One Week Until Courtship!

…and I’ve got a thousand things to do before then, so I’m gonna make this quick.

IndieReader gave A Courtship in Quarantine a great review and rated it 4.7 out of 5 stars! That means that it’s officially IndieReader Approved and I can put stickers on the books and marketing materials. For those of you keeping track, I’m two for two, since Starlight and Cinnamon also achieved that literal stamp of approval from IndieReader. Kara Dennison says, “What starts as a lockdown-era “Shop Around the Corner” quickly turns into a story of love building strength during turbulent times. Jem Spears’s A COURTSHIP IN QUARANTINE is a romance, but it’s also a call to stand up for one’s convictions.” I’m thrilled that someone read it and understood what I was trying to do. I know you all will do the same!

You can read the full review here:

https://indiereader.com/book_review/a-courtship-in-quarantine/

I’m still waiting for my distributor to, well, distribute my book to sites that aren’t Amazon, but I’m pretty confident that’ll happen at least on its publication date of December 9. I’ll give you the link to where you can find it, but it might take a few days or even a week for your preferred bookstore to have it available. My advice is to check the link next week and cross your fingers! And also to come to my book launch at Bell, Book and Comic on December 16! Event details are further below.

Where to buy A Courtship in Quarantine:

https://books2read.com/ACourtshipinQuarantine

I also found a beautiful bookstore that focuses on indie authors called The Cozy Book Nook. It’s up in Dayton, in a gorgeous Victorian-era house, and they have local indie author events pretty regularly. Go check them out, if you’re in the area. They’ll have copies of all my books up there, and they might host a signing event for me in the near future. As always, I’ll keep you updated.

Signing Events and Where to Buy A Courtship in Quarantine

The problem with waiting until I have lots of news to share is that I wait too long and end up with too much news to share. I just encountered a similar problem with my wardrobe, where I put some clothes aside to try on when I lost weight, and when I went to try them on they were too big because I waited too long. So I guess this is a characteristic that spans every facet of my life.

Let’s start with Starlight and Cinnamon. I ran a GoodReads Giveaway for it that ended earlier in the month and sent the eight winners their signed paperback copies. Over 3,000 people entered to win a copy, so the title is on over 3,100 to-read shelves. And somehow, a stranger has already read, rated, and reviewed it.

A few Saturdays ago, I participated in an author meet-up at Mulberry St Books in Lebanon, OH. If you live in the area, you should visit them, their many books, their wall of local authors’ books, and Winnie, their spherical store calico. The event coincided with Lebanon’s Girls Night Out, and me and a dozen other local authors had tables outside to hand-sell our books to everyone out and about. Lebanon (and Ohio in general) isn’t exactly known for being queer- or poetry-friendly, but the people surprised me and bought both Starlight and Cinnamon and my poetry. Networking with my fellow authors yielded some good leads on other signing event opportunities, and I took notes from the charismatic people who seemed to sell their books effortlessly.

A Courtship in Quarantine will be available in paperback on its release date, December 9! I had to do some fancy footwork to get to this point, with one distributor inexplicably holding the title hostage and the other not allowing me to do preorders. But! You CAN preorder the kindle ebook now! And the paperback will be available through Amazon on December 9. As for finding it at other bookstores and other ebook sites and the library…that’s going to take a little longer. I said before that I suspect these distribution problems stem from companies trying to shove AI into everything and messing it all up. I stand by that theory.

Order A Courtship in Quarantine for kindle HERE! And check future newsletters from me for updated links to other places you can buy it.

If you’re on GoodReads, you can enter the giveaway to receive it as an ebook HERE!

It’s also time to share the title of book three, which comes out in March 2026. Ready?

Paper Roads.

In the two years since their break-up, Luke and Rin haven’t made any progress: not in their careers, not in their family or social lives, and certainly not in the romance department. When their well-meaning friends coordinate a “chance” meeting for them, the former couple dive in and embark on a road trip together. Between the chaotic moments of imminent car destruction, attacks by animals both wild and domesticated, getting lost in the woods, and escaping a possibly murderous eccentric, Luke and Rin explore what they got right together, what they got wrong, and what it will take to fall in love all over again.

I’m so excited for you all to read this one! And to share the cover in a few weeks. I love all my books, but Paper Roads is my favorite.

