January 2024 Dispatch

Happy New Year!

Another year in the books. Let’s all make this coming year a good one!

As nominations for book awards open for the 2023 year, I hope you’ll remember The Price of Thorns! Leo Awards are now accepting nominations, and if you’re a FWG member, you’ll be able to nominate for the Coyotls soon (there should be an announcement when they open). I’ll update with other awards as we become aware of them.

I spent December mostly writing Azure City, the new Dangerous Spirits spin-off story (it’s not an official entry in the series in that it doesn’t have multiple POVs, but it does have many of the same characters and supernatural stuff, so it sort of exists in a Camouflage-like space). I finished a draft of it, which feels good! If all goes well, you might see it this year. Actually, there are two chances you might see it this year, but more on that in a bit. I wrote some 43,000 words on it in December, bringing it to about 77K total, but that usually goes up a bit on revision, because my first drafts tend to skip over establishing description to get to the good bits, and I then have to go and fill them in later. Anyway, it feels really good to have it done, and that brings up the question: what next?

It’s odd timing, because as the year rolls over, I finished the main project I was working on (Azure City), I’m a few chapters from finishing Ty the Knot ($20+ level Patreon), and I’m a few scenes from finishing the Robin Hood story ($5-level Patreon). So there’s going to be a lot of changes. Last time this kind of thing happened was when I finished Love Match and Black Angel in the same year (2016, iirc), and that was when I dove into finishing the Calatians series.

So what’s replacing all of those in January? Well, the first week of January, I’m going to a writing retreat where we’ll run through Azure City and see what it needs upon revision. Later in the month, I’ll also be getting feedback on Dead Right, the second Wolftown book, and I’ll be revising Squeak Thief. Those three are the books I hope to have out in 2024, so it’d be nice to have them finalized pretty soon. Wolftown is the closest, then the other two, but Wolftown also needs a pretty long ramp up to publication because we’ll be sending it for outside review, which we likely won’t do with the others (maybe Azure City, we’ll talk about it).

In the longer term, I think I will serialize Azure City on my Patreon at the $5 level, so if you’re interested, keep an eye out for that. Likely it’ll start in February or March. At the $20+ level, I think I will start that gay furry basketball player book. On my other Patreon, where the Wolftown book is currently being serialized, I am thinking about writing a “how to write a novel” craft book and posting updates there. We’re also looking at overhauling the Patreons and maybe offering more cool stuff there, so stay tuned for updates.

I have enough manuscripts sitting around now that I’d like to get some of them into the publication queue before Robin and Ty join them. So that’s where my energy’s going to go until at least two of the three are out of my paws. After that, we’ll see. Might want to dive into the third Wolftown book—if I want it out in 2025, I’ll have to start it soon—or go with the untitled fantasy book or the other Cupcake I have in my head. In any event, I’ll let you know as soon as I know!

I’ll be at Further Confusion in January doing a few panels (if you’re attending, please come to my Live Reading/Q&A on Friday because that’s on a stage and that probably means a large room that I would like to see a lot of people in!), and at Texas Furry Fiesta in March! Also looking at Las Vegas FC as lots of people said last year that one was fun.

Books:

The Price of Thorns: OUT NOW, 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: The Mysterious Affair of Giles is the latest audiobook to hit the stands, as it were. I’m thrilled that you finally get to hear Huskyteer’s lovely narration of this Agatha Christie-like story.

Winter Games is done and available now! Check it out. We’re very happy with this new recording and hope you’ll enjoy rediscovering that old title. As Kit read through it, he kept coming back to me with little bits we’d both forgotten about and enjoyed remembering.

As for the others: 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:

Squeak Thief: Sometime in 2024. A rich mouse hires a fox thief to steal from his own family, but the job quickly spirals out of control. (Novella)

Azure City: 2024-25. 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 fanfic and Ty Game sequel (on Patreon), untitled fantasy world project.

Streaming stuff:

Scott Pilgrim Takes Off (Netflix): Finished the series and loved it. I can’t think of another remake/reboot/sequel that honors the source material this much and also explores new areas so creatively.

Bodies (Netflix): If you like detective thrillers and time travel stories (I do), you will love this one. The premise: the same body shows up in the same place in London in 1890, 1941, and 2023. Three different detectives have to deal with it, and the story just gets stranger from there. Great stuff.

Clone High (Max): I’m late to the game on this one by about twenty years, but the creative geniuses behind The Lego Movie and Into the Spider-Verse team up with the creator of Scrubs to make a wacky animated sitcom about teen clones of famous people from throughout history. Will teen Abe Lincoln date his best friend teen Joan of Arc or sexpot teen Cleopatra? Popular kid teen John F. Kennedy and wannabe popular kid Gandhi round out a fantastic cast. There is a sequel series but…we’ll move on to that this year.

The Other Black Girl (Hulu): This thriller series starts off strong, as I noted last month. The ending didn’t quite work, I thought, but also maybe it wasn’t for me. And it wasn’t off enough to make me not recommend this show, because the acting and writing are generally great. Nella’s friend Malaika (Brittany Adebumola) steals every scene she’s in.

Slow Horses (Apple+): Spy thriller about a branch of MI5 where the disgraced or unwanted agents go, headed by Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman). Each series is only six episodes, so it’s a quick watch, but they pack a lot into those episodes and it’s the kind of show that’s hard to stop watching once it gets going. First series is great and I’m told it gets better.

What are you all hoping to accomplish this year?