Reading time: 0.52 203 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Beware of the Sit Pit. I fell into one just yesterday afternoon. Only meant to sit down for a moment, but that’s how it gets you. An hour later, and I’ve run out of lives on my phone game and can’t quite reach my book. But then— Whiskey to the rescue! She’s our little old lady cat and she’s deaf so when she wants things, the entire village knows about it. She decided it was time to Go Outside. And so we did. Where I...
2 days ago • 1 min read
Reading time: 5.54 1,402 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Public speaking always comes up as people’s number 1 fear and I kind of get it — after all, it’s a chance for humiliation and rejection in the most public way. And our lizard brains tell us very clearly that if that happens WE WILL DEFINITELY DIE. Because back in the day when we lived in little groups and hunted and gathered, we probably WOULD die if we got ousted. Eaten by a sabre-toothed tiger or the enemies from...
5 days ago • 6 min read
(Ipromise it’s worth it) Reading time: 8.27 2,011 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Standing at the side of the stage, waiting for the EmCee to announce me, I think I started to hyperventilate. My soul definitely abandoned my body and headed for a corner of the ceiling to watch so it could claim to have nothing to do with the disaster about to happen. “You’re on your own, mate,” it hissed. “This is a batshit thing to do. Sayonara, doofus.” Ten minutes later, my soul rejoined...
7 days ago • 9 min read
Reading time: 2.03 487 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, It’s not all about the word count. I get that. But in order to write that book, we do have to produce words. A lot of them. And my MicroBook Magic client Sarah had written 13,980 words as of February 2026. Then she stopped. Stalled. Ground to a halt. Her book became a thing she kind of avoided, and every time I asked about it I felt the side-eye that she would never give me because she’s far too nice, but it was...
9 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 6.35 1,565 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Are you thinking your way out of writing your book? I reckon you might be, you know. Sometimes I do. Before I started writing this email, in fact, I’d shuffled along that route. I let my brain get in the way of the ideas. Humans are big old bags of mostly water and emotional soup. Yes, even people who claim not to experience any emotions. Yes, even certified psychopaths experience at least proto-emotions. Lizard brain...
12 days ago • 7 min read
Reading time: 7.26 1,769 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, When I was a child I often went missing. Not missing missing — except for that one time my parents gathered the entire neighbourhood to look for me and were about to call the police before my brother found me underneath the dining room table behind the tablecloth reading a stack of books. And that’s where I often was. In a cupboard or under a table or hidden in a nook, reading. I wasn’t very good at interacting with...
14 days ago • 8 min read
Reading time: 1.55 454 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, There’s a bramble in our porch. It started poking through a gap in the wall a few days ago and I kept forgetting to cut it off and pull it back through to the outside. So it crept its way further in. And further. And now it’s in front of the glass door to the living room where we get a perfect view of the aphid farm. Isn’t this cool? This is ants farming aphids. The aphids all congregate on the bramble stem, sucking away...
16 days ago • 2 min read
Reading time: 3.45 889 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Sometimes, all you need is cheese. Not just any cheese: Welsh Dragon cheddar with spicy bits of chilli in. That, and some crusty bread. You see, I have a tendency to overcomplicate things (I KNOW RIGHT, WHO WOULD EVER HAVE GUESSED???) So I think “picnic” and immediately my mind jumps to the kind of fancy affair that requires a butler, a maid, a driver, and a lad to carry all the baskets and bottles. There are pies and...
19 days ago • 4 min read
(ooooof it’s a chonker but do give it a read!) Reading time: 10.41 2,539 words Read this email in your browser Hey Reader, Skinny little 12-year-old me desperately wanted to be on the netball team. I was small, I was fast, I was fighty. Good for darting around the defenders and passing to the attackers. Not averse to the odd elbow to the face. But I never got picked. Not by the other girls and not by the games teachers. Because I wasn’t one of the Cool Girls. I was the speccy little weirdo...
21 days ago • 11 min read