UPCOMING EVENTS

I added a new page to my website to let everyone know where to find me for signings over the next couple months. That’s HERE.

The next event is the A Courtship in Quarantine launch event, December 16, 2025 at Bell, Book & Comic in Dayton, OH, 6:30-8pm. I like having my signing during their weekly Magic the Gathering night, because when people walk into the room and my table is the first thing they see, I can ask them, “Are you here for romance or magic?” Which. Is such a romantic question. It’s very on-brand for me.

The event after that is February 7, 2026 at Half Price Books in Mason, Ohio, from 1-3pm.

And finally, the launch event for Paper Roads will be in late March. The date is pushed a few weeks after its pub day so my parents can attend while they’re here to celebrate my birthday. That one isn’t finalized yet because I have so much more to do between now and then.

Trope Map and an Interview

Sunday was in the mid-50s and windy and honestly, October 19 is too late for the season to begin. I should have been able to wear sweaters and drink my hot beverages without melting for the past month at least. But, Ohio. I should be glad I didn’t have to wait until November. The heat has made motivation difficult, which is not good when I’m still promoting one book, scrambling to finalize another for its December release, and looking ahead to the third one coming out in March.

Starlight and Cinnamon continues to surprise me. I did an interview with IndieReader—you may remember that they gave Starlight and Cinnamon 4.9 out of 5 stars and a very flattering review—and it was a lot of fun! I sound like a professional who knows what they’re doing. People will read this and maybe even think I’m cool, which is so strange, because usually when people think I’m cool, they’re just picking up on the autism that leans toward narcissism. Here, I’ll let you judge for yourself:

https://indiereader.com/2025/10/advice-from-ir-approved-author-jem-spears-you-cant-do-it-alone-you-may-want-to-you-may-wish-to-i-introvert-and-curmudgeon-that-i-am-certainly-wished-to-but-its-never-just-yo/

Amazon finally broke me, and I uploaded Starlight and Cinnamon as an ebook through them, so you can buy it for your kindle directly on Amazon now. I’m having some difficulty with my regular distributor, so I’m going to try to make it available through Amazon publishing as a paperback too, as a sort of test in case getting Courtship published goes horribly wrong. At least I’m learning how to make options for myself instead of spiraling into despair!

And finally, I present to you the Courtship trope map, HERE! This book is different from the first one in both mood and form. You’ll recognize a lot of characters, but it’s a little heavier, which feels weird to say, since the first book wasn’t one hundred percent lighthearted. Courtship also plays with form: the first half of the book is epistolary (only letters, texts, and emails): since the characters can’t be in the same physical space, their communication is similarly distant. But the moment they can actually touch, we switch to regular third-person prose, mirroring the new intimacy. Yes, I was trying to be clever, which is usually to my detriment, but I like it so I wrote it that way. If you continue to enjoy villains getting what’s coming to them and soft bisexuals finding love where they least expect it, you’re gonna love Mattie and Raph’s adventures in New Zealand.

Love and Misadventure

I’m starting to think that publishing three books three months apart was very ambitious of me. It’s a trait that Daphne and I have in common: we don’t know we could fail at whatever we attempt. Not that I’m failing! Just that, with the little experience I’ve gained so far, I already see an easier way to do it. Will that stop me from charging ahead anyway? Does it ever?

I finally figured out how to get a GoodReads author account for my pen name. It took trickery and mischief and misdirection, which is usually how we have to wrangle technology into compliance. So, good news! I set up a GoodReads Giveaway for Starlight and Cinnamon. If you have a GoodReads account and haven’t gotten a copy yet, or want to take your chances at winning a signed physical copy, hop on over here and enter the contest:

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/423311-starlight-and-cinnamon

Over 1400 people have entered and there are only eight copies available. I’d also love if you could leave a review, or even a rating, for Starlight and Cinnamon. On GoodReads, or Barnes and Noble, or wherever you buy your books.

And for A Courtship in Quarantine: the cover is complete! You can check it out on the Jem Spears website HERE. I’ll also give you a sneak peek of the back copy, so you can start getting excited about the story. Enjoy!

