THE BIGGEST THANK YOU EVER (also some updates but mostly a thank you!!!)

Hello there friends and welcome back to You Have to Try, a free monthly newsletter where I update you on the progress of my debut novel SOME ADVANCED NOTES ON PRACTICAL DREAMING as we make our way through the year towards its publication date on 01/09/25. This is my SECOND time writing this newsletter, as the first draft fell victim to the extremely dodgy internet at my grandmother's house when I was visiting her this month but luckily I remember exactly what I led with which was a huge, enormous, mahoosive, bigger-than-you-could-ever-believe thank you to everyone who made the announcement of Dreamers so special. To say announcement day blew past my expectations would be MASSIVELY understating. I could never have dreamed of so much love or excitement or kindness from my community, who truly made it a day I'll remember forever.

Because the first ever sendout of this newsletter was a bit of a special case I just want to take a quick moment to lay out how things will go from now on. The newsletter will come out once a month, usually on the 30th or 31st, unless I have a particularly big update that you need to see sooner (early access links to pre-orders, arc info, that sort of thing). The newsletter will always include an updates section, a monthly inspirations section, and a snippet. I considered beginning every newsletter with a long ramble but let's be real here; I'm a writer on a deadline and you're reading this on your phone. Let's stick to what works.

As always; thank you SO MUCH for being here. If you're enjoying the newsletter, tell a friend! If you want to know more about Dreamers you can head to my website, or my social media. And please, please, if you're interested in helping out remember that the most helpful thing you can currently do for Dreamers is to add it on Goodreads and get your friends to do the same. If you have an account, just search the book's title and then click the green button which says 'want to read'.

And without further ado...let's do it.

WELCOME TO THE UPDATES SECTION

(This title reads very 'I didn't go to the Eras tour and I really wanted to' I fear)

• At the moment the absolute biggest thing going on with Dreamers right now is that I am absolutely up to my eyeballs in revisions (explain this if you didn't do a drafting version). I have until the end of the year to make the changes I want to so that my editor can go over Dreamers once more and so we can hit the ground running with line edits and eventual proofing in 2025. SO FAR this is looking very achievable although I will need to pull a few 5AM wakeups to get there (good thing we purchased the most enormous bottle of powdered cold brew on vacation lol).
• Speaking of vacation I was on one literally as I wrote the first draft of this. We were in the USA visiting my family for two weeks which was a very needed break from reality while also coming at sort of the worst possible time in terms of working on Dreamers. Not having time to work on revisions felt incredibly anxiety inducing, as was not being able to post regularly on my socials. I still haven't fully gotten as caught up as I'd like to yet and I really need to get back into the self promo mindset but I'm sure this will come as I spend more time at home.
• I am currently working with an absolute dream artist of mine on the plan for Dreamers' cover, which is about the most exciting thing I could possibly think of typing right now. The artist in question is not only hugely talented and such a joy to work with but said such complimentary things about Dreamers when I first contacted them about the commission that it feels like ours is truly going to be a match made in heaven. I had quite a specific vision for the cover but because I have no visual imagination I was really nervous about suggesting it but luckily my artist LOVED it and really feels like she can make it come to life. An absolute dream tbh.
• Another really big one: I am currently ironing out the details of doing as much book distribution as possible through my website instead of through an external retailer. My ebook will remain exclusively available through Kindle Unlimited and the paperback will be available worldwide through various different sources (I will put a full list on my website closer to the time) but doing as much of my own distribution as possible works out in me being far more fairly compensated for my work than I would be otherwise, as well as taking sales away from global corporations, which is no bad thing. All copies sent through my website will be signed, and will also come with some very cool goodies. This does mean I am having to re-research how I'll be printing Dreamers though! Which means another very time consuming job to add to a long list. It's a good thing, I think, that I'm such a workaholic!
• I'm not entirely sure how much I can actually say about this yet but as part of promo for Dreamers I've booked in slots to appear on several different very cool podcasts! As a huge podcast listener this is another little dream ticked off, and it's so cool to be getting to it so early!
• Aannd finally, after years of holding out I've caved and admitted it's finally time to get on Booktok, in the hope of getting the news about Dreamers out to the dark academia folks out there. If you wanted to follow along here, I'd really appreciate it!

