Out of the Debauched Sloth
Chaz Brenchley's (sometimes) Fortnightly Newsletter
“Yesterday’s papers, telling yesterday’s news” - Ralph McTell
...suppose you wrote a newsletter, and nobody remembered to send it?*
*a guide for the bewildered: “you” in this figure is in fact me, and “nobody” is also me, except in the negative.
As it happens, the big news hereabouts is that I had a royalty check this morning from those nice people at Zombies Needs Brains, for my share of the proceeds from the three books of theirs that I have stories in. Thus am I now $23.63 wealthier, which is a grand thing.
And meanwhile, for your delectation and delight, here is all the news of yesteryear, or at least two weeks ago...
* * *
Happy News Year, to all who celebrate!
So what’s news, you ask? Good question, that. First off, you should know that I not only finished and submitted my December solarpunk short story to its editors at ZNB, but I did so days ahead of deadline. Days, I say! This is ... almost unprecedented, in recent history. My reputation hereabouts is much more along the lines of writing the thing on the last possible day, and delivering it in the last possible minute.
So I’m quite smug about that, and also about the Great Kitchen Reorg [Ongoing], which has been Ongoing for more than a month now and is still going on. The cleaners come today; they will find the kitchen - well, not spotless, no. Never that. But presentable, I believe. And I can find things.
Also I have reanimated my sourdough starter (thanks to one of my Christmas presents, a copy of THE PERFECT LOAF by Maurizio Leo, which is a lovely book and I intend to work my way through it from beginning to end), baked one highly satisfactory loaf, and learned that no, you cannot successfully freeze sourdough dough, or at least not the way I freeze pizza doughs for later baking. People, I committed Science! Experiments were attempted, results noted (seriously, I have dedicated a notebook to recording my breadbaking progress), mistakes made! It was glorious.
Going back to the workstuff, I am also ramping ahead with PAGE AND MONARCH, FORTH THEY WENT, the second novella about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Christian Priest on Mars. You can catch up with this on my Ko-fi page (and indeed buy me a coffee, to keep the story moving along), and if you missed the first one you can read that for free on my Patreon page. Where you could also pause to subscribe, and thus get your hands on half a million words of other fiction, much of it works in progress or otherwise as yet unpublished.
Forthcomingly: my next book out will be the third volume of my rereleased Crusader-based fantasy, A DARK WAY TO GLORY. You can expect that in a couple of months, I believe, from Wizard’s Tower Press; I am in hopes that you can expect the cover reveal in the next issue of this newsletter. (I have seen it, and it is glorious. I feel sooo lucky, having Ben Baldwin making my covers for me at WTP.)
Also, following on from that whole Great Kitchen Reorg (Ongoing) energy, I have also begun Sorting Out My Study. Baby steps thus far, picking up a lot of scribbled-over drafts from the floor and tossing them out, because nobody cares about my archive so I might as well tidy up after myself and not leave a metric tonne of paper for my heirs and graces to throw away.
Is that it, for now? That may be it. I have a birthday tomorrow, and should probably think about prepping for it. Though we are also expecting Massive Weather tomorrow and in the days to come (srsly, what is on its way has been described as “a brutal storm”, and we are told to expect roads washed away, trees toppled, floods and power outages and “likely loss of human life”, so we’re not really expecting many visitors. My fourth birthday party was snowed off; it seems likely that my sixty-fourth will be Rain-Affected, as we say in cricketing circles).
’Til next time,
- Chaz