Shwmae!

It feels like forever since I wrote the last one of these, but maybe that's just the way time slows down in this part of the year. For most of my life I've been a winter hater, but in recent years I've started finding the long nights quite calming. 

Plus, nobody expects you to go out and do things, so I don't feel too guilty about hiding away in my burrow to write. Which is what I've been doing, and very little else.

Writing News

I don't have any publication news I can talk about yet, but I will say that it's been fun to take a break from longer projects and work on some short stories this month. I love digging into a long piece, spending time with the characters and fleshing them out, but shorts are a chance to play with new ideas without committing a year's work to them.

Weirdly, almost everything I've written lately has revolved around a body of water in some way. Feels like that might be worth digging into in an essay sometime.

What I've been reading

I know I'm extremely late to the party on this, but man, Gemma Files can 

write

. I picked up 

A Book of Tongues

, the first instalment in her Hexslinger series, this month, and it's one of those books that's so good it pissed me off a little. Brutal and compelling, with crunchy, satisfying prose. Fair warning: there's

quite a lot of period-typical racism, so it's not going to be for everyone.

What I've been watching

S

end Help

 was a nasty, hilarious good time. I also have a lot of thoughts about Girlboss Annie Wilkes that probably need to percolate a while before they're fit for human consumption, but I can feel an essay brewing,

What I've been listening to

I caught Disgusting Sisters at Clwb Ifor Bach this weekend, an early contender for gig of the year. Punkier live than their recorded stuff suggests and full of manic fuck-you energy.

That's all from me for this month. 'Til next time.

JL