Go through your messages. Reply to the big emails.
Realise the big emails require planner cross-checks and WhatsApp messages. Send the messages.
Send the emails.
Clear your inbox of anything of medium importance.
Realise that the low importance emails never mattered and delete them. Resolve to do this more after the holiday.
Turn on your out-of-office automatic email replies on however many inboxes you monitor. Include useful links in the accounts to which people will have emailed questions because they actively chose not to Google their question, and thought instead that emailing you on Christmas Eve was a smarter, faster and more empathic option.
Consult your to-do list. If it includes basic accounting, updating your planner for the new year to reduce first day back stress and/or more messages, make a cup of tea.
Find new emails in your inbox. Everyone you work with is doing step one. Don’t reply, because your out of office is activated and you are, officially, No Longer Available. Do you even exist? Possibly not.
Check that anything you needed to schedule over the break has been scheduled. (Are you really going to Instagram a sunrise photo for the solstice on the day you observe it? Probably, yeah. If you don’t, it’s okay to spend 10 days with no Instagram updates, even if you are publishing a book and require Content. Most people who follow your work will be very drunk very soon, and won’t be able to read captions anyway.)
Finish up any last dregs that will annoy you after the break if they’re still hanging around waiting to be done.
There was something Big you wanted to get done before the break. There always is. It can wait until after the break. It’s waited three months or three weeks and it can wait ten more days. If you come back rested, you might actually get it done more efficiently after your break.
Remember you wanted to write a blog post before the break, but the one you have drafted might work better in the new year and you’ve lost interest anyway.
Write this blog post.
Fuck off.
Have a lovely and safe whatever-you’re-celebrating and I will see you in 2024!
Look after yourselves, Francesca
Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to my latest book, Rotting Trees, plus chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi for one-off support. If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buymy first book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailersand as a paperback from Amazon.(That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos…) If you enjoy my book recommendations, you can find my Bookshop.org page here.
Is going into a creative career an admirable pursuit of one’s passion or an act of epic financial self-sabotage? Don’t look at me for the answer, I once stuck my finger in a plug socket. Anyway, I’ve been chatting with arty friends and less arty friends alike about publishing Rotting Trees (from 11th December! Read about it here!) and thought I’d share why I’ve decided to self publish at a time when quite a lot of cosmic signals – like, I don’t know, the global economy – would suggest it’s silly.
Reason 1: Self Publishing is Fun, Mostly
Scheduling Instagram posts and then editing them when the text hasn’t saved…. is not fun. But otherwise, I’m having a great time. I used to work/still dabble in digital marketing, and the fun parts of promoting a book – making graphics, creating memes, reaching out to reviewers – are as delightful now as they were when I published The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes. I also enjoy uploading to Patreon regularly; sharing a short story each week during lockdown gave me structure, and my readers enjoyed them. I know binge-consumption is the norm these days, but I think there’s something lovely about reading a story or a set of stories a chapter at a time.
Reason 2: I Wasn’t Going to Sit on a Manuscript
Not literally, I can’t afford the printing. A few agents requested full copies of Rotting Trees. I sent it, of course, but the way publishing works is that an agent will usually only get back in touch if they want to represent you. Whether it takes them a week to read your manuscript or six months, they generally won’t contact you if they don’t want to work with you. (My thoughts on the publishing industry’s general email etiquette are unflattering.) I’m still waiting for ‘nos’ that might never come – I know people who have had rejections two years after sending an agent their work. (Can you guess what my thoughts are? You want me to trust you to look after my work but you take two years to answer an email?)
from sunshinethekatt.tumblr.com
So I figured, I’m not getting any younger and nor is the planet. Let’s share this manuscript before the ecological crisis or World War III knocks out the power lines. I’m reasonably confident people will enjoy it and I’ve done my due diligence with editing and sensitivity reading, so it’s in as good shape as it could be. Might as well share it on Patreon and give my readers a year of new work.
Speaking of Patreon…
Reason 3: Money (jokes!)
