What a whirlwind week it’s been! Writing-wise, it was a bit of a wash – I blame the Mercury retrograde for that – but otherwise I felt like I was firing on all cylinders. Mostly, I’m just really stoked to know that my book is coming out in less than 2 months. A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has already pre-ordered A Party to Murder! And to everyone who is planning to do so as well … yes, I am not above a little emotional blackmail 😉

Miraculously, the weather here has been holding on to a semblance of fall, meaning that there is, as yet, no proper snow on the ground. [I say ‘miracle’ when it’s almost certainly climate change, but I’m trying to keep things light here for a change.] I love that I haven’t had to pull out my heavy winter arsenal yet, and haven’t had to make the mental switch from fall dressing. I also know that, once the snow does hit, it’s gonna feel extra rough to make that adjustment because I’ve had almost an entire month longer than usual to live in denial about winter. That being said, getting used to darkness at 4PM has been bad enough. Hibernation mode has def been activated!

Let me take a moment here to complain for a little bit, k? So, this week has been generally great, but you know one thing that sucked? Trying to get into the right mind-frame to tackle marketing for A Party to Murder. I loathe marketing. It’s the reason I didn’t want to get into self-publishing in the first place, but it’s also unavoidably necessary to achieve the goal I have for self-publishing. Unfortunately, given the state of the publication industry as a whole, relying wholly on the “built it and they will come” approach – aka write a good book and wait for people to find it – is a recipe for disappointment, it seems. You need to write a good book, of course, but with thousands of books being published daily – yes, daily! – its chances of being organically discovered by the right people (i.e. people who are the audience for that particular kind of book) are vanishingly small. On the other hand, figuring out how to do effective marketing – the kind that gets your book in front of the right people – is so, so hard. And also time-consuming, even if you know what you’re doing. Which I don’t. So I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels and ‘wasting’ time that I’d much rather put to other uses, like writing or reading or spectating the Wuthering Heights discourse online.

I think I’m feeling particularly salty about this because it’s not my goal to make writing my paying career. Like, I want people to read my book, but I don’t need it to become a viral success. It’s too niche for that, anyway. Money-wise, if I can get to a point where my books pay for themselves (i.e. my royalties cover the costs of the professional services I use to get them in publishable form), I would be quite content. Even so, I can’t afford to ignore the marketing angle. I feel like I’m stuck in this weird no-man’s-land of monetization, and I hate it. My biggest hope is that, a few books in, I’ll have built enough word of mouth to allow me to dispense with the marketing malarkey.

OK, rant over.

Given what I’ve just said, you shouldn’t be surprised to hear that I haven’t accomplished much else of note this week. Regretfully, I had to DNF (for now) Blinding by Mircea Cartarescu. The lack of plot defeated me about 2/3 of the way in. The prose is gorgeous – but also very, very dense. There were passages I read dozens of times because the language and the images/ideas it evoked were so startling and beautiful … but there were also places where I felt I was getting lost. The style is similar to Solenoid, which is one of my fave books, but Solenoid is a lot less dense and has a very solid, interesting plot. It explores similar ideas, though, so I think it’s a more accessible choice for most people (myself included). I am going to try Blinding again down the line, but for now, I’m moving on to Schattenfroh by Michael Lenz and hoping it’s also a bit more accessible. Or I would … if I had any time. Which I don’t. Sigh.

Have a great weekend!

Here’s something that may surprise you, given the tenor of my recent posts: I hate self-help books. I think it’s an industry rife with problematic people and problematic advice, and wading through the crap to get to the useful or interesting nuggets it’s worth my time. [And that’s not a judgment on anyone who feels it’s worth their time.] If something comes across my path that seems interesting, I may take a closer look at it, but I don’t go out of my way to find it, if that makes sense. As a matter of principle, I am skeptical of most self-improvement “hacks”. If they’re not a thinly disguised device for selling some product/service or other, they’re often some combination of self-evident, trite, or vague/generalized to the point of being inactionable.

But there is one exercise I have found immeasurably useful to my personal growth. I hesitate to call it a self-improvement exercise. It’s more about self-discovery than anything else. If you are someone who is currently engaged in finding their purpose, I highly recommend it.

It’s the “perfect day” exercise. And it’s exactly what it sounds.

Imagine your perfect day: what does it look like?

In doing the exercise, set aside all constraints and limitations as to what might be realistic or achievable. Shut out external noise, turn inward, and listen. Do not rush yourself to an answer. It may take a while for a clear picture to emerge. It’s okay if it emerges in bits and pieces. The key thing is for the picture to be yours.

And watch for the “shoulds”. “Shoulds” are almost always someone else’s voice in your head; an internalized cultural/societal dictum. Interrogate them fiercely before you let them anywhere near your perfect day. Personally, I’ve tossed most of the shoulds in my life out of the window. Time’s too precious to waste on things I should do. There are enough things I need to do (practical necessities) and things I want to do (purpose and joy) to fill a lifetime.

It was my experience that the “perfect day” I eventually settled upon looked nothing like the version that, in the past, I probably would have imagined. [The ‘past’ being that part of my life when I was still very much in thrall to “shoulds.”] In one sense, my perfect day was, for lack of a better word, very modest. Quiet. No big thrills, no fancy stuff. It was filled with small pleasures. In another sense, it was very audacious. First, because it was modest – when our society’s motto is “go big or go home.” Second, because it was predicated on experiences that, for the most part, would be considered unproductive within the capitalist paradigm that defines modern existence. Unmonetized creativity, leisure, human connection: these are things capitalism has no use for. Choosing them, in my perfect day, felt like a radical act – a very small one, to be sure, but radical all the same.

