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; my PhD thesis…

Having pushed those deadlines that can be pushed, I’m now staring down the ones that can’t be, and realising that something needs to change, which is why I’m attempting to take something of a social media break over the next … well, I’m not sure how long. At least the next month, until TAWB has been safely rewritten and that article handed in, but quite probably longer, because my thesis needs more time than it’s been getting, and, quite honestly, social media hasn’t been making me happy for a long time now.

When I say this, people usually assume I mean because of the political doomscrolling. This certainly doesn’t help, but, in truth, it runs deeper than that. I’ve realised I’m simply tired of 24/7 exposure to other people’s opinions, often before I’ve had a chance to form an opinion of my own, or even without having any interest in forming one. I know so much about things I care so little about, and more than that, I know so much about the detailed opinions of strangers on those things I care so little about, and how this relates to their personal identities and traumas and sex lives and moral crises and political leanings and—

Aren’t you tired, too, sometimes, of wading through it all? I think I have too many other people’s thoughts in my head, and sometimes there’s no space for mine. Perhaps that was the idea, a running away from myself, but one can neither write fiction nor a thesis while keeping one’s brain at arm’s length using a ballast of other people’s commentary, so something has to change. We should all know less about each other, I saw someone say on the internet, and I think probably that’s true, though I’ll be the first to confess I don’t always know where my own boundaries should be, nor defend them as I should.

Right now, I think, I’ve hit the point where I need to know less about the world’s opinions on every book I might consider reading, every TV show that exists, every film that is made. I find I lose interest before I ever pick something up, because I’ve already seen it through twenty people’s eyes, without the chance to look through my own. I would like to have more time to look at the world through my own eyes, even if I might then seek out people to talk about it with.

And then there’s the political doomscrolling, which doesn’t help, it’s true. Especially as my nocturnal habits mean I am frequently online in the US timezones, and believe me: I care what’s happening. I care on a moral level, because I think it is wrong; I care on an emotional level, because I have friends there; I care on a personal level, because while I may live in the UK, when America sneezes, the world catches a cold, and we can’t pretend it doesn’t affect us, or hope that our government wouldn’t get right on board with the same tactics if they thought it would help them win elections. (Those they aren’t already utilising, that is.) But there’s a powerlessness that comes with distance, and being bombarded with calls to action that I cannot act on and people I cannot help is not doing great things for my brain, and is drowning out my capacity to pay attention to news and needs in my own communities, where I might actually be able to contribute more.

But, in the end, it comes down to this: the deadlines. They are deadlining. I need to be less online, because I need to be in my word documents, and apparently I do not have the capacity to be on social media in moderation, which means I am deleting the Bluesky and Instagram apps from my phone entirely and restricting my access to them from my computer.

(Frankly, I wish it were easier to just turn my phone off, or leave it in another room, but it’s amazing how often even the most focused work sessions need a one-time password, the authenticator app, a backup code, some kind of distraction to pull me away from my book or screen and back to my phone. Even my e-reader sometimes won’t let me buy a book on the device without confirming the purchase from my phone, which means I’m tethered to the thing. And I think, oh, okay, I’ll turn off all notifications except for my university emails, in case of something important — but the mailing lists! The sheer volume of emails that come through there! The distractions are everywhere, and I’m still filtering them out, but social media is the easiest, so that’s going first.)

Why am I telling you? This isn’t intended to be a navel-gazing exercise or a crusade against social media. I’m telling you because I made this decision at a foolish time, which is to say, three days after The Wolf and His King released in North America, and therefore a time when there is, on some level, a slightly increased amount of interest in me as an author, and completely disappearing from the internet at such a moment would be… unhelpful. If I’m going to make this work, and not find myself forced back to social media before I’m willing to go, I will actually need to use this website as intended, which is to say, keep it up to date and post semi-regularly with book news and events, something I’ve been broadly failing to do. So you might notice more of that happening, and possibly some changes to the website layout as I try to make it better suited to that.

I’m also hoping to do some more substantial website redevelopment, though this might be a slow process. In an ideal world, it won’t really change how you interact with the site on the front end; it may not even change it visually. However, I’m hoping I might be able to switch content management systems to something that suits my needs better behind the scenes, and it’s possible that will completely screw up all the email and WordPress subscriptions. If it looks like that’s going to happen, I will let you know before the move happens, so you’ll have some warning. I don’t imagine it’ll be for a few months yet, if it happens at all.

Finally, I’m telling you this as a preface to a brief round-up of news:

• The Wolf and His King is now out in both the UK and North America! (As well as various other places that receive the UK edition as an import, such as Ireland, Australia, etc.) All the links can be found on its page. It’s received a number of nice trade reviews, as well as some excellent fan art already.
• The launch party Q&A about the book with Miranda Griffin is available to watch on YouTube.
• My most recent academic article came out at the end of December and explored parallels in Cú Chulainn’s relationships with Fer Diad, Láeg, and Emer, through the ‘shared grave’ motif that shows up in some early modern Ulster Cycle tales. It’s open access; abstract and links on the research page.
• My next planned event will be a short talk in the ASNC department at the Cambridge Festival at the end of March, discussing how my research and writing contribute to each other. More details when I’ve got them.
• My next book is The Animals We Became, a reworking of Math fab Mathonwy. It’s due to come out in November 2026 in the UK or summer 2027 in the US (which will be rather a tighter schedule than anticipated since I decided I hated it and am now rewriting it). However, I have pushed the third of my medieval retellings to 2028 rather than 2027, because I do actually need to write my thesis at some point (and, frankly, even 2028 feels ambitious).

I think that’s probably everything for now. Blog and news posts will continue to be open/public rather than becoming an email newsletter situation, because frankly, I never read email newsletters and I’m not about to start expecting others to do so for me, but if you would like email notifications when a new post is up, you can subscribe… somewhere? On desktop it’ll be in the sidebar, probably over there ->

And now I shall go and seek some offline ways to procrastinate…