There are already two newsletters out of this house — one for the public and one for the friends and family — so a third feels, on the face of it, indulgent. But every time I sit down to write The Currawong Letter I find myself cutting the bits I most want to keep. The bits that are a bit too candid. The bits that are a bit too me. The thinking-out-loud bits.
The Letter is for readers and booksellers. It is supposed to be polished, slow, considered — a small literary thing that sits comfortably next to a cup of tea. I work hard on it, and I don't want to break it. So instead I'm starting a second, scruffier thing, in a quieter corner of the site, where I can think aloud without breaking anything.
That is what Notes from the Nest is. A back room. A working desk. Not a blog — I am not going to feed it on a schedule — but a place to leave the offcuts when an offcut is worth leaving somewhere.
What you'll find here
Probably: small confessions about the Clara production, half-formed thoughts on Australian children's publishing, the occasional thing my two-year-old does — a finger on a page, a refused page, a favourite — that ends up shaping a spread. Probably: notes on the next book (Burnie the Bumbling Bumblebee, an entirely different beast). Probably: notes about why I do not have a blog and never will, even though, technically, this is one.
What you won't find: launch dates, pre-order links, promotional anything. That stuff lives on the Letter, in the trade sheet, and on Clara's page. The Nest is the editorial brain, not the marketing department.
How to read it
Notes go up whenever a note is worth writing — sometimes weekly, sometimes never. There is an RSS feed if you'd like to subscribe that way; otherwise, every note also gets a brief mention in the next monthly Letter. Nothing on the Nest is ever paywalled, and nothing on the Nest is ever cross-posted to social media. This is on purpose.
That is enough for a first note. The kettle has just clicked off.
— James