#19 - This Newsletter Isn't Pumpkin-Flavored, But It Should Be
AKA "i am and will always be a pumpkin spice bish"
PROLOGUE
Ah, September. It’s prime apple picking time, and it’s also when people finally get on my level and realize that it’s autumn. My entire wardrobe can be described as “cozy chic”, so I’m ready to put on my sweaters and my Halloween tees, forgetting about the sweaty horror that is summer.
In August, I turned in SO LET THEM BURN 2 (more on that below), announced my SO LET THEM BURN preorder campaign (signed and personalized copies with an exclusive art print are available from Books of Wonder only!), I caught my second round of COVID, and I read a bunch of my friends’ books, including Blood Justice by Terry J. Benton-Walker, A Study in Drowning by Ava Reid, and Everyone Who Can Forgive Me is Dead by Jenny Hollander.
I’m now reading I Feed Her to the Beast and the Beast is Me by Jamison Shea, which has been terrifying me with the world of ballet even BEFORE the blood-coated demon showed up, and getting ready to revisit some of my favorite Halloween movies. As for music, is there any answer by Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR to prepare for GUTS coming out this week? Yeah, I didn’t think so.
CHAPTER 1: POP CULTURE MOMENT OF THE MONTH
Guys, I finally, FINALLY saw the freaking Barbie movie, and I am obsessed. I knew from the trailers that I would love it, but I was unprepared for just how fun, funny, cheesy, campy, heartwarming, and downright queer it is. I hope Gloria and Barbie have a long and happy life together as lesbian mothers to their daughter Sasha, along with Gloria’s pet husband. I hope we all realize that we are, indeed, Kenough, and that we all learn to feel the Kenergy. And I hope you know that Barbie comes out on streaming on September 5th, so you can watch it again and again. I know I sure will.
CHAPTER 2: WHEN THE WRITING GETS HARD, IT GETS REAL HARD
Y’all, deadline was so brutal. It completely destroyed my self-esteem. I asked so many people if I could even write that I’m sure many of them considered blocking me.
Objectively speaking, so many amazing things have happened with regards to SO LET THEM BURN that every one feelings like a blessing. Objectively speaking, I haven’t even debuted yet, and I’ve sold four books. None of that swayed me from the invariable belief that I couldn’t write. Why was I writing? I hated everything I put on the page. Every day was a fight between me and my laughing Word document. Everything seemed pointless, and my Type A formerly gifted kid ass lives in perpetual fear of disappointing someone, so you can imagine how horrified I was by the idea that I might disappoint them by not finishing OR disappoint them with the finished product. It was, quite frankly, A Time.
And now it’s over. The draft has been submitted. Now that I’ve had time to reflect on the breakdowns I had during my first time writing a whole book for deadline, I realize that all of the above was the symptom of a different problem, a common problem. Where do you find the motivation to write even when it’s hard? Even when it’s bad? Even when you’re stressed and exhausted and busy and you log on to see everyone talking about how much they hate [TROPE], the cornerstone of your WIP, or another book is announced that sounds identical to yours so what’s the point? How do you write when you feel unoriginal, untalented, unwanted in the literary sphere? How do you write when you’re no longer writing for fun, for an audience of you?
Once you make that jump from writing for fun to writing knowing that other people will be watching, reading, expecting, it changes the experience of writing. When it’s no longer you and the page, your mind becomes a blender with a fork in it, a constant screeching breakdown of is this good enough for them instead of is this good enough for me? Whether you’re on your first project for traditional publishing or your hundredth, it’s hard to accept that you’re not the person you were when you wrote for yourself and you never will be again. It’s sad, in a way, because the experience of writing a story in a vacuum is so special that you never truly appreciate it until it’s gone and you’re writing to build a career. But it’s also good because you’ve grown as a writer and evolved so much in your career that you can never write a book that way again. You’re better than needing the vacuum
I saw a tweet once that was something like every time you write a book, it’s just realizing you have no idea how to write a book. You’re a different person every time you start a new project, you’ll have a different connection to the project, and it will require a different method to get to the end. As the writer, it’s not your job to try and capture the lightning in a bottle of your first project. Why would you even want to? That’s like admitting you peaked with your first book. Instead, think of it as your job to tell the best story you can however you can every time you can.
There is an episode in Season 1 of One Tree Hill called “The Places You Have Come to Fear the Most.” In it, Lucas Scott plays his first basketball game for the school team… and he chokes. He’s only ever played for himself, for friends, in the privacy of his local court. When faced with the pressure of an audience, he gets too in his head, too insecure, and he loses his talent. But he’s not the only one doubting the thing that defines them. He catches his love interest, Peyton Sawyer, throwing her portfolio in the garbage and she explains in a speech that has always resonated with me:
I want to draw something that means something to someone. You know, I want to draw blind faith, or a fading summer, or just a moment of clarity. It's like when you go and see a really great band, live for the first time and, you know, and nobody's saying it, but everybody's thinking it: we have something to believe in again. I want to draw that feeling, but I can't. And if I can't be great at it then I don't want to ruin it. It's too important to me.
