Ghost Post: January 2026

dried white flowers sit on a dark wooden desk next to a white letter envelope with a red stamp. white text reads: ghost post.

A few friends and I have a music league in which we have a monthly theme and each submit songs fitting the theme. December’s theme was our favourite release of 2025, which was a surprisingly tough choice for me; I ended up going with Florence + the Machine’s “The Old Religion,” because as much as there were catchier songs that went on repeat for hours (special shout outs to Kesha’s “Red Flag” and Wolf Alice’s “Bloom Baby Bloom”), nothing quite struck at my soul like that one.

While choosing, though, I considered another song off the same album: “And Love.” It’s the repeated refrain of the chorus that gets me: “Peace is coming, peace is coming, peace is coming.” In an interview about the album, Florence Welch acknowledged the influence of spellcraft and mysticism. The repetition of phrases invoking the manifestation of the stated desire shows up in several places on the album: “I will be happy, it will be perfect” in “One of the Greats,” “All shall be well, and all shall be well” (with a nod to Julian of Norwich) in “Perfume and Milk,” and of course, “Peace is coming.”

I thought of another 2025 release that also seemed to be casting a spell, albeit in this case far less likely to have been intentional: “Silverlines” by Damiano David. It too was a consideration for my song of the year, due in part to the feeling imparted by the repetition, “Peace belongs to me.”

It’s easy to look at the big picture in the world right now and see where a desire for peace comes from, but in the context of both these songs, it feels like a smaller, more personal wish. Maybe I’m projecting, or maybe we’re all feeling it a little bit.

2025 was, overall, a pretty good year for me. I spent time in beautiful places with wonderful friends and beloved partners, I made new connections and reminded myself why I love where I live, I did myself a goddamn favour and got myself out of a situation doing its best to kill me.

But there’s always something, isn’t there? I’m still tensing all my muscles, sitting on the edge of my seat waiting to hear if the UK’s new immigration laws are going to let me stay in this place I love (despite everything). I still fall into anxiety spirals about the spiderwebs of all my contingency plans, wondering which lifeline I’m going to need to grab, living in panic about the ground falling out from underneath me.

And so I take a deep breath. There’s nothing I can do about this but wait, and trust: peace is coming, peace is coming, peace is coming.

dried white flowers on a dark wooden table. white text reads: whats new.

I should know by now that every time I go ‘yeah woohoo yippee I’m gonna have SUCH an explosively productive month’ I instead get a chest infection for a week and a half. However! December saw the beginning of a return to form, at least.

I wrote a deep sea fairytale for Author Avengers.

I updated Phantoms on what’s been happening behind the scenes.

dried white flowers on a dark wooden table. white text reads: coming soon.

I’m enjoying working on smaller projects alongside Hollywood Gods – I intend to make much more progress this month on the latter front, but I might have a few more things to share depending where my whims carry me.

I will, of course, have a behind the scenes update for Phantoms as always.

My schedule has some availability for commissions and TTRPGs. You can read more here about having me write or edit something for you. If you’re interested in booking a game, you can get more information on my website and at StartPlayingGames.

dried white flowers on a dark wooden table. white text reads: haunt a friend.

I’m excited to be starting the new year with Grumble’s return to streams. It’s always a lovely space to hang out. You can follow Grumble on Twitch for updates, and support the stream on Ko-fi.

Joanna M. Lawrie’s been busy with poetry; you can catch it as it’s published on her Patreon.

Kivrin has commissions open for TTRPG-related editing and logo design.

Michael’s work is such a ray of light, always; highly recommend his newsletter, and checking out his commission options.

dried white flowers on a dark wooden table. white text reads: cabinet of curiosities.

An interesting read about Sinners and the state of film-making: The Hit Hollywood Didn’t Want

I keep reading interesting things about how sustainable agriculture and food used to be. Makes you think. Here’s a 5,000 year-old bread recipe in Turkey.

Good news on the cancer treatment front.

I feel so normal about the Jinu concept art in the KPop Demon Hunters artbook.

This was such a good read: Harlow’s Still Here.

