The Crackling Quill // April Edition
The monthly newsletter of T. Albright
This month’s newsletter has a new short story, the genre and title reveal for my May short story, and mouthwatering April book recs.
Rock Solid is here!
All writing is special, but this story was a special little milestone for me. It allowed me to expand my representation of queer identities, it let me geek out a little bit about rock climbing (my only non-creative hobby), and it brought some new beta readers into my life. Yay!
Rock Solid follows a park ranger named Charlie who nurses a massive crush on Ian, a climber who shows up every spring around Easter. When Ian doesn’t return from a trip into the park, Charlie’s anxious brain sends him on a one-man rescue mission that lands him right in the lap of his crush, who is in desperate need of rescuing!
This 12,000-word novelette is set in 1986 West Virginia, at the gorgeous (pun intended, I guess) New River Gorge National Park. It was good practice for an upcoming (still secret) historical project I’m working on that will require more intense research than I usually do. This also caused it to be released a tiny bit later than I’d originally planned it to be, so thank goodness Easter is so late this year.
If you enjoy it, I hope you will leave a review on your favorite site!
Creative Update
May’s short story from The Crackling Quill is Mother’s Day themed. It’s a cozy mystery titled, aptly, The Mother of All Mysteries. I’ve got it outlined and I’m all set to begin drafting it next week. Right on schedule! More details to come soon.
Because of the slap-dash way I started off the year, I’m also about a quarter of the way through June’s offering, a novella set in an exotic locale during the solstice with magical realism and plenty of spice! More details to come in May.
I’ve got a wonderful collab project with my amazing friend and producing partner in the works. It’s a huge undertaking with many moving pieces, including a novel series and a workbook. I sent her the third draft of book 1 last week and I am eagerly awaiting our notes session later this month.
And last but not least, I am just around the corner from my next writer’s retreat, June 2 - 9 at the Weymouth Center for the Arts & Humanities. This will be my second time there and I have a super special project I’m brewing up. Also more details to come in May!
Savouring and Craving
I accept that there are more books in the world than I can read in a lifetime. I do not accept that there are more books in my house than I can read in a lifetime, despite what others who have visited me may say. April has been an excellent month for sequels, and I snapped up copies of A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennet and The Geographer’s Map to Romance by India Holt this week, and they’ve jumped to the front of my reading queue. I also highly recommend the series openers for both (The Tainted Cup and The Ornithologist's Field Guide to Love).
I am deeply craving getting my hands on When The Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley. I have been drooling over the cover art for months, and I cannot wait to grab my copy at the end of the month. Bonus: All three of these will look gorgeous next to each other on my shelf.
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