Newest Love Letter comin' at ya from Substack!

Finally, the MailChimp saga is over!

Happy March, y’all. I promise I love y’all more than just one love letter every three months’ worth, but I have been having issues with MailChimp for MONTHS. Every time I try to send you a love letter, I ran into a million issues. Hopefully, this will be a good solution. (If you’re getting this email, it’s because you signed up under my MailChimp account. If you’re no longer interested, that’s okay! I can remove your name from this list, just let me know :) )

Aside from all the crying and cussing trying to publish my love letters has caused, I’ve also been busy writing! And connecting with other writers! And planning a writer’s retreat for next year! (All the exclamation points!!!!) So much fun and good stuff coming, and I cannot wait to tell y’all all the details about the retreat as soon as I am able. Just know we will be hanging out at the coolest Airbnb in Ellijay and the whitetail deer will be guests as well.

For now, let me tell you about the coolest thing I’ve been doing lately: organizing a local writers’ group! So far, no quippy name, but Local Writers of Cherokee County has had three meetings, and I am basically obsessed with this idea. The first time, I met up with my friend who writes paranormal romance under the pen name Safari Spell. It was a very sweet and fun first meeting at a local coffee shop. Our next two meetings, we were joined by two more writers: Kim Patton and C.S.McKinney. Kim is gearing up to publish a book that’s part memoir, part essay, and completely wonderful. (Her Kickstarter is running until the end of March, and you can pledge here if you would like to read her book before anyone else!) Charlie writes YA romance with several titles written. It was so fun to get together with like minds and chit chat about all the weird things that writers talk about while getting a few more words added to the word count.

What a good looking group of writers!

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LISTENING/READING/WATCHING/WRITING

LISTENING:

Y’all. Get to Spotify and start listening to The Innis Forgettance. I am blessed to have so many creative and talented friends and Leah Noel is one of them. She originally wrote this story as a novel, but after sending out a hundred queries with no positive returns, she decided that this story needed to be told no matter what. She used her voice acting skills and turned The Innis Forgettance into a serialized podcast. It is such an incredible story. Leah does all the voices (except one) and when you listen, you will hear just how impressive that is.

Here’s the blurb:

According to rumors going around the haunted town of Inniscombe, 17-year-old Porter Hollis is to blame for his mother’s crying sickness.

What’s more, he’s been bewitched by the Neverseen, spirits haunting the forest who possess townsfolk’s bodies and steal their souls. Yet no one seems to know how or why the Neverseen came to afflict them.

Written and narrated by north-Georgia novelist Leah Noel, with special appearance by David Walker, The Innis Forgettance is a fiction podcast that straddles timelines set in an alternate Appalachia and faraway Celtic fort.

Travel with Porter Hollis as he sets on a journey to untangle the lies of the past, and a spell woven of darkness and fear. Will he bring about Inniscombe’s deliverance… or its end?

It is seriously so good. Catch up wherever you listen to podcasts!

READING:

I’ve been reading multiple books at a time lately, which is kind of weird for me. Most recently I finished The Simplicity of Cider and Ladies of the Lake. I think I’ve mentioned Ladies before. I started it months ago but didn’t finish until this weekend. It was funny and interesting as I don’t generally read romance where the main character is over 60 years old. I liked it though. What was more interesting to me was the relationships between the four flower-named sisters: Dahlia, Iris, Violet, and Rose. Plus, there was intrigue: mummified remains in the cellar of their grandma’s basement!

Simplicity was a pretty sweet read, and frankly, made me very thirsty for cider. (Apple Cider > Pumpkin spice any day of the week.) It’s all about Sanna, a cider-maker who is laser focused on avoiding anything other than work and her family farm, but of course, a man and his little boy interrupt her plans. When her father is injured and her brother comes to town, he disrupts her own ideas about the future, and Sanna must figure out exactly what she has room for in her life. Also, if they made a movie based on this book and if Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” isn’t playing during a certain sweet scene, I would be absolutely devastated.

WATCHING:

Oh man, have we been watching some doozies lately.

We watched a documentary called The Hatchet Wielding Hitchiker and it was a ride. It was hard to watch at times, but definitely interesting. Then we watched The Last Blockbuster, which filled me with such nostalgia for childhood.

Probably the most unusual show we’ve watched recently is Murderville. It is a weird concept, but Terry Seattle is a detective with a new celebrity detective-in-training each episode. Terry is a character, but each celebrity trainee is a real celebrity, like Conan O Brien. The celebrity guest has to solve the murder. It’s pretty funny. I don’t think I would want to watch a ton of it, but it’s a nice palate cleanser.

We finished Outer Banks. It was basically a must-watch the night the third season came out. And I was annoyed the whole time; Big John’s storyline bugged the heck out of me! There was no need to drag John B through all the hell that he went through. ANYWAY. That being said, I, of course, want nothing more than to wear oversized Hawaiian shirts and search for hidden treasures this summer. I wonder if there will be a fourth season?

Jared and I are currently a few episodes into Shadow and Bone, and I am SO. ANXIOUS. to see how it all ends. But unfortunately, we are only watching one episode a night because of the girls and the havoc that the time change has wreaked upon their bedtime. I know how it’s supposed to end because I’ve read the books up until King of Scars, but since the tv show is blending the Six of Crows duology along with the Shadow and Bone trilogy, I’m excited to see how it all comes together.

WRITING:

I am so stinkin’ pumped about what I’ve been working on! Jared and I recently went to the mountains and stayed at the airbnb that I am planning on doing the writing retreat at. (consider that sentence more conversational than grammatically correct lol) While on our adventure, we went to an antique store where I bought 8 dollars and some change worth of a stranger’s vacation photos. I’m going to use them as part of some mixed media art that I plan to include in my next collection. I used to make collages all the time and there was something very satisfying about cutting up a million little pieces and gluing them all together. Anyway, when I have something to show y’all, I will share it here first. I’ve also been working on some blackout poetry to include with that part of the collection as well. I’m excited because it is so different from what I’ve done before in terms of poetry and writing. It’s fun to experiment!

If you’ve read this far, let me know what you think about the new format! I think you may even be able to comment if you read this from the actual substack website: www.tristantuttlewrites.substack.com.

Thanks for reading along, y’all. I’ve missed all of you!

Love, Tristan

P.S. I’m still working on getting all my old love letters moved over to substack as well as making this site look pretty with my face all over it and whatnot, but bear with me. This substack, much like its author, is a work in progress.