Hello Foxes!
I’m super excited this week to be announcing Things.
Firstly, book updates. The Secrets We Save is off to beta readers! One step closer to completion, and the latest revision process has me falling in love with this gorgeous gaslamp-inspired setting and quirky characters all over again.
And voila, the book has a cover!
There are so many things I love about this book. The magical flowers. The city of gardens that runs on gas, steam and horsepower. The underground Thieves Guild. The painting and art drama. Political intrigue around a democracy instead of a monarchy. The best friend ex who is the most darling man and deserves his own story.
A clever, pragmatic (most of the time), 26-year-old female main character. A male main character I wrote before finally watching Ted Lasso (how good was it?!) but who definitely has Roy Kent vibes, if Roy was a painter instead of a footballer.
The Kickstarter is alive (well, incubating)
Since I’m personally illustrating Secrets for a special Kickstarter release, it’s time to dive into Kickstarter pre-launch!
What does that mean? If you’re interested in following the campaign and perhaps snagging a special illustrated edition of this book before it releases to the wider world, or even some original art, now you can.
Check it out and sign up to be notified when the campaign goes live! You’re not committing to anything at this stage, just bookmarking it for later.
I’m planning a July campaign, at which point you’ll be able to check out all the arty goodies, read a sample and decide about buying the book in your format of choice.
Other projects
Ah, sorry, Soulshards, but this illustrating a novel business is rather taking up all my time! Rest assured that Soulshards is still very much in my mind, and I am not forgetting it.
One Masked Ball (my gender-swapped dark fantasy Phantom of the Opera retelling) is also still ticking away over on Ream, and next month paid subscribers on the Fabulous tier and above will be diving into the grim history of the Phantom and how she came to know the Persian, an aspect that I felt was left unexplored in the original story.
And I have a Secrets-related novella that I’ve got some exciting plans for very soon, so stay tuned for that.
Queer rep in stories
I never set out to write queer fiction. Not that I meant to avoid it, just that on the list of themes or topics I intended to explore, queerness wasn’t jostling at the top with my more pervasive themes like mental health and the value of art.
On the surface, Darkhaven, my debut novel, doesn’t have much LGBTQIA+ diversity going on, although now that I know Gabby better, I’d say she’s demisexual. She has no interest in boys throughout high school, and it’s not until she gets to know one in particular as she finishes school that she begins to form an attraction.
In Everfire, we learn that Esmerelda Donovan once loved a woman.
And in Memory Weave, we find out that Keraun, like all his kind, was not physically born but painstakingly willed into existence by a trio of parents.
(It’s possible that the genesis of the parent-trio-will-birthing idea was wish-fulfilment on my part – imagine a world where you never have to worry about accidentally getting pregnant! But it became about so much more than that.)
Who Will Hold the Universe doesn’t have a romance as such, but the romantic couple in the flashbacks is deliberately ambiguous. It probably didn’t need to be – you’ll find out more about Gavrin eventually – but I wanted to take some of the gendered language out for a short scene. It’s surprising how much we project onto a text because of it, and how much we rely on pronouns for structure.
In the shared world of my books, there is a whole universe of human civilisations out beyond Earth where relationships take all forms and shapes, and the validity of love and attraction is never questioned. While I dig deep into the angst of self-worth, destiny and disaster through my poor characters, in terms of sexuality, I try to create a sense of comfort and belonging.
I have a mountain of illustrations to do and books to edit and books to write, so I’m off to do that and definitely NOT get distracted reading Kushiel’s Dart.
(Have you read Kushiel’s Dart? If so, please tell me so we can all be miserable about certain events together.)
If you’re not reading Kushiel’s Dart, happy reading!
Kel