September 2023 Dispatch

August is behind us, which means there’s only a couple more months of summer temperatures yet for us to enjoy our pumpkin spice lattes in before Halloween and fall roll around. A lot of what I’ve been doing this month is frantically finishing a revision to the Unfinished Business sequel so that I could send it to the writing group I’m doing a workshop with this week, and when I was done with that I went and read all the other things people submitted that I’m going to have to give critiques on. I’m looking forward to this workshop (even though I’m attending remotely) because doing critiques always opens up my writer brain to new possibilities in my own work, and also because they are smart people who are going to make the second Wolftown book better.

I’ve also been doing a lot of work on the Price of Thorns release—or, well, Kit has been doing a lot of work and I’ve occasionally been helping. I’m impressed at the scope of the work he’s been doing to help get the word out! As you guys saw, we did an Advance Reader Copy program so that hopefully we’ll have some reviews up the week it officially launches, and big thanks to any of you who offered to read and review. Because we and Argyll don’t have a marketing department, we have to depend on our readers to spread the word, so if you have friends who like fantasy books—even if they’re not furry (PoT is on the border between furry and non-furry, I think)—it would mean a lot to me if you recommended the book to them.

What’s coming up in September? Well, there’s a workshop first of all, and I’ll be working on the Dangerous Spirits add-on book, and more PoT marketing stuff. We’re thinking about launching a Telegram channel for my readers to chat and hear new announcements, and I’ll post about it here and on my social media channels when it happens.

Speaking of that! I’m on BlueSky now at, unsurprisingly, @kyellgold@bsky.social. I’m still on Xitter (@kyellgold) and Mastodon (@kyellgold@furries.club). You can follow me on any or all of those. Xitter and Bluesky are generally going to be booky-stuff broadcast channels; Mastodon is going to be that plus more personal stuff, random thoughts and jokes, etc. I’m going to keep a presence on all three channels (for the moment) to keep in touch with those of you who prefer any of the three.

(I had typed out a whole paragraph talking about my social media habits and then deleted it because I’m even more tired of people explaining their social media habits than I am of social media. Just go read about enshittification if you haven’t already because that’s the one thing I wanted to pass along.)

So there’s lots of stuff happening here! I hope you had a lovely summer and that fall treats each of you well. Enjoy your pumpkin spice in whatever form you take it.

Books:

Audiobooks: 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 The Mysterious Affair of Giles and Titles done and available to you. All three have been recorded and are now under our review to send back to the narrators for minor corrections. And we are hoping to get a Price of Thorns audiobook out close to the print release! By next month I should have a better idea of whether that’s happening.

Return From Divalia is available everywhere now. If you have read and liked it, writing a review is one of the most helpful things you can do for it, and it’s free! (It doesn’t have to be on Amazon, but that’s still where most people go for their books.)

Other upcoming releases:

The Price of Thorns: Scheduled for November 2023, some pre-release copies available at conventions, pre-order and review at Amazon. 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.

Squeak Thief: Complete but not scheduled yet, maybe late 2023. A rich mouse hires a fox thief to steal from his own family, but the job quickly spirals out of control.

In progress: Robin Hood fanfic and Ty Game sequel (on Patreon), Wolftown 2, horror novel, untitled fantasy world project.

Streaming stuff:

I’ve probably talked about Perry Mason (HBO) already, but wow is that a good show. The first season holds up and actually rewards a second viewing. I’m in awe of the writing and the performances and the sets and all. Just stellar TV.

Kit introduced us to Jury Duty (Amazon Freevee? It was on Prime but was going to leave last week), a kind of reality/improv show with one unwitting person thinking he’s participating in a documentary about jury service, while the trial is fake and everyone else is an actor. The creators worked on The Office (US), unsurprisingly, and this has a lot of that DNA in it. The main guy is great and all the characters around him are tons of fun. We questioned at various points how much they had actually told him, and that question is answered in the show. Check it out if you can find it—it’s pretty funny.

I’m in the later seasons of Columbo now, and oof. There are still good moments, and a lot of the stories are strong, but a couple of the episodes end with Columbo baiting the murderer into trying to kill him, only to have cunningly rigged things so the murder attempt won’t work. Which feels rather extreme. These later shows seem more bent on putting Columbo into weird situations—in the one I’m watching now, he comes to a building to ask someone questions, stumbles into a music lesson, and ends up leading a bunch of children around the building while playing a tuba. I’m still enjoying it, but I’m glad there aren’t many left.

And we finally watched The Batman. I enjoyed it! They made Gotham seem like a real city, and the comic-bookiness felt just right to fit in a movie-real world. I liked that Batman was more of a detective and that he moved through the world like a real person. Jeffrey Wright is great as Gordon, and mostly the acting is good. I don’t think it needed to be three hours long, but we took breaks and it wasn’t too bad.