The Lord of the Wood: now on Netgalley
happy The Lord of the Wood release year to all who celebrate! the book isn’t out until July 21, but I’ve spent the last two weeks working on the first round of pass pages1.
as you may have seen me say elsewhere, if you follow me on socials, this book kicked my ass. turns out it’s really hard to draft on deadline, especially when you’re used to having as long as you need for ideas to simmer before writing them, and oops! turns out this idea wasn’t quite ready to come off the stove.
I wrote the book, then rewrote the book, then had an idea that [Brazzos voice] sent the book in a whole new direction! which was definitely a great direction, but guess what that meant? that’s right. rewriting the book again.
all of that was before my editor ever touched it. just me, driving myself insane writing the same book over and over until I wasn’t totally embarrassed to let another human person look at it. only mostly embarrassed.
once my editor finally did get to see The Lord of the Wood, there were certain scenes and even arcs that I kept tinkering with, and tinkering with, and tinkering with, until eventually I had to say, “ugh, fine, good enough I GUESS.” I finally figured out what was bugging me about them just in time for copy edits2, which meant making relatively large changes for that point in the process.
as difficult as most of the process was—against a backdrop of increasing fascism from the US government that frequently had me like “why am I even doing this”—it was absolutely magical when I suddenly got to a point where I’d pulled out of the weeds and truly liked the book for the first time.
given that it’s a book about an autistic guy discovering his queerness and his disabled bisexual sister coming to terms with both of those things about herself…I feel like that’s why I’m even doing this. it’s hard to create when the rights of you and your neighbors are under attack, but in such times art is more important than ever. especially art by and about marginalized people.
request The Lord of the Wood on Netgalley
if you’re hoping to read The Lord of the Wood early, it’s now available to request on Netgalley! click here to request: link to The Lord of the Wood on Netgalley
odds & ends
recent reads
Kamilah Cole’s An Arcane Inheritance (2025), a new adult dark academia that I can’t recommend highly enough! the voice, the atmosphere, the critique of higher education, the chemistry between Ellory and Hudson, literally everything about this book was incredible
Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Bewitching (2025), an adult Gothic that follows the stories of three young women living in different decades but experiencing similar terrors. I read this book all in one sitting!
recent watches
Knives Out: Wake Up Dead Man (2025), which felt delightfully Gothic until Benoit Blanc showed up 😂 don’t get me wrong: I love Benoit Blanc, and I enjoyed the movie after he showed up, too—it just didn’t feel Gothic anymore lmao
recent listens
after having Florence + The Machine’s Everybody Scream on repeat for a while (like, well, everybody else), I’m back on the soundtrack to Cyrano (2021) (side note, at first I put “2024” and had to check myself, and now I’m having the usual crisis over a recent film being several years older than I thought)
recent birds
it’s the time of year when I start my birdlist over, so my list is filling up with common birds found in my region year round! my favorites so far are the eastern bluebirds
until next time!
pass pages are when you look for any remaining typos or other errors (or small changes you may otherwise want to make), but now the book looks like a book thanks to the magic of the design team! ↩
copy edits are when you learn you don’t know how to use hyphens or other punctuation. except actually I do know how to use other types of punctuation. hyphens however are my own personal final boss. also, you learn what words you overused that neither you nor your editor caught earlier. why are my characters constantly leaping everywhere?? ↩
