Really happy to announce that the hilarious and brilliant Natalie Naudus will be narrating The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu, which is super cool because when Natalie saw the Publishers Marketplace announcement on Instagram, she threw her hat in the ring right away. I love it when it a plan comes together!
I’m a huge fan of her audio work and her writing. You may also remember that as Victoria Mei, she narrated “Yes, And…” and as Natalie, Wild Life:
Harper Collins Canada | Apple Books | Google Books | Audible US | Kobo CA | Kobo US | Libro.fm
The Leeann Wu audiobook will be out from Spotify on November 18, the same release date as the paperback, the ebook, and the hardcover. (And yes, Spotify books are available on all audiobook retail sites.) Many thanks to Stephanie Manova and the Alcove subrights team, my editor Jess Verdi, agent Sarah E. Younger, and Hanna Silvennoinen at Spotify for making this happen.
For my 10th anniversary year look at my backlist, I’m really happy to talk about the first book in my Uptown series, Playing House.
Playing House is my sort-of fake relationship novella in which Fay and Oliver, acquaintances from urban planning circles, gaze upon historic Harlem homes together and keep getting mistaken for a real couple—so they just… go with it.
Uptown is my favourite of my book series. I used to live near Columbia University in New York City and watched the school eat up parts of western Harlem in a quest to enlarge their campus; somehow thinking about gentrification and neighbourhoods and why people live where they live or move where they move produced this book about urban planners finding love and a series that looks at Harlem in flux.
(I could say more about Columbia, but what hasn’t been said at this point?)
Speaking of favourites, I’ve recently enjoyed this post by N. K. Jemisin in which she asks why magic has to make sense, or why we think it does. I’m on a sci-fi/fantasy kick lately (…something something about our current reality) and have been avidly reading Olivia Dade’s upcoming paranormal books and Ilona Andrews’ serialized novella, The Inheritance as it comes to my mailbox.* *Meaning, it’s not done yet, so if you want the whole thing you’ll have be patient.
I’ve also been pulling together playlists for The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu and the book I’ve been working on (!!!), and I always end up putting Kishi Bashi songs on them because he’s brilliant. His latest, Kantos, is “a party album for the possible end of humanity.”
On that note (lol), take care, my friends, and remember, one way to keep the bastards from grinding you down is by partying on.
xo Ruby/Opal/Mindy