LOVE IS JUST A ROOM AWAY

Mattie Redgrave has no doubt that her isolation in an Auckland quarantine hotel will be the most enjoyable part of her brother’s wedding. She won’t have to see her terrible family, can catch up on all her freelance work, and can finally dive into her to-be-read pile. But when her neighbor in the adjoining room slides a letter beneath their door, Mattie can’t help getting swept up in the romance of starting a correspondence with a handsome stranger.

Raphael Callan is fully aware of the irony of finding escape in a locked room. But New Zealand should be far enough away to sidestep the pressures of his increasingly public acting career and the continued unwanted attention of his ex. When he realizes the intriguing woman he sat beside on the plane is staying in the room next door, he sees an opportunity, at last, to get to know someone without his celebrity getting in the way.

As their letters become more personal, their days in isolation dwindle. Real life presses in, and soon, they’ll have to face it. All their scandals, bad choices, bullies, and exes are waiting to test whether the romantic bubble of their courtship can withstand their neglected real-world problems in the swiftly changing world of a global pandemic.

Starlight and Cinnamon IS OUT TODAY!

Starlight and Cinnamon is Available Now!

Ahhhh! My book is out in the world! To save or destroy as it sees fit, like a baby godzilla from its nest. Thank you all for your support this entire time. I’m going to let you go enjoy it now. I wish I could say I can also take a break but lol. lmao, even.

I’ve got one more thing to ask of you: if you DO enjoy it, would you leave a review on whatever site you prefer? I mean, not like, OpenTable or Hinge...unless...no, no, I mean like Amazon or GoodReads or Barnes and Noble or Google or Yelp or maybe I don’t actually know which rating sites are for books. Use your best judgment, I have faith in you.

Here are some other links for you:

Read all the nice things Kirkus Reviews has to say about Starlight and Cinnamon here!

Order Starlight and Cinnamon here!

Come to my signing at Bell, Book & Comic on September 9 at 6:30pm. You can check out their Facebook here!

One Week until Starlight and Cinnamon!

There’s a low-level screaming in my head constantly now, and it’s different from the usual tinnitus. I think it must be the chorus of my brain cells burning as I dash between writing, reading, editing, formatting (my ever-nemesis), marketing, doing computer stuff, contacting bookstores, and trying to live a human life in these trying times. I have to what? Do laundry? Under these conditions? In addition to everything else? Surely you jest.

So this is just another quick, quick update for y’all. If you haven’t pre-ordered yet, there might still be time? Like I said, I’m not super savvy about these things so I don’t know for sure but...uh, try the links here! Or ask your local bookstore to order it for you! There’s definitely still time for that. And of course, if you like me/my work/my cats and want to see me succeed (so my cats can have a good life), spread the word about my books and ask your library to carry it.

And if you like the book when it reaches your eager hands, be on the lookout for book two in the series, A Courtship in Quarantine, coming December 9, 2025. Book three is a little farther out, March 11, 2026, but three months between books isn’t that bad! Remember when we’d have to wait entire summers for our favorite TV shows to start a new season? Unless you’re remembering streaming services, in which case, we’d have to wait several years for the next season of our favorite shows. Three months is nothing. I’ve got you.

Starlight and Cinnamon Book Signing and Encouraging Words from Kirkus Reviews!

I have so much to tell you, I’m going to get right into it:

It’s hard out here for an indie author. I haven’t made a name for myself, I don’t have much of a following (hello you, I see you and appreciate you!), my networking skills are garbage (hello to you too, autism), and I would say that technology and marketing might as well be quantum physics except I UNDERSTAND QUANTUM PHYSICS BETTER THAN I UNDERSTAND TECHNOLOGY AND MARKETING.

I keep thinking of an interview with Red Sox player David Ortiz, maybe twenty years ago, when he said, “I just want to hit the ball.” Well, I just want to write the book. But if I want people to read the book, I also have to do things I have less skill for, even with practice. So if you see a formatting error (honestly, my arch nemesis, it gets me *every* *time*) or something else that’s out of place that isn’t plot or character or mood, know that I tried my best, me alone over here, trying to figure out how to add a title page in Atticus or get IngramSpark to accept the latest upload of my manuscript or set up my business email.

