Left turn at Albuquerque

Turns out Bugs Bunny was right (er, left) after all.

Dear readers,

I know, I know, it's been a hot minute. One second we're celebrating the Substack's birthday, yay! And the next, poof, no more weekly updates.

Work took a bit of a left turn a few weeks ago (a good one, I promise!) but I didn’t realize at the time that it would be such a big change. Balancing work and life isn’t easy, but it is extremely important to me, and spending more time with my family - which is already the most precious thing in the world to me - has become the utmost, top, and unquestionably first priority.

Due to the nature of there only being 24 hours in a day, and nobody inventing a time machine yet, there isn’t enough time to do everything. So, for the foreseeable future - or until I discover where they’re keeping the Time-Turners in Hogwarts - we will say goodbye.

And honestly, maybe it’s for the better. I now have the extremely un-enviable task of editing The Lost Circus, which will take way too much time and is nowhere near as fun to read as a hot-off-the-press draft. Focusing on the circus also means no more short stories for a while, either, so it’s not like you’ll be missing much. Perhaps every now and then I'll have the bandwidth to send a surprise tale, but I’m afraid they will be few and far between.

In the meantime, here are a few from the archives that I really enjoyed writing. Just ignore the awkward intros, all right? We’re all just trying our best here.

Or how about an old seadog’s tale about the ocean herself?

Or a story about the mountain where words come from?

If none of these strike your fancy, there’s a Flash Fiction tab on my main page with twenty or so other short tales. Perhaps there’s a hidden gem waiting for you there.

Or maybe not. You won’t know unless you try.

Thanks again, dear readers. May your words flow smoothly, and may you read and write incredible stories in the future.

Cheers,

<3 Olivia