November 2025: Post-Tour Recap, plus a new book!

Hello, beloved friends, readers, countrymen! (My country is the world.)

Today is Monday and it’s my first day back at the desk in a bit. (To be fair, I was at home and even worked a bit—but not at the desk.) But being At The Desk means that I mean business. Seriously.

I spent the last week and some right after coming back from Toronto doing some trainhopping around the UK, for what has been a nice tour for The Sovereign and Fate’s Bane (which is now out in the UK!). While on tour, I also broke some exciting news! You’ll find that below as well as a couple choice questions from the Q&As, and my latest obsession.

New Book Coming August 2026!

You will certainly (hopefully) be as excited as I am to hear that I am writing another book! I know, I am always writing another book, but! I am also still excited about it!

A new novella is coming in August 2026—this time from Grimdark Magazine. You might have most recently seen them promoting Richard Swan’s prequel novella The Scour, part of his Vonvalt world, or Essa Hansen’s Casthen Gain, a novella in her Graven world.

Check the post for more details, but the short pitch is:

girl from a pirate family wants to leave the sea and become a monster slayer to make her fortune and marry her sweetheart.

But we all know I won’t let it be that easy! I’ll start working on this as soon as I finish Fell Runner, but I’ve been working on the outline and that’s been so much fun.

Tour Recap

A week after I returned from Toronto, I headed off to Brighton for World Fantasy Con, where I met some old friends and made some new ones. It was actually a really fruitful time of artistic synergy and I had some great conversations about different aspect of the art, and watched some great panels. I walked away from my own panel “Writing Fighting” with much to consider, thanks to my fellow panelists Miles/Christian Cameron (a veteran from the HEMA sector among much more), Steve McHugh, Juliette McKenna, and Anna Smith Spark.

Then back home for just long enough to get in a kettlebell workout and a sword class before heading north for my chat with Hannah Kaner at Toppings Edinburgh. We lasted not ten minutes before a dirty joke about hands came up, but other than that, we were totally well behaved. Massive thanks to Toppings for providing me with an Irn Bru, as well as great convo at the pub about all of the D&D campaigns. Wild nights!

In Glasgow, I fell in love with the River Clyde, running up and down a chunk of it for the two days I had. The chat with Taylor Driggers was great, crossing topics from religion and magic all the way to the wild working schedule that was 2024. Cheers to Waterstones Argyle for having me!

Last but not least, Waterstones Leeds was a treat. As always, me, Tori, and Tasha were chaos incarnate, but I also loved the serious bent of our conversation as well—questions of violent fantasies and sacrifice. Much thanks to Lucy for moderating!

One of my favorite parts about this work is doing events with friends. I have good ones and they are quite funny, if I do say so myself. And there’s no denying that the energy is infectious. More than once, I’ve been asked if I would start a podcast…uh oh. Don’t tempt me. (If I did, it would just be me corralling my friends on a couch.)

When I got back to London, I made a bee-line for Gay’s the Word and signed one million books. In fact, all of these bookshops should have signed copies as long as supplies last, so drop in to pick one up! Or if you’re not local, call or email to place an order.

Finally, a huge thanks to everyone who was able to make it to one of these events! It made my heart swell two whole sizes.

Dutch Comic-Con - Nov 22-23

I am almost done moving around, but first I will be going to the Netherlands as a guest at Dutch Comic Con! There will also be some Baldur’s Gate actors there, so I get to pretend that I am as cool as them. I will also be stuffing my face with ollieballen and Van Stapele cookies. Please come say hi and save me from myself!

I will be signing at various intervals throughout the weekend and I will also have a couple speaking events. Schedule TBA.

Some Good Questions

I really wanted to include some of the standout questions I’m still thinking about, as well as my responses, but this newsletter is getting quite long in the tooth. So I’ll probably put that in a standalone post. I’ll link it here when it’s up. (It will not update in your email but it will update on the blog.) — EDIT: Here they are!

Progress Report

Fell Runner continues apace. Er…sort of. It continues at a pace. At around 6k, I’m not quite where I would like to be, as my dream is to finish it before December (writing NaNo style), but it is only due at the end of the year, so I have some leeway. I just want some free holiday time, and then to jump into Monster Slayer with both feet. Monster Slayer is due in February. Both books are supposed to be around 35k words, so not massive books by my usual standards, but I want to treat them well, even in the first draft stage. The cleaner the drafts, the smoother my later work will be.

If you’re interested in more of the granular process of Fell Runner, check out this post on how I used the cultural keyholes cards to unlock it.

I’m also in a novella class, which is interesting and has already helped me conceptualize some possibilities of structure that match what I hope to achieve with the story. We read The Taiga Syndrome last week, and this week we are reading The Awakening. Next week, Passing.

I will also be turning in Warmongers soon. (Yes, I finished it, but I’ve held onto it while my editor works on other projects in her queue.) I’ve had a bit of time to fill in some gaps, clean up some scenes. Not everything, as it’s not worth reworking until I know I can rip everything out from the guts. There are already things I want to change, to work on. For those, I just make notes on the notes app I keep for the project (every project has one!) and hold tight. I’ll look forward to getting feedback on it and starting the hard work of making it truer to what I want it to be.

What I’m Reading/Watching

First off, if you have finished reading The Sovereign and don’t know what to do with yourself, I have written up 18 Books you can read after based on whether you need more pain, less pain, more lesbians, or more good fantasy.

• Tasha Suri and my friend Jess have both individually cornered me and convinced me to start Critical Role S4. I have largely avoided them because of the time consumption, and the idea of trying to catch up to them. UNfortunately, it is actually pretty entertaining and I am growing more and more invested. It’s such a fascinating way to engage as a ‘reader’ and a storyteller.
• Related, I also plan on watching the Mighty Nein series when it starts. The tv show seems like a much better way to get into the show, and Mighty Nein is the one that always appealed most to me—gay fighter monk woman? gay barbarian woman? and they KISS? duh. that’s mine.
• I also picked up a couple more arcs at World Fantasy Con: Elian J. Morgan’s Princeweaver (Welsh, gay, arranged royal marriage to save a kingdom) and Ryan Cahill’s Of Blood and Fire (heroic epic fantasy with dragon riders).

The rest of my year will wrap up with my head down to the page. It’ll be nice to be out of the glare of the promo spotlight. As much as I love love love seeing all of you, I am a deeply introverted human. Plus, it’s hard to get the deep work done when i’m constantly on the road and I am ready to get back to the quiet work.

I’m already thinking ‘next year’ thoughts—all those intentions and possibilities. In general, I don’t tend to feel like I have lots of massive overhauls to make in my life. I have my feet on what feels like the right path for me. Just a matter of walking the walk.

But I am looking forward to starting the next year’s bullet journal. Already got a lot of things to fill it with. 😉

Until next time,

Stay sharp, my friends.

C. L.