First newsletter excitement šŸŽ‰

About this newsletter, writing retreat in New Orleans, Bad Guys akimbo

First off, I have to just say thank you to everyone who was so incredibly supportive in rushing off to sign up for this newsletter. You are all amazing and deeply appreciated. šŸ’ Writers really need support of the kind youā€™ve just gifted me. We really need to know someone is reading our words, whether itā€™s the books or a newsletter like this, because that gives us the ability to keep writing when the words arenā€™t flowing, or other stressors are competing for brain space.

I have been told for ages ā€œYou must have a newsletter!ā€ But honestly, I only read a couple peopleā€™s newsletters (Chaz Brenchly and Warren Ellis ā€”oh, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) and I wasnā€™t convinced that most people have the time in their day for such things.

Indeed, I think the only reason I am finally getting around to doing this is simply because I miss LiveJournal (yeah, Iā€™m old as the dinosaurs šŸ™„), and Iā€™m kinda seeing this newsletter as my place to talk about the experiences of being an indie-published writer, in a way that Facebook never really has been. Iā€™ll finally have a space to talk about how complicated and challenging itā€™s all been (as well as exciting and thrilling) with people who actually want to hear about it.

My plan for these newsletters is to have them be a mix of ā€œWhatā€™s Raven Working On Now?ā€ and ā€œWhere Can You Buy Ravenā€™s New Thing?ā€ (everyday I'm hustlin' hustlin') and then just me rambling on about my life, both as an author-trying-to-make-it, and just life in general. I think if I strike that balance right, these newsletters will be fun and rewarding for me to write, and for you to read, and I wonā€™t just be shouting tedious self-promotion into a void.

My nameā€™s Raven Belasco, and Iā€™m a dark fantasy writer. These newsletters are about my work and that #authorlife. Updates out bimonthly(ish) to subscribers. Feel free to send your friends to ravenbelas.co, where they can read the most recent letters and subscribe.

If you donā€™t want these getting lost in the spam filter, please add [email protected] to your address book or contacts.

We are getting closer to The Big Announcement, but I keep finding fiddling little details that need to get sorted out first. I hope this is resulting in a frisson of anticipatory delight for you all, and is not just completely annoying! Anyway, I keep having to tell various people about various things, so Iā€™m not even sure it will be a surprise to anyone by the day of The Big Reveal. šŸ™„

The newsletters are going to be really stuffed with news for some time to come, after that, since I will finally be able to TALK ABOUT STUFF, which Iā€™ve been desperately wanting to do for ages.

That New Orleans writerā€™s retreat

There was no formal event, I just really needed some space to focus on the next story in the Blood & Ancient Scrolls series for a while. This is not Book IV, but a third novella in the series, and tells the story of Dubhghall and Wulfhram, whom you met in passing in Blood Ex Libris.

The downside of the ā€œtravel to go write somewhereā€ is that my chronic illness is not just something I can ignore when I feel like it. (If I couldā€”!) So I lost the first three days of being down in Nā€™awlins to an incapacitating migraine. I couldnā€™t write, I couldnā€™t do tourist stuff, just lie in a strange bed and be miserable that Iā€™d been so foolish as to think my illness would let me have nice things.

But, as you probably saw from the socials, I eventually managed to shake that off, and the writingā€”and eating!ā€”could commence. It was so wonderful to just be able to sit and write without anything else impinging on my thoughts or interrupting my flow.

Once the story starts rolling, I really need to be able to let it out onto the page, without interruption. In that way, the fact that I needed to crank out Blood Sine Qua Non and Blood Ad Infinitum on such tight deadlines is really what got me through the first two years of the Pandemic; I was kinda in the same universe as everyone else, but really I was escaping via the act of writing. Anyway, all the jokes about basement-dwelling misanthropic writers were basically true about me for all that timeā€”our noble co-author was pretty much the only reason I ever saw the outdoors, because he demanded his walkies, dammit! šŸ˜

As I was giving Cairngorm his morning walkies today, however, a whole new aspect to the story unfolded in my head. Which would be great, except that Iā€™d been planning on this being a roughly 10,000 word novella, and now weā€™ll be lucky if I manage to keep under 40,000. Which is going to throw off all my planning for everything else in my life. (Except dog walks, obvs!)

Itā€™s the Bag Guy, again. šŸ™„ If youā€™ll remember, in BSQN, OrĆ©lie-Antoine de Tounens (the ā€œSelf-Anointedā€) wrote himself into the book when I already had one perfectly evil Baddie, which made me have to scramble and rework the whole second half of the book right when I was supposed to be tying everything up. Similar deal here. I basically have no control over these characters, they are just doing what they like and I have to try and keep up. šŸ¤Ŗ

Signing off for now

OK, Iā€™m going to go work on a thousand things, in hopes that if I get enough of them done, the next newsletter will be The Big Announcement. Have a great week, and thank you, thank you for supporting my writing! šŸ’–šŸ’–šŸ’–

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