Look, I get that May claims to have 31 days, but we all know it’s more like 9, maybe 10 when it’s feeling generous. That’s the only reason I can think of for the time warp that happens every year. Whole days are simply missing. Vanished into the abyss. Gone and forgotten.

Earlier in this Loki month, my daughter had a school bike trip first thing in the morning. My husband loaded her bike into the back of his truck and took my car to work. I piled the children into the truck only to discover I didn’t have a key. I unloaded everyone (and the bike) and called in a favor from my father who lives in our basement apartment. He gave me the keys to his truck but told me he needed it back soon because he had a piece of furniture to deliver. Not to worry, I said, I would be right back. 

I wedged the bike into the back of his truck beside a large hutch wrapped in a white tarp (remember this), loaded everyone in, and sped off to school. There, I discovered that my daughter’s bike tires needing inflating, so I ran around for a while like Ned Henry trying to locate the Bishop’s Bird Stump until I found someone who could help me. By then I was running late, so off I whizzed down the highway home. At the next stoplight, a kind old man one lane over let me know that the white tarp which had once nicely covered the hutch in the back had blown off on the highway (how was that for foreshadowing).

Around I turned and sped back up the highway until I saw the crumpled thing blown hither and yon by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. I parked off the highway and proceeded to play a delicate and spry game of frogger with the cars and trucks until at last I pounced upon the tarp, bundled it up, and hauled it back to the truck where it sat beside me in the passenger’s seat like an ill-behaved dog banned from the dog park.

When people ask how my May went, I usually tell them that story.

What I’m Working On:

See above story.

Just kidding- I spent the first part of the month working on The Winter King 2, and then I received an exciting email and have been working furiously on that project ever since. I’ll share more about that in an upcoming newsletter. I was told by my agent yesterday that the announcement should be going live soon (maybe even next week??) so I will be sending a special raven out then with more news.

What I’m Reading:

The feedback I received was very helpful, and as it turns out more of you are interested in hearing the whole list of books I read over the month, so I’m returning to that method! Thanks for letting me know, but first, a caveat:

I read a lot of books for a lot of different reasons, sometimes for fun, sometimes for research, sometimes for other ethereal motivations. I know there are teens who read my newsletter, so this note is specifically for you: just because I list a book doesn’t mean I recommend it! I don’t have time to leave content warnings for each book, nor am I interested in leaving negative reviews online, so don’t take this list as an endorsement of suitability for all ages.

Phew. Now that that’s done, on to the list! Impossible Creatures by Katherine Rundell has made a splash in the middle grade world, so I read that one first, followed by The Game of Love and Death. Why did I read Brockenbrough’s YA book about star-crossed lovers, you didn’t ask? Someone recommended it as an example of contemporary magical realism, and I’d been on a magical realism kick recently (reading Borges and Garcia Marquez stories with my short story club). Lastly, I picked up a wild ride of a sci-fi novel called Snow Crash. I’ve consumed my fair share of virtual reality/cyberpunk entertainment, and this was a fun but gritty contribution to the genre (also the VR world was called the Metaverse).

On the nonfiction side, I read My Dear Hemlock (highly recommend). For audiobooks, I finished up the third Emily Wilde story (Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales), then switched over to Peter Nimble and His Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier (my 12-year-old is now listening to it and loving it) and did an abrupt right-turn into heavy (heavy) auto-biography with Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s Infidel.

A Writing Tip

Here’s a question I received recently:

This is a process that changes every time I start a new project because it really depends on the complexity and scope of the idea. Often, when I’m in the brainstorming stage, I’ll crack open a shiny new notebook and start writing down ideas. I try to keep this part as easy and nonjudgmental as possible. I turn off my editor voice and turn on my “wouldn’t it be cool” voice and just go.

Once I’m done brainstorming, I start adding everything that I want to keep from that notebook into Scrivener. I’m a big fan of this writing tool because it keeps all my research organized in one place and easily accessible. As I’m transferring things over, I’m breaking it up into Character Studies, Location Research, Worldbuilding research, magic system rules, scenes I’m excited to write, etc.

(I should add that all of this is still idea stage not plot stage. Plot is the most malleable part of the whole process, so I deal with it last).

As I’m adding everything into Scrivener, I’m figuring out what type of story I’m telling, the genre expectations, wrestling my premise and basic pitch into shape, and slowly teasing out the basic story structure based off the non-negotiable elements that I want this story to have.

I find that this double translation (from brain to notebook and from notebook to Scrivener) keeps me organized while still giving my imagination opportunity to run a little wild when it needs to.

I hope this helps!

That’s all for now, see you next month (if not sooner)

Christine