April Showers
April 2023 Edition
Despite all of my good intentions and theoretical momentum, April was…well…terrible. April showers indeed.
Before we get started, if you have any questions or topics you’d like me to write about in future newsletters, feel free to comment them or message me privately!
Without further ado, let’s get started.
Life Update
So, unfortunately, this newsletter does open with sad news. If you follow me elsewhere, like my Instagram, you already know the news, but my dog passed away in early April.
I’ve gone back and forth on whether I should share the whole story, but ultimately, I don’t think it really matters. I do share the news of her passing because she is a very large part of my life and I shared her constantly. Belle was my best friend and losing her has been devastating. Long story cut very short she had stomach cancer and they couldn’t save her. It was sudden, traumatic, and we were completely blindsided by it. We thought she would be okay. She was only five years old.
I know I’m repeating what I said on Instagram but it’s still true. I loved her so much. My beauty but a funny girl, my Belle. My little lady, my sweet girl, my fluffball. She was my walking buddy, my best friend, my cuddler, my TV watcher. No one huffed like she did, always at the perfect moment as if she knew exactly what you were saying. She was always there when I was writing or streaming or brainstorming. She helped me work through a lot of plot holes. She loved to dance. Go between your legs and kick her feet while you scratched her sides. My little Rockette, the dancing queen. She was so happy, always. She was also so dramatic, a little sneaky, and very much a lil gremlin (said with so much love it hurts).
Bear is okay still. He misses her and I think that’s what has also been hard. He doesn’t understand why she isn’t here anymore. Despite their interesting dynamic, they did love each other and Bear has definitely been depressed. He’ll stare into her bed, he wanders around the yard more than usual, and he even watches out the window more.
Which, I guess, brings me to the good news. We’re getting a puppy. Well, by the time you read this, we already have him. (He’s fascinated by my fingers moving and keeps pouncing on my keyboard.) The void Belle left has been unimaginable and we really cannot live without another dog. We’re not replacing her, but for my family and I, we need another little buddy. Bear needs a friend, someone he can be with so he’s not alone when we go places.
So, I’d like to introduce you all to Blue!
He’s a yellow lab, very fuzzy, and the sweetest boy. We’ve had him for a little and he’s truly such a soft, loveable, playful boy. Bear wants to play, he keeps jumping around and pouncing near Blue, but not on him. He is gentle, mostly because he likes to sniff Blue and Blue is very patient with him. He’s only tried to eat Bear’s tail once.
Of course, there will be a lot more of Blue because he’s a member of our family. He’s a sweet little blueberry, even if he gives the most bombastic side-eye. He’s watched his first movie with my dad (although I use “watch” loosely, he very much slept through it). He has pooped in the bathroom. He’s been chewing on a stuffed squirrel whenever he’s not sacked out in his best interpretation of a cumulonimbus cloud. He’s also been very unhelpful with plot holes, although he’s certainly trying. (I think his suggestions end up “digging” the holes bigger, but he’s got the spirit.)
Project Updates
So, for obvious reasons, this month was pretty dry on the writing front. Until the 7th, I was on track to easily win Camp NaNo.
For Camp I’m working on Lake Actually, a contemporary romance that has kind of evolved into…five novels in a trench coat. It began as brain rot for a couple of characters, but they were very unrelated until a good “spaghetti at the wall” brainstorm with several of my friends. I call the book Lake Actually because I pitched it as “Love Actually but not at Christmas and at a lake.” Thus, Lake Actually. And so it’s five couples or romances.
As an exercise and in an effort to describe this book, I wrote a query letter. It was…painful because this book actually has…ten points of view. This is because it’s five books wrapped into one and I always write romances with dual POV.
If you want an actual premise, here you go.
As usual it’s a bit of a chaotic mess. My writing process has sort of evolved. It has been evolving since I wrote the second draft of Cruel Summer. That was the first time I’d written a book with some of the scenes out of order and then I strung those portions together with connective tissue. Usually, I am strictly a chronological writer. I must write one scene after the other or else I feel as though I don’t have the emotional beats in order.
However, when I was writing the back half of Invisible String, I started writing out of order. Not by very much, but instead of writing the beginning of a scene, I’d start in the middle and then if I got an idea for the beginning, I’d go and write that. Or I’d start at writing the end of a chapter. The process of writing Invisible String was always an odd one because the chapters are so long and span so much time and have so much emotional labor in them. Sometimes I had to know where the characters ended up in order to get them there. Or, simply put, I had to work backward.
Now, I had an outline for Invisible String. For Lake Actually? Not so much. I’m writing what I want and whatever connects, connects. This makes this less of a book and more of a series of events and conversations that all kind of happen randomly.
