June has brought excitement and challenges, with a bunch of promising projects on the horizon.

Horizon 1: Romantasy Novel Assessment

First off, my fantasy/romantasy novel came back from its manuscript assessment.  I’m very pleased with the process. I wasn’t really sure what to expect — red pen crosses everywhere, maybe?

But the manuscript came back with a detailed overall assessment document, and the whole 115,000+ words read, and understood. The comments on the manuscript are not corrections — they are affirmations, or queries, or opportunities for enhancement. There are no suggested phrases or wordings, but places noted where the current writing doesn’t impact in the expected way.

This is SO useful for a writer.

I don’t know about you, but when I’m being creative, I don’t want anyone to ‘correct’ my vision, whether it’s art, craft, or a whole fictional universe that happens to exist in my head. I’m so thrilled that the assessor jumped right into my world, and talks about the characters (who are indeed figments of my imagination) as if they are real people. As if they have the same weight and substance as, hmm, Superman, or Dr Who, or Aragorn, or Miss Marple.

Actual fictional characters who exist in defiance of all the rules of physics. About whom we can have conversations and opinions.

Recommendation

In case you’re searching for something of this nature — a REALLY useful conversation about your fiction — I’d like to share that my manuscript assessment was carried out by the awesome Scott Vandervalk, editor extraordinaire at https://scottvandervalk.com/

Scott was recommended to me by writers whose published work I really admire, so I was very pleased that he accepted the brief!

As for me, my task, before the end of the year, is to fulfil my 2026 resolution: go over the entire manuscript,  respond to the assessment, and then: submit it somewhere.

Eep. But that’s a bridge to be crossed later this year.

Horizon 2: SEED Anthology

Last week I heard wonderful news from a publisher! Yes, it does happen 🙂

SEED: speculative possibilities is an anthology proposal that my fellow author Louise Zedda-Sampson (of the St Hilda’s history project collaboration) and I are floating for next year.

We’ve approached some Australian speculative fiction writers and asked them to each contribute a story. AND the publisher we contacted said YES!

I’ll have more details on the publisher, the authors, and the timeline once contracts are issued. In the meantime, here’s a little taster overview of what we’re planning:

SEED: speculative possibilities
Edited by Clare Rhoden and Louise Zedda-Sampson
Seeds can promise good things to come, or they can invade and destroy. Seeds of certainty or uncertainty. Seeds of plenty, seeds of doubt, of confusion, untruth, destruction, seeds of alien life, seeds from all over the planet, all over the galaxy. Seeds that grow into something unexpected. Seeds of poison, seeds of peace. Literal seeds, and metaphorical seeds.

Louise and I enjoy working together so much that we’ve been hatching the idea of a jointly-edited anthology for some time. Only we couldn’t get started until Louise invented the brilliant theme of SEED. Thanks Louise!

Horizon 3: Heated Rivalry FanFiction!

Okay, now things are going to get very, very weird.

The background

I don’t know how many of you are into the Canadian gay sports romance series, Heated Rivalry? I started to watch this as part of my quest to make my writing more ‘romantasy’, keeping in mind that many popular fantasies of the 21st century include physical encounters between the characters. Quite a lot happens NOT behind closed doors in series such as ACOTAR by Sarah J Maas and THE EMPYREAN by Rebecca Yarros. I thought maybe I should investigate more.

Heated Rivalry, both the book and the TV series, is a modern, sensitive, and explicit exploration of physical romantic attraction. A trusted friend recommended it.

It’s basically a sexy, sporty, emotional love story.

I ended up reading all six books in author Rachel Reid’s Game Changers series, as well as having the 6 TV episodes pretty much on repeat. Like I used to have The Two Towers.

AND THEN:

True confession, I started to follow the actors (Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie) on socials — because they are beautiful and smart and fashionable. And then my feed became swamped with fan fiction recommendations based on the story.

SO I LOOKED at AO3 (Archive of Our Own), where fans write stories about their favourite characters out of all sorts of fictional worlds – Star Wars, Harry Potter, Dune, you name it. And, er, I had an idea for a Heated Rivalry story.

So I wrote it. It just flew off the keyboard, grew to over 30,000 words, and, as of today, has over 2,700 unique readers. What?!

It’s actually very affirming as a writer that a new story — even one featuring established fictional characters — can attract a growing readership.

Another positive is the confidence I have in what these characters would say or do in any given situation. This has inspired me to be more confident about my own fictional characters. Just let them be themselves! What would they do? I should know, I DO know, because I invented them.

And another affirmation

Thank you to everyone who reads my books from libraries. I received this year’s PLR (Public Lending Rights) statement and payment last month. It’s not huge, but it’s such a lovely little boost.

Onwards

That’s a wrap for this post, with quite a few teasers about what’s ahead for the rest of 2026. Love to you all! Happy reading 🙂