Over in Canada, we still have a few more months of winter ahead, but this month’s newsletter has lots of flowery goodness!
I have a new short story that released last month! I’d love it if you would give it a read. You can access it for free (pdf and epub) here!
What Lives Within a Rose
As the sole proprietor of the Garden, Ashe uses her magic to store memories within enchanted flowers, ensuring they will never fade. One day, she receives a visit from Burg, a wizard who has accompanied his prince on a voyage to secure a royal match. When asked to steal a memory to prove the prince’s intent, Ashe finds herself warring between her duty to her queen and the feelings she’s developing for the foreign wizard.
Fun facts about this story!
- It was written after re-reading This is How You Lose the Time War for a book club last summer. I don’t actually have super strong opinions about that book as a whole (it is fine), buuuut, in it, the characters put letters they are sending to one another into such weird little things, which inspired the “storing memories inside flowers” part of the magic system.
- Also inspired by This is How You Lose the Time War, I decided I was going to lean into the flowery prose (if you’re not going to be melodramatic in romance, when are you going to be melodramatic?)
- This story is like the backstory of two characters who exist in this other novel that I have yet to write, because I finished a first draft of it years ago and was like, “wow, I tried to shove like three books into one,” and I have yet to go back and untangle it. But I love them and it was great to finally get them on the page.
Some recommended listening to go along with it:
My books will be available as part of a promotion on Smashwords to celebrate Read an Ebook Week! This is a chance to get books from many other great authors at a discount so you can get right to reading.
You will find the promo here starting on March 1.
March marks the start of when I am going to buckle down and finally get to writing Of Mist and Magic #3. I decided to stop plotting and start writing because I felt like I was just spinning and going nowhere. Will this be a terrible idea? Who knows. I am giving myself the (hopefully) achievable goal of one chapter a week, so that I feel good when I succeed instead of stressed. This will hopefully either a) let me get a bit ahead or b) still leave me with some time for messing around with short stories if I want to. And if it’s of a similar length to A Damsel and a Demon, I’ll have a finished draft in five-ish months or so.
I have the prologue and Chapter 1 done! Follow along on Instagram for more progress updates and some fun snippets as I go.
This month I had a MOMENT when Yaelokre dropped Hearken. In that I just listened to it really loudly on headphones on repeat for a while and legit cried the first time I heard it because it was so beautiful.
I realize that is probably not a normal reaction to have to a song, but that is neither here nor there. As someone in Youtube comments very aptly put it, it sounds like the kind of song you would hear in the credits of some movie as this big resolution. And it just oozes the vibes of a story that I have percolating in my brain, so it was a very emotional experience! I look forward to listening to it obsessively in the future.
This month Millie thinks everything is suspicious. Veeeeryyy suspicious.
Have a great month!
Allie Leigh 
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