But yes, marketing. Not my strong suit. That’s where Kirkus Reviews comes in. I might not have clout yet, but Kirkus Reviews has been around for almost a century, and getting an honest review from them is a major boost in letting people know that I wrote a legitimate book and not some AI slop. I will never use AI to write my books or come up with ideas, even if I’m stuck, and I’ll never use it for cover art, or for audiobooks if I ever get to make audiobooks for these novels. Why would I bother to read something that somebody couldn’t bother to write? Writing is the fun part!

I’ve derailed myself, but this was an important aside. No AI. Ever. I won’t argue about it, either. Back to the review.

Getting a Kirkus Reviews is a great way for an indie author like myself to gain a bit of respectability. And I can quote the review in my marketing materials. I’ve included the link to the review HERE because I’m just so happy with it.

If you haven’t yet, I would love for you to ask your local library to carry it. If you plan to buy it, you can pre-order basically anywhere you would normally buy your books. Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. If you want to support me even more, you can ask your local indie bookshop to order it for you. If two different people order my book from the same bookshop, the store will usually buy a couple extra copies. Y’all, this is how we trick them into buying my book, lol. Nah, no trickery here, these books will find their people.

***

In fact, perhaps they will find each other at the BOOK SIGNING I’m doing on September 9! I’m going to be at Bell, Book & Comic in Dayton, OH around 6:30pm. Super casual, just me and my books and a few friends and maybe some goodies and you can pick up a physical copy of my book and I can sign it right in front of you. Bell Book has been my comics and nerd-stuff go-to since I moved here oh so many years ago, and my spouse has been going there since before we even met. When I told our friend and proprietor Pete three years ago that I was writing a book, the first thing he said was, “Let me know when it comes out and we’ll do a signing event here.” Y’all. The book wasn’t even written yet. But this is the kind of support and community they’ve always shown and is one of the few ways I’ve felt at home here. Come to support me, and come to support my favorite comic shop.

***

I know we’ve covered a lot today, so let’s recap with some links!

Read all the nice things Kirkus Reviews has to say about Starlight and Cinnamon here!

Pre-Order Starlight and Cinnamon here! (If you can’t make it to my signing!)

Come to my book signing at Bell, Book & Comic on September 9 at 6:30pm. You can check out their Facebook here!

Starlight and Cinnamon Pre-Order Links!

I was told it would take a week or two for Starlight and Cinnamon to populate on bookstore websites, but it actually only took a few days?? So here’s where you can get it:

Ebook and Paperback, For Free!: Ask your library to order it in ebook or paperback! Even if you plan to buy a copy, the more people who ask a library to carry it, the more likely they’ll buy one (or more!).

Paperback, at your Local Indie Bookstore: Unless a book has already been marketed to death by a big-name publisher, it’s impossible to get it in indie bookstores without people asking for it! Just like with the library, the more people who ask a specific bookstore to carry Starlight and Cinnamon, the more likely they’ll be to order a few extra, and that will attract the booksellers, and that’s how we get ‘em, gang.

Ebook and Paperback, big bookstore websites: Barnes and Noble, Bookshop.org, Amazon, etc. (Amazon only had paperback available last I checked: they dislike offering ebooks that don’t originate with them).

Ebook, directly from me: I’ll be offering epub and pdf ebook files starting on publication day because, again, technology and I got some beef. You can side-load these files onto your eReader or read them in a browser, lots of options! I’m also able to offer discounts this way.

And finally, if you’d like a paperback copy directly from me, or you’d like me to sign a paperback you already got, you’ll have to catch me in the wild. If you don’t think you can catch me like that, send me an email through my Contact page, give me your name and address, and I’ll send you a signed bookplate.

I Deserve to be Cold

I know I talk about this a lot, but I really wasn’t built for any kind of warm weather. I get overheated easily and my body and brain simply stop functioning. I thought Scandinavia was the place I belonged, but I ended up visiting on the hottest day my Swedish friends had ever experienced and I nearly passed out riding my bike around Ven. I still think Scandinavia is where I belong, because that day on Ven was basically a normal Ohio day from like, April through the middle of November, and if the Swedes tell me it was a fluke, well, bye bye Ohio, and hej hej Helsingborg.

You may be asking, “But Jackii, you work indoors with air conditioning, what do you have to go out in that weather for?” HAVE to? Eh, groceries, gym, errands, etc. But I would go out a lot more if I didn’t become one with the sidewalk every time I left the house any time of day.

