Out of the Debauched Sloth

Chaz Brenchley's Fortnightly Newsletter

[In which our neglectful hero writes his newsletter on schedule, and then wholly forgets to send it out, and then wholly forgets that he has not in fact sent it out, leading to chaos and hilarity]

“Bad news travels at the speed of light; good news travels like molasses.” - Tracy Morgan

It’s been a rough couple of weeks, but hey: whatever the weather, it has to break eventually. The first real news of this fortnight isn’t even mine, it’s m’wife’s: which is to say that after fifteen months of searching, revising résumés, interviewing—oh lord, so many interviews!—and following promising leads that always ended in disappointment, Karen does finally have a job. The relief hereabouts is palpable, because we’d run our savings down to nothing in the process outlined above. Anyway, she is now a Technical Product Manager for CVS Health, with specific responsibilities that of course I do not understand at all. No matter; I don’t have to do the work, and she’s going to rock it.

So there’s that.

And there is also this! The second volume of my reissued fantasy series The Books of Outremer will be out next month—actual date and pre-order page forthcoming—and we have, wait for it, Revealed the Cover! Which is once again by the remarkable Ben Baldwin, and looks like this:

I love this with a love outstanding, I really do. And now, of course, would be a really good time to buy volume one, The Devil in the Dust (the cover of which is equally lovely, natch), so that you’re caught up on the story by the time Tower of the King’s Daughter actually drops. Me, I am currently engaged in a last-chance proofread of the text. Things happen much faster with indie publishers, I find.

In other writerly news, ahem: I am obliged to report that I have once again fallen foul of my own brain, and have mostly been working on the age-old Bright New Shiny Novel of which I spoke in my last. Did I mention that it was called CLEANER? I don’t remember. But anyway, it is now over 30K in length, which is, y’know. A third of a novel. If you can really call it a novel, when Only Nice Things Happen (so far, at least) despite the bleak and desperate situation from which our protagonist emerges. I need a break from being nasty to my characters, and this poor boy totally needs a break just from the world. My narrative opens with him at the very door to Rivendell, as it were, and he is invited in. (I often speak of “Rivendell moments”, a chapter or two where reader and characters both can catch their breaths, relax for a while, recover from past trauma and prepare for what comes next, catch up with old friendships and make new ones. Hang out with elves. That sort of thing. This whole damn book bids fair to be a Rivendell moment, first to last. And I am okay with that, honestly. Fiction is friction, to be sure, and I dare swear I can turn up some of that now and again, but not everything has to be high-stakes tension and stress. I reckon it’s fair enough to write a book about a boy in recovery.)

In other news, we generally have a party on 4th July, to celebrate my half-birthday and Greg’s full one. Even in these reduced times, we do still plan a smallish get-together with a few close friends—but we’re doing it on Sunday next, just to be different. So I’ll be prepping for that this week, as well as proofing and hopefully squeezing out a little time to write. With any luck, Mrs Bailey will be posting a few more recipes over on Medium; you should follow her there if you have any interest in food, so that you can be notified every time she comes up with something new in her Martian Kitchen.

Speak to you in a fortnight,

- Chaz

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You can hear from Mrs Bailey here - school cook! Many recipes, from all the many diasporic cultures on Mars!

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