Kia ora folks, and welcome to another peek into my writing life!

Snippet

An excerpt from Marcie, which is currently sitting in an editor's inbox waiting to be judged worthy or not...

What was delicate to me once is now as thin as paper. I need not even force my teeth through that barrier before her lifeblood fills my all too eager mouth. She may be weakening — more and more so, with a soft cry, dying away to a low moan — but her blood gushes strong. As my body thrums with the vulgar satisfaction of my thirst, I spare no effort to stay attuned to every other sensation; the last strains of her voice, the final trembles of her body.

A gasp, and she whispers, "The angel of death! She is at my window — oh, Marcilla, she is beautiful. I am truly at peace, to know I am forgiven..."

There are but a few breaths left in her body. Her blood slows its torrent into me, but even after she has breathed her last, I cannot pull away. The bloodlust will grip me until she is drained. I do not like myself for it, and I shall suffer later for drinking in her illness, but the thirst is too powerful to stop this time.

Not now, it says. Not even to see that which inspired her outburst. I have held it back for fifty years. Now Adelaide is gone, the base, filthy creature I have become will have its due.

Her heart ticks down to a stop, and joins mine in silence.

When I stand back up, head pounding from the rush of Adelaide's blood to my system, the apparition at the window is gone.

As I knew she would be.​
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The writing this month

I continued first drafting the deeply personal project I've been working on since mid-July. I ramped my dedication to the project up, since it's been November, and to address the seasonal urge to write ridiculous amounts, I took part in a private writeathon amongst friends. I'm ending the month on a word count of 60,516, which I am pretty happy with. That's a combination of words written on the novel, as well as some short-form prose projects adjacent to it. Not typically how one is supposed to count words in these games (some people can get very precious about it being only words on one new, fresh project started that very month!), but the way I see it, words down on the page are words down on the page! (and I am not being specific about what work this is, because it's a pseudonym one, I'm afraid!). I haven't finished it yet, I still have one chapter to go, but I will savour that last taste and figure out some way to celebrate the closing of that chapter (though like, revision is a whole thing, so it's not like I'm DONE done, you know?)

Guess who:

So like... I got profiled by the magazine of one of my iwi this month, Nati Link. No big deal or anything, haha. But like... this magazine looks so glossy and fancy, it kinda makes me feel like a real writer, you know? Anyway, if you want to read their interview with me, go to page 26 of the online edition: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1axcge2u_INrYRxWPf8lcNllGyOpY2gnc/view

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The big event this month: SICK

In the internet-famous words of Kimberly "Sweet Brown" Wilkins, "I got bronchitis. Ain't nobody got time for that!"

It's true, I got a cold/flu which developed into bronchitis, while the rest of my family got sick but not as severely. So that was fun, trying to balance looking after children while also feeling like death warmed up. I took over three weeks for me to come right. Can't recommend it! It was a huge contrast to my hugely productive and social month in October.

What it meant for my month was that I had to cut a few things down. I had big plans to start a revision this month. That will have to wait for next month, sadly. Or honestly, perhaps later, given how busy December is looking on a personal level. I also wanted to engage with a writer critique session again in this last weekend of the month, but when it came to submitting and getting there, I just couldn't bring myself to do it. I had nothing ready, and no energy to critique a handful of other people's work at short notice. It was really quite a bummer!

But these things happen for a reason, and I really did need to slow to a stop this month. I have been burning the candle at both ends this year. A crash was an inevitability. I will endeavour to find more balance in the future, but it's tricky, being so passionate about so many things at once. It's hard to know when excitement is self-sustaining, versus when it has become a consuming mania. I remain a work-in-progress :)

What's this... Proofreading?

Yes it's true, I engaged in some proofreading for a friend this month. I'll let you know more about it in next month's newsletter, but my friend has a book coming out, and it is so good! I can't wait for other people to read it. Proofreading for them has been a really interesting exercise, because it's forced me to examine some of my own formatting, punctuation and consistency choices. For example, hyphens: who bloody knows which words have them, and which don't! The key for me has been looking up respectable sources to find out, and not relying on Google, which has become an unfortunate cesspit of AI nonsense in the last few years.