The problem, I’ve run into, is the timeline. The main climax of the book, or what I’d intended to be the main climax, happens on the lake when it’s frozen. Unfortunately, the book ends in June…creating a bit of a time problem.
So, I’ve had to move that event to be earlier, which does give more of a “plot” for one of the couples, but it is throwing a wrench in the middle of my other plans.
Other than that, it is hard to keep the weather consistent but that’s what revision is for!
(Who am I kidding, this is probably not getting revised. This is just ~fun~)
So, because I can’t keep a single thing to myself and love to overshare, I’ll give a little snippet from each of the couples. I’ve gone back and forth on how much to share (and since I tend to be an oversharer) I’m going to try to hold back and generally describe the kind of chaos I’ve gotten into over the last week.
As with all my snippets, I usually redact them a bit. The BOLD initial is the POV of the chapter and the ITALIC is the love interest.
So, I guess we’ll start with the fake dating plotline. So N definitely has some emotional baggage with his family and even though he has tried to put their disapproval of him behind him, he can’t help but want to impress them. Enter W, an extroverted secretary at N’s work with a contagious laugh and sweet charm. The perfect man to bring home to meet the parents. In exchange, W gets an indulgent four-month retreat at a beautiful lake for free. Together they must convince N’s friends and his family that they’re utterly in love, but the fake acts of romance and love, and intimacy begin to feel real. Which, of course, naturally includes the sharing of one bed.
And quite a bit of kissing, even though when they’re alone…
The next two characters are so fun to write, because their perspectives contrast so much. L is a nepo baby and he loves to just fuck around and have a good time. He’s extroverted, proud, and so flirty. So, naturally, his friends bet him that he can’t seduce and bed the hot chef at the lake before the beginning of the summer season.
The problem?
Said chef, H, is incredibly shy. So quiet, very reserved, and seemingly immune to L’s charms. Of course, that doesn’t stop L from…well…trying anyway.
I do love writing H, specifically because sometimes he’s just so relatable. Admitting to caring? Painful.
Although…is it the bet that’s driving L or his heart?
(Spoiler alert: it’s his heart.)
This is the opening of one of the perspectives at the beginning of the book and it was actually one of the first things I wrote for it. The fun thing about writing a book where a lot of the characters know each other is that I can make them know each other. M was a bully in his youth, but he’s definitely grown up and matured. Still, it’s fun to write this back and forth as M pursues N, but N pulls back, but then pushes, and they want each other, but they can’t have each other.
(I just realized I have two ‘N’ names. I am so sorry to everyone who is confused. Accuse me of character soup, I know. I did have three ‘N’ names but I changed one of them so, there is that?)
(No, this N and the N from the fake dating plotline are different characters!)
So, part of that push and pull is a bit of drunken banter that does, in fact, lead to a one night stand. And even more angst. I think they have the most well developed plot of all the couples, but they’re so complicated, it’s hard to explain.
I think of all the couples, this is the one that has surprised me the most. They’ve come a long way from the very simple premise of “childhood friends to friends with benefits to both of them are falling in love but they decide to ignore it.” I mean, what’s a little pleasure in a beautifully platonic relationship?
They have a very “undefined” relationship, but they know each other deeply. Both intimately and also as best friends. They’ve believed in each other since they were young and even though they live thousands of miles away, they’re still very close.
So they are fun to write because they’re so familiar with each other, but they also care deeply for each other. But oh my god, they’re so dumb, actually. It’s a good time, I promise.
Finally, we have the last couple. They’re the hardest to write because they are the only established romantic couple. This is from another snippet, back when they didn’t have a story to be in and I was just riffing off a very specific idea.
Still, it’s the best snippet I have.
They’re meant to be the age-gap couple, but it really isn’t becoming a thing? I don’t know, I’m still noodling them.
The only other thing I’ve even done a little bit of work on is actually a partially new project. I say it’s new, but it’s really only new to you. I’ve called it, for now, Sisters Serpentine. (Just so you know going forward.)
If you’ve been following me on YouTube, Instagram, or even reading this newsletter for any length of time, you’ll know about The Wrath King. The first book I ever finished, ever revised, ever queried, etc. Since its inception, there has been a specific plotline involving a northern noblewoman having to marry the titular Wrath King.
This is her paragraph in my query that I sent out almost two years ago.
Now, unfortunately, even though I adore Nola and her sister, Alara, they were always outliers in The Wrath King. I could’ve made them work, and it wouldn’t have taken much more work than I already have to do on the book itself, but I decided I wanted to let their plotline flourish in a way that it hadn’t in the original plot.
So, I plucked their characters, their secrets, and their darkness from the landscape of Izaro and The Wrath King and formed their own story. A story of monstrousness, of religious trauma, of sin and grace, of curses and magic.
