Can I be cringe for a second?
It’s been a while, dear readers, and I do apologize. To say life got away from me would be true but not unique, as I know just about everyone is trying survive in some form or another here in 2026.
Every morning, after taking my 8yo to the bus stop, another neighborhood mom and I trade parenting stories. As we wave goodbye and walk back to our respective houses, we yell to each other, “We got this! We can do it!” Every day of the week. No matter what parenting horrors we trade. From illnesses, to school worries, to the tornado warning we huddled from earlier this week: We got this. We can do it.
The New Art of Ghosting
My essay “The New Art of Ghosting” went live today on Ruadán Books’ Thoughts from the Writers Desk series. It’s an essay that helped me process my feelings on waiting/silence in publishing, and I hope it connects with others. Is it taboo to talk about the silence? Does it sound too complain-y? Too whiny? Perhaps, though I hope not. Agents and editors are not at fault for the silence. They continue to be our greatest advocates. The issue of silence is a reflection of a much bigger systemic problem. One that, from what I’ve gathered, was/is acerbated by the pandemic.
In a nutshell, I wrote this essay as a way to reach out further, searching for more hands to clutch, to hold onto. So that we might all hold onto each other and collectively scream “this sucks!” while marching forward in spite of it.
I have three books on submission as we speak. I think the longest one book has been out without an answer is about 700 days (my agent and I have agreed this is likely no response). I am in the process of writing two more books, a novel and a novella. The show must go on.
Everyone hears from published authors and authors on submission that this is a common experience, yet we hope to be the exception. We pray to be the exception: A quick, great deal (or even better, an auction) on the first book. Alas, these deals, especially on the first try, truly are the exception. The ones we read about on Publishers Weekly or go viral on social media are not the common experience. The common experience is this. The waiting. The silence. The try and try again.
This may be cringe but I was born in ‘89, so whatever: Whenever I wallow in the waiting and am trying to get out of the mood, I think of the line Laurence Fishburne yells to the crowds of Zion in Matrix Reloaded: “We are still here!”
The Short Haul
I have been behind on reading and writing short fiction due to working on the above-mentioned projects, but I do have a couple recent Book Riot articles that provide some excellent recommendations:
Horror in the Library: 6 Horror Books To Keep You Trapped in the Stacks
New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Short Fiction to Read for Free Online
Additionally, I had another Reactor article publish about one of my favorite authors:
We are still here, dear readers and writers. For any writer out there who reads this newsletter, who is also waiting in some form another, whether they are veterans in waiting or newly-wallowing: Yes, the waiting absolutely sucks, but keep going. We are in this together. We are still here.
