Late last year, I got into my sixth-hand little Toyota late at night, driving through freezing fog down a series of almost-empty motorways to get to my friend’s adorable witch cottage, light glowing in the front window of the narrow terrace at the end of the path.

I was there to spend a couple of days cat-sitting – my friend’s cute and skittish nutjob black moggy looks at first glance eerily similar to my own – and have some solo time creative time between seeing my usual online clients.

It’s taken me many years to recognise how much I love and need time on my own, and it’s a thing that’s hard to come by in my current relationship and way of living. My partner and I are both self-employed, and although for me that’s sometimes meant projects and contracts based in other places, the majority of it has us both working from home. Meaning alone time is in short supply, and at the moment I need more than I get. So when I get opportunities to hang out with friends’ cats in other parts of the country, you best believe I’m your gal.

And this solo adventure late last year had a mission attached: months after the publication of my debut novel, Dear Neighbour, I was in a creative existential crisis tailspin, and hoping that a few days dedicated space would help me feel a bit more reconnected to myself and my writing.

And one of the things I did while I was there – late at night, fire burning, friend’s cat watching me suspiciously – was go through the entire backlog of writing projects, drafts, fragments and ideas in the dark messy depths of my hard drive. Which might have initially been a form of procrastination or perfectionism (I’ll deffo get down to writing once everything is sorted into tidy folders and itemised in a colour-coded directory, promise) but which actually became an unexpectedly useful and generative time-travel tour through the past.

Sorting through everything gave me some perspective on my past body of work. It’s not unusual for me to get caught in a spiral of shame, insecurity and imposter syndrome about all the projects that have come to nothing, been rejected, or abandoned partway through. But doing this deep-dive and cataloguing process helped me see the themes, topics and ideas that had come up again and again over the years of my creative journey so far. And sure, there’s definitely a part of my dorky Liz Lemon soul that gets a bit turned on by spreadsheets, because come on, clarity is so soothing in our chaos-vortex world. But also because being able to see everything in one place help me dispel some of that inner critic bullshit and reconnect to a feeling of solidity in my creative identity, obsessions and style.

Another unexpected outcome: realising I had enough material in the dark corners of my digital vaults to form the foundation of the project I’m sharing with you today: my next chapbook, LOST + FOUND.

Available to pre-order from today and out in paperback next month, LOST + FOUND is a mini-collection of seven short stories and accompanying non-fiction, exclusively collected together for the first time. Exploring themes of memory, loss, nostalgia, grief, liminality and identity, it contains some of my earliest published work – going back over a decade – along with never-before-seen stories I’m sharing here for the first time. Each one is accompanied with a reflection about the context it was written in and the meaning it had at the time.

From knife-wielding, road-tripping teen queens causing cross-country mayhem to anonymous, enigmatic narrators waxing lyrical about their sex toys via stories set on school buses and in notorious council estate pubs, queer clubs, and TV newsrooms, LOST + FOUND is a cabinet of curiosities, rescuing these stories from their previous states, dusting them off and claiming, sharing and celebrating them once more.

This newsletter has several earlier incarnations, from my obsessively-kept teen diaries and Livejournal to the long letters I used to write my friends, to the blogs I’ve had at various corners of the internet over the years, until claiming this home, here and now. Which is to say: journaling and reflective non-fiction writing has long been a part of who I am. But since I’ve started building this practice of writing to you more consistently, I’ve developed a real love for and trust in this journey of sharing my creative process. And that’s why I’m including that element in LOST + FOUND, writing new material to accompany each of the short stories in it, sharing elements of my past and process that I’ve never put words to before.

I can’t wait for you to read it. If you want to, you can pre-order your copy now. And if you’re new around here, I’d recommend you grab yourself a discount bundle containing both LOST + FOUND and my first chapbook, TRUTH OR DARE.

And if you’re ever in need of a cat or house sitter, giz a shout and I’ll be there.