Before The Longest Night

Time is behaving very strangely. One minute it was early October and I was getting ready to launch Tubelines, and suddenly here we are in December, drifting slowlt toward the shortest day of the year.

Maybe that’s just what happens when you’re bouncing between projects, but it’s felt a bit like being carried along by a fast current and only now am I reaching calmer water.

Since that last newsletter post, life has been full in all the best ways. Tubelines is out in the world, which still feels slightly surreal. I’ve spent the last couple of months reading poems aloud in different rooms with different people, and there’s something I’ll always love about the moment a poem leaves the page and becomes sound. It’s a tiny transformation every time.

I got the absolute joy of meeting my new baby niece. She's perfect.

Then a new experience for me - recording the audiobook for The Boy From Elsewhere, which is coming out in February. Now that was an experience.

There’s an intimacy to audiobooks that I’d forgotten about. Speaking a story changes your relationship to it. You feel the weight of every line in your chest. You notice the breaths between sentences. Reading the book out loud actually made me fall in love with it in new and exciring ways!

It also made me think about how different formats tug out different parts of a story, and different parts of me as a writer.

So, it's been a good season, busy and a bit strange at times, but in a way that makes you pay attention to your own work again. Events, podcasts, conversations with readers. I’m grateful for all of it.

And now we’re approaching the solstice. The longest night. The literal darkest point of the year.

I find that oddly comforting.

Not because I like my days short. Far from it. But there’s something reassuring about knowing that after the solstice, everything shifts.

The light returns. The days stretch, slowly at first, then all at once.

It feels like a mirror for where things are heading for me, too. A brief pause before the next book arrives. A quiet inhale before 2026 begins to unfold.

And since we’re almost at that turning point, I’d genuinely love to hear from you. What do you want to see from me next year? More essays? Behind the scenes of book launches? Thoughts on writing? Queer life? Poetry? Tech? Grief? Creativity in chaos? All of the above?

Where do you think I should go for the launch of The Boy From Elsewhere?

I’m planning out the year ahead and your voice would help shape the direction. Feel free to reply to this email or drop a comment.

Here’s to the solstice, to the slow return of the light, and to whatever stories we carry forward together. I can't wait to see what comes next, for us all.