Howdy, everyone!
It is AUGUST! It is my BIRTHDAY MONTH! And my [redacted]! And release day for Fortune’s Wake!
I redid my website! Out of a fit of procrastination and also a misguided attempt to feel like I could control something that had a bit more instant gratification than writing a book or getting buff. Take a little tour, tell me if anything breaks. I’ll try to fix it, lol. Most exciting new features: drop down menus for the books and chapter TOCs (for those bonus previews and the serial I still want to do one day). A separation for the newsletter and the blog.
I also accidentally started working on a hella awesome project with the generous cooperation of a few of your (soon-to-be if they aren’t already) artists. You can see a few of them here. Stay tuned for the first drop in a couple weeks.
What with the heatwaves that hit the UK earlier in July, I’ve been thinking a lot about adaptation to stress. Running in London—anywhere in the northern hemisphere, really—meant heat training. My times usually take a hit in the summer, totally normal, but I have noticed my heartrate is actually staying steady, even relatively low, which is essentially saying my body isn’t freaking out over this less than ideal situation—which is to say, it’s handling it. Which is exhilarating. Which is SEXY.
Compared to how I felt one summer ago, two or three summers ago, it’s astonishing and makes me feel proud. The other thing that made me feel proud is how I handled my personal race strategy on the trail race I did.
At the start of a race, you may know this, but everyone is there jockeying for position, trying to not get caught behind slower people, to get out of the massive crush. It takes some time on a course before the mass thins to a sort of line. But with everyone rushing forward, it can be hard not to let yourself get swept up in the momentum and follow the crowd—specifically at a pace that isn’t yours. I let my own miles guide me that day, the miles I’d run day in and day out in the past few hot weeks but also the last year, last 8 years!! (I’ve been running for 8 years!! (I know this bc I started running to impress my partner and that’s how long we’ve been together whoops.))
It takes time to build that sort of experience, and trial and error—so much error! Luckily, it’s also something you can learn from other people, but I find that us athletes and academic high achievers tend to believe in exceptionalism and so need to learn the hard way more often than not. All of that to say: this day at least, I learned the lesson. I acted according to the lesson. And I had a great run because of it. And because I had a great run, that lesson is positively reinforced. I’m more likely to obey the lesson again. And so on.
It seems like a small thing to be proud of, but there are so many things constantly pressuring us, demanding that we not listen to ourselves, what our bodies, hearts, and sheer logic of our thinking minds know to be true. So many demanding that we not think at all.
As always this is about running and this is not about running. With my sixth book coming out, some might think I’m totally chill and well adjusted to this publishing thing. And you know maybe! But not drowning in the noise of every other writer’s great success is even harder than fighting the tide at a starting line. I’m not the fastest runner or the slowest. I’m just doing my thing. I can’t control what the course looks like or what other runners show up to the field on race day. I can only control the effort I put in to my training, every step, every word, every day.
Anyway I’m also back to swords and I would like to dig back into Arabic. And French. You know, small things, totally, easy to tack onto a revision deadline.
Fortune’s Wake: Incoming!
- Physical preorders for Fortune’s Wake aka “Bad Moms and Butch Mentors” aka “C. L. Clark x The Witcher” are officially up! You can by them at Bookshop.org US, Barnes and Noble, Forbidden Planet (UK), Amazon US, Amazon UK, and probably any local indie near you—just ask them to order it in.
- There’s going to be a virtual tour! See the image below for all of the virtual stops I’m going to make, including livestreamed virtual launch with a couple friends, Hannah Kaner (A Snake Among Swans) and M. J. Kuhn (Killswitch Protocol).
- There will also be a couple physical events:
- MCM ComicCon Birmingham - Building Diverse Fantasy Worlds - Friday, Aug 7 - 1:00 - 1:45 PM BST (Signing: 2 PM) - I’m working on getting some sort of sneak-peek bonus for people who come! We will see!
- Fortune’s Wake Launch Party! @Forbidden Planet London Megastore - Interviewed by Ian Green - 5PM-7PM (Signing! Little drinks!) - Tickets: £10, which goes toward the cost of a copy of the book!
- Thank you for sharing the news about the books; social proof is, go figure, a surprisingly important thing. Thank you for trusting me into another book!
Warmongers: Status Update
We continue apace. I try not to be too stressed when I hit a snag because I feel the time pressure; working out knots, after all, is the fun part and means I’m writing an interesting, complicated story worth telling. It means I’m doing something challenging.
Word count: 41,313/150,000. That’s roughly over the (expected? desired?) 1/4 mark. In this precise case, I’m a bit over halfway through the present!storyline. It’s flowing smoothly, steady, and as I go on, I come up with a few things here and there that I can backtrack to include and make the story more unified. Some worldbuilding things, but mostly the emotional trajectory of the characters. Making sure those track and develop honestly. Very much a “slow is smooth, smooth is fast” sort of process.
Fun things you’ll (probably) find in this book (if they don’t get edited out):
- there is a drug that is like pre-workout—the kind with beta alanine. IYKYK.
- a holy festival that is a sports competition
- questionable birth quota practices
- estranged best friends who don’t know how to hug anymore so they get high instead
Other Things I’m Enjoying
My overall media consumption has been low since I’ve been head down on revisions, student work, and promo. I haven’t even watched the new House of the Dragon yet!!!! But what I do have—
- How to Get to Heaven from Belfast - Really felt the millennial angst in some of those scenes. How it feels to realize you’re getting older and the things you tried to forget still come up, and the dreams you thought you found aren’t quite what you wanted—and yet, they are. And how to keep becoming more fully yourself and not bored of yourself. Also, some great music. I have stolen the song “How All this Ends” for my Warmongers soundtrack. I imagine it either as the credits song or a certain linchpin flashback moment.
- I finished The Thrice-Bound Fool. If you’re already a fan of the series, I think you’ll love it. If you’re not a fan yet, hie you hence and start with Blacktongue Thief. In my re-read of BTT, I had one idea for a tattoo, and by the time I finished TBF, I just want to tattoo Bolnu over my heart. IYKYK. It’s also been great to be back in this series because the past!storyline of Warmongers is supposed to be a very voice-y first person, recounting a life, and this series is nothing if not that. I’m studying its strengths and its weaknesses, what it gets away with, and how to make mine mine.
- I’ve just started reading The Deep and the Drowned by Ian Green (out Aug 6 in the UK), partly because I love sea shit (see also: Pasha the Storm, Year of the Mer), but also because we both have sea books and it’ll be fun to talk about them together at the upcoming events. I’m only a couple chapters in, but I’m hooked. Overwhelming feeling? It made me feel like I was reading The Liveship Traders by Robin Hobb. 👌
- The new Woodkid version of “Leave Her, Johnny.” The original from the first Assassin’s Creed shanty soundtrack was already a theme for Fortune’s Wake (a hint, cough) but then Woodkid does what he does and made this epic and haunted and perfect for this dark monster hunter book. And how perfectly times! Like it dropped just for me.
- Finally catching up on Critical Role C4 after a time with the Mighty Nein and OMG THE GALA!!! WHATTTT!!!
That’s all for August—or at least, that’s where I choose to leave it. Until next time.
Stay sharp,
C. L.
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