Content note: I briefly discuss cancer and cancer treatment in the first bit (skip to “Straith updates!” to circumvent).

The last week has … totally kerblammoed my whole life. In good and bad ways! My therapist would tell me this is a time for low stimulation: that to manage myself I would benefit from dark, cool rooms and quiet; from clear air low in scent; from paper and pen; from solitude. She’d be right. But there’s a hell of a lot going on right about now that needs me up and active (and just in my own little life, not even to speak of the broader world). I’ll have to find that quiet in the in-between places.

Okay, first the shitty news: partner’s latest cancer update has him switching treatments and heading into chemo soon. Next the sweet news: following a solstice proposal at sunset, under a very nice tree, partner and I are exchanging rings and getting backyard hitched at the end of July, whee!! And finally, the news you’re probably here for: I’m now agented!!!

Again. All this in about a week. Happy Pride to me. Holy freaking shit.

Straith updates!

Since my last update on May 31, I said I was working on my contemporary Southern Ontario Gothic, Heliotrope; well, I haven’t made more than a few thousand words of progress on it because I was busy getting a literary agent. YEAH!

As of June 22, I'm proud to be signed with Laura Zats of Headwater Literary Management, who will be taking my mind-bendy, very bi+trans, throuple-centred Gawain remix Every Year the Summer to market one day soon.

Here are a few stats for those who, like me, are nosy about such things:

  • Started querying on February 1, 2026

  • I didn’t send out queries in coherent, planned rounds; I sent a few every few days as and when I had the energy, gave up on the book completely in March, queried with renewed vigour in April, and by end of April was just checking QueryTracker every couple of days to see if any new agents had opened to queries in my genre.

  • First offer of rep received on May 25, 2026 (107 days to first offer). I was driving in the car with my partner, his mom, and his cousin who was visiting, just having left my favourite houseplant supplier, when I got an email I fully expected to be a rejection. I nearly dropped my phone and yelled “HOLY SHIT” in front of my partner’s mother but had exactly enough restraint not to swear. I still yelled though.

  • After a wonderful call with the offering agent, I asked for three weeks to consider offers (deadline 1: June 15, 2026), which I had to extend by a week after being utterly steamrolled by a migraine-inducing week-long mandatory work retreat (deadline 2: June 22, 2026). They made us sing. It was very bad!!

  • Querying stats:

    • I sent 94 queries over 107 days

    • I got 63 rejections

    • 27 queries were closed with no response (this includes queries sent to agents who said explicitly that they would not get in contact in case of a rejection)

    • I received 10 requests:

      • 8 full requests (8 pre-offer, 2 post-offer)

      • 2 partials that both turned into rejections

    • 4 offers!!

In terms of offers, I got ludicrously lucky. Every agent who offered would have been a great fit for me in their own way. That these super kind, super astute readers all read my relatively bizarre book and found it to be relatively saleable and maybe even fun was humbling, not to mention wildly cool.

That said, I think I made my own luck to an extent by continuing to send emails (or submit on QueryManager forms, same diff). I gave up on my manuscript completely for the month of March, but fully three of the four agents who offered me representation I queried during my second wind in April/May: queries number 80, 87 and 91 out of 94 all resulted in offers. I don’t know if that’s just a chance cluster, or if my pitch had genuinely matured enough by that point that I was better able to catch the right people, or if the fervour for gay knights being gay had pitched up more by then, or what.

But yeah. I know I'm lucky. I am also really happy to be with Laura and Headwater. Laura’s vision into my manuscript and her ability to see what in it really matters to me, combined with her experience and expertise—not to mention her passion for the deeply important weirdness of the manuscript—really drew me to her. (Also, while it is not at all the most important part, and although Laura doesn’t know this because we haven’t talked about it yet, her social media is a non-zero percent pitbull by weight. Those who know me know that for me this only counts in Laura’s favour)

Now to get to work.

A recent read

The cover of Nghi Vo's novella THE EMPRESS OF SALT AND FORTUNE. There are four animals featured on the cover: along the very top of the cover, from left to right, a hoopoe, a mammoth, and a lion face a rabbit cradled in the mammoth’s trunk. Typography on the bottom half of the cover reads "THE EMPRESS OF SALT & FORTUNE, [by] Hugo Award Winner Nghi Vo", with a blurb by Seanan McGuire that reads "Gorgeous. Cruel. Perfect."

THE EMPRESS OF SALT & FORTUNE (Nghi Vo) … what can I say about this novella that hasn’t been said already, and by more coherent, less exhausted people? Well, okay: Cindy Kay’s narration of the audiobook was so good. And also: wow, WOMEN. Women. I love women they are great and I love them in this book wowwww … women. Women. Wow.

A recent watch

Against a bright white background stands the character of Sam Bell (played by Sam Rockwell), a white man with short dark hair wearing a white spacesuit. He is holding the spacesuit’s helmet under one arm and has his eyes shut, as well as a fatigued expression. Behind him, overlaid with the background, is a pattern of many fine-lined concentric circles.

My honey and I have been undertaking a space movie marathon, in an effort to help me meet my goal of watching 100 films in 2026 (so kind of my partner to oblige, right?). We're doing a mix of rewatches and new material. A standout for me that I hadn’t seen until this weekend was MOON (2009) starring Sam Rockwell; I really didn’t have any expectations going in, but I found the tight scope of this film really refreshing. I like it as a lesson in how “personal stakes” and “coziness” are not the same thing; you might imagine at first that MOON is veering cozy, but then it takes a sharp fucking turn. There might be an interesting contrast here with something like the PROJECT HAIL MARY film* (*I'm so sorry to the fandom I haven’t read the book), which instead achieves a very different effect (epic stakes w/ cozy vibe) also using a human lead + nonhuman foil … but I’d have to rewatch them together and get back to you on the details.

A recent pic

With a bright white door as a backdrop, a white person’s hand holds a small glass plant pot in which a tall begonia maculata, or polka dot begonia, is growing. The begonia, which is taller than it is wide with many long, pointed leaves, is about four or five times as tall as the pot. The green leaves have silver spots and red backs.

This weekend I gave my mom a begonia I propagated from this mother plant, which felt very in keeping with the start of summer here in the northern hemisphere. If you can believe it, when I got it in February this thing was only just a little bigger than the pot it’s still in now. It’s due for a repotting, I’d say, but that'll have to happen another week when I'm not totally bedeviled with emails, et cetera.

This has been Straith's Leaflet thing. If you'd like to see more shitposts and micro-updates from this person, check out their Bluesky. If you'd rather less talk and more plants, follow them on Instagram. Or, if you'd like to read some fiction, check out this story of theirs published in Flash Fiction Online.