New Year Newsletter + New PAPERBACK! 📚
Happy 2023 to all, and happy LOVE FROM SCRATCH paperback day!
You might have noticed I didn't appear in your inbox in December, which I'll get into a little more later, but we are BACK with a new newsletter name (thank you to my buddy Laura for your entry in my naming giveaway!!) and exciting news!
First, the paperback!
LOVE FROM SCRATCH is out in paperback TODAY! Wherever books are sold, you can now find this beauty in its floppier form. As a reader of tons of adult romance, most of which come out in paperback exclusively, I'm super excited to join the ranks of their format. Young adult PBs are also even more affordable than adult! $11.99! Great way to spend your holiday gift cards, if you ask me. PLUS if you get your hands on a copy, you'll be able to read the first chapter of NOT HERE TO STAY FRIENDS for the first time in print, at the very end of the book! FUN EXCLUSIVE PREVIEW! HOT NEW BOMBSHELL ENTERS THE VILLA!
Speaking of Not Here to Stay Friends...
It comes out in THREE MONTHS! (Am I yelling enough in this newsletter yet?) Another beautiful paperback to have on your shelves so soon, or you can grab it in ebook or audio form. Pre-orders are so so helpful to show publishers and booksellers that readers are excited for a book, so if you know you want this reality dating show rom-com, I'd looove if you reserved your copy early! New Years present to me AND you! Exciting things are also in the works for pre-order incentives, so save your receipts!
Other writing updates
WILD ABOUT YOU is, at long last, in my editor's hands! This book has been a journeeeyyy and it ain't over yet. But it feels really good to have finished a draft I'm proud of, and I always love getting my editor's feedback and diving back in for revisions with a fresh perspective, which I'll get to do before too long.
While waiting on my Wild edit letter (will the letter itself be wild?? Time will tell), I'm splitting my time between preparing for the NHTSF release and all that'll come with it - pre-order goodies, events, etc - and working on a new project. So far I've only brain dumped a bunch of thoughts and ideas into various notes app notes, but if I say here that I'm "working on it," I will manifest that into reality, right? That's how these things work.Â
On the personal life front
One of the reasons I loved Laura's idea of calling my newsletter the "stream of consciousness," in addition to the opportunity to create a ridiculous graphic of me in a boat, is that it really fits my preferred style of writing to you all. Putting on the Professional Author Marketing Herself hat is not so natural for me - though if you're here only for book news and updates, I totally get that! More power to you! I try to label the sections accordingly, so you can skip what you don't want/need in an author newsletter. But I'll probably always include a balance of my books and my self...because they're kind of highly intertwined, and while I think a lot about keeping Kaitlyn separate from Kaitlyn's Creative Work/Career, that ish is hard.Â
I don't know exactly what I'm aiming to say here, except that non-book-related life has not been so rosy lately, and I think that comes through in the ways I'm present (or not) online, doing the whole endless book promo cycle (or not), and I feel like acknowledging it, at least for the people who cared enough about my books or me in some fashion to sign up for my newsletter! The holiday season was rough. My family lost a really special member and it's all been very difficult and sad. I'm only just getting the chance to slow down to process everything now, which is conveniently as most of the world's winter break ends and life as usual is starting back up. Not ideal, ya know? But we have no control over these things and no real choice but to keep on.Â
I won't get all into my Grief Experience and Mortality Thoughts because that is definitely not the newsletter you signed up for, but I did want to share something brief about my late great-grandfather - he was a great storyteller. I had the honor of writing and giving his eulogy, no easy feat, and I themed it around "story" both because we share a love of good stories, and because the story of his life is an incredible one. He came from a holler in Eastern Kentucky, had little formal education, a super thick accent, and told the funniest, most engaging stories and used the most clever turns of phrase. He was a wonderful, one-of-a-kind person, and if I can make anyone laugh or smile as much as he made everyone he knew, I'd be a happy gal. I love him, in his words, "like a hog loves slop."
And finally, looking ahead at the year
It would have been very Kaitlyn Hill of me to send a December newsletter with all my varied reflections on the year, but the difficulty of the last few months left me without the bandwidth. So maybe we'll try again in 12 months, but for now, I'm looking forward to the rest of 2023 with hope, hesitancy, excitement, anxiety, and all things in between. I'll release my second book! Keep working on my third! Start my fourth and possibly fifth! That is all so unbelievably cool, and I'm so grateful for everyone who's supported me and Love from Scratch and made this ongoing career possible. This year feels full of possibility, the chance to achieve more dreams, and while I'm a little tired/weary/out of it right now, I hope the months to come will bring increasing amounts of happy and minimal sad. I hope the very same for you and yours!
That's all for now! If you pick up the Love from Scratch paperback or see it in the wild, be sure to tag me in your pictures - I can't wait to see all the places this one goes! Thank you, thank you, thank you for being here and being you!
xoxo,
Kaitlyn
