August 2024 Dispatch
Home for a while, phew!
All right, July is done with and in the books, yay! I didn’t get a lot of writing work done, but I did do a lot of related stuff. Kit and I went to AnthroCon, where I got to meet a lot of people at the table and do a few fun panels (if you came to the panels, thank you!). Squeak Thief sold out at the table, and at least one person said they were inspired to pick it up by the reading, so yay.
We also got some promotional art of Kris and Bryce by the fabulous AmonOmega:
Then we were back home for a week and a half before heading down to ComicCon. I don’t usually have high expectations for selling stuff there, but this year The Price of Thorns drew people’s eye, and did very well (relatively). We talked to a few cool creators, bought some prints and comics, and had fun dinners in San Diego.
And now we’re back home. I have a writing workshop this week, but I’m attending remotely, so I’ll still have my afternoons to myself and I won’t have to live out of a suitcase and spend a day traveling home at the end of it.
The next thing I’m going to work on is a revision to Azure City, while I pick through my to-write pile to see what sticks in my head. And that’ll carry me to the end of August, I hope! I’ve also been reading back through some Agatha Christie stories with a friend, and I think there might be another Ellie story happening soon…at the very least, it’s on the to-write pile. And there’s also another book coming in the Dude, Where’s My Series, because…
The Kickstarter funded! There will be an audiobook of Dude, Where’s My Pack? soon! If you missed out, it will remain open through August—we won’t make further progress toward stretch goals, but you can pre-order the audiobook, which is very helpful, and you can get some of the Kickstarter-exclusive stickers that our fantastic backers unlocked. If you participated, thank you! We’ll start fulfillment in September.
If you hadn’t heard, Kit is producing a relaunched Unsheathed podcast with myself and K. M. Hirosaki, just like in the old days a decade ago! Episodes are going up on the regular podcast feed and on YouTube, but they are also going up on the Sofawolf Academy (currently free to join!), where fans will have a chance to join in discussions about the episodes. We’ll be sending out transcripts of the new episodes in the Writing Tips newsletters here on the blog, and also on the Sofawolf Academy.
And Kit is working on a redesign of the Patreon, more details to come next month!
Books:
Squeak Thief: OUT NOW. A rich mouse hires a fox thief to steal from his own family, but the job quickly spirals out of control. You can get it as a print book on FurPlanet or Amazon, or as an e-book on BadDogBooks, and it’ll be in broader e-book release this week.
The Price of Thorns: buy at Argyll and review at Amazon or GoodReads. In a fantasy world where stories are woven into the fabric of magic and life, Nivvy the thief is hired by a mysterious woman, and this job will change his life in ways he could never have anticipated.
Audiobooks: We are working on getting Titles and Love Match 2 done and available to you. Both have been recorded and are now under our review to send back to the narrators for minor corrections. And we are working on a Price of Thorns audiobook! Because we have been traveling so much, production has paused, but we’re eager to get going again and hope to have this out early next year.
Other upcoming releases:
Azure City: 2025. A book full of blank pages might be the key to another world, but the more Athos reads, the more he disappears from this one.
Dead Right: Late summer/fall 2024. Jae gets tangled in the life of a ghost activist who endangers his relationships and his future.
In progress:
Robin Hood fan fic (two books) — draft complete, awaiting revision
Third Wolftown book — draft complete, awaiting revision
Ty the Knot — draft complete, awaiting revision
Fast Break (a gay basketball player story on Patreon) — first draft ongoing
craft book — first draft ongoing
New Ellie story (mystery) — first draft ongoing
untitled fantasy world project — outlining
Streaming:
I’m watching through the third season of Hacks, which is great and uncomfortable in a lot of ways that great comedies like Veep were. What’s the fun, they say, in looking at people unless they are cringingly flawed? But Jean Smart is fantastic, Hannah Einbinder is terrific too, and the supporting cast kicks ass.
We saw Deadpool & Wolverine in the theater, and enjoyed it a lot. I think the MCU is at a point where it really benefited from someone inside it telling the audience, “No, I see what’s happening too, it’s been pretty mediocre so far and we’re trying to integrate all these other characters we now have the rights to, it’s been rough.” Anyway, if you like Ryan Reynolds’ Deadpool or Hugh Jackman’s Wolverine, you’ll probably enjoy this movie, but if you haven’t been keeping up with the Marvel TV shows, you might be a leeeetle bit lost during some of it. Don’t worry; it doesn’t really matter in the end.