You might be wondering what my perfect day actually involved and waiting for me to tell you. I am not going to. Not only because it’s a deeply private and personal thing, but because it doesn’t matter. Not to you. Not even, at a certain level, to me. The goal of the perfect day exercise isn’t to come up with the ideal To Do list or schedule. It is to reveal, to yourself, the things that give life its purpose and meaning – for you.

I wouldn’t get hung up on the specific activities that you end up including in your perfect day. To me, those activities are merely stand-ins for the values or ideals that define the locus of purpose or meaning in one’s life. Look at your perfect day and ask: what are the common themes or threads here? Follow those threads, and you will eventually get to the definition of your purpose.

One way to architect your best life is to take your “perfect day” and expand it out. In other words, in a very literal sense, build a life that allows you to live your perfect day, every day. If you are fortunate enough to be able to do that, congratulations! Enjoy being exceptional 😉 If you are not – and, spoiler alert, most of us aren’t, at least not immediately – don’t worry. You don’t need to live the perfect day, every single day, in order to be living your best life. As far as I’m concerned, our best life is the life that makes room for and honours our purpose. Once we know what that purpose is, it becomes much easier to spot the ways and opportunities to incorporate it into our day-to-day life, tiny bit by tiny bit. You might be surprised by how tiny bits can add up! And those tiny bits can be different from the things that you included in your perfect day exercise – and, nevertheless, effective ways to practice your purpose.

From time to time, you might get the chance to actually live a “perfect day”. Seize it! Do it! It’ll feel wonderfully self-affirming … and if it doesn’t, then you’ll know it’s time to revisit the exercise. In fact, I think it’s good practice to repeat the exercise on a regular basis, at least every year or every other year. We grow, we evolve; it’s good to leave room for our purpose to grow and evolve too.

Now, I would love to hear from you: have you ever planned out your “perfect day” and, if so, what did you come away with from the exercise?

It’s Mercury and Jupiter retrograde, friends – hold on to your everything. The planets be wilding out there. Against common advice, I decided this was a good week to do All The Things. Which is to say, I did a bunch of really important book publishing related stuff. If you’re on the mailing list for my author newsletter, you will have received some exciting updates in your inbox. All I’m going to say here now is: bookmark January 8, 2026 because that is the day when A Party to Murder will be released!

OK, I’m going to say one more thing: the e-book is now available for pre-order (Amazon and other retailers), and I would be eternally grateful if you chose to support me by pre-ordering in advance of Jan 8. Pre-orders are hugely important to the ranking that new books get on release on platforms like Amazon, which in turn impacts the algorithms that determine how broadly the book gets pushed out to other customers. Basically, the more successful Amazon’s algorithm thinks your book is, the more it shows it to other people. (A Party to Murder is available on a number of different online retailers’ platforms, so there are options for people who don’t want to support Amazon).

In other news, this week I fell down an Instagram rabbit hole of Frankenstein-related content. I am talking, of course, about Guillermo del Toro’s new movie. I haven’t seen it, and I’m not sure I want to – I’ve heard it focuses on an exploration of parent-child and intergenerational trauma, and that’s just too heavy for my current emotional bandwidth to handle. But I’m obsessed with the gothic romance vibed clips I’ve seen … and I say that as someone who never considered herself a monster romance girlie. If anyone can change my mind, it’s GdT, I suppose. (Crimson Peak still occupies a significant portion of my brain-space, rent free all these years later.) Who else would cast a 6’5 Australian hunk as a ‘monster’ and have him wear a mummy’s version of a Speedo for a good chunk of the movie? GdT knows what he’s doing … and, let’s be honest, we are all here for it. I am also sat for the costumes – his movies are always flawless when it comes to vibes + style, even if the pacing and plot are sometimes a bit wobbly. Personally, I just want to watch Elizabeth and the Creature hang out and bond over the beauty of nature and how much they both hate Victor. That’s it, that’s the movie. I hope there will be a director cut of this at some point.

Not coincidentally, my Instagram discovery page is now saturated with Jacob Elordi-adjacent content. Generally speaking, I’m not mad about it. In this trash fire year of our lord 2025, there are a lot of far, far, far worse things I could be doom-scrolling through. Did I mention he’s 6’5? Anyway. The worst thing that has come out of this is … God, I can’t believe I’m about to admit this … I’m now kinda intrigued by Emerald Fennel’s upcoming adaptation of Wuthering Heights. OK! Before you come at me with your literary pitchforks, listen: I made fun of it too when the first on-set photos came out. It looks utterly stupid as an actual literary adaptation and it’s completely historically anachronistic, and I don’t even like Wuthering Heights the book. [In fact, I loathe it. Now you can come at me with the pitchforks.]

But!

If you look at it as a thirst trap for people who enjoy quasi-historical cosplay and toxic smutty romances, I think it might be a really fun ride, no pun intended. Like, based on the trailer, this movie looks like it was made for people who like Frankenstein’s Creature but want to call him daddy. I hope the trailer and the advance buzz for this movie haven’t oversold how horny and depraved it is. I think it would be super interesting (ahem) to see that kind of story told from a female perspective, ya know?

Full disclosure: I have not seen Saltburn or anything else from either Fennell or her lead actors. [Yes, that means I haven’t seen Barbie either.]

Have a great weekend!