Hello, friends!
Just one more month before The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu, my weird, romantic, ghost-y book about a perimenopausal midwife whose hands begin to glow, comes out! My author copies have arrived and, great news, pre-order links for the audiobooks, narrated by Natalie Naudus, have begun to appear! Here’s a small selection of audio links:
Spotify Books | Amazon US | Amazon CA
And, of course, there is still time for US readers to pre-order from Love’s Sweet Arrow if they’d like a signed bookplate.
As some of you may know, I got the idea for Leeann after realizing I had symptoms of perimenopause. For those of you who are currently experiencing this, I’m sure you’ve found out by now that almost everything—not just hot flashes—can be attributed to that riot of hormones: Extra anxiety? Heightened sense of smell? Itching? Brain fog? Yes, yes, and yes, and also yes with some other yeses thrown in for the stuff I left out. So why couldn’t I acquire some powers, too, I asked myself after another hot flash. Why couldn’t someone in perimenopause really glow?
Whether you’re currently dealing with it or not, I’d really love it if you’d pre-order The Glowing Life of Leeann Wu, request it from your library, talk about the book in person or on social media, or recommend it to your book clubs—anything helps!
Bookshop US | Powell's | McNally Robinson | Queen Books |Book City | Amazon US | Amazon CA | B&N | Chapters-Indigo | Books A Million | Target | Hudson Booksellers | Kobo
From the backlist… Have you read I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, my tiny book with the long title? It’s one of my favourites because I love Ben and Nat, two 30-somethings who reconnect after Ben has possibly modelled the unlikable heroine of this YA fantasy series after his former housemate and lover, Nat. Nat has returned to Vancouver after the death of her mother to help take care of her half-sister, and because, as a journalist in a time when papers are folding, she really has nowhere else to go.
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart (IATTBYH for short) is my first book with a fiction-writer main character, and I tried to make that part realistic. Ben’s not a bestseller. He has a teaching job that helps him pay the bills, and he works in what he and Nat call the murder basement (single light bulb, concrete floors, and only the shadows cast by the washing machine and dryer as company). Fun fact, I also work in a murder basement, although I wrote and published Ben’s office in IATTBYH before we bought our current place. I believe this is what the kids call “manifesting.”
IATTBYH is available as an ebook and in audio narrated by Jasmin Song.
Ebook
Bookshop | Amazon US | Apple Books | B&N | Kobo | Amazon CA | Amazon UK
Audio
Everand | B&N | Audiobooks Now
In other news… I read Llinos Cathryn Thomas’s contemporary holiday novella All is Bright, and it was so warm and wonderful. Some of you may remember that I absolutely LOVE her previous book, A Duet for Invisible Strings, a contemporary fantasy romance featuring classical musicians, creepy fairies, and all the pining. Highly recommend both.
I also read Elizabeth Davis’ Time for You, a funny, heartfelt timeslip romance about a Victorian (although he’d object to that term) Scottish MMC who gets dropped into the path (literally) of a tightly-wound modern-day ER doc. I loved it, and there is a speech in it so filled with yearning that I actually clutched my heart while reading it. Treat yourself with this one!
Take care, friends. Til next time.
xo Ruby/Opal/Mindy