a truly Wild two weeks 🌲

if my book comes out and I don't send a newsletter about it, did it really happen? plus, reflections on book tour & a GIVEAWAY!

Well, hi there, everyone! Long time, no mostly-one-sided-virtual-communication! As the header implies, I’ve had A Lot Going On At The Moment, the most relevant piece to our purposes here being that WILD ABOUT YOU is finally out in the world!!! & has been for two whole weeks as of today!

I am very proud of this book, and sharing it with everyone has been such a special experience! I’m super grateful to feel like it’s been received so well and that readers are connecting with the story and characters 💕 My heart is full of love for Wild About You’s readers and everyone who’s shown me love and support these last couple weeks and beyond, including all of you! THANK YOUUU 🫶

Time for a ~GiVeAwAy~

To celebrate WAY’s release and therefore the completion of my lil reality showmance series, I’m doing a GIVEAWAY exclusive to this newsletter!!! One winner will receive all THREE of my books—signed and personalized copies of Wild About You, Not Here to Stay Friends, and Love from Scratch. To enter:

• Make sure you subscribe to this substack a.k.a. newsletter! I’ll put a subscribe button below these entry instructions.

• Comment on this post! Any ol’ comment—how your day is going, a fav emoji, etc.

That’s it!! Easy! This giveaway will be open until 11:59pm EST on June 11th (one week from now) and is open internationally. I’ll reply to the winner’s comment from this account with instructions for sending me your mailing address + personalization requests! If you haven’t done so—

wild-eyed dog not included in giveaway

A wee request that makes a not-wee difference!

If you’ve read, bought, laid eyes upon, but mostly read and/or bought Wild About You, something that would be SO AMAZING is if you’d leave a review on any retail site or other site where books are reviewed. Ratings & reviews—even the briefest ones!—help readers find books, increase a book’s visibility in searches, & other things that are generally good for me as the author¹! Some places where WAY could use your review (some only let you post reviews if you bought the book from them, so no worries about hitting every site) are Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, Books A Million, Audible, Goodreads, & Storygraph.

& a note on my long-delayed correspondence

While every book launch so far has come with some bittersweet feelings, this one’s had more than its fair share 🥲 which is the reason I’m just now writing to you about it. I planned on sending a newsletter on release day, which would’ve made the most sense but was also a day I was especially Going Thru It. But I texted some author friends about how much writing a newsletter was stressing me out, and they were all, “don’t worry about it! Send it whenever you get around to it!” and as you can see, I took that advice and ran with it for a whole fortnight². Friends are the best!!

Anyhoo, without veering too far off the course of books, writing, or whatever else brought you to this space, there has been a lot happening in my personal life that has made this release season a complicated one—happy things I had planned for in between launch events, like siblings’ graduation ceremonies and parties, and sad things I couldn’t have anticipated, like saying goodbye to a dear family member and celebrating her long, amazing life. All things considered, I think I’ve kept my ish together pretty well? While also knowing that everyone would understand if I didn’t, and I’m grateful for that. But for better or worse, I do generally operate by locking down the difficult emotions until I’m ready to feel them (or until I basically can’t lock them down any more, and just hope I’m somewhere private + by myself when it all blows up, a great strategy that never does me dirty!) and I love a happy distraction in the meantime. WAY’s release and tour have made for really lovely, exciting, heartwarming distractions, it turns out, and I feel so lucky to have the support of friends, family, and my publishing team who helped make it all happen. ❤️ On that note…

Wild About You Tour: the Highlights

Joseph-Beth Booksellers - Lexington, KY

• Jodie Slaughter is an ICON! I already loved her books + her online self, but in person, she’s a beautiful darling angel who is so much fun to talk to and made for an awesome conversation partner!

• My family’s matching t-shirts, glimpsed above with the book cover on the front, tagline on the back. They are so cuuute and my mom is the real MVP for organizing this, book after book.

