Phew, a busy week and my author brain is feeling tired. But a good week, too, and I did get some stuff done, which always makes me feel positive!
FRIDAY WRITING UPDATE
Here is my writing update (and other random stuff!):
π PREP: Gosh. So much prep. I am hosting a panel session about the horror anthology I edited (HOMETOWN HAUNTS) at the Adelaide Writers’ Week this Sunday (06 March at 3pm, free event come along!) so I’ve been busily writing questions for the lovely authors I’ll be interviewing. Am I nervous? Haha. Yes. Yes, I am so utterly nervous, but excited too! I also had to write a little speech for something very special that I’ll be able to chat about next week, but that I’m feeling very amazed by..AWARD NEWS: If you’ve been following Australian book awards season or my previous Instagram posts, you may have seen my latest novel was listed as a CBCA Notables book for 2022 … which is just crazy! I was super surprised and so pleased. It’s been a lovely week!
π HISTORY: Why have I added this section? … I have no idea, haha. Except I enjoy talking about history, so here we go! I’ve been reading a book on Irish history this week. Very fascinating stuff. I’m sure I’ll talk more about this as I delve deeper into it. I have also been listening to a really horrifying / fascinating 5-part episode series on the excellent podcast Coldest Cases that covers the Salem Witch Trials that occurred in America in the 1600s and the story is just … absolute madness. One of the most frightening things in the world to me is mob mentality and this particular history-mystery is chock full with it! I want to read more into the history of witch trials and witches in general … so, I bought a book on the subject! Haha. Of course, I did!
π. WRITING: I’ve been surging (limping?) my way through a ton of edits this week, which has actually been quite … fun? Nice! I haven’t had as much time to work on it as I would have liked this week, but my novella is forming up into something I am really proud of. Today I thought I’d be brave and share the first line of this very dark murder mystery, which is set against an epic fantasy backdrop:
‘Honnan Skyin was no stranger to death, but it didnβt make burning the bodies any easier.’
Phew! I always get nervous sharing snippets (especially dark ones like this! Eeek), but I want to start dropping more information about all these crazy projects I am working on as they are so fun for me to talk about (this new world is absolutely living in my mind these days!).
So anyway, that’s the name of my main character in the novella! Honnan is a young soldier on an isolated and frozen frontier island, and when the novella opens, he is burning the dead on the shore. Needless to say, things get worse from there.
Creepy stuff! But apparently, I am very much into all the creepy stories these days!
π STUDY: νκ΅μ΄κ³΅λΆ μ‘°κΈ μ΄λ €μμ. κ·Έλ°λ° μ¬λ―Έμμ΄μ!
READING:
I recently finished this wonderful book, called GODS OF JADE AND SORROW by Silvia Moreno-Garcia as pictured, and I utterly adored it. I truly didn’t want this one to end.β
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This story is a historical fantasy set in the 1920s in Mexico, and is written so beautifully, like a fable or in an ethereal feeling fairytale style. The language is so beautiful and I found so many gorgeous quotes in this one that I had to stop and re-read passages constantly. β π
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The tale begins with a young woman who is overlooked in her household and treated badly by her family (forced to clean and act like a servant basically), but after she opens a forbidden chest, and unleashes a Mayan god of death, the two go on a quest that feels like a mythical tale, both utterly romantic and bitter, and surreal and atmospheric. And extremely dangerous! β
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I really adored this book so much and highly recommend it to anyone who loves an old creepy fairytale … π»
Family Snaps
My lovely husband frolicking among the summer flowers πΉ
Creepy illustrations and Harry Clarke
This illustration is taken from an old fairytale book from the 1940s called ‘Anderson’s Fairy Tales’, by Anderson and Perrault, which has been illustrated by the incredible Irish artist Harry Clarke.β π
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I was so excited when I found this book in a second-hand book shop … Harry Clarke is one of my favourite illustrators and I think his work is so strange, beautiful, and also a little bit creepy.β
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I first stumbled across Harry Clarke’s work when I was living in Dublin. There was an exhibition dedicated to his stained-glass windows and illustrations in the Dublin Art Gallery, and as soon as I saw them, I was hooked. Two of his pieces stood out to me most that day, one stained glass window of a mad prince and the other an illustration of Ophelia drowning in a river while covered in a giant lobster yabbie crustacean thing. Both were very strange and creepy! β π
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At the time, I hadn’t realised Harry Clarke had also illustrated fairytale books, so finding this book back in Australia was very exciting. β
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The illustration in my photo is from a story called ‘The Ridiculous Wishes’ about a young woodcutter who is granted three wishes by Jupiter but, while deciding what to wish, accidentally first wishes for a black pudding, and then, after his wife calls him an idiot for being so silly, he accidentally wishes that the black pudding were stuck on the end of her nose. And so it was.β
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The ending of the story goes like this… The woodcutter asks his wife if she would rather his final wish is used to make them a king and queen (but she’d still have her pudding nose) or if she’d prefer he returned her to her normal self.β
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The young woman chooses to get rid of her nose pudding, and so the young couple are peasants once more … but stop complaining about their lot in life presumably. Always a moral in these old stories, eh?β πΉ
And that’s it for this week, folks!
THANK YOU FOR READING
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PJ Nwosu writes dark mystery novels set in epic fantasy worlds.
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