Largely, thanks to you.

Today’s coffee break is being brought to you a little later than usual this Friday, courtesy of a WILD release week, and today’s northern Illinois snow day*. I know this is a regional thing—some of you NEVER get snow days—but we are expecting anywhere from 7-15 inches of snow over the course of the day, and up to 50 mph wind gusts. The snow is thick right now, but it looks less-than-treacherous. I think that will change by the end of the day.

*It’s not a traditional snow day anymore. We are doing e-learning. Our district is asynchronous, which is nice. My daughter is on Zoom, which is probably good for her, but definitely gives us some flashbacks to a few years ago. I will say, as an aside, that before you say anything about e-learning ruining snow days, most teachers are mindful of the fact that kids shouldn’t be sitting in front of a screen all day. The key here is that some learning does happen, and we do no need to make these up at the end of the year. And let me tell you from experience, e-learning in the winter is way more useful than emergency make-up days in the summer. Thus concludes my soapbox for the morning. Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

So, what’s in my mug on this glorious of all snowy Fridays? I’m not going out in this, and my kids are home, so you might be unsurprised to find that my Read Books and Fight the Patriarchy mug is filled with French press coffee, and jazzed up with a little soy milk and cinnamon dolce flavor syrup. It has also been microwaved three times.

Oh, and this just in, my husband has informed me that he has switched to half-caf as part of a (misguided) New Year’s Resolution. It’s fine. It’s totally fine. It just gives me more opportunities to drink more coffee to make up the difference. (Kidding. We’re in this together.)

I am feeling particularly seen these past few days, and it is entirely because of all of my beautiful ARC readers. If that’s you, then thank you.

I know Katie is frustrating. I get it. I have *feelings* about this, which I know it’s uncool for an author to have as we are expected to remain largely neutral when it comes to reader reviews and reader spaces.

But this is my space, so you are going to get those feelings today. Feel free to click out if you’d rather read my books unencumbered by my emotions.

I’ve already said it: Katie is frustrating. She’s stubborn. She’s prickly. She’s a born-and-bred New Yorker who lost both her parents at a young age and has no true friends to speak of. Sure, she had some friends when she worked at the gallery, but they encouraged her drinking and left her as soon as the drinking stopped. She got unexpectedly pregnant—which turned out to be a good thing for her—and fell in love with a man who could give her most of her wildest dreams. As a result, and completely accidentally, Brandon and their son (and later their daughter), became her whole world.

And she didn’t have a ton of time to process all of this.

For a while, that was fine. Great, even. She was happy. Until she wasn’t. And the thing about unhappiness like that is that it’s a slow boil. You’re probably familiar with the (admittedly violent) metaphor of a frog in a pot of water. You put it in a pot of water and turn up the heat. It won’t notice that the water is boiling until it’s too late because the water gets hot in such slow increments, it can’t tell.

The other problem with this type of unhappiness is that it’s frustrating for people watching it happen. By all measures, she *should* be happy. (I hate that word—should, but bear with me.) She had everything she wanted: She was able to stay home; she had a husband and two beautiful children; she had time and support for therapy appointments; she was fully supported in her sobriety. She was missing time for her art, but that happened slowly, too. It was fine when her son was very little, but when he started getting older and her daughter was born, she got busier. And little hands + paint = kids’ arts-and-craft time. Which is fun, but not the art she needs for her soul.

Then, in another slow boil, Brandon’s job became more and more demanding. He was home less often. She was, to put it bluntly, lonely.

I feel like a lot of us can relate to this, even if it’s not our life situation. (I mean, hello, that’s why I wrote this book.) I don’t have substance use issues. Aside from 3 months of summer and a few breaks, I am not a stay-at-home mom. Because my husband and I have the same job and the same schedule, I am almost never alone. But I had been feeling that slow boil of unhappiness for years. By all measure, I *should* have been happy. I loved my teaching job, I loved my family, I had a great friend group. But I was missing something.

