Happy 2025
It's my debut year!
I’ve been waiting for 2025 since SING THE NIGHT sold in fall of 2023. Time works differently in publishing, it’s a strange, slow crawl where nothing seems quite real. I wrote the first draft of this book in 2019 and six year later, here we are. The dream is coming true.
While this is my debut year, but we aren’t in my debut season yet. Which means lots of nothing is happening on my end—except the desperate churn to finish my sequel which is a lot like going to the dentist and hearing the drill for hours at a time right now. It is a truth universally acknowledged that writing a second book is terrible.
It has been terrible for almost a year. Did I mention I wrote a 65k draft in 2024 AND THREW THE WHOLE BOOK OUT?! Still grappling with that disaster.
I’m trying very hard to break out of this slump and move back into a place of joy. Writing used to be the best part of my day and I’ve lost some of that. When was the last time it was fun to write? When did it last feel fresh and new and exciting? When did it feel the same as breathing?
The last time was probably when I had my poetry year and just churned out poems meant only for me. Which is part of the challenge: writing isn’t just for me anymore. I’m writing for consumption.
So how do I find joy in writing for the world?
I don’t know yet, but I’m working on it. I’m going to spend some time unravelling that for myself so that I can finish this book and get started on my dark fantasy secret project that is some mashup of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and THE SECRET HISTORY. Perhaps the carrot of a new project will propel me to finish this damn book.
I’m going to spend more time on substack in 2025 puzzling some of this out. If you are a person who is just interested in book updates, I’m working on alternative list for you so that I don’t annoy with writing/diary entry stuff. Stay tuned.