SHE'S IN HER DEBUT AUTHOR ERA!!!

Hi friends, and welcome to the first ever rollout of You Have To Try, a newsletter where I simply cannot promise not to be this excited and this loud about it every single month.

The reason?

I HAVE A BOOK COMING OUT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I DO! ME!!!

I am so excited/terrified/euphoric/thrilled/delighted/every adjective under the sun to say that my debut novel 'Some Advanced Notes on Practical Dreaming' will be released on September 1st 2025. It feels unreal to say that. It feels like I'm not allowed to say it? I have so much to say about the journey I've been on to get to this point - but for now this moment really belongs to my book - 'Some Advanced Notes on Practical Dreaming' to the world, 'Dreamers' to her friends - and her very long overdue moment in the sun. If there was ever a book of my heart, this is it, and I cannot believe that in just a year's time it will finally be out there in the big, bad world.


Image shows a black square with faded white images of a stylised moon and clouds transposed over the top. White text on top of this reads 'Some Advanced Notes on Practical Dreaming' 01/09/2025.
To anyone worried, this is not the real cover, just a temporary image I'm using for my website and for things such as this. I'm about to start chatting to different dream artists about creating a cover which will not only be gorgeous in its own right but so much better than what I can do with Canva, five minutes, and a dream.

SOME ADVANCED NOTES ON PRACTICAL DREAMING

(01/09/2025)

Something is waiting in the dark. And it already knows your name…


At Auchter House, a mysterious university hidden away in the Scottish Highlands, only the most arcane of subjects are studied and only excellence will do. Auchter can teach you to speak forgotten languages, walk back in time, manipulate your dreams and uncover secrets lost to hearsay and myth. It can also give you back your life.

Before Auchter Sam Sheridan was depressed, isolated and institutionalized three times before her eighteenth birthday. The university has given her everything - friends, purpose, a place that finally feels like home - and she knows that she could not live without it.


But then her best friend goes missing. And even though Sam can’t prove it she knows that her enigmatic but cutthroat supervisor is to blame. Forced into a rescue mission that will take her across continents, into the path of a mysterious hitman and in and out of dreams, Sam will discover exactly how far she will go to protect the ones she loves - and how far she can trust in her own mind.


On the other side of every dream is a nightmare. Welcome to Auchter House.


To add 'Some Advanced Notes on Practical Dreaming' to Goodreads click here.

To read the first two chapters for free, click here.


I wrote the first ever draft of Dreamers back in 2021. It took about three months to write, which I did with no outline and I think about another month to quite substantially revise. As I wrote it I was astonished by the way the story grew before my eyes. My original intention was to write a creepy but fun Dark Academia-ish romp but the story took my hand and told me that it - and I - could be so much more. It became a book about mental illness, about being 'the sick friend', about not being your best friend's best friend, about building a new life and losing it and building a life again. A book about young womanhood and relationship to authority. A book about longing for a home, about not being believed, and about how inherently grad school just fucking sucks (ironically written before my own, ultimately very traumatic, experience with grad school that led to me dropping out this spring. Am I clairvoyant? God I fucking hope not).

I was also surprised by how many people online were interested in Dreamers and in my posts about it. I'd only really joined the online writing community on Twitter and Instagram in 2020 and although I'd begun to make some lovely friends when I was writing my first book, it was as I wrote Dreamers that I met - first through their interest in the story, then through them kindly beta reading for me - the same absolute ride or die crew that I still get to very proudly call my friends and critique partners to this day.

What I'm trying to tell you is that Dreamers very quickly became more than just a book to me. So I say again: to be debuting with it is pure magic. It is one of the greatest privileges and most exciting moments of my life so far. I hope you love it or find something you need in it or at the very least just give it a chance. It so deserves one and I'll be fighting every single day for the next year or so to make sure it gets its moment, whatever that looks like at the time.


WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?

  • Existing fans of the Dark Academia genre, although it definitely leans more towards Ninth House than A Study In Drowning (if this means nothing to you, don't worry about it)
  • Fantasy readers in general, especially fans of Contemporary Fantasy (I'm looking at you, adult fans of the Raven Cycle) or who want to read more fantasy with a queer-norm world and a cast of queer characters
  • I was really influenced by Erin Morgenstern's 'A Starless Sea', as well as Lev Grossman's 'The Magician's Trilogy' and always hold Ava Reid and Sara Maria Griffin up as the gold standard for my prose so if that appeals! This is, in fact, your book!
  • Readers who are interested in some more realistic (not always pleasantly so...) mental health representation that neither makes having a mental illness look super cool and edgy OR just winds up as trauma porn
  • Readers who love a bit of humour mixed into their books. I know it sounds really serious but honestly I have never in my life been able to write a book that wasn't full of fundamentally very silly people and I am pretty certain I never will
  • Do you like Twin Peaks? Do you like random Easter Eggs to early 2000s telly? How about Buffy the Vampire slayer? slaps side of manuscript this baby can fit so many fun little references, you have NO IDEA
  • Anyone who wants to experience the romance that friends who read this book three years ago ARE STILL TEXTING ME ABOUT

WHAT TROPES ARE WE TALKING?

If you like:

  • Platonic love
  • You came/You called
  • Female rage/ 'Good for her' books
  • Grump x Grump
  • 'There's only one bed' (my personal fav)
  • Slowburn friends to lovers
  • Reluctant heroes

Then this is the book for you. I really hope people open their hearts to this book. I really hope they like it. I am so incredibly grateful to all the friends, family and very kind publishing professionals who have been such a huge source of love, support and wisdom to me as I begin one of the biggest journeys of my life and I am so grateful to you for being here too.


Thank you so much for reading. Thank you so much for being here. I can't wait to share more.

Take care of yourselves,

Clarey

P.S. This is hardly the biggest news in the entire world today but fun fact! If you are reading this newsletter you are likely getting this news VERY MUCH BEFORE the rest of the world. That will continue to be true for subscribers to the newsletter: you will always have early access to anything I do, whether that be ARC releases, pre-order incentives or more news and updates just like this. It's not a bad deal, I think!