Cass Marshall argues for ‘messy and miserable’ games in the wake of the Horses controversy.

I leave you with inspiration from Jacob Wysocki.

dried white flowers on a dark wooden table. white text reads: current media.

Currently Reading: Beloved by Toni Morrison

Okay actually I just finished this but I made the executive decision not to pick anything else up during my break, so! What a fucking literary achievement. I can't add anything to the conversation about a book published before I was born that hasn't already been said, but: the way the construction evokes the experience of trauma and grief, the way it leaves you unmoored and gives you an understanding of the characters' mindsets, the folkloric storytelling influence, the gorgeous, vivid prose.

Currently Watching: Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (Goblin)

Wow the Grim Reaper and the Goblin are soooooo normal about each other 🥰

Currently Playing: The Wanderer: Frankenstein’s Creature

This is a strange, beautiful, (mostly) peaceful little game in which you play as the Creature from the moment he wakes up, exploring a strange and unfamiliar world, and learning about it on his own. The discovery of sensations is so gorgeous, and the sound design really does a lot of heavy lifting as you learn what it is to be a living creature in the world. The story takes some interesting curves away from the novel – at present, I’m exploring an extremely colourful festival and trying to figure out how to win a costume contest. Perfect little game to noodle away at while I await the Animal Crossing update.

Currently Listening: Anthems for a Thirty-Two Year Old Backflipper by Demi Adejuyigbe

This is 37 minutes of mashups and it’s been my cleaning soundtrack for the past two weeks. I think “Down With The Sickness/Dancing Queen” is possibly the achievement of our generation.

dried white flowers on a dark wooden table. white text reads: sundry and knick pnack.

black and white shorthair cat knick pnack lies on his side on the floor, a long rainbow teaser toy ribbon draped artfully around his head and paws.

Major Knick Pnack regrets to report that he is lost in the sauce. Please send a search party.

Keep in touch on Discord and Revolt, and I’ll see you soon.

29/08/24: I'm Pulling My Books From Draft2Digital

Short version: I am pulling my books from Draft2Digital’s distribution. Ebooks are still available through my Ko-fi shop and paperbacks are available through the end of August. I want to have print copies available again sometime in the future, but I don’t know how long that will be.

Long version:

Apparently generative AI companies have been approaching my book distributor, Draft2Digital, seeking to acquire books distributed through them on which to train their AI. Some authors (not me; I was alerted to this by December on Pillowfort) received an email with a survey link asking how we feel about receiving 1/10 of a cent per word for our work in exchange for training an algorithm to write stories we’ll then have to compete with in the publishing market. For context, bare minimum industry standard is 5 cents a word. We’re being asked to take a fraction of what our work is worth in order to put ourselves out of jobs in the future.

Y’all? I’m miserable about this. I’m angry, I’m exhausted, I’m devastated. It feels like this is happening at every turn and now my fucking book distributor is salivating at selling my work out from under me for pennies so that AI can write stories instead of me.

Right now it’s just a survey. But the fact that they’re even considering it tells me they aren’t trustworthy with my work. I suspect no matter how much pushback they get in the survey, they’re going to do it if they want to do it. I’m not giving them the opportunity to do this to my books.

When I was unemployed and writing was my only income, I resisted wider distribution for so long. Nearly every channel I could find required me to go through Amazon, and I wanted to stick to my guns on not letting Jeff Bezos make one red cent off me as long as I could. But I needed money, and people wanted to buy my books in Real Bookshops (and also Amazon), so I caved. And it was nice! I was grumpy about Amazon making money off me but people bought my books and I could buy groceries. If you bought books from me back then, you cannot know how grateful I was and am, and how much that helped me.

I mention this because there isn’t a mass exodus from D2D brewing. You’re not gonna see every author you know who distributes through them pulling their books. I want to be clear that I’m not making a moral judgment on everyone else. I depended on that book money and so do tons of other authors. We’re all weighing the factors in our lives and figuring out what we can bear to do. Some people are going to take that shitty deal because no money doesn’t pay the bills, and some money, even if it’s insultingly little, does. It isn’t our fault that we’re being put in the position of trading our futures for short-term cash; it is these AI companies and everyone who funds them, it is CEOs who hoard wealth and refuse to adequately compensate the people on whose labour they profit, it is capitalism, full stop. It is the system that’s been created to stop us from doing anything that isn’t making money for the man at the top.

