Easter Long Weekend Vibes

As the first quarter of the year is already at its end, I thought it was about time I sent out a newsletter. Easter is upon us, which means that I get to bemoan the lack of vegan carob Easter eggs, as though I don’t already eat more than enough carob as it is.

A House of Longing extra

I was digging around in my hard drive this afternoon and stumbled across an asylum case book entry I wrote for Charlotte quite some time ago. It uses the format of case notes at Kew Asylum in 1895, the year Charlotte entered, and might be of interest to people who have read the book. Or, yanno, people who haven’t read the book but are interested in what a standard set of recorded admission information looked like at that time.

It's up on my Tumblr at https://taracalaby.tumblr.com/post/746251599444312064/charlotte-rosss-case-notes .

Book Two… and Three?

No update at all on a release date for Book Two, I’m afraid, but hopefully I’ll have more information soon.

In the meantime, I’ve started work on a non-fiction book based on my PhD research. There are so many fascinating lives and stories contained—or just hinted at—in the asylum archives and I’m hoping to put together a compilation of some of the most interesting ones. Progress is very slow at the moment, because my priority is finishing off the PhD first, but it’s nice to have a new manuscript on the go again.

Watching & Reading

Along with the usual collection of Drag Race franchises, we’re currently making our way through “Ghosts”—the UK version, of course. It took me a few episodes to get into the series, due in part to the large ensemble of characters, but now I’m finding it very likeable. My “The Bill” special interest revitalisation is still extremely active, so I’m watching enormous amounts of that as well. It’s always good to have a special interest with a lot of source material, and in the case of “The Bill” a lot equals over well over two thousand episodes so I’ll be set for quite some times.

I’ve been dividing my reading between work reading and fun reading, which means I get to read dry books for PhD research and Sweet Valley Twins graphic novels. My favourite for the year so far has to be Emma Donoghue’s Learned by Heart, which is inspired by the early life of Anne Lister and is her best book yet, in my opinion. I also became the last person in the world to read Rebecca F Kuang’s Yellowface and finally got the chance to catch up on more of the Debut Crew 2023’s work: She and Her Pretty Friend by Danielle Scrimshaw, My Father the Whale by Gina Perry, The Matchmaker by Saman Shad and Fed to Red Birds by Rijn Collins. I’m chuffed to be among such a great crowd and you should definitely check out their books.

Paying the Cute Tax

Please accept a photo of The Baby atop her throne (aka our old microwave in the new microwave’s box, which she has designated hers) as payment for making it to the end: