Back from Harvest
It's been a long road through the high desert, but we've successfully walked it!
What up, readers, listeners, viewers, and everyone else who follows along with this writing and podcasting journey?
PERSONAL UPDATES
As always, I have to start off by expressing my most sincere gratitude for you folks who continue to show up, month in and month out, even as I slack off terribly during the post-harvest season with these updates. Harvest is a time of turmoil in my writing life, as I have to get as much done before leaving and then essentially drop everything in place of daily 16-hour shifts for the duration of the harvest season (usually 3-5 weeks).
Naturally, nothing ever works out perfectly, so I often end up having to finish up all my writing work for the first week and a half or so, making those days 18 hours or so, sometimes. It’s brutal, but once I do get settled into the farming work, it’s always a profound reset from the work I generally do.
Farming is a fascinating trade filled with difficult work, weather-dependent circumstances, and a plethora of requisite skill sets from chemistry to mechanics, to knowledge of plants and soil and weather patterns, and CDL-level knowledge of heavy machinery operation.
It’s stressful. There are no small mistakes, as everything you break is expensive and difficult to fix, and you’re on a tight timeline.
The mission: Get the crop out while it’s ripe and before bad weather (which Montana is very notorious for) rolls in and decimates the fields.
But there’s a meditative, grounding quality to it too. The concerted and centralized focus of purpose across my whole family is always galvanizing for us as a team, as people who love and respect each other, and as a fourth-generation family business, and being a meaningful part of that is extremely important to me.
Finally, it’s a great reminder of how lucky I am to be a full-time writer. I am profoundly blessed to create stories, interact with you fine folks, and talk about the genre and craft that I love at a professional level, and I still have to pinch myself sometimes to believe it’s real. I have nothing but utter respect and reverence for those who commit their lives to food production and farming — it’s a thankless job full of constant toil and never-ending stress that is largely stigmatized and misunderstood by the larger public.
My hat goes off always to those who do this crucial work and to all of you for supporting my writing journey, so that I can pursue my individual passions.
Check out some of the awesome photos I got from the picturesque land that is my home of Cut Bank, Montana! The traditional land of the Pikuni Blackfeet people, and a place I was fortunate enough to grow up.
I also had a unique journey back home. Where I usually drive home, this time I went all the way from Port Angeles, WA, to Cut Bank, MT (770 mi) on public transit, and it was surprisingly simple! Bus from the stop by my house, to ferry, to train, and back home to my beautiful wife and kitty on the same route!
As for what I’ve been up to personally.
Mainly trying to get back into the swing of things with my work-life balance and settling back into this home that I love so much!
I’ve been out surfing (no pictures, sorry…I don’t bring my phone outside with me much ;), rock climbing, and kayaking in our brand new sea kayaks (also no pictures, but we need to fix that, cause these boats are SUPER SLICK).
It’s been wonderful to reconnect with my wife on every level, and we are in the best place we’ve ever been as a couple. I could not be more thankful for her. She is my best friend, my biggest fan and supporter, and my partner in all things.
Finally, we put up the picture rail in our house, which has allowed us to turn our living room into a miniature art museum of all the stuff we’ve collected over the years! How cool is this space?
So, what have I been up to since getting back? Plenty :)
WRITING UPDATES:
Two big updates here!
#1. Rain Shadows Book Tour
Tamara and I have been hard at work promoting our new book all over the state of Washington, and the work continues to march forward.
If you’re around here, please come out and see us, grab a signed copy, and join the conversation about the new PNW Gothic horror collection that’s only going to get more and more exciting as we roll into season 2 of Beneath the Rain Shadow (see podcast updates).
#2. Cairn (Book 2 of the Voices from the Cold Trilogy) is off to Beta Readers!!!
I have officially finished the 7th draft of this story, the sequel to Crevasse, and thereby put the final touches on the developmental edits of this new novella.
That’s a HUGE step for the publishing process, as it marks the transition into semantic level editing (grammar, sentence structure, things like that), which is more rule-based, syntax-heavy, and mathematical in terms of the work. All that is a loooonnnnggg way to say that, creatively, the story is basically finished! All I have to do is make a couple more tweaks, then it goes to my editor and begins its final stretch toward officially being published.
Release dates have been back pushed a few times, so I won’t promise anything at this time, but suffice to say, we’re closing in and confident the book will be out by early 2026. Cover reveal is on the way soon as well!
PODCAST UPDATES
I won’t bother with Fermented Fiction, as you get those every week in this newsletter and therefore, know we’re up and running and having a great season!
However, there is a big update on the returning Beneath the Rain Shadow Podcast:
We are officially green-lit.
We start airing new episodes of our craft-centric, pod-to-pub podcast, and this year we have two new authors joining us in Gordon B. White and M. Leigh.
Double the authors, double the editing feedback/power, and quadruple the perspectives through which we shall tell our prompt-based PNW gothic tales.
Can’t wait to see ya’ll over there.
Thank you for being here, once again. I live my dream, and that’s only because of you people.
I’ll be back with another newsletter next month :)
Yours,
Clay Vermulm