In the original manuscript of The Wrath King, Alara was cursed to be the vessel of an ancient and chaotic goddess hellbent on eating the earth. Nola was her guardian, bound to her through a tattoo on her back to keep her from becoming an apocalyptic monster. So, that’s been taken and I’ve decided to place it in our modern world. Mostly because the idea of Nola having a gun absolutely makes me cackle.
A little-known fact about me is that I’m a little bit obsessed with religious iconography, the ~aesthetic~ if you will. Particularly Christianity. I don’t talk a lot about my own faith, but it does tend to seep into my writing in subtle ways. Although they’ve become less subtle over time because I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how my bias creeps into how I write. Anyway, that’s a bit outside the scope of this newsletter, but I have spent a significant time researching and soul-searching, and diving into religion and the tenets that often hold religion aloft.
So, all you really need to know is that the original idea of Alara and her monstrous side has been rooted in religion and patriarchy. And the song that has always circled in my head when it comes to Alara and Nola is Seven Devils by Florence and the Machine. She (Florence) has described the song as being an “ecstatic exorcism” in which “self-doubt. Guilt. Pain. And constant questioning of who I am and where my morals lie” is being exorcised. Good and bad, chaos and control.
While thinking about what I could do with this concept of a monstrous girl struggling to survive, struggling with good and bad, chaos and control, I relistened to the song. The second verse struck me as I was brain-dumping a lot of my thoughts onto a Google doc.
And now all your love
Will be exorcized
And we will find new saints
To be canonized
And it's an evensong
It's a litany
It's a battle cry
It's a symphony
And then, the neurons were firing and a brain wave hit me. Why create a second world when I could place the story in our world? Our world which already puts so much pressure on women. Our world that already has a fascinating religion that I am deeply familiar with. Our world already has so many flaws and I’ve spent the last year and a half playing with those flaws.
Of course, this idea is still in its development phase so there are still so many routes and ideas that I can incorporate or change. It’s in its superfluid state.
So far, this story is all that I’ve said above but takes place in an alternate history Rome wherein thousands of years ago The Saints defeated evil and vanquished magic. Of course, that evil, that chaos, that monstrousness is simply passed through bloodlines. The lineage of Saints.
And yes, you guessed it, Alara and Nola are one of those key families.
There are four other families and a lot of other little things, including oracles and using blood for magic. (Blood magic will always seep into what I write, it seems inevitable.) This was my original list of things I brainstormed with this story:
venom, blood, and honey
divine violence
medusa-like story
cyclical, ouroboros, snake eating it’s tail
sultry, passion, luxury, sensuality, sluttyyy (affectionate)
silk, velvet, lace, lots of exposed skin, leather, chains
feminine rage
seduction
cannibalism
And from that original list, I have ideas spinning and already it’s shaping up to have so much of what I love to write. The bodyguard trope, found family, sibling love, animal iconography, religious trauma, the Catholic aesthetic, so much history, girliepops doing bad stuff, girls with guns, queer characters, sinners and saints, cathedrals and churches being sanctuaries, and so much more.
Plus, Nola gets to keep her very venomous pet snake and now it makes sense that her snake’s name is Nerium. Named so because that’s the scientific name for Oleander, which is one of the most poisonous plants in the world.
What I’m Consuming
MUSIC
I have struggled a bit with music this month. I do have a playlist for lake actually but it’s not perfect and I flip back and forth between listening to it and finding another song I can just listen to on repeat.
My favorite playlist right now is my Sisters Serpentine one, which includes some of my favorite songs for feminine rage like the fruits by paris paloma, STUPID by Ashnikko, The Tradition by Halsey, and Goddess by Xana. It also has some sexy songs like Streets by Doja Cat, She Wolf by Shakira, Slumber Party by Ashnikko, and Maneater by Nelly Furtado. If you want the vibes of the book, this playlist is probably one of my best in terms of giving the feeling of what it is in my head.
Of course, I’m easily influenced by Tiktok songs and this month was a great one for good songs from Tiktok. Little Girl Gone by CHINCHILLA, I’m Her by Natalie Jane, and Daylight by David Kushner all really lived up to the sound bites that have been trending. All of them slot perfectly into the Sisters Serpentine playlist so it feels like a sign.
I do have a regular April 23 playlist as well with songs I’ve been loving but don’t fit anywhere. I specifically found out that one of my favorite songs, Collide by Justine Skye has a Solo Version without Tyga on it so I’ve been listening to that one so much.
Sabrina Carpenter has also been sneaking back onto my playlists. I was obsessed with her a couple years ago and now Nonsense and Feather have consumed my brain.
