May has been an extremely busy month—mainly for good reasons!

Most notably, we closed on a house! I am both excited and overwhelmed. There’s a lot of work ahead (help, SO much work), but I’m really looking forward to getting to know the property’s birds and plants, having an actual office with a door that closes, and planting a garden and fruit orchard. Maybe even chickens next year? (Less excited to figure out how to relocate a honeybee hive from the attic…)

I also bought a boat! I now have in my possession a 50-year-old Sunfish, which is a small sailboat designed for one person to cruise around in (you can fit a second person, just not super comfortably). I’ve been saying I want a Sunfish for… oh, the last 15 years-ish? I’m hoping to have her for many years to come and to get lots and lots of sailing time in. I have kind of been obsessed with boats my entire life, and it feels unreal to actually finally own one.

A quick housekeeping note: thank you so much to everyone who entered my UK paperback giveaway! Those copies have now been shipped out to the winners—I hope you enjoy them, winners!

The UK paperback of Behooved is now out wherever you get your books! If you’re UK-based and happen to see it in the wild, I’d love photos!

Some news for reviewers: It Depends: An author’s practical guide to debut year will be up on NetGalley the week of June 15. (If you’re not familiar with NetGalley, it’s a digital review site for advance copies.) It will only be on the site for a month, so mark your calendars if you’re interested in requesting and reviewing!

Preorders should also go live very soon (definitely by the end of this month). The ebook is currently available on Amazon, and both the ebook and paperback versions will be up across retailers shortly.

Also, This Treacherous Night has an official publication date! My YA fantasy heist is releasing May 18, 2027! We have less than a year to go until the chaos crew sets sail!

That’s about it for writing-related news this month—I have a lot of projects in the works, but they’re all currently in stages where there’s a lot happening on the back end but not much I’m allowed to talk about yet. More soon, though, including some cover reveals!

In May I completed copy edits for The Bookbinder & the Thief—the final step before it’s off to be typeset, aka turned into a real book! I’m very excited to be in the final stages with the manuscript—including getting cover drafts!

Most of my focus this month, however, was on continuing to work on This Ruthless Day (the sequel to This Treacherous Night and the conclusion to the duology). I finished the first draft in April and have been doing a round of revision to get it in shape before turning it in. I really love this series and my characters, and it’s so fun to get the payoff of some scenes I’ve been building towards for almost two entire books, but ugh, this sequel has been such a struggle. It’s been a slow slog occasionally punctuated by moments where it all clicks. I managed to hit the end of the second draft right before the end of the month and am sending it off to my editors next, which is both exciting and terrifying.

I expect to be working on revisions for my adult book 3 in June—I’m very excited for this one, which is very much a passion project! I’m also, though, hoping to maybe take a bit of a writing break? Buying a house, moving to said house, and being on deadline at the same time does take quite a lot of mental effort. I’ll see where I land with various deadlines!

I’ll be at Protagonist Books in Dryden for two free in-person events this month!

June 19th, 5-6pm: I’ll be talking about getting a book deal—bring your questions!

June 26th, 5-6:30pm: I’ll be on a panel with other local authors to discuss reading and writing queer fantasy!

I somewhat recently experienced an author first: retitling a book. Some of you expressed interest in learning how that went behind the scenes, so here’s a rundown of the process!

First, a caveat that retitling a book is super normal and common. I was very happy to get to keep my titles for both Behooved and This Treacherous Night, but I’ve always been aware that title changes are a possibility in publishing, so it’s something I wasn’t upset or shocked about.

The Bookbinder & the Thief was originally called Rebound, for reasons that will be pretty obvious when you read it.

Sometime last fall, my editor let me know that they wanted to change the title. She wasn’t particularly specific on why, but it was at least partly because there was some concern that the original title might be interpreted as a sports reference. (I personally think that no one would have thought it was a sports book, but I am also not a marketing person.) She suggested a different title; let’s call it Title A.

Title A was fine, but it followed a very popular formula and I knew there would be a lot of similarly named books. So I asked some friends for help and brainstormed a longer list of possible titles, which I then narrowed down to a list of about a dozen and sent over to my editor.

Some time passed. My editor talked to marketing again. Marketing didn’t like any of my alternates, so I agreed we could use Title A.

…and then the very next day, a friend alerted me that there was already a book with an extremely similar title—down to everything but a few letters of one word—coming out in 2026.

I let my editor know that Title A was already essentially taken, and we nixed it from the list.

A few more weeks passed. (Everything is slow in publishing.) Eventually, my editor got back to me with three titles suggested by marketing.

These titles were also fine, but none of them felt like this book. I brainstormed and sent back another, shorter list of new alternatives. More time passed. Marketing and both my editors (US and UK) discussed titles on their end.

Finally, my UK editor suggested a different title—not one from any of the previous lists—that felt like it both fit the book and hit the right points: character focused, not overly wordy, compatible vibes, and the right genre. As everyone was in favor of the title, it was declared official: the book was now The Bookbinder & the Thief!

All told, the process took just under two months—which felt like forever, but title conversations can go on much, much longer.

This was an interesting exercise in the intersection between product and art. Ultimately, a title is a marketing tool, but a good title is about more than just making readers pick up the book; it needs to set the correct expectations about the specific book, too.

Is there a craft or publishing topic you’d like me to cover? Hit reply or leave a comment!

I’ve read a lot of fantastic books in the last couple months, but I wanted to give a particular shoutout to Sangu Mandanna’s A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, which is funny and cozy and hit me right in the feels. It’s a really warm, loving contemporary romantic fantasy with a beautiful handling of grief and a charming found family. My only complaint is that I read it way too fast because I was enjoying it so much!

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