Issue #8

Hey there friends. Long time no email!

Life has been...ah, you know the story. I've been writing, but the newsletter unfortunately fell by the wayside a little.

So here we all are in 2023. Already it's shaping up to be better than the last couple of years, which I suspect everyone is quite happy to leave behind.

I'm trying to get back on track with everything after the summer holidays here in NZ; work is ramping up, term one is, well, done, and we're heading into autumn now.

new cool things

A couple of things are new! And cool!

Catnip & Brimstone

A new novella! As I posted earlier today on micro.blog, it's got:

Magic, cats, kids, old ladies, a guy named Falco and his seagull familiar, flux witches, and sorcerers on holiday in a chaotic all-ages story set in New Zealand.

It's on sale at Amazon right now but you lovely people can get it free, right here:

Download!

And on that note I do just want to say, thanks so much for your support! It's a lovely feeling to be able to send this out to you all.

(The blurb proper and more details—should you need them—are up on the book's Amazon page.)

New newsletter name

The other new thing is that I'm changing up the newsletter name to match my author blog (which, just to refresh your memory, is at jessicanickelsen.com). Lo: UNUSUAL FICTIONS it shall be. But fear not, the general format will remain...unchanged.

Other things

I've also been doing quite a bit of short story drafting, as part of a "draft a week" challenge run by Cat Rambo (she of Kittywumpus and the very excellent Rambo Academy, thanks to whom I've been able to take some classes with some amazing writers, including John Wiswell and Joon Ha Lee).

As well as this, I've signed up to the novella challenge with the Codex writer's group to finish a novella by the end of May. For that I'm pulling out another work-in-progress that had stalled out last year, working title Trash Planet.