Hello, friends! I hope this finds you as well as can be expected. It’s already been a bruiser of a year, and we’ve just gotten started.
I’m thinking about anniversaries lately. I’ve had a few in my personal life recently, but it’s also my 10th anniversary as a published romance author, and it’ll be the year of my 10th release when The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu comes out. (My first novel, Acute Reactions, came out in March 2015. I’ll talk about it in my next newsletter.)
And today is the first birthday of my latest published book, Wild Life.
I started writing Wild Life before COVID hit. I was working on it when I first started realizing anxiety was creeping into almost all parts of my life, colouring my everyday decisions about where to walk, how to talk, and how to dress, becoming the real reason I stopped socializing. And when the pandemic broke it was almost a terrible relief to have so many of my fears appear real—I had an objective correlative.
Anxiety won for a long time. And I’m still working on a lot of these things. Obviously.
But oddly, writing about high strung Zoey and seemingly laid back Davy (whose ways of coping and masking mirrored mine in so many ways) and putting them on this quest to find Zoey’s missing slide on an island with cougars and attack geese, against a chorus of mouthy friends and relatives—well, it was a joy. Making the characters talk with each other, joke, laugh, yell, confess their deepest insecurities, accept each other… It was a revelation and it ended up reminding me that even uncertainty can bring good things and good people into your life.
After talking about this book, of course I’m giving you the buy links:
The Ripped Bodice | Meet Cute Bookshop | Queen Books | Chapters Indigo | B&N | Target | Amazon US | Amazon UK | Bookshop | Harlequin (Also, if you’re near Dog-Eared Books, in Ames, Iowa, give them a try.)
But also I’m happy to give away one print copy to a subscriber. Just write to rubymydear@gmail.com and tell me about something that makes you happy right now. (I’m on a new newsletter platform and I’m not sure if replying to this works, hence the email address. If anyone is brave enough to try, lmk.) I’ll close this giveaway on February 3, 2025. Fine print: this giveaway is not affiliated with Buttondown. Entrants must be 18+. International entries are a-ok. I’ll draw one winner at random and will need a snail mail address at that point. (But I don’t keep your addresses because that’s creepy.)
Speaking of calendars and milestones, Lunar New Year snakes its way into our lives on January 29th.
We are not the most ardent celebrators of anything around here, but for the Lunar New Year, I attempt to clean the house well beforehand, then we make dumplings, the kiddo collects red envelopes from all the relatives who’ve just finished paying her off for the December holidays. And I get a little do-over on all the resolutions and promises I made myself when January 1st came. I give myself another chance or pat myself on the back for doing okay so far. In other words, for me, Lunar New Year has always been a period to offer myself some grace, which makes it a true holiday in my book.
Love you, friends. Happy Year of the Snake.
xo Ruby/Opal/Mindy