Matthew Harrington

It's been a long few months. Stress, illness, surgery, recovery... These things are not especially conducive to writing, and neither is my own tired laziness.

But today I broke a cycle, and I feel great about that. 1690 words, and that's not much, but it's some. I'll take "some" over none.

The early reviews of DEATH BECOMES HER are just so inspiring. I can't believe I've written a book that received such positive comments. Thank you to all of you (friends and strangers) who took a chance on DEATH BECOMES HER.
Go read the full reviews: www.goodreads.com/book/show/22...

"Dealing with the dead is so much easier than the living. The dead are straightforward. While we think they hold secrets, they, more than anyone else, want those secrets to be exposed, revealed. They want their stories told. The living, on the other hand, would do anything to hide their true nature and intentions, always hiding some ulterior motive." – Death Becomes Her by Ina Harrington

DEATH BECOMES HER is a paranormal murder mystery that features a mix of clean romance, occasional naughty language, and grotesque horror elements, set in an elite British University. A fast-paced story of first loves, rediscovery, and magic.

Get the first 5 chapters in the bio.

I AM SO EXCITED‼️

The book proof actually looks so good! I was sure I messed up somewhere, because nothing ever gets done the first time, but so far it's perfect.

I only wish it didn't have the stupid line in the middle!😩

🏷️
#urbanfantasy #coverreveal #murdermystery #booksky #ghosts #darkacademia

✨ COVER REVEAL ✨

Coming out 02 August 2025, but you can add it to your TBR right now:
shorturl.at/abVqF

🔮Urban Fantasy
🔮Dark Academia
🔮Paranormal Mystery
🔮Slow Burn Romance

No words this morning, but instead a few hours capturing everything I've been thinking about my world and its characters. One of my worst writing habits as a discovery writer is simply spewing out characters and concepts and then doing nothing with them, so this time I'm holding myself accountable.

Ina has poured her blood (figuratively), sweat (figuratively) and tears (literally) into this book, and it's amazing to see it all come together. If you're interested in giving it a read and sharing your feedback, go sign up for an ARC!

Another Saturday, another chapter written. But I also deleted a chapter with righteous fury. So net zero chapters, but I'm still counting it as a win.

Another chapter or so tomorrow and I'll also be down at guilt-zero from barely writing last week. Baby steps.

This weekend's writing resulted in... 500 words. No chapters there. Not great, but that's fine. If I'm going to spam Bluesky weekly with how much I'm writing, I need to own the bad weeks too.

Could I have written more? Yeah sure, but I didn't, and that's fine, sometimes the words aren't there.

And yeah, I'd post word counts but I just realised one of my draft chapters has the word 'capsaicin' accidentally pasted three times at the start because I can absolutely spell that word and didn't need Google, shut up. So let's not pretend word counts matter here.

A chapter and a half down today, and my brain is cooked - with a new apprenticeship launching this week and a ton of surrounding other work my brain is too overworked, but we're getting there.

We're now up to chapter 9, and yes, I'm using you as my writing log to hold myself accountable, fight me

7 chapters down in the new book and feeling good 😊

Only writing at the weekends is agonisingly slow, but it's definitely better for my brain - if I write before work, my focus is shot for the rest of the day, and after work I have no more spoons left.

So this is my writing now, and I like it.

Got started on Tome today, and despite a rocky start where I got buried in the usual smut and romance books that cover social media, I've found actual fantasy people and I'm actually really starting to like it now!

Scratches a different itch to Bluesky, so I'm slowly becoming a bit more social.

Why does this recipe want me to burn Gotham to the ground?

Best I can do is gesture to the world burning outside, the other bit about writing the books is on you!

...and so now I'm on Bluesky. How is your day going?

Me: "Hey I'm actually focusing a bit today and getting stuff done"

Man with a drill the floor below me:

Me: "Wait what are you-"

Man with a drill the floor below me: WRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR (Also hey this will continue for a few hours)

Thank you! It's not much, but it's been so long since I've written *properly* that it feels great to ease back into it 😊

Forgot to post at the weekend, so doing it now:

Word count over the weekend came in at ~3700 words. Rebuilding the habit one weekend at a time!

As much as I wish I could write during the week, it ruins my ability to concentrate on my day job. So I'm a weekend writer now I guess!

Authors outside of the romance genre - what are your thoughts on trope maps? (those posts that are the book cover surrounded by tropes and random snippets of information)

I know they're a thing in romance that's leaking heavily, I'm trying to see how much and whether anyone actually likes them.

So. Damn. Pretty.

Wow ok, but you didn't need to come directly at me like that

Nothing quite like losing the flow due to finally realising my mouth has been open for hours due to losing all control over the parts of my body not involved in typing, and now my throat is lined with sandpaper... 😭

YouTube video by Anti Trump 2025 Governors Ball - US Army - "Do You Hear the People Sing" Dunning Kruger Self Own by Trump

Just dropping the video here because oh my god. youtu.be/IQ1J0HCZS74

Unfortunately, it's not subtle revolt from the choir, he used the song on stage because he apparently doesn't know even the basics of the plot, but still.

I won't pretend to have all the answers. I'm out here actively developing curriculum for AI engineers on environmental sustainability and ethical development. At the same time, I'm a writer, writing is part of my identity. I get it, I really do.

But there's no such thing as friendly fire.

But what we cannot do is start witch hunts over proper (for the US at least) punctuation, especially when people who just like grammar use them correctly. We cannot walk blindly into an AI dystopia, but we also cannot bury our heads in the sand and scream until it goes away.

I get it, GenAI poses a threat to creatives, and we need to learn to coexist. I'm in a weird place seeing both sides of the line, and honestly both sides have totally valid points. It's classic technological innovation vs. societal constraints, and there's real and present risk that we do this wrong