#27 - I'm Standing By the Sidelines
AKA "not to jinx myself, but i think my reading slump is over"
PROLOGUE
Happy July! I’ve just returned to the States from a family trip to Jamaica, and I’m buried deep in developmental edits for The Sinister Elite (more on that below). I would’ve sent a newsletter last week, but, honestly, in all my preparation for this trip, the first Monday in July caught me by surprise. So I hope you’ll accept my silly words on this, the second Monday in July, because I really don’t have that much to say anyway.
I read not one, not two, but THREE books while on vacation: Liar’s Kingdom by Christine Calella, Where Shadows Bloom by Catherine Bakewell, and The Mountain Crown by Karin Lowachee. My next read is To Steal From Thieves by MK Lobb, but I have so many good books on my TBR now that I seem to be out of my reading slump (for now).
My mom loves Jason Statham, and we discovered a new movie of his: The Beekeeper. We are both obsessed with it. The bee puns! The takedown of phone scams against the elderly! Emmy Raver-Lampman as a cowboy cop of an FBI Agent! Josh Hutcherson keeps saying f*ck! Check it out if you like this kind of movie, but be warned that the first 30 minutes are incredibly sad as you see the phone scam and its fatal aftermath in gruesome and heart-wrenching detail. Meanwhile, I’ve been listening to the playlist for The Sinister Elite on repeat while I do my edits, which you can find on my Spotify account!
This month is for doing my edits, seeing my friends, and accepting what I have known for months: that I move to Seattle in late August. The times, they are a’changin’!
CHAPTER 1: THE DEADLINES, THEY NEVER END
As stated above, I’m currently working on developmental edits for The Sinister Elite. I sold The Sinister Elite, my Adult dark academia debut, on proposal, which means that I wrote a sample of 78 pages and a detailed synopsis of the book, and my agent sent that out to editors. It’s coming out with Sourcebooks in 2025, but this means that, unlike So Let Them Burn, when The Sinister Elite was announced to you all, I hadn’t written it yet.
Thankfully, the first draft is finished NOW, but, whew, writing a whole book on deadline is just as hard for me as This Ends in Embers (the sequel to So Let Them Burn, which I also wrote in its entirety on deadline) was. This Ends in Embers was hard because I was self-conscious about crafting a conclusion to the duology that built on everything that came before, made sense with the plot points that had led to it, and satisfied myself if not all of my readers. The Sinister Elite was hard because it’s my debut in Adult, it’s a standalone, and it’s a very different, personal kind of story for me.
But I did it! I finished that first draft!
Since then, I’ve received some amazing notes for my developmental edits, most of them largely devoted to the vagueness of the worldbuilding. Though I pitched The Sinister Elite as a speculative thriller, in the writing it became more of a fantasy horror, and I’m blessed that my editor is allowing me to fully lean into that. I plan to rip this book open and stuff so much more haunting, dark goodness inside this academic critique-mystery, and I hope that you guys love this book as much as I do when it comes out.
For now, I’ll leave you with a new paragraph that I shared in my Instagram stories and that I hope gets to stay.
Ellory’s breath rattled out of her lungs in hitching pants. Through the hammering rain, she thought she heard a giggle, but, when she whirled around, there was no one there. The path she had walked to get here had grown darker, unfamiliar, like an elongated black tongue, slick with rainwater. Trees twisted in the gale, branches splayed like the limbs of a broken puppet. Lightning snapped across a sky the dark purple of a fresh bruise.
CHAPTER 2: 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. For July, we have…
THE LOUDEST SILENCE by Sydney Langford
Sixteen-year-old Casey Kowalski once dreamed of becoming a professional singer. Then the universe threw her a life-altering curveball—sudden, permanent, and profound hearing loss—mere months before her family's cross-country move from Portland to Miami. Soccer captain Hayden González-Rossi is facing challenges of his own. Three generations of González men have risen to stardom on the soccer field, including Hayden's older brother, who just became Inter Miami CF's hottest new recruit. Hayden knows his family expects him to follow in their footsteps, but he has a secret: all he wants is to quit the soccer team and pursue a career on Broadway. Casey and Hayden are both determined to hide who they really are. But when they cross paths at school, they end up bonding over their shared love of music and their mutual feeling that they don't quite belong, and the secrets come spilling out.
BLOOD JADE by Julia Vee and Ken Bebelle
The follow-up to Ebony Gate, the critically acclaimed debut of Vee and Bebelle's Phoenix Hoard series. Emiko Soong, newly minted Sentinel of San Francisco, just can't catch a break. Just after she becomes the guardian for a sentient city, a murder strikes close to home. Called by the city and one of the most powerful clans to investigate, she traces the killer whose scent signature bears a haunting similarity to her mother's talent. The trail will lead her back to Tokyo where the thread she pulls threatens to unravel her whole world and bring dark family secrets to light. Meanwhile, the General rises in the East and Emiko must fight the hidden enemies of his growing army who are amped up on Blood Jade, while keeping her promises to her brother Tatsuya as he prepares for his tourney.
MASQUERADE by O.O. Sangoyomi
Òdòdó's hometown of Timbuktu has been conquered by the warrior king of Yorùbáland, and living conditions for the women in her blacksmith guild, who were already shunned as social pariahs, grow even worse. Then Òdòdó is abducted. She is whisked across the Sahara to the capital city of Ṣàngótẹ̀, where she is shocked to discover that her kidnapper is none other than the vagrant who had visited her guild just days prior. But now that he is swathed in riches rather than rags, Òdòdó realizes he is not a vagrant at all; he is the warrior king, and he has chosen her to be his wife. In a sudden change of fortune, Òdòdó soars to the very heights of society. But after a lifetime of subjugation, she finds the power that saturates this world of battle and political savvy too enticing to resist.
CHAPTER 3: LOOK AT MY CAT!!!
As you may know, I adopted a shelter cat in December 2021, who I named Sora Mittens. She is the cutest little baby in all the world—everyone who meets her says so, so it must be true—and she really loves under the chin scratches, so here is her being absolutely spoiled.
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. August might be another short newsletter as I prepare for both my move and my deadline, but I have a few surprises up my literary sleeve that I just can’t wait to share with you all. Be well!