WATCHING
You know how people with anxiety talk about watching the same show over again because there is no surprises? I never really got that until recently. Because of that and my continued slump where I don’t feel like watching or reading anything, I basically just watched a ton of Midsomer Murders. No change from last month.
However, I do have The Last of Us on my list to watch next. It’s been on my feeds a lot and a few friends of mine who have similar tastes as me have recommended it, so we’ll see if we get to that this month.
READING
I haven’t read anything this month, however, I did go on a Barnes and Noble binge and bought a bunch of books online. I had forgotten about a bunch of books that I wanted to preorder and so I went on to do that and found a bunch of them were already out!
(How many times can I say ‘bunch’ in one paragraph? A lot apparently.)
So, I haven’t read any of these, but I’ve got them so I could.
The first books are from auto-buy authors. The Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi is the first one that arrived. It’s her adult debut and from what I know if it, I’m so intruiged. Her use of language to create gorgeous, atmospheric, and heartwrenching prose has made her one of my favorite writers. She wrote The Gilded Wolves series, which tore my heart out and it’s my go-to recommendation for YA Fantasy.
Next, I got The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty. The Davaebad Trilogy is my absolute favorite book series and so, of course, I ordered her adult pirate book! It takes place earlier than the Davaebad Trilogy but it’s in the same world and it has an older main female character! I’m saving this for May for a prompt for May Chaos Reign.
Next, I got The Luminaries by Susan Dennard. I really like her books. They’re not my favorites, but I think this series is more up my alley than The Witchlands series. A small town with an ancient society that protects humanity from monsters? Deadly games? Sign me up!
The next one isn’t from an auto-buy author but I am giving this author another chance. I picked up The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten. I read For the Wolf a couple years ago and hated it. But I hated it because of the characters and the weak themes. It had started good but because of some weird choices with the plot and narration, I ended up giving it 1 star. However, I did like some portions of it, like the worldbuilding and the prose, so I’ll give her another chance with this new series. I hope I like it.
The next two books have arrived but I’m taking a chance on them. One is a 1920s-inspired book with magic as the prohibited commodity. It’s called Nightbirds and it just sounds really good? The other is Juniper & Thorn by Ava Reid. I’ve heard so many good things about this and one of my favorite booktubers, Reads with Rachel highly rated it and I trust her opinion, so I’m giving it a shot. Perhaps it’ll be a comp for Sisters Serpentine? We’ll see. That is why I picked it up now as opposed to earlier.
Then, I have a bunch of preorders which are a lot of second books in a series, including Painted Devils by Margaret Owen, The Midnight Kingdom by Tara Sim, and Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao. Also, because I’m me and absolute V.E. Schwab trash, I ordered The Fragile Threads of Power. And I went for Claire Legrand’s newest fantasy romance, A Crown of Ivy and Glass.
So, let’s hope I get out of my reading slump soon.
YOUTUBE
In an effort to get back into writing, I’ve been easing myself into watching more writing vlogs and Authortube content. I’ve mentioned Rachel Writes and Sarah Mae Sutton in newsletters before, so I won’t go into detail with them now.
I’ve been catching up on Anna Robbins, Kristen Leatherman, Ana Neu, Emily McCosh, Kris MF, and Kate Cavanaugh. Their content really hits the right balance between being incredibly aesthetic and pleasing on the eyeballs, personal, informative, and entertaining. I love getting invested in stories and so I’ve just been lurking and watching their videos to turn off my brain.
While also like…thinking about writing too. But without any of the work on my part.
Beyond Authortube content, I’ve been really into the Sims 4. Although I’m not so much into Let’s Plays, except for the ones done by my friends, I love watching builds. Specifically, I love CarynandConnieGaming. They’re twins and I love their style. They do unique builds, not just houses. The first video I watched was where they made a pancake restaurant called The Stacks which was shaped and themed and looked like a stack of pancakes. They’re incredibly funny and likable, with a good mix of tips and showing the different options they pick for each of their builds. They mostly do challenges, like each room is this size or each room is a different color.
The other simmer I love to watch is lilsimsie and I love how she has a video out every day. I don’t watch every video, but if I have a hankering for a Sims 4 video, she’s my go-to. She has a lot of fun builds and I love how she discusses what she thinks about while building. Plus she builds fast, so my instant gratification mind is pleased.
Photo Dump
As always, I love giving pictures of my dogs as a little treat. I’ve included a selection of my favorite Belle pictures as well as Bear and Blue. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do.
Until next month, happy writing and all my love!
I was going to say if labour by paris paloma wasn't on your sisters serpintine playlist then it needed to be but i just creeped on it and it is so 💗 loved the photos of belle and i hope blue is adjusting well to the famil🥰