September Sewing, Sales, and Word(s).

It's past mid-September, which means it's nearly Frocktober, and after a healthy wardrobe purge earlier in the year, I have a mere fifteen ready-to-wear dresses, some of which are unsuitable for everyday occasions. I also have five that need some sewing adjustments (hems, reshaping, create a new bodice, etc)

I know this because I just piled them all on my bed and took photos like a big nerd.

Left: the current wardrobe of fifteen. Right: the five to finish.

Now, as per the official guidelines, I don't have to wear a separate frock every day for Frocktober. I can fundraise for ovarian cancer research wearing frocks on Fridays, or just at my day-job, or weekends. I can wear the same frock 31 different ways. I can wear no frocks at all, and get funky with accessories, or wear some frocking fabulous socks.

BUT. I am a sewing nerd, and I love dresses. And I have an abundance of patterns, and quite a lot of material, and I suspect that it is time to put on my big girl pants (ie Snag shorts1) and do my very best to sew through my stash. I may not get to 31 complete dresses, but I can probably produce a frocking awesome wardrobe for (and during) October.

If you would like to follow my Frocktober adventures, both during the month itself and in the frantic sewing run-up, you can follow my Instagram or TikTok accounts! I do a semi-regular Sewing Sunday feature where I show off my latest makes, and I will be posting (hopefully) daily during October to help fundraise for my Frocktober team.

Words

I started the month with WORD Christchurch, my favourite literary festival (and I've been to a few). This year I was fortunate enough to be in the team that took out the Word Quiz, which I think was really the best one yet. There was a terrific round where ten books appearing in the festival had their covers reinterpreted by children, including a big splodgy grey handprint from a two-year-old artist that I immediately (and accurately) identified as Olivia Laing's The Silver Book.

I attended a sane and sensible three sessions: All Things Romantasy, Cabinet of Curiousities, and Leather and Chains. Naturally I had heavy FOMO, but I always do - there are just too many things I would love and not enough hours to do them.

I pulled out my Regency ballgown for All Things Romantasy, and was delighted to see a couch set up for lounging.

SPEAKING OF not enough hours, I have been diligently plugging away at this year's mission to learn how to market books with no money (ie, no ads). It is not easy, and I find a lot of it tedious and frustrating, but I am getting my head around some things like automation, and I do like learning and achieving competence. I am also getting better at taking advantage of opportunities and seeking advice from community.

Re: opportunities, check out this sale for Spicy Curvy Romance! I have both Persephone in Bloom and Ask Cassandra in there, for a mere $0.99 each, and I just picked up Carina Walsh's Rules of the Spotlight, because I love a confident body-positive lady with a tough job (she owns an inn!) who accidentally saves a celebrity's life and then has to date him for... reasons.

You guys, I think they're gonna fall in love.

Learning the marketing ropes (and recovering from ropeburn) has naturally meant that less of my author time has been allocated to writing than I would like (ie, all of it2). I had hoped to launch the Kickstarter for Love at Third Bite in October, but I'll be pushing that out, because there isn't enough book yet for me to feel comfortable with a campaign launch. Pre-launching soon, though!

My Patreon is always my first priority for new writing, and I released two new things there last week - a Movie Magic epilogue for Kingston and Amalia, and another chapter of Death Magic and Dahlias.

The next manuscript I'll finish is the Sparks & Recreation prequel (about halfway through), and then Love at Third Bite. After that, I am really hoping to finish at least a rough draft of the third Movie Magic novella by the end of the year - there's no urgency, and no deadline except the one in my own brain, but I love that universe, and I want to get back to Oliver St. James, my prickly director wunderkind who is bad with words (and as it turns out, romance).

What's Karen Reading

Oh lord, it's been too long. A few notable things, rather than the whole pile:

  • The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath. A re-read, but I think the first time I've read this since uni, 20-some years ago. Plath really captures how ordinary and inevitable mental illness can feel when you're in it. Like, even if you realise you're acting strangely and people are concerned about you, it's just, you know, it's just how things are? What?
  • A BUNCH of Anne Bishop Black Jewels books, three of which I'd never read before. They didn't give me the same heady, id-ridden glory of the first Black Jewels trilogy, BUT WHAT COULD?? I love Anne Bishop very much for going "I'm going to create a woman who gets the shiniest and darkest of all the shiny Jewels, and also a telepathic tiger and a unicorn and a cute dog and also the most powerful guy in the realm is gonna be her lover, and the second most powerful is her adopted dad, and she's gonna be thirteen thousand times stronger than both of them, and she's gonna tell the bad guys she will utterly destroy them AND THEN SHE WILL." That series is wish-fulfillment at its finest and I applaud it. It's also very gender-binary in the men are like THIS women are like THAT way, but with considerably more magical-biological justification than in our world.
  • Sisters of the Vast Black, Lina Rather. Nuns in space. The Mother Superior did something very bad in a past life. Their spaceship is a giant seaslug which would like to mate. And the Vatican would like to have a word about their adherence to the vow of obedience. I was raised Catholic, and owe a great deal to that cultural inheritance, and I ate this uppp. I will be reading the sequels.
  • Mythica, by Emily Hauser. A really interesting take on Homer's women, using them as a lens to explore the lives of real Mesopotamian Bronze Age women (insofar as archeology and literature can afford us glimpses of them). And, also, of course, some scandalous history as well. I did not know that Schliemann basically commissioned a Homeric wife for his second bride - a dark-haired pretty Greek woman who could be his Helen. Ew.

That Healey Girl is the weeklyish newsletter of Kate (or Karen) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river. Feel free to share the newsletter with anyone you think would like it.

1 Snag is not sponsoring this post, alas, but legit legit they are fucking fantastic. If chub rub bothers you and you're sick of bulky or squeezy options for under skirts, hie thee hence.

2 The little gremlin in my head wants to offer an apologia for, like, daring to sew and go to literary festivals and such instead of turning leisure time into more working time. The little gremlin can go back in its cave, pls.