9 min read Newsletter

Whew, BIG Update!

I tried to take March off of podcasting to catch up on things, and ended up using most of the time for vacation, being sick, or visiting a relative in the hospital. So of course the month didn’t quite turn out as productive as I’d hoped. I’m back, but not sure how much recording I’m going to be doing for the next few weeks.

[TL;DR: I have semi-new podcasts. I have a new cozy fantasy deal. Infinite Archive comes out in July. I’m reading some great books. Podcasting for both ISBW and DD resumes this week. An Escape Pod story was nominated for a BSFA award. JoCo Cruise was fun. You can buy whole seasons of my podcasts over at Patreon. And I’m moving from Substack to Ghost. Also, Nazis suck and deserve to be punched.]

Table of Contents

  • The latest shows
  • Latest book news!
  • Notable books out in March
  • What I’m reading
  • What’s happening this week
  • BSFA nomination!
  • March adventures
  • Patreon collections!
  • Moving to Ghost

The Latest Shows

I Should Be Writing Season 21:

New Book Announcement!

This was finally announced! I’m so excited to be writing a cozy fantasy with a touch of romance and adventure. But really it’s about running that inn/bar where the hero stops in before a big adventure (think Prancing Pony). The title of course may change.

Fun fact, those of you who saw my stream playing with Story Engine (not the most recent podcast) may remember we had tunnels, created by ancient wyrms, that lead to a magical lentil tree. That sparked one of the ideas for this book.

In other news Infinite Archive is up for preorder now, out July 1!

infinite archive cover, pink with blue cats

Notable books out in March

I get sent a lot of books for coverage or to interview the author, and I’m going to start listing them here since I can’t give them all the love they deserve.

THE DISTRACTIONS by Liza Monroy

Meet Mischa Osborne, a solitary tech worker whose life is upended when she meets celebrity Nicolás Adán Luchano. After a great first date captured by tiny drones for everyone online to see, Mischa is convinced that Nic is the one. She is devastated to learn he has moved on to someone else. What starts as some innocent internet stalking of their ex spiral into an all out obsession.

Meanwhile, someone is equally obsessed with Mischa, tracking their every move and perhaps even influencing their choices.

The Prince Without Sorrow by Maithree Wijesekara

A prince born into violence, seeking peace.

Prince Ashoka is the youngest son of the tyrannical Emperor Adil Maurya. Considered an outcast by his father for his rejection of the emperor’s brutal onslaught against the witches of the empire, Ashoka longs for change.

A witch shackled by pacifism, seeking revenge.

Shakti is a mayakari: a witch bound by a pacifist code. After witnessing the murder of her aunt and village at the hands of the emperor, Shakti hurtles down a path of revenge, casting a curse with unexpected consequences.
(description snipped for space, read more about the book at the link!)

What I’m Reading

In my cozy fantasy research I found this gem, The Teller of Small Fortunes by Julie Leong. A young woman makes her living going from town to town telling small fortunes (whether it will hail next week; which boy the barmaid will kiss; when the cow will calve, etc) that always come true. But when she tells a man that his daughter will play with a cat, everything changes. His daughter is missing and presumed dead, so with this small fortune guiding them, they go looking for her. A lovely book about found family and making choices.

I was interested in Voyage of the Damned by Frances White since I heard about a white (not Frances White) debut author who began review bombing on Goodreads other debut books coming out around the same time as hers (and all were written by people of color). She made some sock puppet accounts and gave all these books 1 star reviews while, with the same accounts, giving her own book 5 stars. Underhanded AND sloppy. All of the books attacked sounded amazing, and Damned is the first one I’ve gotten to. It’s a fantasy mystery aboard a ship carrying eleven heirs of magical powers (“Blessings”) and one who doesn’t have a Blessing but is trying hard to pretend he does.

I loved the book The Undertaking of Hard and Mercy by Megan Bannen, a romantasy about an undertaker and a zombie hunter. I am now enjoying the audiobook of the sequel, The Undermining of Twyla and Frank, which features two other characters from the world and a friends to lovers middle-aged romance (and as someone getting fully entrenched in my 50s, I am very happy to read a story like this!) This story has dragons and glitter and middle-aged love.

Outside of genre, I’m reading The Five Star Weekend by Elin Hilderbrand. I really enjoyed The Perfect Couple on Netflix, so I picked up the book as well. The book is less a creepy murder mystery with fewer jaw dropping reveals than Netflix’s version, but I still enjoyed it. With Five Star I discovered I’m a sucker for the trope of “motley group has a ‘vacation’ together and terrible secrets come out and maybe someone dies.” (I don’t know if anyone dies here yet.) I’m also reading some ARCs I will talk about in later newsletters and a bunch of solo RPGs. Stay tuned!

I’m looking forward to John Scalzi’s new book, as well as others that I ordered from my friendly local book store.

What’s Happening This Month

I am attempting to plan out my content a little farther out than spur of the moment.

