Marion Agnew

I’m incredibly proud that Shawn Mooney, of the BookTube channel Shawn Breathes Books, included Making Up the Gods in several categories as he shared his reading highlights for 2025. His Most Unforgettable Main Character was a tie between Simone and Chen. And Shawn’s comments helped me see how their interactions help illuminate their best and worst qualities. Making Up the Gods appears again in the “most touching passage category,” and in Shawn’s best books of the year. What a humbling honour! ( Here's a link to the episode .) It’s so lovely to keep hearing from people who are getting to know Simone. The book world pays a lot of attention to book launches and that early flush of “latest greatest” publicity. But (I’m learning), books are meant to keep living beyond that short timeframe. I’m very grateful to readers who keep discovering and enjoying my books and recommending them to others. Shawn’s an avid reader, and his channel is a wealth of information about title from many eras. ...

I've mentioned UK writer Iain Robinson before ( here, in relation to notebooks ). I subscribe to his Substack, "This Party's Over," where he keeps a country diary far more extensive than the few observations I write in the morning. He's an activist and teacher besides being writing, and his posts are always thought provoking. It's interesting to see differences and similarities in nature-minded people writing nonfiction elsewhere in the world. Recently (meaning the past few months), of course, global relationships among countries are shifting. In his Country Diary #51, he laments being able to create big changes. Instead: “Going out into nature and responding to its truth feels like the only thing I can do in this troubled, broken age.” drifts Below is a version of the comment I left. I read this six weeks after he wrote it, right around the turn of the year, and I still feel this way. Sometimes I have to force myself to the page, but I need to write. It's...