I’m currently suffering with a godawful flu – which has impeded even my ability to watch terrible Hugh Grant films. But normal service will resume soon enough, I’m sure.
I’m also aware I’ve left things up in the air a bit when it comes to my various projects, so here’s a State of the Hall update.
The first is a bit complicated because it relates to my non-writing life. Basically, midway through last year my day job changed pretty substantially and became a lot of more demanding. This is mostly really exciting, because I’m fortunate enough to love my day job about as much as I love my writing job, but it took me longer than I thought it would to adapt my writing around my new schedule.
The most direct impact of this is, as a few people have already noticed, the publication date of Ardy III (provisionally titled, How To Belong With A Billionaire) has been pushed back to late 2018. I know this is really frustrating, especially because the second book ended where it did, and I’m really sorry. But the book is definitely coming! And I can’t wait to give Ardy and Caspian their much-deserved HEA.
Something that has also been impacted, although I don’t think it will affect readers quite so explicitly is that some time last year I announced a queer m/f Regency trilogy, which I was very excited about. Unfortunately, due to the day job thing, I fell behind on the delivery date for it and the schedule no longer worked for the publisher – so that’s on the back burner for the foreseeable. It’s a book I really enjoyed writing so I do hope to come back to it at some point in the future, but I’m having to manage my commitments a lot more carefully moving forward.
I’ve also had a few queries about Nettlefield. Basically, 2016 and 2017 were just such shitty years in terms of, well, everything (Alan Rickman and Carrie Fisher died for God’s sake) that I didn’t really want to put out a sad book. Well, I mean it’s not sad exctly, but it’s quite bittersweet. And I just don’t think this is a time for bittersweet. So I’m afraid that’s also back burnered until, well, something changes.
Finally, though, here is something awesome. When I first started writing back in … yikes … 2014 … I used to split my output pretty evenly between queer contemporary romance and, um, shall we say weirder offerings? With one thing and another, things shifted heavily towards romance, so something i really wanted to do in 2017 was redress the balance a bit. Aaaaaand I’m happy to be able to say that is happening!
Recently, my amazing agent sold my queer fantasy novel to an equally amazing editor at Ace. The book is provisionally titled The Affair of the Mysterious Letter (though I don’t think I’ve ever written anything that hasn’t had its name changed before publication) and it’s probably best summed up as: bisexual lady Holmes and puritan trans Watson solve crimes in a weird fantasy city. It’s not really very much like anything I’ve written previously, because it tilts much more towards fantasy than Prosperity or even Kate Kane. But if you were into the way I went about building the worlds in those books, then you might enjoy this too. I mean, the book is completely mad, but it’s also a joy to write, I think it’s in super good hands and I can’t wait to share it with you.
As ever, if you have any questions or concerns, by all means throw them at me in the comments.
Otherwise, all that remains to be said, I think is: OMG YAY.
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