Hi, Reader!

I hope you’ve had a great September! Mine has gone well after the busy nature of my August. I recovered a bit, managed to get decent headway into my next novel, and am on a small vacation of sorts for the latter part of September and first part of October. Then that’ll leave us getting eerily close to the end of the year…

Ah, but it’s too soon to worry about that, I suppose. I’m not sure how much “small talk” a newsletter should involve, so I’ll get into the actual updates!

Housekeeping: Changing Newsletter Provider

First, I’d like to apologize for my messy management as I learn how to indie author, but there’s only a handful of people on this email list currently so better now than later, right? That said, I’ll be switching newsletter providers from Substack to Kit. Not that I’ve had an issue with Substack (beyond replies ending up in spam), but Substack isn’t quite intended as a newsletter service. I’d like to change before I have a bigger list of people.

So, if you’d like to continue receiving newsletters you can subscribe at https://reese-lavine.kit.com/subscribe.

I apologize for the inconvenience! But it offers one last check if you’d like to bow out of these emails.

On that note, I'd also like to come up with a catchier/more fun name than just "my newsletter" but we will see if I come up with anything. For now, it is bare bones. Branding worries can come later, haha.

What Have You Been Working On? 📝

As previously mentioned, my current focus is my fantasy novel. It was at roughly 15,000 words at the beginning of September, and it is now at 27,500 words. I’m hoping I can keep up with it and aim for at least 1,000/words a day when I’m back home, and aiming for the ballpark of 100,000 words. If I manage to keep this up, I could have a first draft done by the end of the year (but of course there's a lot more work that needs to be done before it's in a polished state)...

I want to make a proper blog post introduction, but since I only have a small pool of you at the moment, here’s a bit more information on it: the current working title is The Constellation of Us (TCOU), though it may very well end up the final title because I'm attached to it. I'm afraid to get too into the weeds yet, but by the end of the year you'll learn more.

I’m unsure how I’ll end up categorizing it. There’s sapphic romance (and it’s significant to the story), but it’s decidedly slow burn so I’m not sure where it stands. It is not romantasy (romance first, fantasy second), so it's between fantasy romance (fantasy first, romance second) or simply fantasy with romance as a subplot. Hopefully I'll have a better idea when more of it is complete!

I don’t think it’ll introduce anything that hasn’t been done in fantasy before, but I hope it’s a unique enough spin it remains interesting to read. Or, I hope the characters are liked enough to carry the story. There aren’t that many fantasy books out there with sapphic couples, so at the very least it’ll be something else to add to that list.

I outlined it as a trilogy, though I’d love to have the first book out in 2027 if I can make it work. If you’re subscribed to the newsletter, you’ll definitely receive a heads up when I’m looking for ARC readers! I might look for some beta readers, too.

I may also share some snippets or previews, but the problem with me as a writer is that I'm incredibly pedantic with tweaking my words (ADORE received changes up to its release day! The ARC copy actually missed out on quite a few changes / fixes), so I can only share with the caveat that everything I show pre-publishing may end up fiddled with.

Pic of the Month

I wanted to share more ADORE fanart done by f5slash on Instagram (and other sites)! They’ve been doing a few pieces inspired by the book, which is so touching to see!

Well, that’s it for September! I don’t love that the weather is getting colder, but I enjoy the general aesthetics of October and Halloween festivities. 🎃

Until next time!

♡ Reese