By the time we circled back to Copenhagen, I realized that I’d spent every day for over two weeks in the sun, but instead of burning, my skin was just a darker shade of pale, and for the first time in over twenty years, I got...FRECKLES. God, I loved those new freckles. They were proof that I could go in the sun for days at a time and not get burned! And during the hottest part of the day on that hottest day in Ven, the UV index topped out at 4. FOUR! Meanwhile, a week before Easter, in southwest Ohio, within an hour after sunrise, we’re already at 10. Ten is as high as it goes.

All this is to say that I know it only calendrically turned Summer a few weeks ago, and we’ve got another fourteen or so before it starts to cool down, but I’m already miserable. I’m currently trying to distract myself from that misery by writing the zero draft for a new book, getting preorder links for Starlight and Cinnamon, and doing edits and cover design for book 2, which comes out in December. If you’d like to stay up-to-date on the details of these endeavors, and maybe get little treats like exerpts and cover reveals early, make sure to sign up for my newsletter. I think the sign-up is at the bottom of this page but you know technology thwarts me at every turn.

Starting Over

Has it really been almost three months since I gave you all an update? Oof. Bad Jackii! If anything, I suppose it demonstrates how busy I’ve been. My debut novel is literally days away from being available for pre-order, its cover is amazing, and I have all my ducks in a row for the next two books in the series, too. In fact, there’s nothing I can do for this first series until other people get back to me, and I have no control over that.

Which means it’s time to really start on my next series. Which is difficult! Switching gears like that is so hard for me. I’ve been in a production/marketing mire for the first series for a while, and most of my time was spent figuring out HOW to do what I wanted and needed to do. All I want to do is write! Sit me at a keyboard and I’ll just go, go, go. Throw in a bunch of other stuff that I have no skill at and tell me it all needs to be done, and my neurodivergent brain just sort of bounces around in a freefall.

What didn’t help was doing a birth doula training program in May, followed by a visit to family in New England into June. Shaking things up even more. I mean, I wouldn’t have NOT done those things, and I’m happy I did, but they did create breaks in my workflow.

So to quickly catch y’all up: My first contemporary queer romance series is called International Love and Misadventure. The first book is Starlight and Cinnamon, where a love-obsessed spy and a therapist with a hero complex fall in love while trying to bring down a vile Silicon Valley techlord. We’ve got spies, a masquerade meet-cute, messy lesbians, interracial romance, and a monkey heist, and it’s sure to make the worst online people mad. It comes out September 9 of this year, and I’ll be sure to share the preorder links when they’re available. If you’re out looking for it, I released it under my pen name, Jem Spears. In the meantime, I’m hammering out the basics of my next contemporary queer romance series, and outlining and draft-blocking book 1 of that one. So you know. I’m busy.

If you want to sign up for my newsletter so you can get all of this information more frequently than a blog that’s updated maybe once every three months, you can do that at the bottom of this page, or click here.

Jem Spears website is live!

As much as I love writing poetry under my own name, a big genre shift requires a pen name that’s up to the task. You’ll find my upcoming contemporary queer romance under Jem Spears, and today, it’s all more real than it was before, because now that pen name has its very own website!

Click here to go there now!

The first book in this romance trilogy, Starlight and Cinnamon, comes out September 9, which feels both impossibly far away and also way too soon. But final edits are concluding this weekend (by hook or by crook, goddamit), the cover is almost finished, and I’ve got the next two books in the pipeline.

I’m going to be looking for you, dear reader, to help spread the word. If you can buy it, ask your local independent bookstore to get it for you, or buy directly from the links I’ll send once pre-ordering is set up. Whether you can purchase it or not, ask your local library to stock it! Tell your friends about it! Hell, tell your enemies about it, it’ll at least pique their interest and the web traffic won’t hurt.

In the meantime, I’ll be doing an exclusive cover reveal for my newsletter subscribers next month, and in June, I’ll have figured out how to send them a sneak peek at the book. I’m thinking chapter one. And of course once I’m a pro at that, I’ll send chapter two in July, chapter three in August, and then you’ll be ready to read all of it on its September publishing date! If you’re getting jealous and also want these first looks, you can sign up for my newsletter here.

