I’m writing to you from the abyss between projects, or, more properly, the Realm of Chaos and Night.

This month, I sent my freshly rewritten novella to my agent and, while I know what I’m working on next, I’m forcing myself to take a little break before I dive in.

Partly, that’s because this rewrite felt like that sequence in The Count of Monte Cristo when Dantès slowly scoops his way through a plaster wall with a saucepan. Whether I want a break or not, I need one after that.

My other reason is that I’m heading into another rewrite that’s tonally and temporally very different. We’re moving from horror in Vermont to historical fantasy in Victorian London. (What can I say? I’ve got genre wanderlust.) I need to give myself time to reset.

But brains are gonna brain, and so I’ve been puzzling the shiny next, next, next thing that’s starting to come together and tapping weird little ideas into my notes app.

Fallow time is good time, too. It gives the chaos a chance to morph into something interesting.

Updates

I got to do an interview about Higher Magic and my day job in Inside Higher Ed!

ALSO Higher Magic is now available for request on NetGalley. It’s out in the wild! In fact, I recently saw the cover loaded up on an e-reader in a stranger’s Instagram story and almost dropped my phone.

May Recommendations

• The River has Roots by Amal El-Mohtar is stunning and clever and full of heart. I loved the grammar-based magic system and the sister-centered story. In the hardcover, there are lovely illustrations and I hear that the audiobook includes harp music performed by the author and her sister.

• MK Hardy sent me an eARC of their forthcoming gothic horror debut, The Needfire, and I was absolutely swept away. Blending “the historical flavour and sapphic yearning of Sarah Waters with the creeping dread of Mexican Gothic,” The Needfire follows Norah Mackenzie into a marriage of convenience in a troubled house on restive lands where she must ally with the alluring housekeeper as she unravels the past and its secrets, or risk losing herself.

Thanks for wallowing with me,

Courtney