Advice from The Bear, new gallery, new audiobook, same chaos
Creating opportunities
Do you guys watch The Bear? In season 4, I loved how Ebraheim tries to save the struggling high-class restaurant by “creating opportunities” with his more successful takeaway window. I made the tagline my motto for June and beyond. Missing a mentor, I looked at the way I do things through my producer lens—day-job skills must be useful for something—and some interesting ideas began to emerge.
More about that in the coming month \(^-^)/.
Art
On the art side of things, I am excited to welcome a new stockist to the Minu family: The Coolstore Gallery located on the stunning Waimea estuary at the popular Mapua Wharf close to Nelson.
A selection of papier-mâché sculptures and fine art prints will soon be available at the gallery.
The second limited paper mache edition is available online: Nim and the Crown. You can read all about how Nim came to have his crown on my blog.
My own online shop is still a bit empty, but a shop update is coming on July 16, leaving me just two weeks to get everything ready #scary.
Books and writing
There was a lot of running in circles with flailing arms, but after the paperback release of The House in May, you can now get The Fragments and The House at bookshop.org (every sale supports a local bookshop) and … the audiobook edition of The Fragments will be released on July 7, 2026. Yay!
Next is the illustrated and locally printed New Zealand Trade Paperback edition, once I recovered from the printer’s quote—publishing is a very expensive habit.
An amazing fan from Hamilton wrote the first 5 star review for the House on Goodreads!
More book news can be found in my June Writing Update \(^-^)/!
Renovations
Rotten trim boards have been replaced, weather-sealed, and painted just before the latest vicious storm battered Wellington. Definitely moving to indoor projects now.
In case you missed it …
… a few updates on the blog you might not have caught:
- I updated “Book Design—Trim size, margins, and typography” after I completed the book interiors for The House
- “Paper mache clay recipe using non-toxic, natural, and recycled materials” is still a favourite
- as is “Making a Positive Paper Mache Mould Using Plasticine“
Current Art Crush
Current Book Crush
Ancillary Justice by Ann Leckie. This book is as good as everybody says it is. If you like “A Memory Called Empire” by Arkady Martine or “The Murderbot Diaries” by Martha Wells, this is for you.
Have an amazing July… and I am truly thankful to everybody who follows my creative adventures and signs up to my newsletter.
I’ll see you next month!
#studiovisit #artistlife #artistinthestudio #artstudio #lifeupdate
New here? I write adult fantasy that sits somewhere between dystopia, post-apocalyptic fiction, and science fiction—complex, a little dark, unapologetically nerdy.
I’ve published two books in a trilogy called The Spheres—The Fragments (2022), The House (2025)—and am working on Book Three. If you enjoyed this post, why not sign up to my newsletter or get a free review copy?
You can follow my writing adventures on Bluesky, Instagram, Goodreads and Amazon.
