Allie Leigh

I definitely…didn’t get halfway through the month, realize I hadn’t sent out the newsletter yet, and then ALSO realize that I didn’t really have much to say. Definitely not.

That is not the case this month! This month, we have lots of news!

The first annual Cozy the Day Away sale will be on Friday, May 8th! All three of my books will be available as part of the sale, either for free, or $0.99! There are tons of great books included in this, in both cozy and cozy-adjacent genres, from tons of diverse authors! So if you’re looking for something new to read, it’ll be great to check out!

Also coming later this month, I’ll have a new short story out in the May issue of Indie Bites, entitled The Dove and the Wren! It’s set to release sometime toward the end of May, so I’ll include a link in next month’s newsletter once it’s live for everyone. Indie Bites is great and always completely free to read, or print copies are available at-cost, and each issue is always filled with a great variety of fantasy stories, so I highly recommend checking it out.

If you can’t wait to sink your teeth in, here are some links to past issues I’ve been a part of! (But really, if you take a look at the back catalogue on the website, you can’t go wrong with any of them!)

Finally, at the end of the month, I’ll be doing my first ever reading! It came about in a really wonderful way. This one independent bookstore in Winnipeg stocks my books, and a journalist was doing a story on them. They reached out to me with a few questions for an article, and then afterward asked if I wanted to participate in this reading series they do every six weeks or so with local authors. I attended one to get a feel for it (because I was very anxious about this idea), and decided that it was not absolutely terrifying and that I could manage it. I think I’m going to read a section of The Dove and the Wren, so hopefully it goes well!

I think last time, I explained that I was just going to dive into trying to write Of Mist and Magic #3 because I felt like I was spinning in my plotting. I got like ~60-70 pages (handwritten) in and decided that I needed a full outline because I didn’t like how the pacing was going. I have restarted this outline like five times at this point, but I think I finally have a trajectory that I like that makes sense (it involved significantly changing and downgrading the importance of one subplot I was trying to fit in, but it was causing problems and making everything TOO full. I think this new direction is also a lot more hopeful, which ties in nicely with the vibes I want for the book overall. I consider A Damsel and a Demon to be cozy-adjacent instead of just cozy, like A Sorceress and Scones, but I still don’t want this all to be getting too dark and depressing!)

Other than that, I’m working on finishing up a short story to submit by the end of the month, and hope to plot out two more short stories this month that I can then start writing in June.

I’ve been playing some more video games lately, which has been nice. I played and finished the Star Ocean 2 rerelease, which was cool, because I’d played the PSP version aaaages ago, gotten to the second to last boss, and absolutely could not win. So now I have been victorious. Huzzah!

I’ve also started playing Persona 3 Reload and I am absolutely loving that. I played P3P like…a decade or more ago at this point and I just forgot how much I love all these characters. Can’t wait to be emotionally devastated. They’ve done a really great job on the remake and making it super snazzy (the menus have no right being this pretty). The only thing I’m finding a little jarring are some of the social links. Because I have only played the FemMC route of P3P, all my experience with the social links were with the ACTUAL party members, not your school friends who…are doing things like trying to date a teacher. (You can follow along with my misadventures on TikTok, if you want!)

Anyway here’s one of my favourite songs to jam to while playing it. We’re dancing like ballerinas~

This is my dog and her new best friend. Future best friend. It’s my friends’ dog, and we’re determined to make them best friends by the end of the summer. They’ve gone on a few walks and had a few playdates so far, and so far so good!

See you next month!