Realistically I’ve spent more getting Rotting Trees ready for publication than I can earn back in the year I’ll be publishing it, but I knew that going in. Inflation’s been at ten percent; it’s a young adult novel and most young adults are in state mandated full time education supported by parents, or are at university living off piss poor student loans and working too many hours just to afford to stay in education. Why would someone spend £1 a month to join my Patreon community when that £1 is needed for groceries, or shoes, or immorally high rent? I can’t assume my work will ever be anything other than a luxury.
Still, I want to give it a go. Partly for my existing Patreon readers, who I appreciate more than I know how to articulate. In an act of timing so bad it’s circled back round to funny, my health has taken a dip so I’ve scaled back my studies to graduate in 2025, and I’m moving closer to university for a less draining commute. Going part time has been great for my health but extremely bad for student finance, but ongoing support from my Patreon community means I don’t have to hustle quite as much to make up the difference. Which is great, because I am in quite a lot of pain. Heart eyes emoji for Patreon! Have a book!
I suppose I’m partly sharing Rotting Trees for me, too, because writing it over the last couple of years was a joy, and I owe it to myself to not let it rot (ha) in a file on my OneDrive. Plus, well, when the chips are down and life is shit, people still turn to the arts for entertainment and distraction, and it’s cool to be a part of that landscape.
And thus, Rotting Trees will be on Patreon from 11th December. The prologue is up now. If you see an Instagram post with no text in it, er, wait a bit and I’ll notice and fix it…
Look after yourselves,
Francesca
Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to my latest book, Rotting Trees, plus chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi for one-off support. If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buymy first book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailersand as a paperback from Amazon.(That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos…) If you enjoy my book recommendations, you can find my Bookshop.org page here.
Once upon a time, I nicknamed a manuscript ‘cursenovel.’ More recently I finished it, named it Rotting Trees and, when no one I’d approached wanted to sell it, decided to publish it myself.
Then I wrote this post. I do have some graphics planned to share to my social media as part of the never ending PR machine that is required of self publishing, but I thought it would be fun to have a master post type blog here, since most social media platforms are increasingly functionally unusable and/or full of Nazis and/or require you to have 250k followers before it’ll show anyone anything.
What is Rotting Trees?
A young adult contemporary fantasy novel. In normal English: magicky but set in the real world, and with an audience in mind of anyone aged about 15 upwards. I’ve been describing it as for fans of The Raven Cycle and Good Omens in both tone and generalised vibes.
Okay, but what’s it about?
All the women in Ariel Scarlet’s family die before the age of forty. Family legend blames a cursed Victorian necklace, and Ariel is determined to discover who cursed it and why.
Sophey Cartwright works in Bezzina’s Emporium of Magical Artefacts and Antiquities. She can help Ariel find out the truth… but is Ariel ready to face the past and choose her own place in history?
Keen eyed readers will remember Sophey and Ariel from the handful of Bezzina’s Emporium short stories I’ve been writing over the last few years. I think the first ever story was part of the Major Arcana series – what a lockdown project that was – and you can read the Bezzina’s stories here and the whole Major Arcana series here. You don’t have to have read the short stories to enjoy Rotting Trees, but they are a good time and you might enjoy seeing how I splashed around in the world before committing to a seventy-one thousand word manuscript. Which has, for the record, been professionally proofread and been checked by a sensitivity reader.
I’m sold, where is it?
From December 2023-December 2024, I’ll share a chapter per week of Rotting Trees to my Patreon, the No. 1 Readers’ Club (it’s available for all paying members regardless of tier!). The prologue is up now. This will, of course, be alongside all my usual Patreon funsies like tarot readings and short stories. I’d love to do a Kickstarter to fund an ebook and print run in 2025, but that will depend on demand (my energy levels aren’t likely to go up but my workload probably will, so we’ll see how it goes on Patreon first). If you’re new: membership to the No. 1 Readers’ Club starts from £1 a month, and there’s an option to trial for 7 days. You can also sign up for free to see my public posts. I name a character after every paying member, do monthly tarot readings and add paid members’ names to the thank yous of published books.
