Kia ora friends,

It's been a crazy month. Let's get right into it!

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The actual writing:

So uh, I know I said I'd slow down and just do some planning, but... yeah, that didn't happen. Instead, I...

• broke ground on Peregrine Pax v3. I mean, this one at least we knew was coming. I've got my final load of feedback from Lauren Keenan, and I'm ready to go. I also have a major change I want to make, which is going to be quite the effort, but I think will be worth it in the end. The bulk of this work is going to happen in June, but I've gotten started at least. Due date 30th June!!!
• wrote a novella called Marcie. Like I said last month, Marcie was a vampire who popped into my head one evening and would not leave me alone until I wrote her into being. I found time amongst the busy days to pop a few words down about her, and now I have a first draft. It went from short story, to novelette, to novella in quick order, now standing just shy of 21K words. No idea what I'm going to do with this yet, but it exists. Once a month or two has passed, I can look at it again and decide what it is and what it needs for a second pass. Even though it's a romantic work, it's not spicy, so I think it still exists as a Hiria Dunning work (rather than a steamy romance pseudonym work ;) )
• and also... I wrote and released something completely unexpected...

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SURPRISE RELEASE! (non-fiction):

I wrote a solo journaling RPG module called Walker's Quest. I definitely did not see this one coming.

My spouse was bouncing ideas off me on a road trip because he wanted to take part in the Kiwi Game Jam on itch.io. The theme was Hīkoi, the Māori word which has a basic meaning of walk, but has further resonances, especially in the context of protest marches here in Aotearoa. While he was coming up with ideas for himself, I remembered that years ago (back during those heady game development days, before children made life complicated) I wanted to make a mobile idle pedometer game where you've got a little tamagotchi style guy in your phone who walks at the same rate as you and goes on a quest. I realised on the drive, hey, why don't I just write that up as a journaling game? It would be way easier for me than programming a mobile game, and the roleplaying possibilities are way more magical than what can be achieved in a video game interface.

In this version as it exists, you help your Walker achieve their daily goal by meeting your own daily goals for a week, and on the way, you get to indulge your imagination, creating the world Walker walks in as you go. So that exists, and it's free, if you want to check it out here: https://skybeargames.itch.io/walkers-quest-solo-rpg

All you need is pen, paper, a goal, and one week to devote some daily chunks of time to meeting your goal and journaling about it. One 6-sided dice optional.

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Anthology Judging:

This month I've been helping young South Waikato author Rutendo Shadaya with an initiative that she started all on her own. It's amazing; she's still in high school, she's published two books with a third on the way, and she's running a regional short story anthology competition for youth.

Over three weeks, the two of us met weekly to go over batches of entries into her competition. It was quite a jump for me mentally. Lately I've been beta reading and critiquing adults' writing, so to have to put my judging-childrens'-writing hat on after over a decade away from teaching teenagers... it was interesting! But it was okay; once I was able to take a bird's eye view of the whole field, I found it a lot easier. I've helped Rutendo to select the best of the bunch, and soon there will be winners and a publication announced. It's very exciting and so cool.

I'm really honoured that she sought me out and asked me to be a part of this. You can check out her work here: https://rutendoshadayabook.wixsite.com/website​

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Auckland and Sydney Writers' Festivals:

I posted this big recap of the festival experience on my blog a couple of days ago (https://hiriadunning.com/2025/05/28/my-time-at-the-auckland-and-sydney-writers-festivals/). But I have saved a little bit of behind-the-scenes tea for you newsletters subscribers. So if you want to read that blog post first, I'll be here, and you can come back and get the tea when you've read that. Plus some photos which I didn't post there but will post here. (Even if you don't read the whole blog post, you could just skim the photos!)

I finished both Marcie and Walker's Quest while I was in Sydney. I was having a proper little productive time. Turns out that's what happens when I don't have children around for a week!

