Out of the Debauched Sloth

Chaz Brenchley's Fortnightly Newsletter

“No news is good news” - James Howell, 1640 (though he said it in Italian; does that count?)*

It is in the nature of the writer’s life that sometimes, often, two weeks is not enough time to garner any actual professional news. Especially in trad publishing, whatever I was doing a fortnight ago is very likely what I’m still doing now, and nothing has happened in the meantime. If you’re publishing one book a year, you’re getting one launch date, one cover reveal, one preorder link, and often not very much else worth talking about.

Publishing indie, as I am right now, there can be more going on (four books this year, maybe? Somewhere around that number), but even so. Something of the same applies. In the last two weeks I have done some proofreading, read through and cleaned up and minorly revised the text of TOWER OF THE KING’S DAUGHTER, book two of Outremer [no date to announce yet, but it is coming, my love, my own], and honestly written very little.

However! One thing I did write is Chapter Twelve of MARY ELLEN—CRATEREAN!, my ongoing saga of life in a 1930s girls’ boarding school. On Mars. That’s up now on my Patreon, and this is the link thereto, should you wish to sign up. Half a million words of fiction you will find there, and all for $3 a month. (Or more. Don’t hesitate to drop more in the kitty, if you’re willing and able. That buys our groceries, mostly.) If you’d rather just buy the books as they come out, here you go: links to the first two, THREE TWINS AT THE CRATER SCHOOL and DUST UP AT THE CRATER SCHOOL.

Print copies of the first Outremer novel, THE DEVIL IN THE DUST, have still not passed through the desiderata imposed by their host-to-be, so no link yet for those. You can preorder the ebook, though, from this link right here.

Not much else going on hereabouts. I posted a couple more recipes to Mrs Bailey’s Martian Kitchen, over on Medium. My giant rosemary bush has died. My favourite rose—“Julia Child”, to nobody’s great surprise—has not yet bloomed (I cut her back quite radically and quite late, so she’s been playing catch-up), but she’s getting there. I’ll hopefully remember to post a photo when she does, for she is glorious.

Here’s a reminder of the cover to THE DEVIL IN THE DUST, for it too is glorious—

—and that’s all I have for you this time. Stay safe, enjoy the spring if you’re in the northern hemisphere and the autumn if you’re not, and Slava Ukraini!

*James VI of Scotland & I of England almost said it a generation earlier, in 1616, but he actually said “No news is better than evil news,” which is close but not cigar-worthy. Besides which, he hated smoking. He wrote a whole great rant about it, which is glorious. Here you go. (I was unhappily unable to find a link that acknowledged his Scottishness, grrr.)