Dear friend,

Another year, another book. It’s hard to believe how much has happened over the last twelve months:

• My debut novel BLACK SALT QUEEN came out last summer. The launch party in NYC was an absolute dream. Seven months later, and it’s still hard to believe that my book is out there for anyone to read.

• I started revising the sequel, BIRD KING RISING (coming out fall 2026). The sophomore slump hit me hard. But once I got into the groove, Book 2 became one of my most rewarding projects to date. It taught me a lot about faster pacing and action scenes (neither of which were my strengths), which helped me grow as a writer.

• I celebrated my thirtieth birthday. I won’t deny that I fear aging as much as the next person. But with age comes the experience and confidence I lacked for much of the last decade. Without going into too much detail, that experience has helped me make considerable strides in my personal and professional lives.

✏️ Authorly musings:

2026 has scarcely begun, and, already, there are countless reasons to be angry and concerned. But if I narrow it down to publishing and the book community, I often find myself worrying about the notion of authorial intent and—yes—the decline in critical thinking.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Roland Barthes’ 1967 essay, La mort de l’auteur or The Death of the Author. Since publication, this essay has come to mean a lot of different things. At its core, it’s about how we interpret literature.

Barthes argues that we shouldn’t limit ourselves to the author’s biography or intentions to derive meaning from a written work. While readers can and should interpret books through a subjective lens, it’s hard to fully support this argument in an age when both reading for pleasure and critical thinking skills are on the decline.

The other day, I came across a Thread that pretty much sums up what I’ve been feeling:

Possibly unpopular opinion: if you ever want to enjoy media again you have to learn to meet the story where it's at. Yes the writer owes you a good story but that doesn't mean they owe you the exact story you personally want. You as the audience also owe the writer some understanding of the type of story they're trying to tell and some grace/trust that they're smart enough to tell it. — @author_oconnor

More and more, it feels like people are expecting books to read like something clipped from their hyper-personalized, algorithmic feed—that is to say, easy to digest, designed to provoke an immediate reaction, and tailored to their individual preferences.

Books are not content. But when it comes to both, we need to judge them on their own merits—not just how well they correspond to our worldviews and tastes.

For this to happen, authorial intent must take up more space in the conversation. What was the author trying to say? Why did they choose to convey information in this specific way? Not everyone is a professional writer, nor are we all literary critics. But it’s important, more than ever, to take some sort of critical distance. To understand the whats, hows, and whys of language. Because language shapes how we experience both stories and the world around us.

It worries me that many people aren’t doing this, not just with the books they read but also the content they consume every day. In online spaces, information manipulation and rage bait are becoming the norm. Regardless of whether we agree with the content itself, we need to ask ourselves:

Who is posting it?

How do they convey their message? Are they using misleading narrative framing or loaded language?

And, most importantly, why might they want us to think or feel a certain way?

In literature, everything is intentional. Every chapter, every sentence, and every word. The format and goals of social media content are different. But we can’t forget that content is often constructed with similar levels of care and intentionality.

Platforms influence how we interact with media and receive information. And, just like with books, we must acknowledge the hands penning the words and shaping our experiences.

Because intent is everything. And the author is, very much, alive.

💌 What I’m loving lately:

• Reading Is a Vice. This Atlantic article by Adam Kirsch has been sparking a lot of conversation lately. While I think how we read is equally as important, getting people to choose a book over a screen is the harder battle. I agree that we can’t get more people to read by simply appealing to their democratic virtues; they’ll only read more if they find it pleasurable.

• Le Comte de Monte-Cristo (2024). I enjoyed this adaptation—even more so on my rewatch this past week. It’s thoroughly entertaining and wonderfully paced. I’ve been seeing more discourse about decentering US media. As with books, I think we all benefit by expanding our horizons, shifting our perspectives, and discovering new styles of storytelling. And when it comes to good stories, global cinema has so much to offer.

🔗 Links:

• Add BLACK SALT QUEEN to your TBR on Storygraph and Goodreads.

• Order BLACK SALT QUEEN via Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and wherever books are sold!

• Add BIRD KING RISING to your TBR on Goodreads (coming out fall 2026).

All my love,

S.B.