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It's a little over a week until Christmas, and we're so not ready for the big holiday. We've just come back from three weeks in our favourite coastal spot (one week writing and two weeks working) of Westward Ho! or WeHo for short. Cue the next week or so looking at properties for sale in the area so I can kitesurf whenever the right wind blows in. Brey decorated the house before we left, but I've got the outside decorations still to put up... GLITTER!!! The bane of my life. We have a set of reindeer covered in the stuff which Brey loves—I wear latex gloves in a vain effort to stop it getting all over my hands, but damn it, that stuff gets everywhere. When I ran a youth centre, the cleaner always gave me hell whenever we used it. Does anyone have one of those special tricks or life hacks to clear it up? I'd love you forever if you share it with me 🙂

Anyhoo, Brey got me the best advent calendar in the world to countdown to Christmas this year! Behind every door is a cute little perfectly sized travel bottle of ink! I think I'm going to spend Christmas morning with my dip pen trying them all out... What will you be doing on Christmas morning?

I know everyone says reviews are for readers, not authors, but every now and then, I go back to older books to check out how they're being received. And oh my, this review made me laugh so much that I had to share it... But also, how sad that this guy thinks a book about an FBI agent can't feature a lesbian. My guess is that Dak threatened his fragile sense of masculinity.

In other author news, this month saw the release of E.V. Bancroft's latest historical romance, Encrypted Hearts, featuring charismatic Cam and glamorous Gloria. Set against the backdrop of World War Two's Bletchley Park code-breakers, this butch-femme romance is the perfect gift for Christmas! Click on the pic below for that and lots of other sapphic romances out this month (in a BookFunnel promo led by the lovely—and incredibly tall—Claire Highton Stevenson).

And in more booky sale news, I've got Music City Dreamers, the only romance I wrote before creating Helena Harte (because reviewers said Robyn couldn't write romance!), on sale for 99 bits of money all over the world in the I Heart SapphFic Christmas sale. It doesn't start until Boxing Day, so this is an early heads up!

The concept of the book has been slightly out of date for a couple of years since Nashville seemed to be developing a more open-door policy to our community (see the success of Lily Rose), but as the US slips under the control of the far right again, sadly it might become more relevant once more.

Also—random fact—Louie, the butch MC songwriter first appeared in my novel Change in Time back in 2017. She popped up to help Landry out of a sticky situation and stayed in my head until I gave her her own story and HEA!

The writing week in Westward Ho! was fantastic, and not just because I managed seven hours of kitesurfing, but also because I completed my rewrite of Time to Escape. I'm quietly confident I'll be able to get it out by March 2025, but it's with my discerning editor right now, so I'll know for sure when her edits drop... Fingers crossed, I should have the cover reveal for Escape ready for you next month (unless the wife is feeling particularly mean, and I have more rewrites)!

After some lovely feedback and encouraging comments from you all last month, I've decided to go ahead and get the books out one at a time. So I'll disappear for a couple of months while Helena takes over to write the third book in the Windy City Romance series, then I'll get onto the second book, Time to Change. I'll do the same again for the final book, meaning all three will be out within a year—exciting times!

This is here one final time because there's still a couple of weeks' submission time left! We need your stories more than ever, so get writing and send that story you've been meaning to get out into the world for volume six of SapphFic Eclectic.

And please use the email below to submit your story before the deadline of 31st December 2024.

sapphfic.eclectic@butterworthbooks.co.uk

Not that I'm already looking forward to the GCLS Conference in Albany as insane amount already, but...

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Ciao for now, lovely peeps, and remember, le bonheur c'est maintenant!