Sasha got to the show just as the band — Oxygen Thieves, an infuriatingly good name — returned for their encore, the four of them strolling back onstage to a small but very loud, very densely packed contingent of fans that filled the fashionably small performance space at the back of this King’s Cross pub. It wasn’t the most ideal timing, but she hadn’t exactly planned on being waylaid at Heathrow by the world’s longest queue to get through immigration. Sure, it was a British national sport or whatever the fuck, but come on. She had places to be.
She had mysteries to solve. Beautiful people to hunt down, for more reasons than one.
Her pulse raced as the audience cheers died down a little, as she saw the drummer’s face in the atmospheric concert half-light as he took his seat centre stage, spinning a drumstick with lazy deftness in his left hand, nodding at the crowd. He looked good. Sasha licked her lips, felt heat flaming beneath her skin and a seductively siren-call chasm stirring in her ribs.
Not now, she told herself. God, come on — you need this one alive.
HEY! Hello! It’s nice to be back. Oh my god I’m shaking like a wet kitten in a storm coming up on LSD.
A TL;DR of the events of the last uhhh five months:
My mental health has been solidly doing kick-flips in the sewer, for the last year or so. Good news: therapy is happening, support network is present and excellent. CPTSD sucks like a black hole, but discovering/understanding it (not the easiest or most obvious thing when one’s childhood contains plenty of trauma-engendering things, but none as dramatic/obvious as the most societally-recognised types of things that are understood to cause trauma) really does make a whole lot more of life make sense. Good. The situation also seems to have improved a bit since
WE MOVED TO SAN FRANCISCO! Goodbye London/Kent, hello to a city that feels so much more like the home I grew up in (Sydney! Australia! oioioioioi). God fucking damn it, we’ve been here just about a month now and I fucking love it so fucking much you wouldn’t believe. Picture me grabbing you by the lapels and hissing that italics bit through gritted teeth, like a hard-boiled detective who’s just broken a spell of sobriety and cracked the case too. Honestly didn’t expect to love it here so much but I! DO!
I turned 30 the day after the 2024 total solar eclipse, which my partner and I saw from Dallas (it was magical). It was a lovely time, thanks to the people I am lucky to have in my life.
Writing … is something that became tragically difficult (along with pretty much eeverything else in life) over the winter in which I was climbing out of the crater of trauma realisations (which, by the way, coincided with prep for the international move, which was a very sexy fun time for all and not at all overwhelming and paralysing). It is also something that I’ve recently found the time and energy to be do more of again, and I’m really happy about that but also it’s hard and scary but I’m going to do it anyway god fucking damn it. The little snippet that starts this newsletter was written a couple weeks ago :)
In non-writing creative news, I recently had the chance to illustrate the cover art for indie musician and friend Stefan Dando’s latest single, Hit The Road Again. It’s a folk pop bittersweet banger that I had a blast working on — listen on Spotify, YouTube, or your streaming platform of choice for the soundscape that birthed this:
On that note, I’ll bid you dear readers adieu (seriously if you are reading this I appreciate you SO SO MUCH SO MUCH) and will see you — I hope — at a point in the relatively near future, with something composed of words and self-indulgence :)