So take a little tour of my new website and start getting excited! You’ll have Starlight and Cinnamon in your hands before you know it.

An Update Ten Years in the Making

When I started on this whole self-publishing thing ten years ago, it was spurred by—as usual—spite.

Spite can get you far. In my case, spite can get me anywhere.

And after spending who knows how much time and money submitting my poetry to “contests,” I finally said Fuck It I’ll Do It Myself. Took my master’s thesis, edited it one million times, started an imprint, got a website, and self-published the collection. Got the bug and published another work the next year. Fast forward eight years to two more published poetry collections and a trio of romance novels on the way, and it was finally time to update my website.

It didn’t look terrible. But it did look amateur. It had been ten years since I launched it, and my grandmother left me a little bit of money and I think she would like for me to use it toward my authoring, so...here it is!

All the content is the same, but now it looks like I’m a professional person who does professional type writer stuff. Go click on things! Check it out!

In your clicking, you’ll find lots of links to my pen name website, jemspears.com, which will be up and running in a month or two. Since I write in so many genres, I needed a separate name and place for what will be the bulk of my books: contemporary queer romance. Totally different vibes require totally different spaces, or people will get confused (It me. I will get confused).

I plan to release more poetry collections, though probably not for a few years. That’s ok. In the meantime, reread what I have out now. Then jump over to my alter ego’s site and read some romance. Follow me on social media. Send me an email. Just reach out, you know. I’ll always have something for you.

My Contemporary Queer Romance Series is Actually, Finally Getting Published!

It’s been a while. It’s been so long that maybe you’ve forgotten I’ve been over here writing away and editing away and surviving away. Maybe you thought I was doing nothing. Which is fair. Sometimes I’m just playing Assassin’s Creed or reading or catching up on shows and movies. But not this time!

I’m very happy to announce that the first book in my queer contemporary romance series, International Love and Misadventure, will be released September 9, 2025, with book two coming out December 9, 2025, and book three on March 11, 2026! And the title for book one is…

Starlight and Cinnamon.

A love-obsessed spy and a therapist with a hero complex fall for each other while working to take down a nefarious Silicon Valley tech lord.

Do you know how long it took me to condense it down to one catchy sentence like that? Longer than it took for me to write the whole damn book. Cover reveal is coming in a month or two, and I’ll share the other titles as we get closer to their pub dates, but it’s all happening!

I’ll also be revamping this website and creating a brand new one for my pen name over the coming months. Rest assured, I will send you a newsletter when that happens so you can check it out.

In some personal news, I started Zepbound in November and it went really well! For two months! Before I had a significant allergic reaction to it and my doctor said omg stop it completely immediately! In better news, I’ve been going to the gym regularly and my arms have, like, definition? To them? And I can do half a pec dance? So things are going well.

This place is a mess and Ohio is a mess and I calculated how much it would cost to move to Norway permanently and unfortunately I need another $400,000 or so to make it work. So you’re stuck with me. At least you’ll soon get to start reading the stories that have been keeping me busy for the past few years.

Finding the Path

It's been really hard to focus the past month (year? years? decade?). So much is undecided, and I've been between projects for most of 2024, waiting for certain things to happen and dealing with people health and cat health. But by New Year's Eve, I had come to a number of decisions, giving me a clear path forward for 2025.

You're hearing it here first, folks: I'll be going the indie route and self-publishing my first romance trilogy this year! The first book will come out in the last quarter of 2025, and the rest will be published in 2026. The date is still soft, since I'm hiring professionals for all the stuff I can't professionally do myself, and their timeline is my timeline. I'm very excited and have a ton of stuff planned, from revamping my website, linking it to my new, pen-name website, getting real author photos, submitting my books for review, etc. I can't wait to share the titles and covers in a few months.

Most exciting is that these books will be available at YOUR local bookstores and libraries! All you have to do is ask those bookstores and libraries to get you a copy! It's like magic!

So this is the main focus of my work right now, getting this first romance trilogy all together. But once I'm mostly finished with the final edits, my time is just large chunks of waiting for other people to finish their parts. And those large chunks of waiting are perfect for...

Starting to write my next romance series! I've hammered out a theme and I think I can get at least eight books out of it, which is wild to me, someone who always wrote but never thought they'd actually finish any novels.

