In Language Strange - Coming June 6th

I have been sneakily working away on a semi-secret project: a book! Well, sort of.

After my first time visiting Dartmoor and falling in love with the landscape (both the myths and the actual formations of it), I thought about writing a story to express that feeling. After I got home, I wrote a few lines, and then life got in the way. But visiting again last August reignited both that love and the desire to finish the story I’d started.

The final length wound up being somewhere around 10,700 words, which falls into an odd categorization known as a “novelette,” not quite a novella, but certainly longer than the typical short story.

Something about the tale had me hesitating to go through the process of submitting it for publication, subjecting it to potential rejection. That wasn’t why I gave it life in the first place. I had written it as a gift to the landscape, and to the people who helped me to see the magic of the moors. So, I started thinking about sharing it as its own separate creation: a booklet, a print to order limited release, signed and numbered.

I contacted my deeply talented friend, Greene Spiro, and commissioned her to create a cover illustration. My extremely skilled coworker helped me with the graphic design. I began the steep (at least for me) learning curve of the technical processes involved in making the booklet itself. And now the first few are all ready to go, sitting and waiting. For what?

June 6th.

On June 6th I’ll be releasing the booklets. With as bespoke and home-spun a release as this, that simply means that I’ll be posting a blog and also on all my socials announcing the book, likely with a link to my Ko-fi storefront to buy. Details are forthcoming!

Oh, I do so hope you love the story. It is a sapphic reimagining of the poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci by John Keats, and the two main characters are a hare faerie and a lady knight. I dare not say more. You’ll just need to read it for yourself…June 6th!