but what if walking 500 miles is hard

The weather is finally turning warm in the UK, it’s my birth month, and I may have a kitchen again before the week is out. Things are looking up!

I was putting off this newsletter—it doesn’t have a ton of news, per se, but there are a lot of bits and pieces to string together, so let’s get into it.

News & Updates

Writing Corner

I am, yet again, pivoting between projects. I handed off copyedits for TTATTB last week, so I’m trying to get as much necromantasy done as I can before pass pages come to haunt me. That means I am knee-deep in edits for my summer 2027 book, THE DYING SEASON, which is a standalone horror romance set in London. It’s about Iris Hall, a handler on the London Necropolis Railway, the railway that provides bodies to necromancers all over town. Iris’s focus is on a. paying rent, and b. avoiding her academic rival/former will-they-won’t-they best friend, Hart, as much as possible before graduating—except, when she’s attacked by one of the risen dead, Hart is the only one who can help her solve the case.

I am super excited for y’all to get TDS next spooky season (it’s drizzly London in autumn, so it’s perfectly suited for it!) but until then, have a snippet:

General Chatter

It should probably come as no surprise to readers that I am a certified Inside Girl. Give me a rainy day, sitting on my big chair, drinking tea and reading a book over a big outside adventure. I do like the outside, obviously—I do a lot of walking and running and walking of the dog—but my choice is to be cozy in most cases. I’ve never been one for camping, long walks should have some sort of termination spot pre-agreed and warned, and after the outside activities happen, we all come in and have a nice sit-down. I’ve always looked with some envy at one of my best friends from childhood, who is indeed an Outside Girl: she not only accepts the outdoors, but thrives in it. She’s who you want on a hike or camping trip or whitewater adventure. Not only is she knowledgeable about these sorts of things, she’s also very good at them.

She also knows all my faults in this area, which is probably why there was a long pause on the other end of the phone when I told her about my planned backpacking weekend, and then something to the equivalent of, “Are you sure?”

No, reader. I was not sure. My husband also does Outside things—he is the human equivalent of a golden retriever in a field—so at least I knew we wouldn’t be totally hopeless. But the plan was easy enough: a few days of hiking and camping in Dartmoor, then a nice sit-down somewhere inside. The pre-trip prep involved a long and arduous trip to the store for all the camping stuff I didn’t have in my adult life (big ol’ backpack, sleeping bag, the necessities), going over maps, booking campsites, and hypothesizing how the dog would do in a tent.

We went over the weekend, and can confirm, it was lovely for the most part. No one got lost on the moors, and though there was some injury involved, we all ended up okay. But at one point, my husband and I looked at each other and said, “Are we on a quest?”

Case in point:

-we found (and returned) a lost dog
-my partner spotted a dead sheep in a field we were crossing (depressing, but we live in the countryside and it’s lambing season; it does happen) and notified the farmer
-a robin took a particular interest in us in a churchyard

It definitely felt like there were a string of challenges in the vein of “to complete x, you must first speak to y, and unlock this new thing.” The whole experience got me thinking about quests and how I write them. I have also been listening to the audiobook of The Fellowship of the Ring and I think there are some interesting tidbits about how Tolkein wrote his quest.

First and foremost, it was a reminder that, uh, my characters are definitely more physically fit than I. There’s a line in Locke where Grey says that she’s done a lot for Scaela, but no one has ever asked her to walk across it, yet she manages just fine. In LOTR, Frodo specifically notes how boring walking is, and that he may not be up to the physical challenge, but then there’s something lovely about walking in a group. This is that moment in the story where we have action, in that things are happening and people are moving, but they’re in a suspended state between two places—so we get the perfect opportunity to get to know the characters. I think this is why found family on a quest works so well: there is something happening narratively to tie these characters together.

When you’re on a walking quest, nothing really happens quickly. If you see something coming up over the horizon, it’s going to take a while to reach it. The distances on the map are not actually that far away, yet it takes hours. (Yes, this is fairly obvious as a point, but definitely something that we, as a civilization with much more efficient modes of transport, may lose sight of). When I was writing Locke, I spent a lot of time on Orbis, estimating distances and pace. It takes time to get from point A to point B, and that impacts pacing—but trying to rush it makes the book less logistically sound. Horses, too, are not magical creatures that make everything go a thousand times faster.

I did survive the quest. It gave me a lot to chew on in terms of writing quests (pacing, scenery, distractions, physical exertion, ailments, etc) but it was also a wonderful experience of being in nature and pushing my body.

Also: I will never take cars for granted again.

Recommendations

And that’s all! See y’all next month 🙂