July 2026: Until it Kills You

Howdy everyone,

Welcome to the July newsletter, brought to you by the European heatwave! I am writing this as I have been living the last couple weeks—which is to say in an a-shirt and some ranger panties/hoochie daddy shorts. Shirt optional. This is how masterpieces are made, y’all.

General News

• Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf mass-market paperbacks are out July 7 in the UK! I don’t totally know the difference between all of them, but these are smaller, and in my humble opinion, fit better in the hand. If you missed it, I wrote recently about what it was like writing Arcane IP.
• Fortune’s Wake Cover Reveal! Pre-order here or at your local bookshop!
• VCFA Writing MFA residency is just wrapping up. I taught virtually this time, a 5-day workshop on muddling through the middle of your novel.
• For ✨reasons,✨ I have been thinking about dual vs. single POV in romance novels. I also dove into how and why genre covers and titles manage expectations for readers (including how The Unbroken became The Unbroken and not The Magic Sands or The Sands of Qatal or By Force and Arms). Plus, I figured it’s about time to repost some of the original launch posts from The Unbroken debut on my own website, after they were so generously shared by Chuck Wendig, John Scalzi, and Mary Robinette Kowal, so stay tuned for more of those.

• I also had a great time at Cymera in Edinburgh, one of the regular festivals I attend—thank you to everyone who came and said hello! I had a lot of fun talking irreverently about the importance of the erotic. I also loved meeting booksellers at the Monsters and Maidens Ball at Orbit UK HQ! See below my sterling outfit.

Warmongers: The Real Work Begins

With the big work on most of my other projects done—novellas, short stories, proposals for new books, etc.—it’s really time to dig in and make this book what it’s meant to be. I got my edit letter from my editor and we had a good talk about it and on the whole, we’re in strong agreement about the things that aren’t working and we came up with a few possible solutions just on the call alone. By the time I hung up, I felt energized instead of the low hum of dread building into overwhelm that I’d felt trying to figure out the problems on my own.

(There are two entire timelines, a past and a present. My editor and I both agreed that we read the present just waiting to get back to the more interesting past chapters. That’s…not ideal. I’m fixing that. But that essentially means I’m re-writing an entire half of the book. Which, for those of you keeping count, is the size of a normal person’s book.)

(I’ve also been asked to make it shorter. Oops.)

This book is due in October, and I know I’ll have a book launch and regular life stuff going on all summer, not to mention the other projects cycling back in and out. There are some important other projects that rely on me finishing on time, as well as the Warmonger publication date that I don’t want to push back.

To keep the motivation and momentum, I’ve made a couple different charts. One is the calendar in my BuJu that I have heretofore only used for my athletic endeavors. This one is for my daily writing, just making sure the work gets done.

This one below is something I stole from Kate Dylan, who often posts her progress on Instagram in chaotic bursts of excel sheets and after admiring them often, I have finally made one of my own. I think it’ll be fun, but most importantly, help me keep on track in a better way than “words written.” Focusing on the raw number of words written can make the writing itself bloated, less economical. (Not that I’m usually thinking of sentence-level economy at this stage.) But I think if I can show up to do the work of re-writing a chapter every day, I’ll manage my deadline without going crazy.

The other pressure of Warmongers is that it’s technically my “sophomore” novel project. I feel like a seasoned voice in the SFF world, comfortably mid-career with five books under my belt, but in reality, Warmongers will be the first original novel-length work since my debut trilogy. It’s the next novel that will show publishers if The Unbroken was a fluke or if I have a real audience—if I’m worth taking another chance on or not. Because sequel numbers always reduce substantially after the first book in a series (and mine even more so, given the gap between publication dates), this standalone means I also don’t have to fear low sequel sales sandbagging a publisher’s perception of the work.

While I have a lot of faith in the project, the weight of getting it right—maybe not perfect, but right—rides pretty heavy. And I am trying to do some ambitious things from a craft perspective. The dueling timelines, making sure the characters hit just as hard, and a bit more elaborate worldbuilding since this is all from scratch (instead of modeled on real-world nations).

So I need to bring all my considerable focus to bear and, as they say—lock in.

I want to make this one worth the wait.

Behind the Scenes: Paid Tier Perks

And that leads me to this part:

Since I’ve gotten some new subs, particularly paid subscribers, I’ve been trying to think of ways to repay your generosity without delaying the thing you really want—the new books. I had really wanted to write an exclusive serial novel or novella, but it’s currently out of the question with the current activity slate (and the thing that was supposed to be a serial novel is entering a new phase of life).

When I was originally planning the move from Substack/Wordpress to Ghost, I did have some ideas: regular glimpses of what I’m working on—a snippet I’m particularly proud of from that week’s writing, craft points that I’m working through or analysis of how I’m applying them, deleted scenes from already published books, and any other glimpses behind the curtain that I can think of (or any that you can think of—I’m open to requests and suggestions!). You’ve already gotten a taste of that with my latest Warmongers snippets, where I wrote about setting exercises breaking my writers block, and how aphrodisiacs are a very important component of worldbuilding. As I’m lowering my shoulder to the wheel for the next few months, there’ll be a lot of opportunity for that.

Basically, I’m thinking it’ll be a bit like what my group chats are like. (Though maybe a little less unhinged—maybe.) I am a working artist and to me, that means I’m constantly trying to grow and improve. If you’re an artist, maybe this fumbling will help you, too. Or maybe you’re just a nosy reader and want to read the kisses and [redacted] before everyone else.

My pitch for those of you who are not subscribers—essentially, it’s like a Patreon. Your support of my work this way helps provide a more regular income for me in the world of publishing, where book advances are broken up into thirds and fourths and appear only yearly at best. That means I’ll write better books for you in the long run, because financial security won’t depend on clinging to the book-a-year publishing cycle that burns so many of us out but is the only way to get a “regular” paycheck. (At least, until I start getting Joe Abercrombie-sized advances.) (I’m kidding. Mostly. I don’t know what size his advances are.) But I do know that my books are better when I can take more time to find the right ideas, to iterate and revise and learn my characters enough to know just where to twist the knife.

Less financial stress = more creativity = more sword lesbians.

But I also had plans to get art commissioned for the serial-that-is-no-longer-a-serial-but-a-secret-other-thing, and as you know, I love the artists who have done fan art for me and love even more getting to pay them for deliberate work. These tiers would also help support that. The Warmongers girlies are just begging for it with their tragic longing gazes and strapping muscles.

There are also super tiers, the Forge and Liege tiers, for those who really really really like the work I do and want to support me beyond the yearly £30. If you join this tier, you’ll even get to contribute a name to the name bank of future projects. (If you like.) (No promises they will live especially long.) The yearly Forge and Liege tiers will also donate extra subscriptions to the “No Questions Asked” pot for folks who can’t afford a sub. You can also gift subscriptions to friends.

No matter what tier of subscriber you are, I’m glad you’re here and I hope you enjoy the shenanigans to come. And if you tell me what you’d like to see, I’ll do my best to make sure of that.

Things I’ve Been Enjoying/Things You Might Enjoy

• This TTRPG Fitness person: Taylor Neal @Tayloredforstrength
• This other TTRPG Fitness person: Tank Tolman @tanktolman

I have not used either, but the idea sounds fun and because of who you all are, I thought I would put it out here in case you wanted to check them out.

• My Liege Kickstarter - An artbook of queer nights, featuring many artists we know and love, like Annalise Jensen. There’s also ahem a NSFW mini-book for the naughty among us. 😘

• Pasha the Storm just came out yesterday! My new favorite horny old pirate! Pasha the Storm is part Moby Dick, part Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End (the one where all the pirate kings get together without killing each other for 5 minutes to fight the British, amen) and ALLLL GAY.
• Blacktongue Thief by Christopher Buehlman - I am rereading this because I started reading my ARC of Thrice-Bound Fool, and it was too good for me to go in with only half-remembered context. It’s very likely that I will also re-read The Daughters’ War, too. I don’t reread often, so that’s saying a lot. I may even go deeper into these books in a separate post, because there’s a lot I’m studying here.
• Don’t Call it Art by Austin Kleon - A nice little book of reminders, like all of his work is. And it’s a nice flippable package, so whenever I need a bit of motivation, I can flip it open and read a page or two. My favorite bit:

That’s all from me. As always, thanks for being here.

Stay sharp and stay cool,

C. L.