I censored myself a little bit in the blog post to keep it nice, but the truth is, there was one panel that I actually really did not enjoy. Five minutes in, they said something which made me feel like 'oh no this is not for me'. Basically it was a really tropey thing that I don't identify with. I felt like everyone on the panel was too busy back-patting and talking up their genre, and doing a huge disservice to all the writers who had come before them. Especially the women authors, which was quite infuriating as they were all themselves women too! It's given me a huge takeaway for if I'm ever on such a panel, to be humble, open-minded, and not hype up my cohort or genre or any other group I'm in to the point where I'm excluding others. I wouldn't want to come off as ignorant and/or arrogant.

The thing I'm probably going to miss most of all out of all of this isn't the festivals themselves, but the camaraderie of being with my fellow authors. I was with Taryn Baker and Toni Wi for many panels, train rides, the flight there, breakfasts at the hotel and debriefs late at night. We read panels to filth if we didn't like them, and waxed lyrical about the ones we did. We overanalysed the interviewers' questions and the body language of the panelists, and tried to think about what we would do in their place. We helped each other devour spare food and collect train fare from spare cash, critiqued each others' work, and laughed and whinged and laughed some more together. We HAVE to do this again sometime, and bring in our fellow mentee Steph Julian who was too sick to come. Hopefully we'll have a similar chance again later this year, though not quite so far away as Sydney.

And now for my secret newsletter pictures... here is a group shot of the three of us (from the left, Taryn, Toni, me) about to go out for dinner on Taryn's birthday at a wonderful restaurant called George's. It was right on the harbour. Pity about the weather. The next photo is the delicious Greek saganaki I had. Also Taryn and Toni told me I HAD to take a fancy bathroom selfie (they did too) but look, I'll be honest, I was a bit far gone by that point in the night. Lining up my camera... making sure I was looking in the right direction... it was a lot to ask (you can kinda see I'm laughing at myself). And finally, Toni bought me the sweetest little bag of swag from Japan-mart type store the next day. She's the sweetest human being.

Also real tea, it's official, I now have a bit of a literary crush on Torrey Peters and Catherine Chidgey. I'm going to devour everything they've ever written now, byeee.
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What's up next:

• The pedal hits the metal on Peregrine Pax v3 in June. I very much don't need another Marcie showing up this month to derail me. Anything else that comes my way, I'll just have to make a note of in my notebook, and CLOSE IT. PUT IT DOWN. FOCUS! This is my chance to really make my words shine, and deliver to Huia Publishers the best possible work that represents where I am now, and how far I've come.
• Enjoying some more beta reading on the side, after finishing an amazing YA fantasy halfway through May. It's so exciting to see what other people are up to. Sometimes I think it's more exciting than a lot of mainstream publishing. I've read too many romances and fantasies lately where my ultimate reaction was... why was this published? I had a big disappointment recently with a popular YA fantasy romance. It was a sequel to a book I quite enjoyed, but as a sequel and even as its own thing it was such a letdown. Meanwhile there's these amazing things being written by people without representation. Mad world.
• Coming soon, I was asked by Uncharted Mag to make a video promoting Crass, my short story which came out with them back in August. I put something together quickly while in Sydney and they said it was absolutely fine how it was - thank goodness, I do not have time to muck around right now! So I'll link that social post sometime next month when it comes out.
• Here is the secret thing I was hyping for the last little while, now no longer secret: A Queer Writers' Anthology! Jade and Jamie and I have joined forces again to bring an exciting opportunity to the queer writing community in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. On June 14th, we'll kickoff a process which will lead to a published anthology of poems and short stories from local writers, with all proceeds going to OutLine. Are you a queer writer in Tāmaki? Consider joining us. Go here to find out more: https://shorturl.at/vMcW0​
• *sad noises* I go back full-time to work in June. I will miss my maternity leave, but I won't miss pinching pennies. And of course, I'm not looking forward to the time crunch this is going to mean for my revision. But this is the world we live in (...for now... [*ominous socialist noises intensify*])
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I hope the month brings you whatever you need most.

Arohanui,

Claire Hiria

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