AHHHHHHH

Reviews are so, so helpful in early days with books - if you use things like Storygraph or Goodreads, it makes a big difference if you can drop a rating or a review if you enjoyed the book and you have a free minute!

Links:

Ylva Publishing (my publisher's website - I get very slightly higher royalties if you get the e-book here, but they don't do print)

Barnes & Noble (USA)

Indigo/Chapters (Canada)

Waterstones (UK - they always take a week or two to list new books, so it's not there quite yet)

Bookshop.org

Amazon (anywhere Amazon delivers)

Apple Books

Shifting Gears is on Audible (and all other audiobook retailers), but I can't get a link because I don't have an Audible account lmao.

My 70s au is the first thing I ever wrote where I felt like I was reaching for something deeper than a romcom or a smutty one-shot. I've always been really proud of it, and in writing this book I got to dive back in and tug at all the narrative and emotional threads that I wasn't an experienced enough writer to follow 5 years ago.

As always, the fic isn't going anywhere. I've made changes in the book, and I never want to take the original away from people who treasure it. But if you're interested in reading about 70k more words about Claire's emotional journey with a better fleshed out world and a more realistic narrative, I hope you enjoy this new version! 💕

And I think this is true in general but now I'm talking about it in the context of AI.

If you don't enjoy making art and only care about the end piece and how it'll look and how much traction it"lol get online then making art is not something for you, find something you enjoy from start to finish.

Same goes for writing: if you do not enjoy writing and rewriting and then some more and instead want AI to write for you, being a writer is not something you should pursue.

Sure, not every part of creative process is going to be equally enjoyable but you should get satisfaction from solving the problems along the way and you should get a sense of accomplishment on your way of "making the piece yours" and you should have a sense of ownership once you are done.

a ‘green/yes’ is a weakness, a ‘red/no’ is something that isnt a weakness, and a ‘?’ is something that has never been addressed but fucking riddle me this

And that meant sometimes we saw a deer in the middle of the road at midnight and the majestic motherfucker just stared us down until my mom shredded our tires to stop from hitting him. Once we stopped he did a little half-bow as if saying ‘You have not committed an act of godslayer this night. Your bloodline shall bear no curse of mine’, and walked away chill as you please.

The next day a neighbor told us a deer with fucking big antlers got tangled in his fence because it was trying to steal his grapes.

I went on a hike with another neighbor to collect yarrow for tea. A bear came out of the woods towards us, went on its hind legs and inquiringly roared. And he pushed me, tiny as I was back then, behind me out of sight and spread his jacket wide to make himself seem bigger than he already was. He let out a sound I had not known humans were capable of making. He and the bear looked at each other for a moment, and came to an understanding. The bear went down and walked away, respecting a powerful opponent protecting its young.

A week ago, there had been a bear that completely tore apart our trashcan and gorged itself on half-fermented apples we threw away. My cousin had to chase it away, drunk out of its tiny fucking mind, with an umbrella that made weird noises when opened. The bear ran for its life, crashed into our wall, fell on its ass, and scampered away.

I was playing on a swing once, all alone, and a fox came up to me, the most beautiful animal I had seen in my ten years of life. Thinking it wanted to pass, I stopped swinging and sat still not to spook it. But instead of passing, the fox circled the swing, found it wanting, and came to sit before me perfectly poised and looked me in the eye, and I could swear it wished to tell me something but I could not understand the language spoken before human time.

Then my mom came out of the nearby inn, shrieked at the fox and swung her purse to chase it away. The fox jumped, ran off and fell into a ditch, all notions of grace gone with the wind.