‘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 acutely because, honestly, I don’t feel like my life has been “business as usual” since about April, if it can have been said to be normal then. From May through to early September was just one thing after another consuming my attention and my time and causing me to neglect… literally everything else in my life. Some of these things were academic commitments (conferences, PhD registration, etc), some were writing-related (Moth to a Flame‘s publication, line- and copyedits for The Wolf and His King) some were Life Events like moving house (again) (last time for a while), some were health related (my second bout of COVID, once again acquired in the Gaeltacht), and some were fun (going to the Gaeltacht, going to North Wales). All were good excuses to neglect my emails and my everyday work.

It’s just… well… when you neglect your emails and your work for four and a half months, you end up with a lot of emails and work to deal with. Tragic how that happens. And the summer is gone, and the months have passed, and the start of the university term fast approaches, and I have so much to do…

Anyway, I’m in the process of getting my life back under control, which might mean posting here slightly more often (another ball I dropped this summer), but first and foremost I am trying to process the fact that it is autumn again already, quite without me knowing how that happened, and that means two things:

One, it’s been a whole year since I began my readalong of The Butterfly Assassin, sharing extra worldbuilding details, insights into my writing process, old drafts, forgotten or abandoned character backstory, etc. Which means:

Two, we are once again in the time of year when The Butterfly Assassin takes place. The opening chapter takes place late at night on the 17th September and into the 18th September, and then we continue onwards from there, through to early December.

Last year’s “real time readalong” turned out to be pretty intense in the amount of work it involved for me, and I wouldn’t say it was entirely successful in luring blog readers and newcomers alike into the comment section to talk to me and each other, freeing ourselves from the shackles of centralised social media and enjoying the benefits of a quieter, ore focused platform. But it did get a few conversations started, and one of the major benefits of posting it all on here rather than on social media is that it’s all still there, and findable.

Which means anyone who wants to do a real-time readalong of The Butterfly Assassin this year can do so! All of the posts are there: you can follow them day by day as though I were posting them this year, you can binge-read the whole lot at once, you can dip in and out when there are chapters you particularly want to know more about, or you can ignore them entirely and focus on the book.

One thing’s for sure, though: this is definitely the most seasonally appropriate time to pick up The Butterfly Assassin, whether reading it for the first time or rereading. After all, who can resist the call of those relatable Back To School moments, like trying to hide the fact that you were raised to be an assassin, and, whoops, might have killed someone last night…

I actually really enjoyed looking back over some of the old readalong posts. There’s a lot there: a lot that I’ve talked about in bits and pieces at other times, but rarely have the chance to discuss at length (another major benefit of doing this on my own site is that nobody can impose a word limit on me and, boy, would I go over it if they tried). I should probably, at some point, sit down and come up with a concordance of topics I discussed in the readalong, so that when they come up in other contexts I can quickly pull a link to my longer discussions.

For example, I often find myself trying to articulate my back-to-front approach to worldbuilding, the way I start with a specific question and wind up looking at much bigger issues, but that’s a lot easier to comprehend with concrete examples, and the very first post contains a great rundown of that approach, as well as a look at a bunch of different opening scenes I tried. Yesterday’s post (18/09) outlines the Esperan education system that I spent so long devising just to make sure some dates matched up. Tomorrow’s post, for 20/09, delves into some of the more political aspects of the worldbuilding. And next week, on 27/09, we get a post exploring some of the context and backstory to Isabel’s health conditions (including the one that’s just me being mad about Age of Ultron), as well as the structure of Comma.

I’m not going to painstakingly share a link to every post on the correct day, both because I am far too disorganised and busy to take on that kind of responsibility, and because I think it would deeply annoy everyone who subscribes to this blog. Nevertheless, I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that they exist, and encourage those who are interest to glance over them. The internet loves to focus on “new content”, but just because these posts are from a year ago, doesn’t mean they’re worthless.

And I want to note that the comments are still open on those posts, and you are still incredibly welcome to discuss them, whether addressing your remarks to me or to others hanging out in the comment section. A big part of the purpose of the readalong was to start conversations, not merely to broadcast my thoughts at youse. I would love to talk.

Mostly, though, I’d just be grateful if you’d consider reading The Butterfly Assassin this autumn or, if you’ve already read it, writing a quick review or recommending it to a friend so it can reach somebody who hasn’t. I realise, however, that there are a great many other autumnal books out there, so this is also an invitation to tell me what seasonally appropriate reads you’re enjoying right now, so that I can check them out too.

The comment section awaits ⤵

What do you think? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

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