In the end, Lucas fishes Peyton’s art out of the garbage and looks at it. In the end, Lucas decides not to quit the team and turns up for the first game. In the end, Lucas doesn’t choke. He gets his spark back. Why? Because, as he tells Peyton before the game starts: “Your art matters… it’s what got me here.”
I think you see where I’m going with this.
It’s near impossible not to get in your own head about traditional publishing and sharing your work with a wider audience. As authors, we’re on the front lines. We’re blamed for poor content and delays and bad covers. We deal with one star reviews and publishing houses that buy our books and then ignore us. We suffer through racism and low advances and book bans and microaggressions. All we want to do is write our little stories, but we have to sacrifice so much of our mental health to do it—especially those of us pursuing traditional publishing. And that’s hard. It will always be hard.
But think of your favorite book from when you were a kid. That book that made you happy when you were crying. That book that inspired you to write. That book that comforted you, that got you out of bed, that pushed you to do the hard thing. It didn’t matter if it was well-written or came out later than expected or anything like that. It matters that they existed. Because those books existed, your life was changed.
And I think that’s what really keeps me going when I want to quit. Sometimes, it can be a strength that my stories aren’t for me—or, well, not just me. SO LET THEM BURN, for example, is for the Jamaican teen searching for that specific rep in the Fantasy genre and only finding a handful of books they quickly breeze through. It’s for the demisexuals who feel othered by the rare portrayals of them in Fantasy fiction. It’s for the island I wrote this book as a love letter to and it’s for my sister who I adore.
All of my stories were written for the hope that even one person out there picks up my book at a hard time in their life and feels like, in that moment, that everything is going to be okay. When I can’t write for myself, I write for you. Maybe you’ll hate my terrible books. Maybe you’ll love them. Maybe you’ll never want to see them again. Maybe they will be exactly what you need. But I want you to have the opportunity to read them, and I want myself to have the opportunity to be read. Heard. Known.
After how hard I’ve worked, alone in my vacuum, I think it’s okay to want that. And thinking back at all the stories that kept me company in my childhood, I think it’s okay to write for that reason when the writing gets hard.
If you have a story inside you, I hope you share it, despite the struggles, the breakdowns, the frustration, the pain. One day, a life might be changed because of you.
CHAPTER 3: THE REC ROOM
Welcome to the Rec Room, the section of my newsletter that I use to highlight books coming out each month I’m really excited about. A ton of my friends have books coming out this month, so for September we have a bunch…
THE BORROW A BOYFRIEND CLUB by Page Powars
A feel-good, coming-of-age rom-com from debut author Page Powars that follows a trans teen who joins a boyfriend borrowing service masquerading as an Italian Club to prove that he's one of the guys, especially to its frustratingly handsome leader.
YOUR LONELY NIGHTS ARE OVER by Adam Sass
Scream meets Clueless in this YA horror from Adam Sass in which two gay teen BFFs find their friendship tested when a serial killer starts targeting their school's Queer Club.
SHADOW COVEN by S. Isabelle
The Haunting Season has ended, but dark magic lingers in the shadows in this deadly sequel to The Witchery.
ALL THE FIGHTING PARTS by Hannah Sawyerr
In the vein of Grown and The Poet X, a searing and defiant novel in verse about reclaiming agency after a sexual assault within the church community.
ALEX WISE VS. THE END OF THE WORLD by Terry J. Benton-Walker
One 12-year-old boy leads the charge against the forces of evil as he tries to stop the Four Horsemen from taking over the world in the start to a wildly funny and addictive fantasy series about accepting yourself and finding your inner hero.
HOW TO FIND A MISSING GIRL by Victoria Wlosok
For fans of A Good Girl's Guide to Murder and Veronica Mars, this whip-smart thriller follows a sapphic detective agency as they seek the truth behind a growing trail of missing girls in small-town Louisiana.
CHAPTER 4: LOOK AT MY CAT!!!
As you may know, I adopted a shelter cat in December 2021, who I named Sora Mittens. She remains the best part of my life, so here’s a picture of her perching on my desk. I assume to protect me. From what, I do not know.
EPILOGUE
Thank you for subscribing and/or for sticking around! I hope you like rambles, shenanigans, and nonsense, because that’s truly all this is. It’s been scary season for a while for me now, but I hope you enjoy the turn from summer to autumn! If you need me, I’ll be putting up Halloween decorations.
You expressed everything true about Barbie. I am in love all over again