• The mix of people at my hometown launch is so much fun to see every time, from close friends I see often to people from my past who I can’t believe even remember me (hello, my elementary school librarian). It’s also cooler than I can even really say to see a growing number of readers who don’t know me personally show up with each book³ 🥲

• I just really loved my outfit ok?? Boden romper from ThredUp! Shop used!!⁴

Union Ave Books - Knoxville, TN

• I still kind of can’t believe Lauren Morrill agreed to do an event with me not once, but twice?? Y’all, if you haven’t read her books, fix that ASAP! She’s a contemporary romance queen in both YA and adult, traditional publishing and indie, but also so humble, kind, and generous—I’m such a big fan and have been since I first fell in love with YA and read all her books! She also had a great answer to her own “which Taylor Swift era are each of your main characters” question (Red for Natalie, Evermore for Finn).

• The family t-shirts are back 😂 even Memaw (the original Joleen Hill) got one! Look at two of my cutie little brothers aaawwww

• My dad and brother both publicly admitted to watching/loving Love Island UK and The Golden Bachelor, via their Q&A questions. I come by it honestly.

• Union Ave is such a cute store and the people there have been so sweet to me. I also inevitably buy things every time I’m in there because their stuff is TOO cute, actually!

The Novel Neighbor - St. Louis, MO

• Samantha Markum, my STL conversation partner and SamBnB host, is a fellow author who I used to admire from afar (on the internet) and gradually forced my friendship upon her until now she’ll never be rid of me⁵. We’ve had super parallel publishing journeys and talk pretty much every day, but somehow we’d never done an event together?! So this one was a long time coming and obviously a blast!! (from our perspective anyway, because we just got to be as weird as we always are together, but I think everyone else had fun too)

• Sam made me talk about Jonas Brothers fanfiction, which through related audience questions then led me to tell a never-before-told story about a ridiculous experience I had pertaining to the short-lived reality show Married to Jonas. For now, that one’s gonna stay between me and the audience at the Novel Neighbor Wild About You launch #exclusive

• I got to meet my editor in person!!! 😭🥹 Hannah literally changed my life 4 years ago when she picked up Love from Scratch, and has done so in so many other ways since then, and I seriously think I hit the publishing jackpot in working with her. She drove several hours to be there (midwestern life, am I rite) and I was/am so honored, and it was wonderful to hang out not through a computer screen!!

• I’m obsessed with The Novel Neighbor and their booksellers lol, it was like meeting real celebs to me 😅

Anderson’s Bookshop - Naperville, IL

• Jen! St.! Jude!! What an incredible human! Jen and I were in the same mentee class in 2019 (RIP Pitch Wars) so it was very ~full circle~ to get to do this together, and also a great excuse for me to make Jen hang out with me under the guise of doing a book launch. Jen was such a chill conversation partner which in turn made me chiller, which was really great, as I’m normally kind of unhinged at events lol

• But I was still a little unhinged, as exhibited when I demonstrated my bad British accent while talking about the show Buying London. No one asked for that, but they got it anyway!

• My nephew Baby Leo came to his first book signing and was a little angel! (pictured in the middle, if you weren’t sure)

• Anderson’s was such a nice store!! The booksellers were all extremely friendly and sweet, and I got to sign the wall right beneath one of my personal heroes, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, among others. I already wanna go back!

Aaand that’s a wrap! I got home from Chicago on Sunday and have since resumed my regularly scheduled Jolene snuggles and am beginning to hunker back down in my drafting cave. If I want to do more fun book launches, I gotta keep writing books, after all! Thank you so so SO much again for all the excitement you’ve shown for this book and for making this such a wonderful experience for me—meeting readers face to face on tour is such a powerful reminder of who I’m writing for and how lucky I feel to do this for my job. 💕

xoxo,

Kaitlyn

1. unless your review says something like “Kaitlyn is ugly and smells bad and same goes for her books!!” and you tag me in it on instagram—that’s not great for me

2. by Taylor Swift featuring Post Malone

3. someday I might even stop getting the urge to ask them “how do you know who I am?”

4. and use my referral link for 40% off + free shipping on your first order #influencer 💅

5. the grammar of this sentence is questionable but like many things rn, I’m not thinking too hard about it