Kia ora friends,

Despite it being short on days, this month was busybusybusy. Mostly with personal life things, with life contorting me in a few unexpected directions. Long story short, for family reasons, I’ve had to extend my maternity leave for another three months. Thankfully, my day job has been kind to me, being flexible about some of the wrenches that have been thrown in the works. It’s all going to come right in the end. I’ll keep telling myself this - I’m a glass-half-full kind of person.

The actual writing:

• Revision on Peregrine Pax continues apace! Building on the changes I made in Round 1 in January, Round 2 has been all about: making sure the characters are moving through the chapters with intention; that every scene has a turning point; that every piece of action is built up in the correct order with the protagonist’s emotional, instinctual, and logical reactions; and that the point-of-vIew is consistent throughout. In March for Round 3 I’ll be deep diving into dialogue and showing-not-telling before I hand Draft Two over to my mentor.
• Writing and posting my gothic horror novella The Villa Delacroix on Royal Road (https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/102948/the-villa-delacroix). A few nice people read it and commented on how it’s going. They have theories about who will live and who will die. All good fun.
• As promised last month, I wrote a blog post about how the Te Papa Tupu workshop went at the end of January (https://hiriadunning.com/2025/02/06/te-papa-tupu-workshop-3-and-beyond/). I made another blog post that got a lot of chatter going over on Bluesky (https://hiriadunning.com/2025/02/09/villainy-in-2025/), asking the question: how do we write villains in this current time?

In Social Land:

I have written this section like… three times? And I delete it every time, unhappy with it. At the same time, I think that maybe my honesty might help others who feel like me. So I’ll keep it short.

I’m peeling back a bit from socials because it’s becoming a headache. I feel a bit bad about this because like… it’s just social media, what’s the big deal? I keep telling myself to just post and be done with it. But when seeing the little unread notifications icon is triggering my anxiety, I know it’s time to take a break. Same with pitch events. I did three this month, and while I got some lovely feedback from people following the tags, it did leave me feeling like… I would really rather be doing the writing itself, rather than shouting out to the world for likes and reposts.

I dunno. It’s a balance. I haven’t struck the right one yet. Maybe one day I’ll figure it out. But looking after my mental health takes precendence.

In Real Life:

I took part in the Queer Storytelling Panel on February 22nd at Onehunga Library. It was hosted by Auckland Libraries podcast host Alison Fitzpatrick, and I was up there with fellow authors Jade du Preez (https://www.instagram.com/jade.f.dupreez/) and Hayley Price (https://www.hayleyprice.net/). For 90 minutes (though it did not at all feel that long while I was up there!) we shared yarns and laughs with a lovely audience. I wish I could remember more of what was said: it was one of those moments in time where a combination of nerves and joy made my memory short-circuit.

It was something of a delicate atmosphere at first, because one of the events in Auckland Pride was attacked earlier this month. We were fairly certain, as our event was aimed at adults, that we would not be targeted. The one which was attacked was a drag storytime. It’s awful that this is happening, and it is something we have to be more wary of currently with trends in world politics. We feel the ripples even down here in this isolated corner of the world. But we had security present, and no protestors showed up, so a peaceful good time was had. I remain certain that the future will be more open and accepting. But I won't sit back and wait for that; I’m encouraged to fight for that future to come to fruition, using my words.

What’s coming next month:

• Tomorrow (!!!) I am part of the Queer Writers’ Workshop with Jamie Sands and Jade du Preez at New Lynn Community Centre. Looking forward to reporting back on how that goes.
• I'll be working hard on Rounds 3 and 4 of my revision on Peregrine Pax, before I hand it over to my mentor in April for a final critique, in time for the big June deadline
• Writing more chapters of The Villa Delacroix. Wish I was writing faster, but this is all I can manage with how busy life is at the moment.

I hope you have a wonderful, restful, kind and peaceful month! (mostly those adjectives cos I’m wishing this on myself too!!)

Arohanui,

Claire Hiria