dirtbag-adjacent at best tbh

Or, we're all doing our best here.

Hello friends!

Sneaking in because I have promised you two newsletters a month and I am a gremlin of my word.

I have had what we in the business call “a bit of a month,” which has included: some good news I can hopefully reveal shortly (!!), a series of life-altering unfortunate events, approximately eleven hundred weddings, and a brand-new deadline. As a result, regrettably, the dirtbag wheels have just not been turning lately.

So no full story today! But I do have some ideas for next time, and I’d like you to help me choose the subject of the next newsletter! Vote in the poll below if you have a preference among the following…

Other than that, some brief business:

• The Let the Dead Bury the Dead preorder campaign is still running through October. Thanks to all of you who have preordered already! Drop your info in this brief form if you haven’t, so that I may thank you personally by giving you some free stuff.

• Coming up on July 17 and 24, I’ll be teaching a two-part online workshop with my friends at Bookends and Beginnings all about dialogue writing! Registration is open now, so please join me if you’re interested. I’ve loved getting to meet Dirtbag Nation members at these workshops in the past. Maybe my cat will make a cameo appearance in the background and you can meet her too.

• I’m doing a bunch of episodes of the Vulgar History podcast this summer with my dear friend Ann Foster as she deep-dives into the life of Mary Queen of Scots. If you like this newsletter, I think you’ll enjoy the series and highly recommend subscribing. We discuss this image in great detail:

I am reliably informed that is a rabbit

• If you want to know what I’m up to more generally, my website is finally updated to include all this information as well as accurate buy and preorder links for all my books. I did this instead of working on the revisions for which I am on deadline. Nonetheless, please clap.

• Also, a few weeks ago I saw the revival of Sweeney Todd and I desperately need to talk about how great Annaleigh Ashford’s Mrs. Lovett was. If you or someone you know has seen this production, I invite you to scream about it in the comments. The sound I made during the last three seconds of the show could probably have been heard from space.

Anyway, I look forward to being back on the ball in roughly a fortnight.

Until then, please help me petition Starbucks to start using that Mary Queen of Scots mermaid instead of its boring, tits-in logo, because it’s what the people deserve,

-Allison