I’m incredibly lucky in many ways, not least of which is that I start a permanent position next week which will allow me not to depend on book income as much. It still certainly helps (especially because I haven’t been paid since July and have had a broken bed and a broken laptop to replace ha ha ha) but I can afford to keep my books safe from exploitative entities.

I hate this. I really do. I wish I could just keep them available. But I really believe in doing the good I’m able to do. One person keeping their books out of the AI training buffet isn’t going to make a huge difference, but it’s four fewer books in the matrix. And if everyone who can afford to pull their books does, that’s even more of a difference. And if they don’t, at least I did what I could.

I had actually been looking vaguely at switching to a different print distributor, so at least that was already on my radar. They charge upfront, and as mentioned previously, I’ve had some financial hits between paychecks, so it’s not going to be an immediate switch. I’m also going to have to talk to them about AI now apparently!! I’ll keep you posted on how that goes. For now, I’m leaving the print books listed through the end of August, which I know isn’t much time. If you want a print copy but can’t afford it right now, let me know and I’ll be happy to get you a copy if you can cover shipping from the UK.

Ebooks are still available through my Ko-fi shop.

As a final note, in case you hadn’t picked up on this, it’s an incredibly demoralising time to be a professional author. If you’re looking for ways to help, genuinely the best advice I can give is to support your favourite authors in the ways they say help them the most. For some people it might be Patreon, for some it might be liking and commenting on YouTube videos. For me, it’s Ko-fi. And if you like someone’s work, it’s always worth saying something. Tell a friend you think might like it, or let the author know what it meant to you.

And don’t fucking use AI.

10/06/24: Authors for Palestine: Free Books for a Good Cause

I've joined over 50 other authors supporting Palestinian families in need through a fundraising giveaway! Here's how it works:

1. Donate to one of the families we've chosen through Operation Olive Branch

2. Fill in the form on our website and attach a screenshot of your donation

3. Receive free books and discount codes as thanks for your help

AND

Be entered in our giveaway to potentially receive even more free books and extras!

All participants will receive a free copy of my queer gothic ghost story romance, The Hunt and the Haunting, plus a code for 50% off everything in my Ko-fi shop. There are also two ebook copies of my novella retelling the myth of Ariadne and Dionysus, Crown of Ivy, up for grabs in the giveaway.

Check out our website for all the details!

25/05/24: Generic Foundational Blog Post Title

Preserving my post about quitting Instagram here:

I grow weary of the internet being run by tech bros who never took an ethics class. Not that it's in the least surprising, but IG is the latest platform to be mined for 'AI' datasets, and so this is where I draw the line. Link for further reading here.

For those who don't understand why artists are upset about AI - which, tangentially, is not artificial intelligence, as it doesn't think for itself but runs an algorithm on aggregated data to find the mode - these bots are fed art and writing taken from artists without either consent or remuneration, then used to approximate our creative work. From a purely ethical standpoint, these bots are trained on stolen art and used to recreate that art without paying the people who made it. From a standpoint valuing human creativity, this is both unforgivably inane and gallingly dismissive. People create art to say things to each other about the world we experience and the things we value. Who cares what the algorithm values? Art is an inherently human endeavour, and the people who create it deserve the resources to live our lives in this capitalist hellscape. Attempts to create a world where art is manufactured by robots and humans are stuck with the menial labour are so backwards it blows my mind.

I'm not a visual artist but my writing has been scraped for AI use without my consent, without my receiving credit or compensation, and without my ability to remove it from that sphere. I don't want to be part of a machine meant to replace writing jobs! I want to GET those writing jobs! But those jobs are being eradicated so that robots can have them instead, and that's supremely uncool.

Please stand with your artist friends. Don't use AI generators and don't feed the bots.