Forgive that absolute blast from the past of a title. (For those going, "huh?", it's an obscure, out-of-date meme. Don't worry about it.)
But - yeah. One of many reasons this blog has been immensely quiet over the last few months, apart from that book bundle including The Meaning Wars, is that I've been completely obsessed with a new project, called Prairie Weather.
Back in university, I had a short story column in The Meliorist, the U of L's school paper, and I wrote a series of one-off shorts with loosely connected characters. I'd always toyed with the idea of writing a whole novel about these interconnected characters - and well, for some reason, around October of last year, I just got up and did it.
So now the connected stories of a group of university students trying to deal with friendship, romance, and all the resulting drama has become not one book, but two - or three, depending on whether I go indie with this or get picked up for trad pub (traditional publishing). It's set in 2011, right here in Lethbridge, and it's a love letter to the city and the university - both of which are beautiful, and underutilized as settings. If you like feminism, queer love, heartbreak, stabbings, and bomb threats, you'll probably be into this book.
Now, I'm actually going to try and send out some queries for Prairie Weather, and see if I can get it traditionally published. That's a thing I haven't really done before, and it might go absolutely nowhere, but I thought I'd take a shot at it. At worst, I get to improve my query-writing skills, mess around with Querytracker, sorta learn how to write a synopsis, and that sort of useful thing.
I was also going through my blog archives and stats, and I noticed a huge surge in traffic last month. So, thank you for the views! I didn't realise just how much I used to write on here.
But unfortunately, Blogger is a pretty dead platform, and all the cool kids are on Substack and Patreon these days. So while I do plan to continue posting over here, if I don't get anywhere with Prairie Weather, I'm going to try serialising that publication on Ream, Substack, and Patreon. We'll see if I get any traction. In the meantime, if any of y'all somehow know an agent who's hunting for contemporary fiction or literary fiction, hit me up!
And yes, I am still planning to try and get Monsters and Fools out this year. It's at about 63 of roughly 80k, give or take. There's a few big plot twists left to write, and then this dark sequel to The Underlighters will finally, finally be ready to release into the world. The sequel is more of a dystopian, noire-toned piece, and will focus on what happens when activism fails in the face of a conspiracy...
If you thought it was dark before? It's only going to get darker.
A writer and professional freelance editor, Michelle Browne lives in Lethbridge, AB with her partners-in-crime and their cats. She is currently working on the next books in her series, other people's manuscripts, knitting, jewelry-making, and drinking as much tea as humanly possible.
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