Hail and Well Met, Newsletter Friends!

Another short missive, I’m afraid. The comforting sequel to Hellebore has finally be wrangled into something publishable. Like last time, I won’t give you a snippet, because even though this part’s very tame the story itself should still be plastered with warnings. In lieu of an excerpt, here’s a chunk of the closing notes, which should give you a pretty good idea of what to expect:

Is this wildly out of character? Maybe! Should it have been published a month and a half ago? Probably! Is it entirely self-serving? Absolutely!

Look, sometimes when things are bad what you really need is someone else to look at you and go “wow, that is extremely bad, I’m so sorry.” So that’s what this is.

On the WIP docket: I don’t know, honestly. I’m mostly sending this email out to assure people that I am in fact still writing, but what precisely I’m writing is hard to say. Shit’s been weird lately, for all the expected reasons; like most other people I’ve been battling the the combination of class/work from home + normal keeping yourself alive obligations + brainfog. Writing Short Steps has been hard, so I’m mostly bouncing between oneshots without finishing anything. It sucks.

I know the hot take right now is that it’s super fine and chill, actually, if you don’t do anything during your quarantine, because we’re all being [spins “social sciences terms the internet love to misuse wheel”] gaslight by the coronavirus. And I get that; the cult of productivity is really insidious. But I feel like this overlooks the fact that doing fun and creative things feels a lot better than just Absorbing Even More News. I don’t feel pressured by our current late capitalist hellscape to write, I want to make myself feel better by doing my fun hobby.

I guess the plan is that I’d like to publish something, anything, but preferably the next Short Steps chapter, before the end of the month. I hope that’s doable.

Stay safe out there friends.

—unsmilingchuck