Water (a lake) with four tiny black & gold ducklings & an adult duck.

The first ducklings of the season!

While I was at Eastercon I got new headshots! (see user icon thing, also my website; cannot bring myself to put one here). From the lovely Tom Pepperdine who is at www.tompepperdine.com & who made the whole process impressively stress-free.

I stayed in a large house with friends last month where we are nearly certain there were bees in the chimney in one room because mostly-dead bees kept falling down it into the room overnight 😬 (we told the owners but I suppose will never actually know)

hello new people! I have a newsletter here as well if you are interested julietkemp.com/newsletter
(Low volume, announcements and occasional other updates.)

Cover of Wiz Duo Book 2. Art by Roz Clarke. The images are of a shield superimposed on a flying dragon, and a girl with a hole through her belly.

Love novellas? How about two in one book? In Wiz Duo 2, Juliet Kemp sends a reluctant knight on a quest, while E M Faulds gives her heroine a superpower that totally sucks.
wizardstowerpress.co...

Hello!

Sort of meant to post from @easterconuk.bsky.social but was too busy having a lovely time! The teenager also thoroughly enjoyed himself (he’s been for the day a couple of times before but not ‘properly’).

Congratulations Beth!! Love what you said in your thank you speech too

A fantastic story and well worth a listen!

A panel of five people sitting behind a long table with their name signs in front of them.

The Let’s Not Fight panel with @julietk.bsky.social @drkarenlord.bsky.social @aptshadow.bsky.social @annabelcwrites.bsky.social and @elianjmorgan.bsky.social

Anyway it was definitely fun & we will be trying again! We had to cut my hiding run short as we were due to meet up with friends.

Interesting that the much smaller space doesn’t reduce the time as much as I’d sort of thought. Obviously it’s quicker to move around but the logic takes the same amount of time & you can’t do much researching while on transit because of the short time between stops.

Trickier than I expected! Took me just over 2h to find L although I did have some bad luck. Good fun though :) I am now having a nice sit down & awaiting being found.

Box, cards, dice, & notebook from Hide + Seek - a game from YouTube channel Jet Lag The Game

L & I are off out this morning to play hide & seek in London! (A limited game board for this trial run - within the Circle line.)

Copy of and quote from Song, Stone, Scale, Bone: " I was fine. I was absolutely fine. It was just strange not to have a song to guide me, that was all. I’d hoped maybe once we were past the rockfall the old song would still work; but there was another, more comprehensive, pile of rocks just beyond that, several houses tumbled into one another, which definitively blocked off the song-route."

It's Book Quote Wednesday #bookqw and this week's word is OLD. Cade is not-quite-lost in the catacombs.

There's a panel on Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Trans History including @cherylmorgan.bsky.social and @joelcornah.bsky.social, as well as Nick Hubble, duckbunny, and modded by Sandra Bond, also at the con there's @julietk.bsky.social, though no @poopraven.bsky.social this year I don't think :(

Slower writing this week as I spent most of yesterday contemplating Why This Bit Doesn't Work; but I got there in the end & have written nearly 4K today. Maybe will get a bit more done before dinner?

(also I bet it was longer ago than that but yes fine EVIDENCE etc)

Today I met a modern dog who demonstrated thousands of years of co-evolving with humans by dropping a ball in your path, waiting for you to reach it, then staring at you until you threw it. 100% success rate.

Been writing a mailing list post, with a snippet from the novel I've just started drafting -- sign up here if you're interested:
julietkemp.com/newsletter

Cover of Wiz Duo Book 2. Art by Roz Clarke. The images are of a shield superimposed on a flying dragon, and a girl with a hole through her belly.

Love novellas? How about two in one book? In Wiz Duo 2, Juliet Kemp sends a reluctant knight on a quest, while E M Faulds gives her heroine a superpower that totally sucks.
wizardstowerpress.co...

this was at the weekend which was OK! Last night would have been a bit hairier :)

Start of last April I camped on my own in a hammock!

A green campsite field, with the edge of a tent, in front of bare spring trees against a colourful sunset and a clear dark blue sky with a tiny crescent moon.

Downside of March camping: very nearly freezing, spent the night entirely within my sleeping bag, head and all.
Upside of March camping: gorgeous sunset.

L might also be there! (Or he might have better things to do 😅 I’m not sure if I will end up losing him to the gaming room for the duration!)

Plus the traditional Fountain Pen Meet-up, with @aliettedebodard.com, 13:30 Saturday. Bring your pens! Bring ink! General show-and-tell vibes!

Looking forward to @easterconuk.bsky.social next week 🎉 Also to my 4 panels:
16:30 Fri: The Politics of Hope: Imagining a Better World
21:00 Fri: Everything I know about life, I learned from reading....
16:30 Sat: Let's not fight
16:30 Sun: Getting from A to B in Under a Month: Transport in SFF

The cover of The Green Man's Heir by Juliet E McKenna. Art by Ben Baldwin. The image is of a golden Green Man face against a dark green forest background.

Our ebooks are now available through Bookshop.org. Go ye forth and support your local, independent bookshop!
uk.bookshop.org/p/bo...

See you there! Looking forward to both panel & DISCO.

The inside of both my forearms, one with a black I I 🖤ACID club stamp and one with an ocean wave tattoo in lots of blues.

Sea and acid the other week :) 🌊 (only one of these is permanent)

Cover of the book 'Song, Stone, Scale, Bone' and a quote: "“It’s my fault. If I hadn’t —” “If, if, if. If I’d gotten a charm-knife into it. If either of us’d remembered the guide-song. If the client had been less of an arse. It is what it is, Cade love. Not your fault. I got unlucky. Two feet the other way and it’d’ve been you. Four feet and neither of us. Or both. A different fall and you’d have carried me up alive. You did everything you could, right?” I couldn’t accept that.

It's Book Quote Wednesday #bookqw and this week's word is KNIFE. Cade is having a chat with a ghost.

Strongly recommend taking it easy the next few days - idk if you have broken a bone before but it is weirdly knackering & also IME there is often a mental drop as well. I figure this is the body hanging onto resources for bone reconstruction by making you feel sad and thus not want to do anything