Plot Girl Walk #4

Hello and welcome to Plot Girl Walk #4! 

First let’s start with the book stuff!

There’s a giveaway of Wedding Dashers going on over on Goodreads. Enter to win between now and Nov 17th! 

I’m also thrilled to announce that I’ll be doing signed preorders with my wonderful local indie, Third Place Books. You can preorder here. If you’d like your copy signed/personalized, please leave a note in the comment box at check-out.

Now for the “dear diary” stuff…

We are almost 3 months out from release….

How am I feeling about this? Well, the short, Oscar-acceptance-speech answer would be “so grateful for this opportunity to publish alongside so many authors I love and admire.” But since this is MY newsletter, here’s the longer, perhaps more vulnerable answer…

I’m overwhelmed. And not in a “so grateful” kind of way (though I very much am grateful) but more in a “some days I feel excited about the direction things are headed, and other days I feel like I’m in the metaverse, trying to dissociate from reality” kind of way. 

On any given day my headspace can go from doing cartwheels in outer space to feeling like a Sim trapped in a swimming pool with no ladder. I often feel like I’m on a never ending emotional rollercoaster, continuously swayed by the buffet of sensory catnip served up on social media. 

Which is why the closer I get to release, the more I find myself emotionally relying on my community, and the more I find myself relying on them, the more I realize just how important that community is.

Writing is a solitary endeavor. There are no fans in the stans, no coaches or teammates, no scheduled practices. It’s entirely up to you to sit down, butt in chair, fingers on keyboard and write. And yet, the farther I come on this journey the more I realize that while the act of writing itself is something I do on my own, it really truly is a team sport, and I truly couldn’t do it without the team I’ve built along the way. 

So I got to thinking…maybe the real [insert publishing thing that you want] really is the friends we made along the way….

Before I got SeRiOuS about writing, I was pretty SeRiOuS about dance. I wasn’t a “professional” dancer in the sense that I was being paid for my work, but I’ve often referred to myself as a “former professional dancer” simply because I don’t know how else to explain the period of my life when I was performing with an amateur company and training 20 hours a week. 

While I have since left my dancer life behind, I fondly remember when my community was almost entirely made up of other dancers—people I otherwise wouldn’t have ever engaged with or even met without dance. We quite literally had nothing in common except one thing: we ate, slept and breathed dance. We weren’t just passionate about dance, we were consumed.

Now I find myself in a very similar position with writing. Some of the closest people in my life are people who live all over the world whom I otherwise never have crossed paths with except for the fact that we all write kissing books and have an unhealthy obsession with men written by women.

There is nothing quite as electric as the bond between people who are consumed by the same passions and dreams (and traumas), and I feel endlessly thankful for the other writers who have been on this journey with me. Who have dropped everything to read something, or reassure me, or pull me back off the ledge. Who understand publishing. Who have spent countless hours on plot girl walks untangling a messy plot point or an unclear character arc. Who have quite frankly been my lifeline through the wins and losses of the query trenches, sub, and now debut year. You know who you are, and I love you. 

I feel entirely ill qualified to give anyone advice on….anything, really. But if I had to give any advice on the author journey, it’s to get yourself a cohort of ride-or-die friends who will be there with you every step of the way, through the joys and the heartaches. Who will let you talk about *that one situation* for the hundredth time, and like every single story on Instagram (if this is you, you a real one) 

Another thing I’ve learned is that it’s okay to have different kinds of writer friends. They don’t all have to be CPs and betas. In fact, having too many CPs and betas often makes for too many cooks in the kitchen, and it’s okay for some friends to just be hype friends, or venting friends, or doomsday friends! (personally, a big fan of doomsday friends). All kinds of friends are important and valid on this journey.

Besides, if you’re anything like me, you might be constantly worried that you’re being too much and you’ll run out of social currency (hello fellow people pleasers, see you in therapy), in which case it’s great to have several different friend groups so you can alternate who gets to be on the receiving end of today’s meltdown! So fun! So strategic!

Anyways, writing is a HARD journey, one that only appears to get harder, so building that strong network of friends who will be there through the highs and lows is just as crucial to the journey as learning how to use a comma (jk I don’t know how to use a comma). 

What I’ve been reading lately:

Recent five star reads:

Unromance by Erin Connor– deliciously tropey and sexy with PERFECT banter and charm. Everything about this book is a wink and a nod to the romance genre. 

You Between the Lines by Katie Naymon–the Gus and January prequel of my dreams….if Gus and January were poetry MFA students with a sexually fraught past and enough tense encounters to put me on a ventilator. 

Currently reading: 

For One Night Only by Jessica James: I’m about a third into this one and LOVING IT! This juicy second chance has me on the edge of my seat and the mental health rep is wonderful.

Up next: 

Passion Project by London Sperry: I’ve been reliably informed that this is INCREDIBLE (also that there’s some nipple play) and I can’t wait to dive in!

Until next time,

Heather xx