Hi, friends!

Good news: I finished Wound Up. If you haven’t heard me yapping about it online, Wound Up is my latest adult achillean ace romance novel. Noah Wakefield is a high-strung, spreadsheet loving asexual yarn shop owner. When his new neighbors file a zoning complaint against him, he must work together with his frustrating and flirty rival yarn shop owner, Benjamin Tasch, to make the Southeast Missouri Fall Yarn Crawl happen and save his shop.

Alpha reader feedback was very positive! It’s got a long way to go, but I’d love to develop it into something worth reading, whether it nets me an agent or I summon as much executive function as I can muster and self-pub, if there are no bites.

But the title of this email is momentum, and I haven’t touched on that yet, so let’s get into it. I quit writing for seven years. I tend to keep doing what I’m doing. So once I stop, it’s hard to start again. I’m trying to keep my momentum by continuing to write, at least a little. It’s hard, because you can’t pour from an empty cup, but I know if I don’t keep writing, if I stop for any significant amount of time, I’ll end up taking another years-long hiatus, and that is NOT how you improve your craft.

So I have been working on and off on At Loose Ends, the sapphic age gap sequel to Wound Up, and A Cold and Distant Star, a complete rewrite of my shelved aroace space opera from 2017 or thereabouts. I have also been working on promoting my author brand, with middling success, on Instagram and TikTok. My Ace of Hearts giveaway just wrapped up Friday, so I’ll be mailing those out this week; ditto my Endless Sea Between Us Indie April giveaway.

I’m also trying my hand at something new: serialized short stories. Let me explain.

This weekend I was at a baby shower when it hit me that I never celebrated anything in my own life as an adult. I did not celebrate graduating high school. Or college. Or grad school. I did not celebrate writing my first novel, or my second. I did not celebrate getting my first promotion at work. I fell victim to the amatonormative, allonormative idea that as adults, marriage and babies are the only things worth celebrating. And it gave me a plot bunny: what if I told a series of short stories about a nonpartnering aroace woman who started a business throwing nontraditional, amatopunk parties for things like divorce, singlehood, passing a particularly heinous class, coming out, medical anniversaries, enforcing boundaries, or—as I say in the first installment—surviving Wednesday?

So here’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna write a minimum of 500 words a month for this particular project, which I am calling Celebration WIP. I’m gonna share them at the end of each newsletter. And if I ever wrap them up in a coherent manner, I might self-publish them also so they’re available in ebook format, not just in back issues of newsletters.

TW: My main character, Luna Ayala, is nonpartnering aroace woman who is childfree by choice, and being childfree is important to her, so this will come up. Take care of yourself and if this is a difficult subject for you or you’re not up to reading this content, that is totally fine! It will be clearly labeled and I will include specific TWs before each installment.

thank you, as always, for reading my nonsense. You’ll hear from me—and Luna, and a quirky rotating cast of supporting characters from Celebration WIP—again in June.

Celebration WIP

Part 1

TW: mild cursing, lack of enthusiasm for the nuclear family structure, including childrearing; disrespectful language

I was twenty eight years old when I realized I’d probably already had my last socially-sanctioned celebration, despite being—statistically—only a third or at worst halfway through my life. The years remaining to me stretched out ahead, and I couldn’t bear the thought of not celebrating anything just because I didn’t want to get married or have kids. The last fancy dress I’d worn was my high school prom, a full decade ago. And that would not stand.

“I just think it’s bullshit,” I blurted, because there were no such thing as inside thoughts for me. 

My sister buckled her seatbelt and raised an eyebrow. “What’s bullshit?”

“That everyone gets parties centered on traditional life events like weddings and babies and milestone marriage anniversaries, and people like me are shunted to the side after we graduate just because we don’t want a nuclear family.”

“Why do you think you deserve a party?”

“I don’t know. For being alive? For passing A&P? Because it’s Wednesday?”

“Are those really party-worthy events?”

“Uh, yes? Why wouldn’t they be?”

“I don’t know, it just seems—”

“Yeah. It seems like we only celebrate how well we perform social norms. And people who don’t contribute to that culture don’t get to celebrate shit.” 

“I just think it’s important to celebrate the things that really–”

“Matter? Hmm?” I couldn’t stop interrupting her. “And nothing matters as much as coupling off and popping out kids?”

“Why are you being like this?”

“Why aren't you being like this? Are you only okay with it because you’re married and planning on having kids? Because it doesn’t affect you?”

“You’re just doing this for attention.”

I counted to ten before I responded so I didn’t say anything rash. “Yes. I am. Because humans want attention sometimes, and if they want it, they deserve it, and we need to stop glorifying just one way to live. I think my single, child-free life is just as worth celebrating as anyone else’s.”

“So you want praise for…existing,” she said skeptically.

“No. I want praise for surviving. Life is hard. If we never celebrate surviving the hard things, what is even the point?”

“Good for you. Start a movement, I guess.” The conversation was clearly over for her. She turned up the radio, the very obvious signal that she didn’t want to talk to me anymore.

We’d just left a bridal shower, which was fine. It was fine to celebrate getting married. But I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling that what should be celebrated is the commitment to what makes you happy, not the act of subscribing to social norms. And if I was committed to myself, why didn’t that deserve celebration? I fished my phone out of my pocket, opened Canva, and started scheming.

Luna’s Adult Party Service?

No. People would hear adult and make assumptions because it was often used as a euphemism for sexual. 

Luna’s Celebrations. 

I liked it. It wasn’t just traditional parties.

I would help people recognize anything, everything—because life deserved celebrations.