april 2023

in which I became a pool person, saw real hummingbirds and found my style

These are getting later and later. I keep telling myself ‘oh, I’ll send it after I’ve done this thing’ but then I do the thing and suddenly a new thing is on the horizon and so I say ‘no, I’ll do it after that thing’ and then lo, behold, another thing arises. And so now it is May in two days and I’m running out of April. Now or never, baby.

I have been BUSY. I don’t think I’ve ever been this busy before in my whole life and I’m really relishing it because it’s a good mix of work I love and play I love, so it feels genuinely fulfilling. I feel fully present in my own life for the first time since 2016, which is a long time to be living sub-optimally in terms of presence.

So what have I been doing? Well, firstly, I got a haircut and I got a Style.

This is my hair now. I have a fringe/bangs (I think bangs sounds nicer)

Lads, I cannot tell you how much my life has been improved by this. I knew it would be, and yet I kept putting it off, but now here, on the other side, I’m telling you everything¹ is rosy now, and it’s largely rooted in this. I feel like a person again. And it’s nice because everyone I see keeps telling me I’m glowing and I am! I am luminous! I am radiant with self-love and satisfaction!

The power of a haircut.

And then, emboldened by my new hair, I did what I said and I got a Style. It’s not a million miles away from what I used to wear, but it’s more Euro-chic, grown-up and manicured; bolder prints instead of ditsy florals, more structured separates instead of shirred, ankle-length dresses. Block colours, and simpler shapes. Cuter shoes. More overall cohesion between pieces - not a capsule wardrobe, but one that works harmoniously together. I have some secret style icons I studied (creepily) and dissected (even more creepily) to pinpoint what about their style I loved and whether I could recreate it in a way that suited me, then I did some clothes reconnaissance and… Style. My Style.

If you want to actually see the Style, you should make plans with me. I’m very into making plans right now. I want to go out and see and be seen.

Honestly, the power of a haircut.

Projects I’m working on:

I finished and submitted something new and immediately started drafting the next one to get ahead of myself while I waited for my edit letter for the folk horror. Which I’ve now had and we made such good plans for how to make it shine and I’m really excited to start implementing that. I’ve also finished and submitted the copy edits for my story in the anthology coming in September, been working super-hard mentoring my Spark mentees and the Write Mentor Summer Cohort, as well as finishing up some mentoring in conjunction with Wigtown Festival, AND preparing to go to Germany next month to talk at the SCBWI Spring Conference there.

All this means revising the Dark Academia YA and writing something else has fallen completely by the wayside, so I’m not going to mention them again until summer. But it does look like from mid-July my workload will get temporarily lighter so I can throw myself back into editing and drafting then.

I don’t have any other professional News I can share yet, except for something in Events below!

In personal news, I have done EVEN MORE things! The biggest one is I flew to Austin, Texas, to visit some friends I hadn’t seen since before the pandemic. I had a really lovely, low-key time, but best of all I ate excellent chips and queso (I will do a lot - A LOT - for good chips and queso), swam in a pool, finally saw an opossum, some vultures, and SAW REAL HUMMINGBIRDS.

I have wanted my whole life to see hummingbirds - I nearly lost my mind last summer at the sight of a hummingbird hawk moth, so you can only imagine my beaming moon face when I saw them. It was especially lovely because I’d been hoping to see snakes that day but it was too overcast, and I was doing my best impression of Not At All Dejected and then BAM! I looked up, wondered what on Earth that thing was and it was a hummingbird. Real magic! There are more photos on Instagram if you’re interested.

In other personal news (I told you I’ve been out seeing and being seen) I saw Oklahoma! and thought it was magnificent, and Sap at Soho Theatre and thought that was magnificent. I went to a party, have been out for coffee, and ate bento and bao and drank bubble tea and red wine. It’s been fun! And there is much more on the way. I like this living thing.

In events, I’m going to be at Cymera this year, IN PERSON! My panel is on Sunday, June 4th at 11.45 am, with C.E. McGill and Andie Spoto. Tickets are available now!

I’ve done a little reading, not much though because I’ve been so busy, but the best thing I’ve read is Lex Croucher’s forthcoming GWEN AND ART ARE NOT IN LOVE. It’s the most fun I’ve had reading a book in absolutely ages - a real romp full of hilarious yearning and queer pining and it’s going to do incredibly well and everyone will fall in love with it and rightly so. I also reread Hiromi Kawakami’s STRANGE WEATHER IN TOKYO, which remains one of my favourite books and is actually where the title of this newsletter originates from!

FOOD!

I have eaten so much good food and made so much good food in the past month and I had no idea what to include as my recipe this month, until last night when I managed to gentrify jacket potato with baked beans and decided it was The One. Partly because it’s all my own recipe, and partly because I really want to eat it again right now and I can’t because I don’t have the fixings in and I have other food that needs eating, so here, I am gifting it to you, please go forth and eat it on my behalf.

You will need:

One sweet potato of a size you want to eat

100g butter beans (maybe more if your potato is bigger. Mine was 300g, for reference)

1.5 tbsps tahini

One whole lemon

Some water (exact volume is a mystery)

Salt to taste

1. Wash and dry the sweet potato and then prick it fairly deeply with a fork around eight times, spread out over the whole surface of the potato.

2. Place it on a baking tray in an oven preheated to around 200 degrees centigrade. If you need to convert that for a gas/induction/American/whatever oven, you’ll have to Google it, I’m not your mother and this isn’t a professional recipe book.

3. Bake for one hour (ish - might need more depending on potato size, again figure it out, you’re an adult - do you think anyone taught me to cook? No, I’m making it up as I go).

4. In the meantime add the tahini and lemon juice to a bowl and whisk it together. It will go all weird. This is when you drizzle in water, a little at a time, and keep whisking. When it becomes a texture you like in a sauce, stop, you’ve done it. Add salt to taste. Put it aside.

5. Now, I use dehydrated butter beans, which I hydrate overnight and then cook in an Instant Pot on high pressure for six minutes, but you’re probably better off (unless you have dehydrated butter beans and an Instant Pot and do this often) buying the pre-cooked ones in a can and heating them on a hob, according to the instructions on the can. Do this about five minutes before you want to eat.

6. Once the beans are heated through, drain them, and add your sauce until it’s all heated together.

7. Serve over the potato, which assumedly you had the good sense to take out of the oven when it was done, put on a plate, and cut open. I also like to have rocket dressed in lemon oil and salt on the side, and some thinly chopped green onion on top.

8. Eat.

I didn’t take a photograph of the food, but it’s honestly not that photogenic anyway, so here, have another hummingbird

And finally, magic, which is another simple one. The best magics are simple, though. You should know that by now.

This month, I want you to change something that you have a sneaking suspicion will make your life better if only you dare. It’s time to dare. It’s almost Beltane, the halfway point between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, the year is whipping away faster than we can count. So stop stalling and waiting for your life to get better and start doing something about it. Make a change. Embrace the power of the unknown to you and make it work for you.

It can be something relatively huge like taking a risk in applying for a new job, booking the solo trip you’ve been too intimidated to take or asking out your crush. Or something physical like changing your hair, or getting a piercing or a tattoo. Or maybe something less permanent, a new piece of clothing that you worry won’t suit you, or statement jewellery, or eyeliner in hot pink or bright orange. But change something - one thing.

Trust yourself and the world enough to take a risk and make a change.

And if it feels good, try another, and another.

After all, it grows because you tend it xx

1. within my reasonable control. obviously objectively everything else is very, very, very, very very far from rosy now