Tag Archives: publishing

December 16, 2025 · 12:07 PM

Did they have couches??

When I was in high school, I for some reason had the bright idea to write a Steampunk-ish novel called The Silk Top Hat Society. It was going to be an action/adventure with a touch of magic and mystery in which a group of old-timey people come across several magical silk top hats, each of which would give the wearer a specific otherworldly ability. I believe there was super speed, invisibility, super strength… maybe teleportation or something.

I decided to write this novel… despite not knowing a single damn thing about history other than like… George Washington did exist at one point, but he’s definitely dead now. To give people an idea, I often say, “I’m so bad at history that I can’t remember what I ate for breakfast this morning.” My “research” for this novel was various movies and TV shows I’d seen (historical accuracy unconfirmed, but definitely unlikely) as well as my best friend, Liz. This led to one of the more memorable exchanges I had with her using the relic known as AOL Instant Messenger or AIM during which I type-shouted at her, “Did they wear hats??”

I was thinking about how old-timey people often wore hats as a rule—not just the magical ones they encountered of a summer day, but like… regulation hats and bonnets that people are always wearing in things like The Crucible and Pride & Prejudice. But when did the practice of wearing hats start? When did it end? Did they wear them indoors and outdoors? Was it a hard-and-fast rule, or up to the preference of the individual? Those questions didn’t even take into account that the answers would definitely vary by country, and probably several other factors. I knew none of the answers to these questions, but I’d decided it was a good idea for me to write a novel that was set in a time period that occurred previous to “present day.”

Cut to… well… present day.

I find myself in the privileged position of not knowing what, if anything, I can share about my upcoming works. This has never happened before. I used to vomit my ideas onto this blog with abandon, sharing sample pages and intimate details of my writing process. Now that I AM GOING TO BE PUBLISHED (SPECIFICALLY IN MAY 2026), I’m pretty sure I can’t do that anymore. So I’m going to be really, really vague.

I like satire. The book that IS GOING TO BE PUBLISHED (SPECIFICALLY IN MAY 2026) is satire. So was one of the other ideas I pitched to my editor. I had one more idea for a satirical novel beyond the aforementioned two, but I knew I could never write it because it was historical in nature. That, and I was concerned people would think I was cribbing from Nimona and Shrek. I wasn’t. The similarities occurred to me only after I came up with my book idea, but who wants to deal with the headache of smugly and self-righteously saying, “There’s no such thing as an original idea anymore” over and over again? Not me!

Anyway, since I thought it was a good idea, but a touch derivative and also WAY out of my wheelhouse to write (“Did they wear hats?” haunts me to this day), I made myself accept that it was only ever going to exist as a concept in my head.

For reasons I’m pretty sure I cannot get into, things changed, and I am now writing pieces of that book. Just pieces.

And it happened again! I was writing a scene that takes place in a sitting room, and was absolutely stymied by what words to use to describe what the characters were sitting on. Which means, you guessed it, I now have to scream into Google: Did they have couches?? (I suppose I could ask Liz again, but she is very busy opening a book shop and also it just wouldn’t be the same without AIM. RIP AIM.)

NOTE TO MY SISTER: I will absolutely be bothering you about this at some point. You’re just working full time and running after a freshly-walking baby. You’re probably not busy.

When was the couch invented? The sofa? The divan? What did people sit on to eat? To relax? To pray? What were the things they sat on made out of? Did rich people have more cushions than poor people? Did they have some sort of old-timey word for couches and chairs that no one uses anymore?

What the fuck is a settee??

Needless to say, I am not well-equipped to write historical fiction or any form of fantasy novel (fantasy novels always seem to have their roots in historical time periods from the real world). This will likely be my one and only foray into the genre, and I hope I don’t flub it too badly. I also hope that if I do flub it, you will find it in your heart to forgive me.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go Google the history of couches.

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May 6, 2025 · 1:07 PM

Donald Trump is the Wrong Genre

There is a section of the Passover seder that has been circling around in my head called “Dayenu” or (read right to left) דַּיֵּנוּ‎. It translates to, “It would have been enough.” Part song, part call-and-response, a reader lists the miracles and wonders God enacted during the exodus from Egypt. After each item listed, the responders say, “Dayenu” to acknowledge that He had already provided, and they would have been grateful even if He had stopped there.

For example, “If He had taken us from Egypt, but not parted the Red Sea… Dayenu.”

It would have been enough.

I have a different version of Dayenu in my head for Donald Trump, a man I hope never to write about ever again after this.

What can I say about this orange-lacquered sack of fart vapor that hasn’t been said already? The man’s brain is a half-eaten pudding cup that has been left out in the sun for a week. And the most complimentary thing I can say about him is that, at one point, it’s possible his brain was a half-eaten pudding cup that hadn’t yet been left out in the sun.

But he never had a full pudding cup! I’m sure of that!

