If you're around my age and worried you look old and shitty, listen to me:

You are beautiful.

You survived decades of battles, and you got a few scars now. So what? The alternative to growing old is dying young. Not really what I prefer. You?

The main advantage of having gone through five decades is this:

I figured out what truly matters to me, and it's not the judgements of strangers. I couldn't care less where on the mainstream sexappeal hacking order people would place me.

If I could write a letter to my 14-year-old self, I'd tell her to give less fucks about what she believes people might think. I'd tell her that she's neither a looser nor crazy, that she's just autistic with ADHD and epilepsy. That she's not stupid. On the contrary. She'll one day get a price fellowship by one of the world's most prestigious research institutions.

And that she needs to stop worrying about stupid gender norms. Non-binary people have been a thing throughout human history and are revered in many indigenous cultures.

If you're an artist or writer — to me, they're one and the same, though most people prefer to keep them apart like liquorice and ice cream, not that I like ice cream with liquorice, I'm not a Swede - and you're trying to make a living with your art, you probably ran into the problem of creating your art AND having to market it.

Then produce more. And market more. And so on, until you feel more like a cog in a machine than a creative soul.

I spent (and continue to spend) way too much time trying to stay up to date with the latest e-commerce and digital marketing trends.

Whenever the "next big thing" pops up, the newest, awesomest social media thingy, the highest-converting newsletter template, the ultimate Meta advertising strategy, I can't help thinking...yeah, looks just like all the old shit.

Don't get me wrong. Artists still need to sell their stuff if they want to make a living. And they've done that for ages, not just since Facebook and Instagram came along.

So my newest and most awesomest strategy (feel free to borrow it) is to dilute the marketing with a boatload of art, and try out all of my crazy little ideas to see where they lead.

Like this, right here: My brandnew artsy scrapbook, aka blog, aka newsletter thing.

Finally, I have a reason for more sketching and doodling because now I can label them as "work," and even "marketing." Yay!

As I'm writing Peregrine, my main characters undergo a major transformation. So for the past 4 weeks or so, I had to figure out what Olivia and Sévère really want.

What are their desires? What are their fears? Imagine one character's ambitions collide with the other's. Voilà, there's your story!

Luckily, I figured this out before one of my Patreon patrons asked for help with their character development. So we dedicated our latest Zoom writing session to this topic.

And I had so much fun that right after, I went into joyful overdrive and made this scrapbook entry for you, with two Victorian ladies singing peepeepee poopoopoo.

Your are welcome!

I made a quiz for you. Yes. You read that right.

I'm not going to spoil it with my jabbering.

Open the sealed letter and find out what heroine you are.