Thirty, flirty, book 3 đȘ©
a Virgo szn (but mostly September) Stream of Consciousness!
Hi there! Happy day after my birthday! Yes, as the subject line suggests and as I will continue to be obnoxious about for at least two to four more business days, I turned 30 on Sunday (and reworked the classic 13 Going on 30 quote to fit my purposes). Itâs snuck up on me, as birthdays have a habit of doing, but Iâm also realizing that I say this a lot about any passage of time. Is it a Me Problem, being easily snuck upon? Should I just pay more attention to the calendar? Maybe I will in my thirties.
Anyway, did you know I still write books?
I do! Not just angsty diatribes on the creative life, or summer travel blogs! Though this update might still have some of bothâIâll just save them for the end đ
WILD ABOUT YOU newsy news!
Boy am I gonna get so much mileage out of saying Iâm âwild aboutâ things for the next ~8 months. Thatâs about how long we have until my 3rd book, WILD ABOUT YOU, hits shelves on May 21st, 2024, and Iâm super excited to share with you that WAY is now available for PRE-ORDER! Itâs so surreal to see three whole books of mine for sale on retail sitesâthere was a time when even putting one book out into the world felt like a pipe dream. This is now the 3rd and final story in my trio of reality showmances, and I canât wait for yâall to read it! I also canât wait to show you the absolutely gooorgeous cover very soon (likeâŠmaybe next newsletter)!!
Iâm also excited to share with you Wild About Youâs official description!
In this grumpy-sunshine teen romance, indoorsy theater girl Natalie must team up with surly nature-lover Finn in an Amazing Race-style reality show set in the Appalachian wildernessâif they donât kill (or kiss!) each other first.
Natalie Hart has always been loud, unfiltered, and unapologetically herself. But that was before her freshman year of college, when she lost her merit scholarship and gained one pesky little anxiety diagnosis.
Hesitant to take out more student loans, Natalie decides to shoot her shot and applies to Wild Adventures, a popular outdoorsy reality competition show. Sure, Natalie prefers her twelve-step skincare routine to roughing it along the Appalachian Trail while competing in challenges against other college kids, but that scholarship prize money is calling her name. High risk, high reward, right?
Enter Finn Markum, her randomly assigned, capital-O Outdoorsy teammate whose growl could rival a black bear. These partners have more friction than a pair of new hiking boots. Or is that⊠flirtation? One thingâs for certain: itâs going to be a wild adventure.
I am so so proud of this book, which is of course true of every book so far, but this feels in some ways like the most ~Kaitlyn~ of them all. While that could make you go âohhh noooâ and run far in the other direction, I am hoping by nature of you subscribing to this newsletter that itâs a positive! We have plenty of snarky, punny humor, but also struggles with anxiety and grief, two subjects close to my heart that I once wasnât sure Iâd be able to write about in a fictional way (at least one that wouldnât be hella depressing). But crafting Natalie and Finnâs story was a joy and an honor, and Iâm so looking forward to sharing it with you! đ
Those other two books!
Back when I was in my twenties, I released two other books you might remember, Love from Scratch and Not Here to Stay Friends. You can still find them wherever books are sold! You can also be my very best friend and leave reviews of them on any retail site, which helps other readers find my work! Weâre quickly coming up on six months since NHTSF was published which is NUTS, and Iâm so so grateful for how many of you have bought, read, reviewed, and generally screamed in excitement about this book with me. Best readers/friends/fam a gal could ask for!
Upcoming events!
Including one TOMORROW, yay!!!
Wednesday 9/20 at 6:00pm - Kentucky Proud Evening at the UK College of Agriculture Extension Office in Lexington, KY - come hear me talk a little about my books and writing journey, answer audience questions, and enjoy some local snacks! Free and open to the public, more info is here.
Saturday 10/21 from 9-4 - Kentucky Book Festival at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Lexington, KY - so excited to go back to this festival for my 2nd year and sign books all day long! Also free with more info here.
Saturday 11/18 from 10-4 - Books by the Banks at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati, OH - another book festival Iâm so excited to attend this fall! Iâll have a signing table all day, and you can find out more here.
