Hello to you lovely patient subscribers to my Substack —
Here’s wishing you a very happy new year for 2024
May we stay connected, creative and involved even when things near and far challenge us to the core of who we are. May we always choose to move in the direction of love and hope, even when that choice sometimes requires us to retreat inwards to replenish and heal. May you forever have what you need to grow in every moment.
…My little bit of news is that I’m extremely happy to say I’ve completed a draft of a new book! Still needs lots of fine-tuning and revision, but I sent it off last week to my favourite beta-reader-friend-editor Ian W, and he gave it the thumbs up, which is an enormous relief. So hard to tell until you finally get eyes on it (ie someone else’s eyes).
Like Vagabondage, it’s another poetry memoir, although I’m thinking it might be more accurately described as something like ‘an auto-fiction of childhood’.
The working title for the past few years has been Such is Life in a Small Town, and lately I've been thinking of it as Breadcrumb Backbone, but the actual title is yet to come.
Titles are tricky and wondrous things. I remember how I only finally hit on How to Conceive of a Girl just before that book went to into production, but hopefully this one will reveal itself not quite so close to the wire.
Meanwhile, The Age of Fibs is still out in the world finding new readers. A huge thank you to everyone who has read Fibs, sent me lovely messages, given stars on Goodreads or Amazon, shared about it or commented on posts, and given or recommended it to others. Reader feedback makes all the difference.
And if there’s enough interest, next year I might use the podcast aspect of Substack to share some audio versions of parts of it. (Like this audio of ‘Forgetting’.)
If you want to know more about Fibs, you can read review comments and get signed copies from me, or from the publisher, order it into your library, get the ebook, watch a talk I gave at Univ of Sydney’s fabulous Writers@Work series, or read an (amazing) article about it at The Monthly.
May you be safe and ludicrously well in these turbulent times. May we be able to open ourselves to all the sadness and all the rage, and always still find wonder and joy every day.
Much love and creativity to you,
Xx Beth