Painting the Walls

The last couple of weeks have been something.

The replacement of taps in my bathroom happened (yes! 2025 Bingo square!) but precipitated the discovery of two slow hot water cylinder leaks (noooooooo!) and even with the help of my very nice and handy neighbours and a cheerfully geeky plumber, fixing those was a time-and-money suck.

I finished the first 10k of XO, Xena, and promptly shifted back to The Love Labyrinth, my adorable little 12k escape-room/revenge-story/Ariadne-and-the-Minotaur novelette that's naturally turned into a 22k novella. The first draft is finished! Maybe. Mostly finished.

The thing is, it might need a sex scene, which I typically don't put in novella length work. But Ariadne and Stirling are extremely hot for each other, and I kept writing them almost having sex and then not, so there might need to be some explicit gentle giant/smol-but-fierce action to fulfil that promise for readers.

Actually, this one is really for you guys - The Love Labyrinth is going out to newsletter subscribers free and early. So what do you think?

My next mission is to get back to XO, Xena (pre-order now!), but at some point during writing, I also have to take a look at my backlist, because guess who has two thumbs and got world rights for her YA books back from her publishers? This Healey girl!

I'm immensely grateful to Little, Brown (Hachette) and Allen & Unwin for launching my publishing career and giving Guardian of the Dead, The Shattering, When We Wake, and While We Run their support. But the most recent of those books is over ten years old, and I'm looking forward to commissioning new covers and releasing new editions, especially for The Shattering, my not-so-secret favourite. Perhaps even... A KICKSTARTER (2025 Bingo square).

I also have to do some serious thinking about Guardian of the Dead, and how (and if) I might republish a book which is culturally appropriative and frankly racist in points, but which also occupies some space in the NZ literary record. I wouldn't write it now, but I did write it then. People prepared scholarly chapters and papers and presentations based on the book that was. I'm not sure erasure is the best response; it feels intellectually dishonest. I'm leaning towards republishing (and not publicising) an edition with a non-enticing cover and an academic price point, meant for researchers rather than general popular release.

But I'm still thinking on it. Lord knows I have plenty to do.

So, next: Xena, obviously, and revamp my sadly out of date website, write a Business of Writing newsletter (at last, I'm so sorry, thank you for your patience, lovely paid subscribers), sort out print editions of Ask Cassandra and Love, Laodice, look through my enormous archive of half-complete and first draft things, and start considering next steps for them (backlist, baby!), write my new urban fantasy series, try some more marketing, maybe start a Patreon(?), consider a schools edition for When We Wake, and, and, and.

This may be too much for a to-do list.

I may need a spreadsheet.

That Healey Girl is the newsletter of Karen (or Kate) Healey, a romance and speculative fiction author who lives in Ōtautahi, New Zealand and shakes plots loose by wandering along the river. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone you think might like it!