Podcast Episodes:

  • I Should Be Writing will cover The Bullies (Bully, Blade, Sponge, Despair, Nap, and Bounce) in the coming weeks. They represent all the little voices in your head that stop you from writing. The show will be live Thursdays on Twitch, 3pm EDT, then it goes into the premium podcast feed (here and Patreon), and then in the regular podcast feed the following week.
  • Ditch Diggers returns on Monday, April 7, 2pm EDT. Ursula and I will likely talk about current events (paying to get published? NaNoWriMo is dead?? What has been happening???) and we have some excellent questions about agents to cover.

Appearances:

  • April 26: I will be in in Savage, Maryland to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day at Omnihedral, located in Savage Mill.
  • (Future cons include ReaderCon in July and WorldCon in August for now)

Patreon Events:

  • Kick in the Pants workshops on April 12 and 26
  • I’m trying to get cowriting/coworking up and going again, not sure if Wednesday morning is the right time. I’m eager to hear your opinions.

BSFA Nomination??!!

I was delighted to be alerted to the fact that one of Escape Pod’s stories, “Mother Death Learns a Trick” by Addison Smith, got nominated for Best Audio Fiction! Congrats, Addison!

March Adventures

I loved being on the JoCo Cruise as an attendee, even though I ran a three day workshop for the Shadow Cruise event. :D But I had the family with me and we all had some much needed relaxation. We got to see TMBG in concert, and see friends James Ernest, Sarah Gailey, the Scalzis, Janet Varney, and Daphne Always and James Sheppard. And we met even more cool people.

We came home and unfortunately got two viruses (one respiratory and one GI bug) that knocked us down for a week, and then the week after was helping a relative in the hospital and trying to get caught back up. On the last week I got to use my Valentine’s Day present and see Tiffany Haddish when she came through Durham. I’ve loved her in movies and The Afterparty, but have never seen her do standup. She was hysterical and we had a great time.

I do have to say that the one negative about the night was that two out of three comedians had jokes about disabled people. I half expected them to start making the equivalent of “Long Duck Dong” jokes from Sixteen Candles.

Phoebe Waller-Bridge grins and nods, then frowns abruptly.

I feel for comics who are on the stage and whose jokes don't land, but from my latest experiences attending shows by Haddish, Patton Oswalt, Josh Johnson, and Lewis Black (and their opening comics), I have come to the conclusion that if the audience doesn't laugh at your joke, don't insult the audience for not finding it funny. Then they will think you're both unfunny and a fussypants.

Patreon Collections

One of the things I worked on in March (when I had energy to work on them) is cleaning up the vast archive of I Should Be Writing so I can present the show in neat little seasonal packages. You can now buy the individual seasons 1-4, covering 2005-2008, over at Patreon without becoming a member there!

I Am Not Long for Substack

I have been on the Internet a long time, and hate it when I find what seems to be a good place to put down roots only to have it disappoint me and I have to pick up my ball and go to another playground. (Yeah, mixed metaphor…) I moved to Substack after my previous newsletter system shut down, and I think it has some amazing features.

But let’s face it. They like Nazis here. They like hate speech. Anything that gets eyeballs and clicks, no matter how much it hurts anyone, is A-OK.

When I was growing up, the topic of Anne Frank would came up and teachers often asked, “What would you have done in Nazi Germany?” and everyone would of course say they would hide those hunted by the Nazis in their house, because that was the Right Thing to Do and Nazis Were Bad.

Risking your life to hide a persecuted group sounds a LOT HARDER than leaving a service that thinks that hate speech = “free speech”, but a lot of people (incl me) often just look at it and say “meh, it’s too much of an annoyance to switch, and the platform is really good.”

But you know what? Boycotts aren’t meant to be convenient or comfortable.

(Please understand that I know everyone has their personal reasons for staying with a brand. I’m not judging anyone for their decisions; I’m only saying what bothers me and what I plan to do about it. We all must choose our battles. I know that if we scratch the paint off of any corporation, we will see things we don’t like.)

So I am moving to Ghost. It might take a few weeks, since I need to get up and running over there. I’m going to export my email list from Substack and take y’all with me, so there should be nothing to do on your end if you want to keep getting my newsletter and podcasts. Your other option to keep up with my newsletter is to get a free membership at Patreon.

I can’t do much to change today’s hellscape on a large scale, and that has been depressing me big time. But I’ve decided that I can stop supporting companies who think Nazis are okay and we should dump all civil rights progress because a rich man told us to.

See you next time with shorter newsletters that are more frequent.

Stay safe, stay kind.

~M

The links in this newsletter may be affiliate, which will let me take a small percentage of the money you spend at Bookshop.org, at no cost to you.

You can find my books at most booksellers in paperback, audio, and ebook forms. Infinite Archive comes out July 1, you can preorder now!

I am co-editor of Escape Pod, the free SF podcast magazine. Check it out.

Podcasts can be found at my home page, or your favorite podcast app.

Copyright 2025, Mur Lafferty. BY-NC-SA

Mur Lafferty

Mur Lafferty