Half a step into weirdness

Dispatches from my tenuous grip on reality

How’s it going folks? I didn’t get to sleep until 3.30am last night so I’m surprised I’m still standing today. Don’t you love it when you can’t sleep for no particular reason at all? I’m usually a Olympic level sleeper but last night my brain was just seethingly awake. Anyway.

A few wee updates for you. As part of their Women in SFF season, I wrote a guest blog for the fabulous people at The Fantasy Hive - it’s about folklore, mythology and fairy tales, and how they are important to my work, but it’s also about my yearning for a weirder existence. You can read it here. Fantasy Hive were also kind enough to review Talonsister, and they said lovely things like ‘An unforgettable magical fable from Britain’s Queen of fantasy’ - expect to see these quotes all over my website soon.

In other Talonsister news, I have stickers! A big pile of them, so if you enter the Talonsister preorder competition in time, I will now also be sending you stickers. And if I see you at a convention, I might throw them at you there too.

Social media update! Yes, I know, we all love those… I seem to have decided to throw myself at every new social media site going (to see what I stick to I guess?) so you can now find me on BlueSky (@sennydreadful.bsky.social) and Threads (@sennydreadful19@threads.net) as well as the more usual but chaotic Twitter (@sennydreadful) and Tumblr (@sennydreadful).

Now, if you’re here I’m assuming you’re a book person, and you might be in want of something new to read this month. Well I have a couple of corkers for you.

First up, Dark Water Daughter by H. M. Long. It came out in the UK just yesterday, and it’s a dark and thrilling fantasy novel about pirates and treacherous seas. I loved it because the characters were just so compelling and the worldbuilding so original. Here’s what I said about it:

‘Dark Water Daughter is a unique and breath-taking slice of high seas fantasy – H. M. Long gives us deliciously complex characters to root for and a world full of surprises. I didn’t know I needed these fantasy pirates and their freezing ocean until they sailed into my life. Enormous fun!’

And in just over week you have another excellent fantasy adventure coming your way from excellent human being David Wragg. The Hunters is the first in the new Tales of the Plains series and you will want to get in on this one early. Out on the 20th of July! Here’s what I said about it:

‘Fast paced, hilarious and peppered with the sort of chaos I crave in a fantasy novel, The Hunters is also full of quiet emotional beats that keep you anchored to the characters and the story. You cannot help but have a great time reading this book.'

And that’s about all from me this week except to say that I have been rebooting the Thundercats. Yes. Well, in my mind.

I have had so much fun drawing these it’s ridiculous, and I suspect I will go on to ‘reboot’ as many 80s cartoons as I can (just don’t ask me to do Transformers, too many straight lines). I’ll post the whole thing up here when it’s finished.

If there’s a cartoon you’d like to see me mess about with, drop it in the comments!