Building books, finding people
Hey folks.
So I got my ketamine infusion this week, which means I spent Friday being chemically reorganized in a medical setting. The experience was: approximately as disorienting as advertised, and also clarifying in the way that things are clarifying when your brain chemistry gets properly adjusted. I don’t recommend the process casually. I also don’t recommend not doing it when you need to. Not sure there’s a middle ground, but I’m not looking for one.
By midday I was functional enough to have an opinion again, which is when the book situation became its own particular kind of problem.
Book Update
The Museum of Ephemeral Arts is live as an ebook right now. You can have it immediately. The paperback is coming—72 hours, maybe less if I stop breaking KDP’s formatting in small specific ways. There’s a whole situation with the cover design and which software needs which file type and whose job it is to care about the discrepancy. I’ve learned a lot about stuff I didn’t need to know. The book itself is finished. The book is genuinely finished. It’s the apparatus around the book that apparently requires an advanced degree in technical specifications.
The book is worth it though. I’ve known this for days but it’s different when you see it actually exist in the world, when someone can just… acquire it.
What I’m Actually Doing Right Now
Beyond fixing cover files, I’m rebuilding my social media entirely. Not from scratch, that’s hyperbolic. But I’ve realized I’ve been invisible in places I should be visible. So I’m writing more, posting more, using Instagram in a way that requires actually opening Instagram regularly, which is its own adjustment. If you follow me there, you’re going to see more of me. That’s intentional.
I also joined a private message group specifically for sapphic writers. It’s new. A few people. Everyone’s either working on something or recently finished something or thinking very hard about starting something. The energy is right—supportive without being saccharine, honest about the work without being cruel about it. I’m hopeful. Finding your actual writing community is harder than people talk about. Most of my life I thought maybe I just wasn’t supposed to have one.
I still don’t know if that’s true. But I’m not stopping looking.
The Other Thing
I’ve been working on Shadow Pine Lodge while managing the actual book releases. This book is not like my other books. It’s dark and it’s spicy and it has gratuitous violence that serves the narrative. It has a happy ending but it’s not a gentle happy ending. It lives in a different genre category and it knows it, so it’s going under a pen name: Ruby Devereau.
I created three extra chapters today. This was not planned. I was editing and the story just wanted more. So now I have more. This is the kind of editing where you’re not fixing things so much as you’re letting the thing be what it actually wants to be, which takes longer than fixing and is usually worth it.
I’m hoping to have Ruby’s book ready within the month.
The Thing I Keep Meaning To Say
Thank you for being here. For reading whatever I’m writing that week, whether it’s this newsletter or a book or a post on social media. The feedback matters. The fact that something I made found you and was worth your time—that actually matters.
I’m trying to be more visible. I’m trying to find my people. I’m trying to remember that the work is worth doing even when the apparatus around it is frustrating.
All of that is easier when someone’s paying attention.
Alright. Back to the editing.
Harlo
Leave a Reply