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By C. L. Clark —

May 2025: Marathons

Running forever, writing forever: it’s all one step at a time.

My cool running socks that are brown with a checkered pattern standing on top of a spread running t-shirt that reads Running in London is awful, I love it.

By Foot

Wow, wow, wow! Did you hear the news?

The London Marathon was a weekend of shattered records! And you don’t have to be a runner or a runnerd to appreciate it either—running 26 miles/42 km in under 2 hours is insane! And until the last few years, seemed pretty impossible. And this time, it was done twice! In the same race! (Which is unfortunate because it’s the kind of performance that deserves first place.)

Sebastian Sawe: 1:59:30
Yomif Kejelcha: 1:59:41

It’s the first time that a sub-2 hour marathon has happened in race conditions (i.e. not on a closed course, etc.)

And then on a more personal note, that weekend, I met one of my personal heroes, THE Coach Bennett, in the flesh! And then went on a shakeout run with him and Mo Farah. Coach B was charming and warm and kept it pretty real. I’ve recommended his podcasts and his guided runs plenty of times, and he taught me a lot of my own running philosophy and training practices. This time I’ll add one more rec: his book This is About Running, This is Not About Running comes out later this year. Obviously, he reads the audiobook, so that’s what I’ve preordered.

c. l. clark and coach bennett standing side by side in a sport shoes shop.
me and coach bennett before the shakeout run!

And then, the weekend after, I jetted off with my partner and her best friend to the Czech Republic, where she bullied him into running the Prague Marathon! Both of them got PRs because it was his first marathon and she shaved a cool 30 minutes off her last one—they executed a solid pacing plan really strategically because of some surprise heat, and then we ate a lot of good food—try the shrimp burger at Mǎmǎm Bistro! Anyway, I’m a really proud partner. Watched her grafting at this for the last 16 weeks and it was great to see it all pay off.

a person in a running outfit with their thumbs up because they haven’t run their marathon.
before the pain.

I’m also getting back running 10ks at 3 months post top surgery. It’s been nice to return to it with the spring and I have to say, running without boobs is pretty damn great. Hopefully, I will also be cleared to fence soon.

By Book

April was an absolutely rammed month for book stuff. All of it happening in increments, just like a marathon. The writing life is a long game. Unlike a marathon, I feel like I’m running many different races at the same time.

Fortune’s Wake

We’re in the last stages of the revisions for Fortune’s Wake, the monster slayer novella (pre-orders are open now and there will be a Broken Binding special edition and an audiobook, so stay tuned for more on that).

The bulk of April work on this was line edits as I’d done a pretty major developmental edit in Feb. Line edits for me include a read-through of the whole book and tightening up things as I see them, but also going through the book and doing what I call “search and destroy” with a list of crutch words. Some of them are from Matt Bell’s list in Refuse to be Done, some are my own personal bugbears. My characters “try” and “begin” a lot, and growl and grunt like any good butch. So I go through and cut out all but the most necessary. Lets me find stronger, less common images. To make the story more vivid in your mind, vivid instead of habitual.

There is never enough time to make it perfect, but we do what we can. Next up will be the proofreading pass and then that’s a wrap!

If you missed it, I did a first chapter behind-the-scenes for paying subscribers, and the book will be out August 26, 2026!

Warmongers

Warmongers is at the complete opposite of the revision timeline—which is to say, I just finished the first read-through of the whole book after finishing the first draft. It is a long book right now, and judging by what I feel is missing, it should be longer. We’ll see if my editor disagrees with that assessment, but while I wait for her feedback, I’m going to start taking action on what I see as the current faults. In particular, I know I need to re-write an entire timeline, but it remains to be seen how much is salvageable.

The last chapter is still everything I want it to be. I can’t wait for you to read it one day.

Codename: Mirrorsworn

Codename: Mirrorsworn some of you might recognize as I’ve mentioned it occasionally as a short serial project that was in the works. First, it got delayed for other projects that took precedence. Then, I got to tinkering with it some more and I realized…it wasn’t really a one book kinda party. Or at least, the world I was building and the characters I was developing were bigger than one single 100k word book.

And it just so happened that Warmongers is my last full-length novel contract, so it was time for me to look into another one. That means I spent part of April working on what we in publishing call an “option proposal” (or something). Basically, that means I write a synopsis and the first few chapters, and my agent pitches it to my current publisher and they get the right of first refusal (basically, they get to offer first).

Unlike The Unbroken, which I sent with only the vaguest notions of what Book Two and Three looked like, I wanted to have a strong sense of where the characters and their stories—alone and together—would go in the whole trilogy, especially since it’s an ensemble cast.

There’s loads more I want to tell you about this story, but for now, we wait.

Secret Thing #1

Also, another secret thing. 😘

Events

All the events above are ticketed, so make sure you buy your tickets if you want to see me in conversation with these other rad writers.

I am still on the road—currently in Kraków, getting the gang back together for some dice-rolling TTRPG fun (we’re playing 13th Age, not D&D). To get in the spirit, I read the Critical Role romance, Tusk Love, which is a book within the world of the campaigns (i.e. a book that the actual characters picked up and read). Alas, I am not the target audience for that book.

Golden Fool by Robin Hobb, on the other hand—OH MY GOD. There are a couple scenes that destroyed me. I had to read them over and over so that I could be wrecked again AND so that I could study them. What a masterclass.

Alright, while there’s loads more I could say, I’m stopping here. More will wait until another day.

Until that day, stay sharp, my friends.

C. L.

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