Francesca's Thoughts

Hello. Francesca Astraea here. Make a cup of tea and settle in for a chat!


Schlupping Off

Hello!

How has August been treating you? I feel like it has been a month of either being so hot I can’t move to leave the house or being rained on so drastically I don’t want to leave the house.

I don’t have too much to catch you up on – most of August has involved travelling, moving, travelling and, just to spice things up, preparing to travel. I sort of love it though, even if it does mean I spend too much time thinking about the logistics of laundry. It’s been a month since I stopped updating ye olde social media accounts and it’s too early to tell if my mental health is SUPREMELY BETTER, but I have finished one book draft and one short story draft. I like to think the two things are related? Or maybe it’s just that I’m either hyper focussed or not remotely paying attention, and August was the former. It’s almost as though all the travelling around has been good for my brain and I should do it ALL THE TIME. Or maybe I just work harder when I know I’m about to have the opportunity to turn off my internet for a week or so… and setting up the fuck off polite autoreply on emails is one of life’s most underrated experiences. It’s even better when you know you’ve ticked off every measly little thing on your schedule.

gif of a dinosaur front flipping onto a boat
Real footage of me learning to paddleboard

I do have boring house stuff to do, so I’ll say bye and will pop back in when I’m back from my holidays. Do people not from Essex say ‘holibobs’?

You should.

Look after yourselves!

Francesca


Thanks for reading. If you’d like to read my short stories and see behind-the-scenes work, you can sample? the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon for a month with this link. No pressure to stick around! Think of it as trying a miniature dessert with no requirement to eat the whole menu. You can also find me on Ko-fi. Thank you for your support – you’re helping to fund this space and pay for other costs of running a creative business, like paying editors.

Here are the books I’ve published so far and where you can find them. If you enjoy my book recommendations, browse my Bookshop.org page here.

I’m on social media (reluctantly), via Instagram, Tumblr and Facebook. I prefer my montly-ish newsletter! You can find all my books and my unhinged reviews of books I love on GoodReads and StoryGraph.



One response to “Schlupping Off”

  1. […] September been? Mine has been really good actually. On holiday I learnt what a Zombie cocktail is, did actually learn what a paddle board is and how to use one, met some excellent cats and far too many people were nice to me on my birthday. […]

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