In July I gave you a news bulletin where I promised to be back “next week” with the cover reveal for The Animals We Became. Did I do that? No. Did I come back the following month, even? No. I simply never posted it on here. For what it’s worth, beloved blog readers, it’s not …
A July News Bulletin
I have done an exceptionally poor job of staying on top of my promise to blog more this year while I was taking a break from social media like Instagram the last few months. I wish that was because I was very hard at work writing my PhD thesis, but unfortunately, that would be stretching …
Constraints and Compromises: Why Line Edits Need Rules
At the end of February, I submitted my line edits for The Animals We Became, my next book — a queertrans retelling of the Fourth Branch of the Mabinogi (the story of Blodeuwedd) exploring gender, trauma, and compulsory heterosexuality through assorted nonconsensual animal transformations and all the other fascinating horrors of medieval Welsh literature. Line …
News and Intentions
I’m often asked how I manage to balance a full-time PhD with writing novels (while chronically ill), and the truth is, quite simply, that I don’t. I am horrendously behind on everything at the moment: laundry; The Animals We Became, my next book; the academic article for which edits are due midway through next month; …
A Handful of Book Thoughts
It’s been a long time since I blogged, mostly because I felt like I had already said everything there was to say about my writing process, about The Wolf and His King, or about the delicate dance of balancing PhD and fiction, and anything else I wrote on the subject would be a repeat. Until …
The Wolf And His King: Cover Reveal!
In which I share the cover of The Wolf and His King, update you on the publication date, and share further news...!
No Platonic Explanation
It’s Aromantic Spectrum Awareness Week and it’s also LGBTQ+ History Month in the UK, which seemed like a good time to talk about a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot recently: the peculiar tension of caring about queer history as an aroace trans person whose experiences of queerness don’t primarily revolve about romantic relationships. …
On Tolkien And Drawing Fruit
After several years of constantly moving house, I finally settled long-term in the autumn of 2024, which means my parents are keen for me to sort through and reclaim or dispose of a lot of the stuff they’ve been looking after for the last ten years. Every time I come to stay, I’m invited to …
‘Tis The Season
Slightly upsettingly, it is now September. Not only that, but it’s not even early September. It’s the 19th. Schools have been back for a good couple of weeks. There’s a distinctly autumnal chill to the air. The evenings are getting darker earlier and earlier. Summer, we are constantly reminded, is over. I’m feeling this particularly …
A Ten-Year Trilogy
Ten years ago, in May 2014, I was revising vocabulary for my French A-Level exam and came across the phrase papillon de nuit, butterfly of night: the French name for a moth. “That’s so badass,” I posted on Facebook. “It sounds like an assassin’s nickname. And saying that, I’ve got an idea…” It wasn’t a …