Now for Kaitlyn Stevesâ Switzerland
A.k.a. the travel portion of this newsletter đ We recently returned from our last big trip of the year, where the newly-a-Dr. Mr. KHill and I got to celebrate the wedding of some friends who live in Switzerland, then celebrate husband finishing his PhD by doing some extra travel around the country! It was an absolute dream of a trip all around, with so many pieces that came together to fit both my husbandâs and my individual and shared interests, and a lot of wonderful times with our friends that weâll never forget. A few pictures and highlights:
left to right, row by row:
Lake Oeschinen, a day trip we took from Bern where there were incredible views, rowboat rentals for some of us, wading in the water for others (đââïž), and scenically located cows.
Maison Cailler, the chocolate factory where we did a chocolate making workshop but more importantly, got the most bonkers tour through the history of chocolate. It involved a lot of animatronics and I still canât believe it was real?? Highly recommend.
Some of the prettiest flowers at the prettiest wedding venue for the prettiest couple there ever was đ
FONDUE which we ate on a very hot day in Bern, not the ideal conditions for fondue but I think if you go to Switzerland and donât have fondue you get deported.
Lauterbrunnen, a beauuutiful valley with tons of waterfalls (gorgeous) and also tons of base jumpers (terrifying).
Froze our buns off in the snow on the Aletsch Glacier at the top of the mountain called Jungfrau! Going on a clear day wouldâve been ideal for views but we still had fun and it was a super cool train journey!
Probably the prettiest hike Iâve ever done, from the top of the mountain Piz Nair in St. Moritz to the bottom. St. Moritz blew us away and we canât wait until weâre multimillionaires and can buy our second home there.
One of many many unbelievable places we saw along the Bernina Express, a scenic train ride thatâs a UNESCO World Heritage Site!
This was actually the first day we arrived but I didnât want to start this gallery with a bikini picture đ„ž We bought a dry bag to put our clothes + stuff in and floated with it down a stretch of the Aare River in Bern! It was extremely refreshing and a little scary and I wish we had one in my city.
Last thing Iâll say on this trip is it was also great research đ for something I might be writing đ whoâs to say đ me because I just told you I guess đ
Closely followed by Kaitlyn Stevesâ Rural Pennsylvania (aka writing retreat with my people!)
I am so lucky that I was able to fly straight from Switzerland to my writing bestie/soulmate Eloraâs house, from which she and I drove a couple days later to meet a bigger group of our writing friends at the Highlights Foundation retreat center in Pennsylvania! There were seventeen of us who all met when we were Pitch Wars mentees in 2019 and have kept in frequent (like, mostly all day every day) touch ever since, but most of us had never met in person. So the initial excitement was âyay, I wasnât being catfished by these people whoâve listened to all my deepest darkest secrets for four years,â but it got even better from there! We actually did a lot of writing sprints together (not a guarantee for a 3 day sleepover with a bunch of your friends), and had so much time to chat and bond and enjoy being together face to face. Iâm so so grateful I got this time to recenter before a season in which I need to do a looottt of writing, and to do so with such talented creatives who are also genuine and good humans, who really Get the bonkers world of publishing, and who have known me since the very beginning of my own publishing journey and still somehow want to hang out with me. I â€ïž you, Fork Family!
Lastly, books you should read
I know this has been a long one, but! So many cool people have had their amaaazing debut novels come out lately and you should pick them all up!
Thank You for Sharing by Rachel Runya Katz - adult queer m/f romance
As Born to Rule the Storm by Cate Baumer - adult sci-fi novella (paperback out now but ebook out/coming to Kindle Unlimited 10/3!)
Borrow a Boyfriend Club by Page Powars - YA trans m/m romance
The Library of Shadows by Rachel Moore - YA paranormal m/f rom-com
Iâm absolutely forgetting more because if it has not been made clear here, itâs been a busy time. But these are a great start for your fall reading pleasure!
Thank you, as ever, for reading, subscribing, pretending to care (or actually caring, Iâll allow thatâs a possibility) about Kaitlyn Stevesâ Travels, and! Getting excited for WILD ABOUT YOU!!! Did you know Iâm wild about you?
xoxo,
Kaitlyn
"Back when I was in my twenties" lololol - WAY sounds great and I'm excited for it! And all the "wild about ____" references! And all the nature puns! And the acronym WAY is even good!