I’m confident he cannot now, nor could he ever, name the three branches of the U.S. government. I think, if someone wanted to, they could tell him the president is the “Execution Branch” of the government, and he would believe it. He’d probably like it! This just hit me as I was typing, and I feel such… resignation. He’d like the sound of being the “Executioner.” I’m certain of it.

I don’t know how to speak Hebrew, so I don’t know if “It should have been enough” can be translated accurately into one word. But that’s what it is.

In my head, it goes like this:

When he bragged about using his status as a celebrity to sexually assault women…

It should have been enough.

When he mocked a disabled reporter…

It should have been enough.

When he watched hundreds of thousands of Americans die from a highly contagious virus while spouting misinformation, inciting violence against Asians and Asian-Americans, and failing to provide necessary medical supplies and aid to doctors, nurses, and hospitals…

It should have been enough.

When he incited a riot on Capitol Hill…

It should have been enough.

When he was charged and convicted with 34 counts of felony document falsification…

It should have been enough.

When he claimed immigrants were eating people’s cats and dogs, once again blithely stirring up hatred and violence towards a vulnerable population…

It should have been enough.

When he watched a man sieg heil on stage two times at his inauguration, and did nothing…

It should have been enough.

When he began trafficking people to a torture prison in El Salvador, and did not stop when he was ordered to by the courts…

It should have been enough.

When he refused court orders to bring an innocent man back to his family…

It should have been enough.

When he, a man who has made full use of due process of the law time and time again, claimed there wasn’t time to give people due process…

It should have been enough.

When he was told that stores would soon have empty shelves due to tariffs, and responded by saying American children would have to make do with “two dolls instead of thirty”…

It should have been enough.

I could go on. And on. And on. That’s the problem, isn’t it? For all I’ve listed here, there are five hundred things I didn’t list. Children in cages at the border? Saying Kamala Harris “suddenly” became Black? Canada as the 51st state? Thinking “transgenic” mice were transgender??

I would be the proverbial monkey at the typewriter, banging on the keys to infinity, never able to stop because there would always be more. Except I’d never get around to accidentally producing Shakespeare’s plays because I’d be too busy listing crimes and atrocities.

Not to mention stupidities. Donald Trump regularly commits stupidities.

Any one of the things listed above should have been enough. It should have been more than goddamn enough!

This all came about because of a very real question I felt the need to ask my editor a few weeks ago. Before we got into the meat of our um… meeting… homophones are weird… I had to ask her for her opinion on including or excluding politics in the novel. Because Trump’s presidency, his existence, does not work for the Romance genre. And, if I’m being honest, it doesn’t work for reality.

If you met someone who woke up from a ten-year coma today, and listed every major point of Trump’s political career from start to finish, I bet you wouldn’t actually get to finish. I bet they’d stop you pretty quickly. You wouldn’t even be able to get to D.O.G.E. But if you did, that’s where they’d stop you for sure.

“Enough!” they’d yell. “You’re making this up. It doesn’t even sound like good fiction. It sounds like a poor attempt at parody.”

“You’re right, learned ex-coma-patient,” you would respond. “It does sound like the worst kind of parody. Now let’s get you back to bed. I probably should’ve taken your vitals before trying to catch you up on what you missed.” (You are a medical professional in this scenario.)

I mean… can you imagine what would happen if I acknowledged our current reality in the fiction I constructed? It occurred to me that the moment a character brings up Donald Trump, that would be the moment when the book becomes exclusively about Donald Trump. How could they ever talk about anything else?

So I got permission from my editor to not bring up politics. Not anchor the book in any given time period. Not mention who is president. Just not. Full stop.

Because our current president belongs in parody. In farce. In heavy-handed satire.

Like… imagine if you were watching Wall-E, and, instead of the late Fred Willard as the live-action president, you saw Donald Trump. Would you even blink? It feels like he fits there, doesn’t it? It’s so terrifying and sad and ludicrous. It’s… terrsadicrous.

I just needed to get that off my chest. I am so excited to be published and to continue going through this process, but I also feel deeply, tragically, lost. I needed to get the sadness out of me. Now I intend to focus, as much as I can, on the happy. It feels wrong to do that, I’ll admit. I feel a kind of survivor’s guilt maybe? I am (relatively) safe. I am (relatively) secure. So many others aren’t. At time of writing, Kilmar Abrego Garcia still isn’t home with his family. How dare I celebrate at a time like this? But I must. I simply must. It won’t stop me from hurting for all the people who are not safe and secure, but I feel I will truly lose my mind if I can’t also allow myself happiness.

It should have been enough, and enough, and enough. A thousand times over, it should have been enough.