Yes! As you can tell from the blurb, this isn’t a romantic comedy. It’s not really graphic and it’s definitely not sexy (I would say it has at least one hundred percent less kissing than The Raven Cycle and the same number of dogs as Good Omens), but I did explore complex and often uncomfortable topics.If you prefer to know themes before you begin, I have a list (if you prefer to dive into a book come what may, just scroll on):
Minor: alcohol, animal cruelty, blood, cursing, disordered eating, mental and physical illness, parental neglect, religious bigotry, vomit.
If you’re a parent and your 14 year-old would like to read it but you aren’t sure: you know your child better than I do, so my recommendation is to take the content warnings into consideration and read it yourself first. Unless, of course, you’re one of those parents who thinks children shouldn’t consume anything depicting LGBTQ folk, children having adventures, or critical thinking. In which case, get them and yourself a membership to your local library immediately and go and have a think about what you’re really afraid of. Did I just spoil Rotting Trees or was that a generalised moan about books being banned from libraries? There’s only one way to find out!
Is Rotting Trees available anywhere for free?
No. If you see it online for free, please tell me because it’s been stolen. I’m mindful that we are all living in horrible financial times and to keep my work as accessible as possible the No. 1 Readers’ Club has a trial option, plus you can join from just £1 per month. I cannot make it cheaper without devaluing a) my work and the effort it takes to write, edit, publish and promote a novel while living with chronic health issues, juggling five jobs and undertaking a degree simultaneously, and b) the writing industry. If Patreon isn’t for you, no hard feelings – I have 14 years of posts on this blog available free, plus dozens of short stories online. You can find previous Bezzina’s Emporium short stories in particular here. You can, as ever, support my work on a one-off basis via Ko-Fi or PayPal.
That’s all for now – I’m sure I’ll add more questions throughout the year I’m sharing this story. I am so very excited for you all to get to know Sophey and Ariel properly over the next year. Thank you to my critique partners Bel, Jengo, Ruth and Lindsay, to my editor, Debz Hobbs-Wyatt and to my sensitivity reader, Helen Gould. Love as ever to the No. 1 Readers’ Club, whose support over the last two years has allowed me to spend time writing this. Let’s gooo! If you have questions about the book as it unfolds, leave them here or on Patreon and I’ll add them to this post.
Links you may find interesting
A blog post where I talk more about why I’m self publishing Rotting Trees
Rotting Trees on GoodReads and StoryGraph if you’d like to add it to your ‘currently reading’ during the read-along
Look after yourselves!
Francesca
Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to my latest book, Rotting Trees, plus chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi for one-off support. If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buymy first book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailersand as a paperback from Amazon.(That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos…) If you enjoy my book recommendations, you can find my Bookshop.org page here.
I have one thing I can’t talk about yet and a room full of wasps. Let me fix the grammar of that sentence. There are Things afoot about which I cannot talk (yet), and one of them is a big-ish thing I’m looking forward to. Separately, my place of work now has a wasp room. A room full of wasps. It didn’t used to be full of wasps. Normally it contains two vending machines of dubious functionality and a fire exit. Today, which is a nine-hour shift, the room is populated by wasps. I suspect it will be populated by wasps tomorrow and probably Monday as well.
But I’m not working then, so pfft.
There was no other point to this post than to record the wasp room for posterity, so see you in October!
Look after yourselves,
Francesca
Want to support this blog and/or enjoy exclusive access to my latest book, Rotting Trees, plus chatter from me? Join the No. 1 Reader’s Club on Patreon! Alternatively, you can use PayPal or Ko-fi for one-off support. If you’re into fairy tales and/or want a brief respite from reality, you can also buymy first book, The Princess and the Dragon and Other Stories About Unlikely Heroes, from most ebook retailersand as a paperback from Amazon.(That link’s an affiliate. Gotta scrape every penny from Bezos…) If you enjoy my book recommendations, you can find my Bookshop.org page here.
Francesca's Thoughts 