Enter: novel writing. I have always been a writer, as I’ve said here before. But I always wanted to write a book. For a while there, I thought about writing nonfiction (I believe I said this last week), but fiction was calling to me in a way that, eventually, couldn’t be ignored.

When I found the romance reader community, I was blown away. Voracious readers who just want to find their happy place? Sign me up. And when Mac and Daniel started bubbling up in my mind, there was nowhere for them to go but onto the page.

Like Katie, I needed to figure out what change to make, and fast. I was slowly fading—or boiling, if we’re sticking to a metaphor—and COVID lockdowns and the stress that came with them accelerated that. I had a 5-year-old and a 4-month-old in March 2020, plus we were trying to figure out the remote teaching landscape. It was awful. And when we came out of that, I looked at my life and thought… This is it. This is my life. If I want to do something, I’d better do it now.

I needed to get back to my art. For Katie, that’s painting. For me, that’s writing. And the rest is history.

But I worried so much about how Katie was going to be perceived. I still do. ARC readers who sign up to help promote a book are notoriously kinder than people who spend money on it. And that’s fine! I expected some people would be frustrated by her perceived stubbornness (which is actually a fight-or-flight-or-freeze inability to respond, and who hasn’t been there?). And, frankly, a lot of people are. But they trust me and push to the end, where Katie has been through an incredible healing journey and has found not only her love for Brandon again, but her art and some really incredible friends.

By and large, though, the messages I have been getting have been overwhelmingly emotional in the best of ways. People who have been sober for a while or are newly sober and trying to figure out what that looks like for them are seeing themselves in Katie. (Thanks, again, to my friend for helping me get that right.) Mothers, whether they are primarily caregivers or they also work are telling me how real Katie’s struggles are. I have had voice memos of people crying, feeling seen and understood. I have had people tell me they already know that The Write Choice will be their favorite book of 2024. It all blows my mind.

Of course, I LOVE that you’re loving the book. I LOVE that my characters have made you feel less alone in the world. I LOVE that I got a lot of it right for you, and it’s resonating. But, most of all, these messages are helping me feel seen, too. Because Katie is me in a lot of ways, and knowing you love her—even though she’s prickly and frustrating and stubborn as hell—means you understand that piece of me, too, and that is really powerful.

The Write Choice will be out in the world on TUESDAY! You can expect another update from me then, but I promise, it’ll be short. And, then, I will likely be taking a bit of a step back from socials as I gear up to submit a draft of my next book which is finally coming along swimmingly. It’s almost as if I needed that validation from your responses to The Write Choice to open the block in my brain. Which just goes to show you, if you’re ever on the fence about messaging or emailing your an author about how much you’re loving their work, DO IT. It means so much.

I’m also happy to report that we’ve surpassed 100 Kindle pre-orders, which is AMAZING to me. I cannot believe it. Thank you for spreading the word, and for those of you who pre-ordered, thank you for spending your money on this story of mine! If you still want to pre-order, you can! I have a few signed copies available, or you can always grab a Kindle pre-order to have it delivered to your device on Tuesday. Both versions are on sale until 1/16! If you pre-order from Kindle/Amazon, be sure to fill out this form by 1/15 so I can send you a special print and some other goodies as a thank you!

And, if you’re one of my amazing ARC readers, please drop a review on Amazon! That is probably the most helpful thing you can do for authors, and I’d really appreciate it.

Let’s be honest. I’m not reading much of anything right now. I’m buried. But people have been asking me about my top 2023 reads, so now seems like a great time to share those. I feel like I need categories. Trad, indie, romance, romantasy… And I know I’m all about celebrating indies around here, but I’ve talked about all those a lot. So let’s go trad publishing for this roundup. In no particular order, here are my favorite books of 2023!

Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams (would definitely recommend the audio for this one!), Just My Type by Falon Ballard (and if you love this one, too, you’ll love my next book), and When Franny Stands Up by Eden Robins (local-to-me Chicago author! Also, not a romance but so, so, so good.)

OK, time for me to get some release day prep work done! The next time you hear from me, The Write Choice will be out in the world. I can’t wait!