Hello!
Happy October!
Book News . . .
My latest book, Enough will be released on 7th November! It's available for preorder now, and newsletter subscribers get a 25% discount with the code ENOUGH2026.
Needless to say, I'm pretty excited that the novel is finally being published! It’s been a long time coming and I wanted to have fun and mark the occasion…
So, I went down a lovely creative rabbit-hole and put together an Enough mini zine as a gift for readers. I designed all the pages myself (hence the homemade vibe!) and used the brilliant Electric Potato Zine Maker app to put it all together, print and fold it – there's a 45 second video of the process here.
This micro-book is a tiny extract from Anna’s diary – she’s one of my favourite secondary characters in Enough – and her jottings give you a sneak peek into the world of the book. Her diary isn’t included in the novel, so this is an exclusive little extra just for subscribers.
If you’d like to view the zine online as a flipbook just click here!
If you'd like to print and fold your own copy, you can download it here:
Anna'sDiaryMiniZine.pdf
and here are the folding instructions:
How to fold your zine.png
I hope you like it, and please feel free to share with any young adults you might know!
Enough is available to preorder now at habitatpress.com and remember, you can get 25% off all preorders until 7th November using the code ENOUGH2026.
A YA dystopian thriller in which two teenagers go on the run . . . But in a world where emotions can kill, how do you fall in love?
Enough was a finalist in the Mslexia Children’s Novel Competition and longlisted for the Times / Chicken House Children’s Fiction Competition.
NB: If you’re owed a book (i.e. if you ordered a copy from Neem Tree or Unbound a couple of years ago, before they went bust) please let me know!
Green Libraries Week
October is the month of Green Libraries Week and I’ll be running a creative writing workshop for young writers (aged 16+) at the British Library. The theme is thrutopian fiction and how we can write our way towards a better future.
It’s tomorrow, Thursday 22nd October at 5pm, and tickets are free but booking is essential – all the details can be found here.
If you’re in London, I’d love to see you there.
Reading recommendation
Breathe by Sarah Crossan is a classic YA dystopia, set in a world where there are no trees and no oxygen. Everyone lives under strict governmental control in an airtight pod and our main characters wouldn’t dream of rebelling – or would they?! The narrative changes point of view with each chapter, so we get inside the heads of a ‘Premium’ (society’s elite), an ‘Auxiliary’ (the bottom rung) and a RAT (resistance fighter). It’s an action-packed story with a cross-class romance and an environmental conscience, and there’s even a sequel, Resist, that I’m looking forward to reading…
Lazy green wins #28
Here’s my favourite green win of all time: Do Nothing.
Not nothing in the sense of apathy, but nothing in the sense of not adding more.
It’s very tempting to curate an eco-conscious life, replacing what we have with bamboo tupperware and stainless-steel straws and the latest ethical garments. But the uncomfortable reality is this: most of the environmental damage tied to our daily lives doesn’t come from using the wrong version of something, it comes from how much of everything we consume in the first place. The most sustainable object is probably the one you own already (with the exception of petrol cars).
We’ve built a culture where replacing something feels like progress, even when nothing was actually wrong with the thing we discarded to begin with. And sustainability, ironically, has been folded into that same mindset.
Lauren Sproule puts it really well (read her full article here): what if the issue isn’t that we’re choosing the wrong products, but that we’ve been trained to keep choosing at all?
Do nothing. Buy nothing. Have a cup of tea and read a library book.
Do you have an object you were thinking of replacing that you might keep a bit longer? Have you repaired anything recently? I’d be really interested in your thoughts on this one!
|
|
Until next time,
Happy reading!
Laura
|
