Sheltie Gazette: Lakes, of the regular and piano-eating varieties
Jul 24, 2025 10:16 pm
Do you have a book summer or a lake summer, ?
Do you prefer your lakes real or magical? Well, you're in luck, because this newsletter has BOTH! 😂
And I would love to see pictures of your loveliest lakes, especially with furry friends on them! (My New Zealand friend just took her kids to the coast, so the question still applies if it's not summer where you are!)
As for my summer... Despite Malin's best efforts to bark at everything that might bother me (starting with water jugs and ceiling fans), and then lay on my feet whenever I sit down, I still have not been able to organize everything this summer. They seem to get trickier every year my kids get older! I have five kids going in five directions each, and my husband isn't home either.
Here is a visual representation:
The backpack contains my computer, which you will notice is not open. I am at a coffee shop because my son has a 3-hour camp this week, which means it isn't worth driving home in the middle, but I can't go to the library because I have the dogs with me. We encountered an absurd number of small obstacles in the morning, which we overcame, but meant that by the time this pretty coffee arrived it was already time to pick up my son. And there went the day!
This is why I have approximately seventeen writing thingamagummies that are almost but not quite done. Two of them are in the last production steps, and when I send you new release tidbits, there will be two fun newsletter bonuses inside! Look for that next week (once I get back from the lake)...
Meanwhile, I keep losing my marbles but the dogs have rounded up a few bits of bookish news...
- What's trying to burst forth from that closed-up computer
- Malin catches a PROBLEM!!
- Magical Lake (plus one devouring a piano)
- Free short stories
- Your dose of cute puppy story, plus non-magical but beautiful lakes
On my writing desk (aka assorted random locations while running the kid taxi service)
Yip yip, I ran around the barn, found a cow, nine children in hay tunnels,
and these upcoming Irish fairy tales!!!
📚 I'm hard at work as one of the editors for our second edition of Feisty Deeds, a short story collection of women defying expectation. I have a sweet Georgian-era love story in the first one, and my story in the second volume goes back to Fionn mac Cumhaill. When Queen Saba vanishes, what happens to the ladies-in-waiting who depended on her?
📚 I also have a story in a second anthology, and here's the cover reveal!!!!
You wanted more Saba, and here she is! Pregnant and chased out of the only world she knows, she goes bounding through time and ends up in the middle of a post-WWII research project. The theme of this anthology is "kindness," so you can guess that she is not evicted, even though she neither knows nor cares about madrigals in Cinquecento Italy.
📚 Both anthologies are scheduled to be released in November! I can't wait to share more details with you.
📚 PAPERBACKS!!!
📚 What's next for the Castle in Kilkenny series? We're going back to Maura and her family for a set of three stories featuring the most famous Irish fairy tales.
Many of you have asked how Maura manages to afford her lifestyle. Despite a rich ex-husband paying alimony and child support, when she takes in OisÃn, Maura is really struggling to make ends meet. The good news is that Saba is more than willing to help out! The bad news is that Saba's ideas, direct from the third century, are a disaster. Oh, and also there's a swan in the guest room.
This one is not a specific fairy-tale retelling, although it collects a number of elements from Irish myth. But the swan is going to take us back into....
📚 Can you guess which fairy tale is going to be retold in the next book? Reply to this email with your guess, and I'll pick a winner from the responses!
📚 There's a free prequel novella coming to your inbox soon! Malin has been barking at it very very hard, but it's moving slowly. Some sheep—I mean books—do that.
Note from Malin: I spy a problem!
"Woof, woof! The book does not have a cover! If you can't pick one, you'd better send it to your newsletter and let them decide!"
WHAT DO YOU THINK???
- piano with lots of bookshelf
- piano with lots of window
- bookshelves looking dark and mysterious
The book that escaped the computer
Do you have your copy of Hannah and Dylan's story yet? Readers say...
This isn't just a love story...I simply did not want to put this down.
This is a well-told coming of age story with several twists.
....a wonderful story.
I love the depth and complexity that Matheson brings to their romance. The emotions and issues they struggle with feel very real and relatable.
Oh wait—I've picked a theme song for this book! These emotions give me all the right feels:
Annmarie O'Riordan "Each Time That I Look in Your Eyes" (Spotify, Apple Music—those are the only places I can find this track, sorry!)
Short stories=fun summer reads
Summer is the perfect time for short stories. You can whisk through one while you're waiting for your kid to get done with camp, and another short story while you're waiting for them to clear their plate but instead they lay on the floor sobbing "it's too hard!"
Wait, that's just me? But I'm sure you have gaps in your life that could be filled with:
- Dragonslayer, Stories of a Squire, The Boy Who Cried Dragon, and other fantasy
- Historical shorts such as Before the Tracks Were Laid, Aerope, and The Urgent Plea from Susan B.
- Family stories and women's fiction like The Silent Sonata, Homeless, and Orange Sky
- and so much more!
Just please don't read books while sitting at a piano that is sinking int0 a lake. Lakes that eat musical instruments are not the right kind of magical.
And finally...super cute puppy story
On Monday, I drove my middle son across the state to his first sleep-away camp (!!!) and then the youngest, the dogs, and I did some exploring. Kids, dogs, and lakes....it's a magical combination, even if it's not a magical lake.
As the day ended, we were coming around the edge of this sunset-tinged lake, into the broad lawns of the lodge. We like to switch dogs, and my little one said that he would take Malin, "just let go of the leash and let him run to me!"
Well, I did as instructed, but Child decided to just go bounding across the lawn, letting Malin's leash drag rather than picking it up, and by then I was too far away to grab it again.
However, Malin knows how a walk is supposed to work—someone holds that leash. Given that no one else had stepped up to the plate, he paused to grab it himself. Then he bounded along, entirely within leash-distance of Child, but carrying his own leash.
Unfortunately, those moments go by too quickly to photograph, but here with Child bounding with Inish. The regular way, where one end of the leash is with the dog and the other with the human.
And here is some more lake. It's a real lake in our real world, and probably there are no Fae living in it. But...
I don't know about you, but I kind of hope they're there, and I just haven't seen them. Yet.
Lana