Here’s an art I did of the orange fartsicle:

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March 24, 2025 · 9:25 AM

Am I Being Right or Stubborn: A Guide for Writers

I got my editorial letter! This is the second editorial letter I have received in my life, but I don’t remember if I talked about it or explained it back when Hellbound was almost close to almost being considered for publication. That version of events is too depressing to talk about anyway, so I thought I’d do a post about editorial letters that is positive and happy! But then I remembered John Green already did a great explanation of editorial letters about thirteen years ago on his YouTube channel.

(Speaking of YouTube, I have released two new videos since my last post.)

Everyone can help me thank John Green for saving me time by watching this video (don’t worry it’s short):

That being said, I wanted to explain the editorial process in broad terms real quick. You see, editing a book is an upside-down pyramid. It starts with broad strokes, big sweeping changes, and generalized feedback. Then it moves on (when your editor is satisfied that it can move on) to narrower, more focused changes.

A lot of people imagine book editing as the editor getting out their red pen (or writing utensil of choice) and marking up the manuscript. But you can’t do that for the first edit because the markup would literally coat the text of the book itself. This would inevitably lead to a mental breakdown on the part of the author, and while we authors are quite familiar with the art of the mental breakdown, healthcare professionals do discourage having more than two or three a year. It takes a while to get down to the nitty-gritty of line edits down there at the point of the pyramid.

What’s really exciting for me is that I am only familiar with the top sections of the pyramid! I can’t express how much I am looking forward to discovering parts of the publishing process that I have not been through before. The thrill of the unknown! I just know that this thing is going to start feeling 1,000% more real once we start talking cover design, and I’ll be sure to update when I can so that you, dear reader, can follow along with me.

What I want to touch on real quick is an issue I’ve run into regarding the plot of my book. Falling for the Protagonist is a satirical novel, and therefore I felt that there was a certain amount of leeway I had vis-a-vis “explaining” the supernatural elements. In my mind, because it was satire, part of the point was that the magical stuff and the [REDADCTED TO AVOID SPOILERS] were not practically explained or reasonable at all. For me, that was funny. It fit the theme of the book, which is that romance novels typically bend over backwards to accomodate their happy and just worlds. The previous statement is not said with any kind of censure on my part; I read romance novels because they provide the comforting certainty of a happy and just ending.

But then literary agents started rejecting the manuscript because “there wasn’t enough explanation” of how/why the supernatural stuff happened. At first, I scoffed in an authoritative and haughty way. (I didn’t want you to miss that great pun back there, so I went ahead and emphasized it for you. You’re welcome!)

I changed my tune recently, however, when my lovely editor mentioned that we needed to work on better explaining the “rules,” and I was finally confronted with the fact that maybe it was time to kill my darling. In this case, I had to accept that what I thought of as a perfectly acceptable and on-brand element of the novel was clearly not hitting right when other people read it. A good rule of thumb: If some part of your vision isn’t translating well to readers (Even if it makes perfect sense to you!), it shouldn’t make it to the final draft.

The problem many writers run into when encountering other people’s suggestions is that it’s sometimes hard to know when to stand your ground, and when to accept that you need to make changes. Sometimes you get a lot of feedback, and some of it is contradictory. Which do you listen to, if any? If you push back, are you doing so because you are confident in your writing and your concept? Or are you accidentally (or purposefully; no judgement) being a stubborn artiste who refuses to back down?

As with all things creative, there is no single right answer. It’s one of the most frustrating things about being creative sometimes. Other times, it’s a gift. (For example, the fact that good art can be achieved in any number of different ways is freeing for those who want to explore unusual or unexpected artistic avenues.) For me, I have recently discovered that I should probably sit up and pay attention when multiple professionals in the industry are saying the same thing. It’s hard to keep claiming I’m in the right when literally no one agrees with me. Not even my inner goddess!

I typically go through some variation of the stages of grief when I have to change something that I was willing to defend for so long, but I have trained myself to get to the Acceptance stage pretty quickly.

In short (too late, I know), you don’t have to listen to everyone’s opinion, but if you get the same advice consistently from people with the credentials to back it up, it may be time to throw in the towel.

I will conclude on an optimistic note, which is unusual for me, but apt in this moment. If you are an aspiring writer, I want you to remember this: Many literary agents rejected my book because of this issue. They didn’t see the manuscript as worth representing because they couldn’t get past this obstacle. I sure did get discouraged! Looking back on it, I’m glad those rejections happened. Because the agent who decided that this plot issue wasn’t a deal-breaker for her is clearly the person I was meant to be working with. Same goes for my editor. My manuscript wound its way through the agencies and publishing companies until it found the right people for its needs. A lot of boilerplate rejections contain language along the lines of “it wasn’t a good fit.” It’s a trite phrase, but I’d like you to consider that it is also 100% truthful. You do not want someone representing you and your work if they didn’t feel that “click” when they read your manuscript.

And, yes, I have been finding ways to work “I have an agent and/or editor” into everyday conversation as much as possible. I imagine I’ve become absolutely insufferable, but I just can’t help myself.

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