryad's son Daniel Mackmain. What I really like about this series is how the mundane rubs against the supernatural. There's a lot of practical detail about food and gear, and Dan knows he can't just go charging in and punch people without consequences - partly because consequences have caught him before. But with various nasty things rising and the Green Man expecting his aid, he's got to come up with some solutions, which forces him to be creative and look for help - and the network of friends and allies he's slowly building are a great delight to me.
  • The non-fiction audiobook of the moment is Hakim Adi's African and Caribbean People in Britain, an impeccably researched and deftly presented history. I would like just a little more gossip, but that's because I'm messy.
  • A new Jo Walton! Everybody's Perfect is a very Jo Walton book - Venice, magic, Platonic influence, the domestic, the power of belief and narrative, big problems impacting little people and solved in unexpected ways. It reminds me of Lifelode more than anything, which means, of course, that I love it.

I hope that you're reading something good!

Love, Kate.

1 At some point I might do a short story anthology, or remove pieces to include in box sets - but I will definitely give warning of that.

2 Exceptions apply for sports with a performance aspect - gymnastics, cheerleading, synchronised swimming, etc. I just don't care about ball sports unless the ball is full of red glitter and being tossed into the air by a smiling woman who's about to catch it in the crook of her knee after a tumbling run.