a year in the life of a book and its author
celebrating the first anniversary of MRS. NASH'S ASHES and the friends we've made along the way
what’s on my mind
Last Wednesday marked the one year anniversary of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes being out in the world. So I thought it might be nice to take a little stroll down memory lane and see what all happened in all that time that flew right on by while we were having so much fun. (And by fun, I do mean fun, but also some hard times, because life, man.1) Here we go!
May 2023
Mrs. Nash’s Ashes is officially published by Berkley in the US on Tuesday, May 23, and by Quercus in the UK on Thursday, May 25.
The night of the 23rd, I have my launch event through Curious Iguana. It goes fantastically and I see lots of friends and family, including my high school biology teacher for some reason. I also meet one of my critique partners, Amber Roberts, in real life after she drives down all the way from Vermont (because she’s the best)!!
Amber! Me! The C. Burr Artz Library! This photo really has it all. On May 25, it is featured in a beach reads roundup on Vulture.
On the morning of May 29, the wonderful Jasmine Guillory recommends it on TODAY with Hoda & Jenna while wearing a very good hat.
Thanks again, Jasmine! You’re so lovely!! May 30 is my first virtual event, in conversation with one of my favorite romcom authors of all time, Sarah Hogle, sponsored by Gibson’s Bookstore.
June 2023
My daughter turns five and I feel guilty because I was too busy preparing for pub day to plan a party. I bribe her with several days of birthday fun instead, which winds up being a lot more work than a party would have been, probably.
Mrs. Nash’s Ashes is chosen as The Book Drop’s June romance selection. I get to write a letter to readers and everything. It’s very exciting.
I notice water damage on my dining room ceiling and spend the next several weeks and lots of money trying to fix it and other random home issues.
July 2023
Sales start to dip after the pub day/Jasmine Guillory spike and the deflated post-pub feeling many people warned me about kicks in. I decide to take a social media hiatus for the month to get some distance from book stuff/focus on all of the random plumber/roofer/general contractor appointments I now have scheduled.
Literally two days later, popular Bookstagram influencer @beachreadsandbubbly posts a five-star review that, in conjunction with a large Amazon romcom book club selecting it for the month, gives Mrs. Nash’s Ashes its best ever sales week. I, offline and unaware of what has cause this sudden spike, am extremely baffled (and also reassured that what they say about authors’ social media activity being unrelated to copies sold seems to be true).
I see one of my favorite bands, Ruen Brothers, in concert.
August 2023
I officially sell my third book, Finders Keepers, to Berkley, and we start discussing timelines for publication.
My cover for Happy Medium is revealed and preorders for it go live.
We go on a family vacation to the Delaware beaches and I get to sign a bunch of copies at Browseabout and Bethany Beach Books. Browseabout has a gigantic stack of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes displayed on the front table, sandwiched between beach read greats Carley Fortune, Emily Henry, and Elin Hilderbrand. It is very surreal and very cool. (Unrelated, but when I go to Bethany Beach Books the vintage shorts I took from my mom’s closet suddenly lose their elasticity and threaten to fall off my body if I don’t hold them in place. Glamorous!)
Look at her! On August 21, I turn 32. It’s the two year anniversary of working with my awesome agent, Taylor Haggerty, whom I signed with on my thirtieth birthday in 2021.
My daughter starts kindergarten. It is a much harder adjustment for her than any of us were expecting.
September 2023
The non-English language version of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes (re-titled Não era pra ser uma história de amor) is published in Brazil on September 13. Fans adore the gorgeous cover, and so do I.
Finders Keepers is officially announced in Publishers Marketplace on September 14.
We celebrate my husband’s 35th birthday by going to a Death Cab for Cutie/Postal Service concert. I tease him a lot about his love of sad music and have a pretty good time despite only knowing like three songs.
October 2023
My husband and I celebrate our eighth wedding anniversary.
I keep trying to finish drafting Finders Keepers while figuring out some executive functioning issues that have popped up after getting my anxiety more under control. Brains are weird!
November 2023
Mrs. Nash’s Ashes is selected as a New York Public Library Best Book of 2023.
I get sick around Thanksgiving. I do not realize that this is a harbinger of the rough winter to come.
December 2023
Mrs. Nash’s Ashes is selected as LibraryJournal Best Book of 2023.
I take another social media hiatus and hope to start checking things off my very long to-do list. But I don’t because…
Sick. