Last weekend, I was one of the guests of honour at Can*Con, here in Ottawa. My fellow guests of honour were Premee Mohamed and Stephen Kotowych, both of whom are extremely cool people to hang out with. I’ve been going to Can*Con every year for, well, I don’t even remember how long but roughly a decade and a half. So I was particularly touched when they asked me to be guest of honour — I mean, they know I’m going to come anyway! It also made the experience of being a guest of honour anywhere for the first time more comfortable, since it’s a convention where I know so many people and where the culture and vibes are familiar to me.

There are various kinds of festivals and conventions that authors go to, and they all have different cultures and expectations. Can*Con, like other fan-run conventions that focus on science fiction, fantasy and horror, is run by volunteers and is not trying to make a profit. Very much a labour of love. Unlike literary festivals, the speakers on panels are attendees like everyone else, and expected to pay their own way, including the membership fees. (Some cons discount or refund membership fees for panelists, but not many, in my experience, and anyway, that’s only a small part of the overall cost: travel, hotel and food are the big budget items.)

The great thing about everybody-pays con culture is that there’s (almost) no line between the “talent” and the other attendees, and we all eat together and chat together.

I’ve grumbled enough on social media about the rise in AI-generated scam emails that now, more than one of my author friends has sent an email to me, asking whether I think it’s a scam or not. (This is great; please always send these emails to author friends for second opinions, and I’m always happy to be that friend.)

My answer, I’m sorry to say, has always been “yeah, that’s the typical scam pattern”, but I can’t fault anyone for being unsure. I’ve just seen a lot of them, I think because I have a pretty big backlist now.

Most of these emails are pretty slick. They come from Firstname Lastname at a gmail address and have a real-looking signature. Most of the time, everything is spelled correctly and they have enough specific details to seem plausible. Some of them even impersonate real events or book clubs, so searching the name of the organization will seem to confirm that the email is genuine. And they never ask for money right away, so the scam is not apparent in the opening email.

Here’s a bit of one that came in five minutes ago:

Hey everyone! Some lovely news: I’ve recieved a grant from the Canada Council of the Arts for a project I’ll work on in 2026. I’ll tell you more about that as time goes on, but for now I’ll just say that I’ll have a small chunk of money to pay myself to work on a book part-time for a couple of months next year. It’s not easy to get a Canada Council grant these days (I struck out with Mercutio, with a note that the project met the threshold on its merits but that most projects are not accepted because of the increasingly constrained budget for funding. I did receive a smaller grant from the City of Ottawa for Mercutio, which made a huge difference to me last year.)

Next month, there are two events here in Ottawa that I’m very excited about.

I’ll be one of the guests of honour at Can*Con. My schedule is below. If you’re coming and would like to attend the kaffeeklatsch, please don’t forget to sign up. I’ll have some chapbooks I’ve been printing up to give away at my kaffeeklatsch and signing.

I was talking with a writer friend in the U.S. the other day, someone I've known for years and whose work I've long admired. They mentioned that they've been finding it difficult to write lately, because of the state of their country and the world in general. They feel pressure to write something that would, even in some small way, make things less terrible. To write something meaningful and valuable to the struggle. So they struggle to write.

It's a conversation I've had with many writer friends over the last few years – actually, over the last few decades, because the world has always been on fire. But more frequently over the last few years. 

I told my friend that, for whatever reason, I have not felt that kind of pressure to write with the times in mind. Maybe, I said, it's because I keep noticing how my values have a way of showing up in whatever I write without my having to think about it; that morning, I had been working on a scene set in the 16th century, and realized that a character's bitter speech about the geopolitics of that time could have been me talking about the war in Ukraine. 

And yes, that's true (and not just for me). But I felt there was something missing from that explanation. After our conversation, I kept thinking about how my own writing practice has been in 2025.

Hello friends! I’ve been travelling in France, Belgium and the UK for the last couple of weeks. I didn’t plan the trip with this in mind, but our route has been very much the same as the path my grandpa travelled during the “phony war” period in early 1940: over the channel to Cherbourg, then across northern France to Belgium, then to Dunkirk, where he was among those safely brought home (and where we have ferry tickets).

We’ve seen a number of sites associated with D-Day in Normandy, and I was particularly struck by Juno Beach, where the Canadians launched their assault. The Picardy-Belgium part of the trip has been about seeing WWI sites. Nothing about this trip was intended to be book research — it’s for my kid, mainly — but, well, everything is research. I’ve got a future project in mind that involves a Canadian soldier from the Great War, so being on the Somme and in Ypres has been very useful for that. It’s also been wonderful to see parts of the landscape I wrote about in Armed in Her Fashion/The Chatelaine, and imagine Margriet and Beatrix and Claude making their way across those fields and towns.

One of the highlights of the trip for me was finally getting to see the Bayeux Tapestry in person. Since the Tapestry plays a major role in my novel The Tapestry of Time, I’ve read a lot about it, and stared at its digitized version for hours, but there’s nothing like seeing the object itself. I’m so glad I was able to. So I thought I’d write this week about that experience.

Hi everyone! Tomorrow (Aug. 16), the Edmonton WorldCon Bid is hosting an online party highlighting Canadian creators. I’ll be on the discussion panel about Canadian science fiction and fantasy, and I’ll also be interviewing my longtime friend and mentor Julie Czerneda about her work. It’s free to join and you don’t have to be a member of WorldCon. There will also be social spaces. Come on by!

Also, a heads up that I’m offering a full manuscript critique for the We The People summer fundraiser, which is raising funds to help families in Gaza, with some funding also going to immigrant and trans rights collectives. I don’t offer a full manuscript critique as an auction donation often, as it’s a lot of work and time, so if this is something that interests you, it’s worth grabbing if you can. (Don’t worry if your manuscript isn’t quite ready yet; I can do it any time in the next several months.) The auction starts Aug. 18, and it’s got hundreds of items worth checking out.

I’ve had a chance to get an early peek at a couple of forthcoming books that I want to recommend to you all. One is The Drowned Man’s Daughter, which a gorgeous, strange, dark ecological novella about how people form and break community. It’s by a friend of mine, C.J. Lavigne, so I am biased, but I’d love it even if I didn’t know C.J. It’s coming out in early September from Newest Press.

Hi all! A couple of things to share: I recently had a post on John Scalzi’s Big Idea series about the history behind The Tapestry of Time. You can also find some book club questions for the novel here.

I’ve been reflecting lately on a particular set of qualities in retellings — a category that includes my novels The Valkyrie, The Swordmaster and Mercutio to some degree. I thought I’d share those reflections with you.

Forty years ago this summer, Italo Calvino was preparing a series of lectures he was scheduled to give at Harvard throughout the next academic year. He died that September, 1985, before he could deliver them. They were published after his death as Six Memos For the Next Millennium (even though he only completed five.)

Each of the lectures is about a quality or value in literature. The first is on lightness. I've listened to the audio version¹ of this lecture dozens of times, and I always find something new in it. By lightness, Calvino means a style of writing that subtracts as much as possible from language, from structure, and even from the images and characters within a story. Lightness tends to move from the concrete to the abstract, to atomize and dissolve.

I was thinking about tense this week, in part because of this useful thread on Bluesky from editor David Thomas Moore about some of the grammatical tangles we writers can get into in present tense. Truth be told, I’m usually thinking about tense, when I’m not overthinking it. 

It's an aspect of writing feature-style journalism that many students struggle with, which means that as an instructor, I have had to figure out ways to explain why past or present may be suitable for a given verb within the context of a piece — something a lot of writers do instinctively. 

As an author, I have particular ways of thinking about tense — in some sense, what tense means to me as the author at the story level is distinct from the way tense manifests at the sentence level. So I thought I’d explore that this week.

(This is going to get into very nerdy weeds and I fear it might seem either obvious or unhinged or both, in a "have you ever really thought about your hands?" sort of way. Sorry. Feel free to skip the rest if you're not into it. My only news to share this week is that the US paperback release of The Tapestry of Time hits shelves on July 22, hooray! Available from anywhere that sells books — you can order if they don’t yet have it in stock — and please do request from your library if you can.)

Hello all! July is upon us, which means The Tapestry of Time comes out in the U.S. in a few weeks, and the paperback comes out in the UK in September. If you’re in either place and you’re able to pre-order the book (ideally from an indie bookstore) that would help spread the word. Any bookstore should be able to order it for you. Library requests are also a huge boost. And thank you!

Today I want to talk about the connection between the fantastical in the book and the themes I set out to explore. I often say that I write history "with something weird going on" but the choice of "something weird" is never arbitrary!

Tapestry begins in June 1944, with a woman walking in Paris, when she sees something impossible.

The main reason I chose to make the sisters clairvoyant is that I wanted the book to ask questions about how we know things and/or think we know things, and whether there's a difference. This is a book about fascism and its claims about history, after all, so "How does anyone know they're right? How do we know they're wrong?" is woven through it.

In case you missed the news, I'm now a Nebula award winner! My nine co-writers and I were pleased and, I think it's fair to say, somewhat astonished by our win in the game writing category for A Death in Hyperspace. I can't say what was in the voters' minds, but it feels to me like a vote for small, weird, indie works of the heart, and it's just lovely. With so many of us on the ballot, we don't all get enormous lucite cubes (the Nebula trophies) but my certificate's in the mail. I really like this overview by Stewart C Baker about how A Death in Hyperspace came together, if you're curious.

Awards are strange beasts. I've had four Nebula nominations now, and three of them are for game writing (as is my only win), even though games are not the bulk of what I do or what I'm best known for. There are so many dynamics that go into it all. It can also be an odd thing to cope with; the emotions that accompany being on an award list can sometimes take us by surprise and be more complex than one might think. (This is probably especially true for those of us with imposter syndrome, and fear of taking up space, and mortifying terror of showing off). I actually struggle with all of that more than I struggle with disappointment over not being on awards lists (which happens most of the time! I've never been nominated for a Hugo, for example.) 

Not being on an awards list is the default expectation, to me, so it doesn't sting at all. And I've never been disappointed when I’m nominated but don't win; it truly is an honour to be on a ballot in the company of one's peers. What makes it all more complicated, of course, is the feeling of obligation to the work and to the team behind it. We want our books, games and stories to have the best chance of finding readers (and, frankly, paying for the groceries) and while awards don't always translate to a bump in sales, anything that might introduce your work to one more reader is welcome.

Anyway, what I really want to talk about this week is occasioned by the fact that copy edits have landed for Mercutio, which is very exciting. At this stage, my editor (Jane Johnson) and I have already worked through any structural issues (characterization, plot, etc) and we're happy with what's on the page. So another editor has gone through line by line and checked for clarity and consistent style. (I cannot get into the habit of putting an S at the end of toward to save my life, even though I made a concerted effort this time!) Copy editors also check for any hiccups in the plot (a character being described one way on page 10, another on page 74), and they check on things like timelines (always an area where I'm prone to make errors, since I revise so much and tend to write novels that take place over many years.) 

I’ve been working on a very cool project with Solaris, and since we announced it yesterday, now I can tell you about it! It’s called The Swordmaster, and it’s a vampire novel set in the world of Alexandre Dumas. Solaris began this series with Emma Newman’s novel The Vengeance—which I have read and loved, and which is getting a sequel of its own.

Although it’s a series, my book doesn’t follow from Emma’s. In fact, The Swordmaster is set earlier than The Vengeance. I set my novel during the time of Dumas’s Valois novels — during the time of Catherine de’ Medici and the St Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris in 1572. For the Dumas fans out there, my novel is set roughly in the same period (and with many of the same characters) as La Reine Margot. I’ve also drawn from his other books and stories; for example, his vampire story The Pale Lady. My main character, Françoise de Montesquiou d’Artagnan, is a member of the same family as the famous musketeer. (I deeply love Françoise and I hope everyone else does too.) There will be Easter eggs for the Dumas readers, but I wrote it to be accessible to people who have not yet read anything by Dumas, as well.

It was a real privilege to write a vampire novel, to tap into (ha) that long tradition, which has so often been used to make social commentary and push boundaries. We have a first draft of The Swordmaster already, and I’m so pleased to be working with my wonderful editor Amanda Raybould on it.

Hello, folks! In my next newsletter, I’ll be able to talk about a secret project I’ve been working on for the last year and a half, so I’m looking forward to that. If you follow me on Bluesky, Instagram or Facebook, I’ll be sharing the news there once it’s out.

Today, I want to talk about the situation facing Canadian cultural events and festivals.

In many cases, paying audiences are still not back to the levels they were at before the pandemic began. First the mid-pandemic global inflation and supply chain crisis, and now the new global economic crisis engineered by the U.S. government, have ensured that ticket revenue is likely to remain stagnant; people are cutting back on discretionary expenses, for good reasons.

The same government is destabilizing stock markets, and that always has an effect on the philanthropic sector. Another thing having an enormous impact on donor behaviour around the world right now is the destruction of USAID and other U.S. agencies; wealthy individuals and foundations are shifting their money to try to fill in the most urgent gaps — ie, to keep babies alive. That means that there is less money to go around for everything, including arts and culture.

In the face of the constant pressure to welcome generative AI into every aspect of our lives, we writers often protest that "writing is thinking." Thinking is not a skill or process that we, as a species, should be eager to farm out! But it's sometimes difficult to think of examples that illustrate what we mean, in the heat of those arguments.

This week, as I was noodling with the first draft of the first chapter of a new book, I came across a little example I thought I'd share. It's very unusual (and a bit uncomfortable) for me to share anything about a book that is in the very early stages, but here we go! This one is set in the 16th century, which is all I’ll say about it for now…

Whenever I'm drafting a new book, I play around with point of view and tense, trying on different options. It might seem rote to change the tense of all the verbs – in fact, on the surface, it seems like precisely the sort of tedious job that software could do for us. But I have found, over and over, that it isn't rote at all. When you tell a story in past tense rather than present, you tell it differently.

For example:

Tomorrow, Saturday April 26, is independent bookstore day! Here in the Ottawa area, we’re blessed to have 8 independent bookstores that throw a fantastic bookstore crawl, and any independent bookstore in Canada is likely to have great deals, events and prizes this weekend.

I’m a reader in large part because of independent bookstores, both in real life and in literature. (Over and over I read The Hounds of the Morrigan, in which great events are set in motion when a boy buys a book in a shop in Galway.) One of the things I love about independent bookstores is that they can be vast palaces or they can be a single shelf inside something else. I treasure the beaten-up paperback of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man I bought when I was 17 at a pizza parlour in Belize City, because it arrived precisely when I needed it (I’d finished the other books in my backpack), in the most unexpected place.

In 2022, I did a reading at the Gaynor Family Library in my home town of Selkirk, Manitoba, north of Winnipeg. I didn’t think anyone would come, but the place was packed. And to my delight, we had books for sale, thanks to the local shop Hi Tone Records, which sold books as well as vinyl (and is now, sadly closed.)

Hey everyone! One quick piece of news to begin: I know this is coming up soon, but I'm teaching a two-hour public seminar at Carleton University on Monday, April 14, from 10 a.m. to noon, on Research for Writers. Still time to sign up if you can make it!

I love getting requests for topics to cover in this newsletter. (You can respond to them any time, or ping me on social media.) I had a request recently for recommendations of books by Canadian writers. That’s a topic I’m happy to talk about — actually, the challenge for me is that once I start talking, it’s hard to know where to stop! I know a lot of Canadian writers, both personally and through their work.

A good place to start, if you’re interested in Canadian speculative fiction, is the series of anthologies edited by Stephen Kotowych. Volume 3 of the Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction is kickstarting now.

To keep this list short, I’ve set some parameters: these are recent books by 9 Canadian and Indigenous writers whose previous work I have enjoyed, even though I haven’t read these particular books yet. They’re some of the books that are at the top of my “to read” pile. I'm up to my eyeballs in research books for the next novel at the moment, though, so the "to read" pile is going to keep taunting me for a while.

I got the revision of Mercutio off to my editor shortly after my last newsletter, and I just heard back from her that she loves it. Hooray! I’m very happy with how it’s coming along, too. This revision wasn’t a structural renovation the way The Tapestry of Time was, but it required a lot of new material to put flesh on the bones, so to speak. (I’ve given up trying to avoid mixed metaphors. We’re all tired.)

My next task is to do a relatively quick read-through and make some smaller corrections, and then we’ll send it off to a copy-editor, and after I go through the copy-edits, it’ll go to proofreading. At the moment, the plan is for Mercutio to come out in April 2026 in the UK (not sure of the dates elsewhere yet), so this gives an idea of timelines in publishing. We’re also talking about the cover design, which is always exciting.

I have another project that will come back to me soon with editorial feedback, but in the meantime, I’m working on the research and brainstorming for two new projects: my next novel, which is already contracted with HarperVoyager UK, and a passion project I’m noodling on.

A few things to share:

Today I’m off to one of my favourite coffee shops, with one of my fabulous writer friends, to work on the last few edits on Mercutio. Even though the revision has been slow going (not helped by me getting sick last week), I’m really happy with the changes and eager to get this novel back to Jane Johnson, my editor at HarperVoyager UK. If all goes according to plan, it’ll be on shelves about a year from now.

Bits of news first off:

Tickets are now available for Can*Con 2025 in person here in Ottawa in October (where I’ll be a guest of honour) and also for the shorter, virtual version in April. I expect this will be the only convention I attend in person this year.

My novel about Nazi-fighting clairvoyants, The Tapestry of Time, is on sale in ebook ($2.99) and audiobook ($6.99) in Canada at all retailers for all of March (it was a contestant in HarperCollins Canada March Madness, from which it’s been eliminated, but the sale’s still on, and the contest is great fun and you should check it out and vote on the remaining books.)

Many things are terrible and hard right now, so here, have a list of my 25 favourite historical films! 

This isn't necessarily a list of the historical movies I think are objectively best, or most important. They are my personal favourites, the ones I watch over and over, and/or the ones that left me saying "wow" and changed my brain in some way. (I have not included any Shakespeare adaptations or even anything Shakespeare-adjacent, as I'm treating that as its own category, one I've talked about in my newsletter before.) The list below is in alphabetical order. I'm sure I've forgotten something that I'll kick myself over in five minutes.

1. A Knight's Tale, 2001. Incredibly fun and deeply medieval, not in spite of the anachronisms but because of them. 

2. A Room With a View, 1985. A perfect film. Lines from this movie play in my head as I go about my business. Love everyone in this. Helena Bonham Carter is Lucy to a T. Rupert Graves as Freddy! Daniel Day-Lewis as Cecil! Julian Sands as George! Maggie Smith as Charlotte! I could go on!

3. Amadeus, 1984. My kid still laughs at me because I panicked when I realized we didn't have this on DVD and were reliant on streaming (I rectified this.) A staple film! It taught me many things about storytelling and continues to do so.

4. Cry Freedom, 1987. Donald Woods' book about Steve Biko has had a huge influence on my life, and I looked to Woods as a role model when I became an editorial writer. The movie was almost equally influential to me. Denzel Washington and Kevin Kline are amazing in it. It was only made 10 years after Biko's death (and my birth), but since it's telling a true story of a particular moment in time, it was and remains "historical" as far as I'm concerned.

5. Dangerous Liaisons, 1988. When I think of John Malkovich, I think of this movie, even now. A movie that sets its tone and holds it. But I haven’t rewatched it in years, so I’m overdue. And maybe I’ll find it doesn’t hold up as well as I remember.

6. Dunkirk, 2017. I went into this one with some trepidation, because my grandpa was among those evacuated from the beach at Dunkirk and told me about what it was like. I think he would have approved of the film. Plus, it's a cool feat of storytelling, with its three interwoven timespans already a touchstone among writers for that kind of plot.

7. In the Name of the Father, 1993. It strikes me that Daniel Day-Lewis appears on my list a lot. He's great in this, as is Pete Postlethwaite. A movie that gave teen me context for Pogues lyrics and taught me a lot about injustice, colonial institutions and why we don’t trust authority.

8. Lady Jane, 1986. I love Helena Bonham Carter in A Room With a View, but it's possible I love her in this even more. The perfect portrayal of Jane Grey, especially the moment on the scaffold when she can't find the block. It makes me ugly sob every single time I see it.

   

9. Lawrence of Arabia, 1962. Watched this one with my dad growing up, and while it's far from a complete or accurate portrayal of the events it covers, it's gorgeous and fascinating and has some incredible performances from Omar Sharif, Claude Rains, Alec Guinness and, of course, Peter O'Toole.

10. Marie Antoinette, 2006. A huge influence on my novel The Embroidered Book, and both my novel and the film drew on Antonia Fraser’s biography. Far more true to history than some earlier and more conventional treatments. Another example (to go with A Knight's Tale) of creative uses of anachronism.

11. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, 2003. So perfectly executed – this film is just a delight. The standout performance is Max Pirkis as the teenage midshipman.

12. Oppenheimer, 2023. I understand why this movie didn't land for some people, and there are a lot of fair critiques of its choices. I see it as a film about how American politics talks about genocide, and I found it riveting, with career-defining performances and really interesting story-telling choices. It has stuck with me.

13. Orlando, 1992. Probably the movie on the list that has influenced me the most as a writer, equally with the book it adapts. Quentin Crisp is my favourite Elizabeth I. Tilda Swinton is magnificent. I adore everything about this movie.

14. Poor Things, 2023. An alternate history, but it counts. Weird and wonderful. Emma Stone is brilliant. That's all.

15. Saving Private Ryan, 1998. Of course. I could make a whole list just of war movies, but this would be near the top of it. Yeah, it’s got US-coloured glasses on, but it shows us D-Day and its aftermath in a way nothing else does, not even The Longest Day, which of course is also great. I definitely had visuals from Saving Private Ryan in my head as I was writing the Ivy chapters of The Tapestry of Time. Another ugly-sob movie.

16. The Age of Innocence, 1993. Daniel Day-Lewis again! He's so good as Archer, and Michelle Pfeiffer is so good as Olenska. A really faithful and beautiful adaptation of a brilliant novel.

17. The Duchess, 2008. The film that made me sit up and take note of what a fine actor Keira Knightley is.

18. The Favourite, 2018. I have an unpublished novel set during Queen Anne's reign in which Robert Harley (played by the always amazing Nicholas Hoult in this film) is a minor character, so I guess I was always the target audience for this, but also, Olivia Colman! And Emma Stone, again. And the soundtrack. 

    

19. The Green Knight, 2021. I almost didn't include this because the England it portrays is more fantastical than historical, but that's one of the things that makes it so true to the stories it's retelling. I love this weird movie deeply. Dev Patel! Sean Harris! Barry Keoghan!

20. The Lion in Winter, 1968. Probably my favourite movie, period. Peter O'Toole, again. Katharine Hepburn. Also anachronistic, also deeply medieval. A movie (and play) that reminds us that writing is not real life; it’s writing. Every line is a diamond.

21. The Name of the Rose, 1986. Another brilliant adaptation of a brilliant book; such a treat to see it come to life. The atmosphere is perfect.

22. The Northman, 2022. It's probably not a surprise to anyone who's read my work that I am very fond of historical fiction that treats the beliefs of its characters as part of the setting. This is a retelling of the stories that preceded Hamlet, and it actually gave me a new understanding of Hamlet – so it almost violates my "no Shakespeare" rule for this list.

23. The Remains of the Day, 1993. What a beautiful, patient film about the lives and choices of two people, and one of the sharpest portrayals of British upper class fascism.

    

24. The VVitch, 2015. I sat in the theatre fully expecting the female main character to follow the Hollywood beats and pluckily convey the movie's message. I was so delighted when it never happened, and I had to rethink the entire movie, and consider whether I see it as a folk tale, or as a community tragedy about the perpetuation of abuse, or something else. It's a movie that asks the audience to do the work, something that feels like a relief, when so many movies refuse to trust us enough to do that. And, as with others like The Green Knight and The Northman, I love movies that don’t feel as if they’re uneasy in their historical viewpoints.

25. The Zone of Interest, 2023. A work of genius that everyone should see, immediately if you haven’t already. The best example I know of a movie that tells its story in full collaboration with its audience.
    

Hello, folks! First of all, a heads up about a new anthology coming soon called Rising Tides that includes a story by me – a pirate story called “Lady Misfortune”, set in the early 1600s on the coast of Newfoundland! I had lots of fun with this one, and I know the publisher will appreciate your support for the kickstarter if you can.

And some good news to share! The Tapestry of Time is on the Locus Recommended Reading List, which also forms the ballot for the Locus Awards, for which anyone can vote! It’s also on the longlist for the British Science Fiction Association awards, for which members of the BSFA can vote. It was really wonderful to see this book on those lists.

I thought I'd do a little update on the novel revisions today, with some thoughts on finding one's own way while taking feedback on board, and dealing with critical voices as a writer.

I got my editor’s (wonderful) feedback on the draft of Mercutio a few weeks ago. It's not a difficult revision, but it's been slow going: partly because I've had a lot of freelance and teaching work on my plate, partly because I'm a bit burnt out from doing too much in the fall, partly because we've had some time-consuming household stuff to deal with such as the aftermath of a truck veering into our lane and hitting our car (we’re all OK, but dealing with the insurance company and other red tape has been extremely stressful), and partly because the horrors on the news are occupying more of my mental space than makes for optimal productivity. But I'm getting there!

The main job with this draft is to extend my hand a little bit more to readers. This is something I get asked about, sometimes, so I thought it might be worth exploring a little. People will ask me questions like “Do you have to do what your editor says?” or “Do you compromise your vision to try to be more commercial?” And the short answer is no. But! That doesn’t mean I just send my (wise and patient!) editor a snippy note and insist upon my genius. It’s more complicated than that.

For example, one thing I am doing with this draft is laying down a bit more emotional groundwork, for certain subplots, to make sure certain moments hit for the reader the way I want them to hit. This is always part of revision for me, but I still find it a little bit tricky to spot where that's actually an issue, because I’m so prone to second-guessing myself. My agent and editor know me and my work well, and they are both good at telling me where I need More. (I always need More somewhere, often very literally. My books almost always get longer with each draft.) Often, everything I want the reader to catch is already there in the book, but it just needs to be underlined or teased out enough that the reader feels it. I have gone through this process with all of my books.

Hello, everyone! A heads up, to begin with: today's the final day for the #KidLit4Ceasefire auction. I'm offering signed and personalized copies of my Assassin's Creed novels, anywhere in the world. You've got a few hours to bid if you're interested! The money goes to good causes, including to helping displaced families in Gaza.

This week, I want to share some thoughts about why I'm not giving up hope despite the truly depressing onslaught of news every day.

If you're subscribed to this newsletter, you probably already know that writing fiction about moments of historical change is the main thing I do with my working hours. 

The Chatelaine is set against the backdrop of the political, religious and economic ferment in 14th century Europe and the pressures that led to the Hundred Years' War.