November Newsletter! ๐๐๐
Hi there, friends!
I hopeย November has been good to you all so far! This fall has been busier for me than any season in recent memory, and mostly in really great ways. But also in ways that make me tired and bad at stopping to reflect and/or write a newsletter. Oops! Soย I'm sitting alone in my house now, I've just eaten a bowl of "death by chocolate" ice cream, and it feels like as good a time as any to catch up with y'all about the latest happenings here!
What I'm Writing
While I haven't technically written any words in or done any other work on my debut novel, LOVE FROM SCRATCH, since this summer, I must first remind you that it exists and is less than 5 months from publication!!! It would absolutely make my day (and hopefully yours, come April 5) if you were to pre-order a copy. Pre-orders are more important now than ever with paper shortages and other ~supply chain~ issues, and also earn you my endless gratitude (which you probably already have by nature of being a newsletter subscriber aka one of my fav people but let's not split hairs)!
Now, what I've actually been writing as of late is book two, NOT HERE TO STAY FRIENDS! This is my childhood friends to lovers, reality dating show, young adult rom-com (and I expect you all to memorize all of these descriptors and be able to recite them on cue). I turned in my first round revision at the end of October, and I'm so excited about it! I think I said something to this effect in the last newsletter, but it took me so long to feel as settled in with this book as I did with Love from Scratch. By the end of working on LFS, I knew the characters, their voices, their personalities, etc, like the back of my hand, and it's jarring to go from that to a brand new draft with new fictional people (who, yes, I also invented in my head) and feel like, who are these strangers??
But now, especially after digging into the characters a little deeper in revisions, I finally feel like I know my book 2 bebes Sloane and Liam as well as LFS's Reese and Benny...or possibly even better, since book 2 is going to be DUAL POINT OF VIEW? A.k.a. you get alternating chapters with Sloane and Liam's perspectives. This is something I was scared to write, as whenever I'd sit down and try to put myself in the mindset of a teenage boy character, all I could think of was my four not-fictional teenage brothers roasting me for the rest of time if I got it wrong. And it's possible that I'm still getting it wrong, which tbh is for the best, as I do not especially want to live in my brothers' heads. But Liam is a soft, sensitive, what-teenage-Kaitlyn-wanted-to-believe-teenage-boys-were-like ideal beta male and I love him and am proud of what I've written for him so far. I'm also proud of Sloane, who has Big Middle Child Energy and snarky humor and a love of soapy teen TV dramas. Eventually I will run out of my own personality traits to give to my fictional characters but that day is not yet here.
So sometime in the nearish future, I'll get book 2 back with more revision notes, most likely smaller than the first round, and make further changes from there! In the meantime, still tinkering with a not-under-contract potential book 3 project that I'm entirely too insecure to talk more about yet. But we're having fun!!!
Have you seen the final cover of Love from Scratch yet, featuring a blurb from the amazing Jenna Evans Welch??? Well, now you have! Sweet and satisfying and looking very book-y!
What I'm Reading
A coupleย of my recent favorite reads:
THE LAYOVER by Lacie Waldonย - I can't remember who I saw rec this romance on Twitter as a great read for fans of one of my all-time favs, The Hating Game, but THEY WERE RIGHT. So many books get comped to THG just for using enemies-to-lovers but this one actually felt like if THG's Lucy and Josh were flight attendants stuck in Belize together. Read it in a day, loved it so much! Check it out here.
OUR WAY BACK TO ALWAYS by Nina Moreno - an absolutely stunning YA romance with two estranged best friends going through a summer bucket list while working through grief and finding their way back to each other. It takes place in the cozy seaside town of Port Coral, same as Nina's first book, and I want to live there/in her books forever! Buy your copy here!
What Else I'm Thinking About
YALLFEST 2K21! Thisย young adult book festival is happening in Charleston, SC, this weekend and I WILL BE THERE! I've never been before, have heard great things, love Charleston, but mostly am so excited to meet a bunch of bookish/writing friends in real life??? If you see me, please say hi! I'm awkward but some find it endearing. My fiancรฉ will also be with meย - just look for the guy who people say looks like the illustrated Benny on the Love from Scratch cover.
Red (Taylor's Version), and most importantly, the short film and 10 minute version of All Too Well. These are being released in tandem with Yallfest which I know is not an attack on me personally, but it's going to be tough to hear my favorite authors on panels talking about book things while also listening to the rerelease of a Taylor Swift album that came out in 2012. A girl only has two ears and they are both about to be occupied all weekend long.
What everyone wants to see in this newsletter! I hope this is enjoyable to read for people who aren't my family or partner, who all at least pretend to find most things I do delightful. If there are topics you'd be interested in seeing me talk about here in the future, whether related to writing, publishing, author life, a tutorial on sleeping on your shower-wet hair and calling it a "style," whatever, feel free to reply to this and let me know!
Thank you for reading! You're all on my "Most Thankful For" list this Thanksgiving!
xoxo,
Kaitlyn