More on that friend's book next issue ;)

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Auckland Queer Writers Anthology

This month, despite my sickness, I had to engage with the task of maintaining the Boosted Campaign for AQWA (which, if you have forgotten/don't know what that is, look here) which I'd scheduled ahead of time before I knew I would be sick.

However, it was actually quite fun. It meant a whole month of Instagram posting where I didn't have to think too hard about what I was posting, because we had videos for that! Check out the backlog of author profiles over here https://www.instagram.com/hiriadunning/ to meet so many lovely and fun people that I have had the privilege of working with over the last 5 months!

It's a little late now, and I know many people won't read this in time, but if you do want to contribute to the funding before the clock runs out, you can do so at the following link before 1st December 5pm NZT: https://www.thearts.co.nz/boosted/projects/auckland-queer-writers-anthology​

Now that the campaign is coming to a close, that leaves the easy part... haha, I joke! It's time for cover design/editing/formatting/publishing/marketing/organising the launch party - which, by the way, if you live in or near Auckland, you should consider attending! It's free, and there'll be free food, live readings, and physical books for purchase and signing. Numbers are restricted, so get in quick: https://events.humanitix.com/aqwa-book-launch​

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On the blog this month

As I re-read Bram Stoker's Dracula this month (for a book club which I couldn't even attend because of sickness T_T), it seemed like the perfect time to write a Lore Drop about my adaptation of it into an adult pantomime. It was one of the most stressful but also most rewarding experiences in my whole arts career, and honestly... I really hope I'm not done with it. I hope, one day, to be able to update that Lore Drop with whatever the next iteration might be. Check out the post here to learn more: https://hiriadunning.com/2025/11/29/lore-drop-4-dracula-the-adult-pantomime/

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Reading this month:

This month, I finally dug into a recommendation a friend gave me months ago, and I'm so glad I did. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin is a rare thing to me: a book I wish I had written. For the most part I am immune to this 'wish I'd written that' curse, because I see most books as so intrinsically tied to their authors and their context as to make them impossible for anyone else to have written them. So too, this one, but nevertheless, the feeling is there. When I was in my twenties, I wanted to be able to write a book that expressed to the world how much video games had the power to reach into your real physical existence and become a very real part of them, even if from the outside, people who weren't in the know couldn't see or understand that.

I will probably never write that book now, because in my thirties, it has become too distant to my actual lived experience. I have had children now, and if I try to sit down to play video games, unless they are intensely engrossing and rewarding experiences, they can no longer hold my attention as they once used to when I was time-rich. But this book has reached back and spoken to that truth I knew in my teens and twenties, reminding me of a world I once understood, immersing me back in it, and rewarding me with a rich, literary experience on top of all that. The relationships were so richly drawn, and the characters became so real to me, that when I put the book down I felt mournful.

So, I highly recommend it to anyone who thinks a literary novel about making video games would appeal to them!

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Social media check-in:

By the way, I did it. I finally split out my social media accounts on Bluesky and Instagram. This will be the last time I explicitly mention Kara Moon or any of those R18+ projects, so if you want to follow me on those accounts, here they are:

​https://karamoonauthor.com/​

​https://bsky.app/profile/karamoonauthor.com​

​https://www.instagram.com/karamoonauthor/​

This newsletter and the usual accounts remain the main touchstones for my mainstream persona, and I continue to run #pretendpanel out of my Hiria Dunning bluesky account, https://bsky.app/profile/hiriadunning.com.

What's Coming Up Next Month

• Actually recovering. Seriously. I'm still not 100%, and with how busy a month December is, I owe it to myself to not take on anything too big. To that end, I was thinking I might just plug away at some short fiction ideas that I had before diving into anything too big.
• Continuing on with organising everything for the launch of the Auckland Queer Writer's Anthology at the end of February. The to-do list is quite large! Good thing I have two co-organisers on this with me.
• Helping with another little anthology-style thingee and my friend's book launch - more on those when I can say more publically.
• I've been asked to write an article by an organisation near and dear to my heart... more on that in future newsletters too!

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Arohanui,

Claire Hiria

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