Communication from me may be spotty, as you have probably surmised. I promise I'll keep you updated every time there's something exciting, or something you can help me with. In the meantime, send me good vibes, and maybe a tip via Ko-Fi to keep me well-rewarded with the little treats that get me through the day.

A Little Review, a Few Wishes

A few days ago, my husband was talking about playing board games last New Year’s Eve, and I had no memory of it. He had to remind me that of course I had no memory of it because I was visiting family out of state last year. I hadn’t forgotten that trip, or the many I took the rest of the year, it’s just that time all runs together now without any demarcations.

I visited Boston many times in 2024, Toronto, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, and finally Sweden, after years of trying to get there. I finished the final drafts of all the books in my trilogy and published two more poetry books. Years ago, my reading goal would have been over 100 books, but since I hit my goal of “1000 books in 10 years” I cut back, realizing that I could read a lot or I could write a lot but I didn’t have time to do both. So I wrote. That drops my total books read in 2024 to 20. Right now, I’m in the middle of the Lady Sherlock books and they’re all I want to read.

Our household was plagued by illness and injury—so it goes with age, I’ve heard—for both humans and felines. We lost Boone a few weeks ago, his heart failure catching up to him twenty months after his initial diagnosis. Phoebe is in the middle of an eye problem that might need surgery, if her current therapy doesn’t cut it.

A thousand other things happened and I’m too tired to review any of them. Someone online said that it feels like everyone is limping toward the finish line of 2024 and that is unfortunately accurate.

I’d wish for a better 2025 but that kind of thinking hasn’t worked in over a decade. I’ll paint my wishes in broad strokes and maybe I’ll catch their edges: with my trilogy basically finished, I want to get covers and publish them. I have a dozen ideas for what to write next but haven’t started anything substantial, so that’s a big goal. I would love to get to Scotland, preferably in October (I know it’s cold, I like the cold, have you even met me?). Will visit family again for a milestone event as long as they figure out what they want to do for it.

End of list. Just a few things, the important ones, with smaller goals sprinkled in. The past few years has taught me to not dream as big, and I hate that. So let’s add that to the list, too: learn to dream big again.

It's Halloweeeen Week!

“…All Saint’s Day Month!”

I love the fall and I love October and I love Halloween, but despite all the spookiness, the chill and chimney smells, spices and la-la-la’s of the annual Gilmore Girls rewatch, saying “It’s Halloween” will forever remind me of Community. I’m sorry, my favorite holiday, but that’s just the way it is now.

It’s been a busy month and a half. Productive? Oh no, I didn’t say that. Just lots of doctor and vet appointments, a never-ending house maintenance list, and ill cats. I redecorated my bathroom and it’s gone from “spooky” to “unsettling,” which is what I was going for. Our closet got a makeover that should be finished by tonight. I spent a whole day making burritos for the month (that’s a long story). And a hundred other things.

Maybe Sweden broke me. Maybe I went there and spent almost three weeks walking an average of 18,000 steps a day, eating amazing food, being social and spending time with friends, going on adventures and generally loving life, only to come back to the States and its…drama. I’ve never felt more crushed by the gears of capitalism than having an immediate comparison to Scandinavia, and I don’t even have a job!

But at least I got to a good point in one writing-related project: I realized that the RPG campaign I’ve been working on isn’t just a quick one-shot, and isn’t something I can make up as I go along, but is actually a huge beast of a story, and one that deserves my dedicated attention. Meaning I would have to commit to it as though it were another novel. Under certain circumstances, this wouldn’t be a problem, but doing it for fun, instead of working on something that I can sell, just isn’t a good choice right now.

I’ve been brainstorming my next series, another contemporary queer romance, and I think it has the potential to be at least eight books. An ensemble story, and every couple gets their own novel. But as Jacqueline Carey says, “Writing = Butt In Chair,” and I have to get my butt back in my chair. Day-to-day, I’m frustrated that I haven’t been able to find the block of time I need to sit down and really get into it, but when I look up and back at what I’ve done this year, I know I should be proud of what I’ve accomplished. I finished book 3 of the first series, got it all edited and read by a sensitivity reader. I literally published two poetry collections that have been sitting around for almost a decade. I traveled more than any other year, to places that have been on my list for as long as I knew they existed. It’s been a good year! I shouldn’t feel so bad about not jumping right in to a new series.

