The summer feels like it’s been flying by. July was hot and busy and mostly positive. I did a lot of writing, I managed to go sailing a few times, and I harvested some lovely things from the garden beds, which have gotten full to bursting.

August has some exciting things to look forward to—read on for details!

It’s release month for It Depends: An author’s practical guide to debut year! I’m so excited for this book to be out in the world, and I hope it’s a valuable resource for debut authors. (As a reminder, newsletter subscribers can read the introduction and first chapter, which is all about navigating publishing offers, for free—just scroll to the bottom of this email.)

I’m also thrilled to share the cover for The Bookbinder & the Thief! This isn’t public quite yet—it should be showing up across retailer sites in the next couple weeks. As subscribers, you get to see it first. The beautiful art is by Kelly Chong, who also did the cover for Behooved. It has so many lovely details, and I love the rich colors!

Would you like to help out with the official cover reveal on social media? Sign up here, and you’ll get graphics and some bonus content (and, of course, my gratitude)!

I started July by finishing another book, again! I received and reviewed pass pages for The Bookbinder & the Thief. It’s now back with my publishing team and out of my hands for the last time—almost on its way to readers! (ARC news soon, I think?)

Both my 2027 books are now completely done (at least, the parts that I have to do). Hurray!

After turning in pass pages, I started revising my next adult book. This was a fairly straightforward revision, but to be honest, I’m edging towards burnout from doing so much heavy revision recently, so I took it kind of slow at first—only to somehow revise the last third in a few days. It’s now headed back to my editors, and I’m happy with how it’s turning out—even more magical and fun.

Finally, I got my first edit letter for This Ruthless Day (my YA duology book 2) and will be working on revisions this month!

I’ll be celebrating the release of It Depends at Protagonist Books on Friday, August 28 at 5pm. If you’re in the Finger Lakes area, I’d love to see you there!

One thing the last year has firmly taught me is how important it is to have projects that are just for you.

I’ve been focused on writing towards publication for a long time. My books were never secret projects that I never intended to show anyone else. I knew I was writing for someone else, that someone being my future agent, editor, and audience.

But at some level, those projects were still just for me.

When I worked on those books, no one was telling me what to write—or, more importantly, what I couldn’t write. And while I was fully aware that a publisher would eventually want me to stay within a certain lane, I didn’t realize how the narrowness of said lane would impact my creative well. (Caveat that I fully understand where publishers are coming from here—this is just one of those places where creativity slams up against capitalism.)

I am someone who thrives on developing ideas. It doesn’t matter if I’ll never write them; the possibility is what’s important and fun. I collect premises for books across all genres based on little creative sparks, and this feeds my creativity in turn.

But suddenly, I was focused on developing only ideas that fit my author “brand”—brainstorming for something my publisher wouldn’t want felt like a waste of time. And because many of my ideas weren’t right for my publisher, because I was saying no to them before they had any chance to grow, my ideas shut down and stopped coming.

I hit not writing burnout, but joy burnout.

What brought the joy back was deciding to write something just for me again.

Now, it’s not really only for me—part of my motivation is sharing my words with an audience, after all. But it was “just for me” in the sense that I was the one who decided it was worth writing. I didn’t have to please a publisher. I didn’t even tell my agent about it. And saying yes again without constraint? Allowing ideas to flow without judging them? It refilled my creative well.

I’m so excited to tell you all about this project in my next newsletter edition!

I’ll leave you with a bit of a conversation from Threads about this very topic:

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

This month’s book recommendation is The Last Hour Between Worlds by Melissa Caruso. It’s actually been a couple of months since I read it, but I’m moving on to the sequel now and am eagerly awaiting the release of the trilogy finale later this year.

Melissa Caruso’s series (this is her third trilogy) are a master class in pacing and how to do a trilogy. This one in particular is a breakneck action fantasy with a sapphic subplot and some very fun world building—kind of like if Groundhog Day were set in multiple, increasingly weird layers of reality.

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