MONTHLY INSPIRATIONS

The list of influences and inspirations that have gone into Dreamers is longer than my arm at this point. Let's check out this month's.

Music: The View Between Villages (Noah Kahan). Nothing original these days about being a new Noah Kahan fan but truly, I do not care. This song, about revisiting somewhere from your past, shares a lot of reallllyyy on the nose themes with Dreamers. Sam herself hasn't been home in five years, and the idea that once you've left home you can never really go back is a huge theme in all of my work. I also just think it's lyrically brilliant - it's got all of Kahan's trademark openness while still holding back in a way that suggests there's things deep down in there that he can't quite look at. Very haunted. Very repressed. VERY Dreamers. There's one moment where he says (and never repeats) 'I'm angry again' and then the whole vibe of the song changes. An anger you can't let yourself dwell on? This man must have been written by Clare Robertson (that's me, hi.) (For a bit of a fun extra why not have my current revisions playlist: I'll be releasing a more formal, professional chapter-by-chapter playlist closer to release date but this is what I'm currently listening to to get myself in the right frame of mind for revisions/help keep a consistent tone throughout the novel.)

Books: Terrible confession to make but while I'm actively working on a book I basically read nothing (currently two books behind on my very low Goodreads goal, do not perceive me). I just don't always have the bandwith/energy/time for someone else's narrative when I'm trying to immerse myself in my own. I have been thinking a lot though about Kelly Link's White Cat, Black Dog though, which is a huge inspiration to my prose, and rifling through it a lot. I just adore really vivid, really specific prose, like please inject it straight into my veins. It was partially reading Link last year that made me decide to get Dreamers down off the shelf and start working on it again! But that's a story for another time.

Misc: I had two options here; write a long ramble about revisiting the forests of the East Coast which are permanently imprinted on me, about my obsession with being a person from the woods, about how woods feature in Dreamers but this has already been so long so instead I'm going to tell you to watch this video of Hozier performing Francesca and think about how this is the exact dynamic of the main romance of Dreamers and about how one day you'll get to read all about them. You're welcome!

AND FINALLY, A SNIPPET

(A reminder, you can read the full first two chapters of Dreamers completely for free here)

I really want being signed up to the newsletter to feel like you're genuinely getting access that you couldn't get just by following me on social media. I can't stop sharing snippets on instagram etc. because it would be really hard to market the book without doing that. But I can share snippets that are slightly longer/ that I love but need to be cut/that need too much context to share randomly online. In this case, enjoy a longer snippet from the beginning of chapter six. The only context you really need is that in the previous chapter McCulloch, the antagonist, has just said some extremely suss things to Sam, on the basis that no one will believe her because of her history of mental illness (we hate him).

'There is a very specific kind of blindness that comes from staring into a dark mirror. Sam has sat in the great hall for so long now, staring through those great, wide windows that open right out onto the Auchter loch that she is discovering this for herself. Her peripheral vision is as clear as it ever has been. But her pupils are dazzled, transfixed. When she blinks the loch is still there. When she looks away it is frozen before her eyes.

So she does not look away. She just keeps staring at the dark water. Those still, silent depths. The loch goes, she is sure of it, all the way down to the centre of the earth. Even in the very heat of its fiery heart the waves will be as cold and as bitterly unperturbed as ever.

It is much easier to stare at the loch, an undrunk cup of tea at her elbow, and a fresh page - completely unmarked, unmarked for nearly an hour now - turned on her yellow legal pad than it is to either commit herself to her research or distract herself entirely. It has been three days since the Dreamlab but some piece of her body is still back there, back in that moment, back with McCulloch and his pale, troubling eyes. 

She wishes she could describe how distressingly un-upset his words have made her.

No one would believe you.

She is not frightened. Neither is she particularly surprised. His voice has simply sunk deep into her bones, a truth she cannot deny, or one that she has at lest been hearing for a long, long time.

You are a woman and you say the kind of things people do not want to believe in. This means you are crazy. 

You are a woman who has been called crazy. This means you can never be believed.'

And that's it from me for this month! I hope that September has been kind to you and that you enjoy the perfectly creepy AND cozy October. I'll see you all back here next month will even more updates.

Be good to yourselves,

Clare