Believe it or not, I’m traveling again next week. Unsure if I’ll get any new series work done, but I’ll be sure to enjoy myself. Sometimes you just need sea air, even if it is in Maine in October.

Let's Pretend It's Fall

I don’t remember August. I know, it just happened, it was existing a few days ago, but I have little memory of it.

I came home from Scandinavia and crashed. Looking back at what I had planned for the past month, it’s clear that delusion must have struck me while carving out my schedule. Draft Block for the first book in a new contemporary queer romance was supposed to begin two weeks ago. To give you an idea of my current chaotic mental state, I’ve rescheduled it to begin in NOVEMBER. Finishing my next two poetry books is still on the calendar, but now it’s hovering around Spring of next year.

Between now and then, I plan to do a few things. A query push for my finished romance trilogy, maybe devote one day a week to that. The rest of the time (that isn’t taken over by home maintenance and improvements) is what I’m calling “Project Downtime.” New romance series book is the primary project, and when I’m not actively working on it (like when it’s set aside after the first draft, or off being beta-read or edited, etc), my focus will be on a secondary project of my choosing. This could be the homebrew Tales from the Loop campaign I’m working on, or those upcoming poetry books, or any of the several horror or fantasy novel ideas that I haven’t had time to flesh out.

It's a gentler approach than I’m used to, which I suppose I simply have to accept in my old age. Feels right, though. Coinciding with the quieting of the seasons.

In the meantime, you can always read my poems! A Year Without a Season is out now, and it’s my favorite collection of poetry so far. You can find it on Amazon in paperback and ebook. I know it’s not much, but hopefully it’s enough for now. Before you know it, we’ll be celebrating Halloween (some of us are ALREADY celebrating Halloween), then Thanksgiving, and we’re into the holidays and everything gets gummed up anyway. So don’t be too hard on yourself if you, like me, find yourself floating, if that’s what it takes not to flail.

A Year Without A Season

It’s that time again…publication day!

Some said I was mad for scheduling my next book release a day and a half after returning from Europe, but you know what? They were right. This was a terrible idea. I don’t know what I was thinking. Not about jet lag and withdrawals from lack of pastries, that’s for sure.

The good news is that there’s a shiny new book all ready for your reading pleasure. A Year Without A Season is a collection of poems from the most isolating part of the pandemic, when it was just me, cats, and nature, trying to figure stuff out. I’ve got some gems in there. Make sure to check it out!

You can find the paperback version here, and you can get the kindle ebook here. If you have time, I’d love it if you could leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever you leave reviews (maybe not, like, Hinge, or Yelp, etc).

If you want a signed copy, reach out to me through any of the social media apps below, or drop me an email via my Contact page.

Happy reading!

A Midsummer Break

Sometimes I disappear from friends and social media and life in general without any warning and with no way to know what I’m doing. But I didn’t want to do that to you this time!

I’m going to be away from all computer-related things for the next month while I track down ancestors and swim in cities’ canals and eat pastries and bask in sun that doesn’t try to kill me for simply existing outside. You might see the odd post on Instagram (my NEXT book is coming out mid-August, so I have to hype it a little before then, I think), but for the most part: disappeared.

You don’t have to be good while I’m gone. Just don’t get caught.

See you in August!

Happy Pub Day to Me!

The Fish, The Twins, The Ram is out TODAY!

Nine years is a long time to get a collection of poetry together. Even my first collection in 2015 only* took six years between my poetry thesis to (an admittedly edited) publication. But it’s ready, finally, and I’m so excited!

What can you expect with these poems? Let me tell ya…

Matriarchal bonds! Family fights! A couple dreams! And some of the saddest poems I’ve ever written. All wrapped up in mystery and astrology and inexplicable connections.

Also, the cover is so pretty. I made it all by me self!

You can order it from Amazon in paperback or ebook here. If you could leave a review at Amazon and/or Goodreads or anywhere else you’d like, I would appreciate it! And if you’d like a signed copy, message me on any of the social media below or go here to shoot me an email, and we’ll work it out!

* “only” lol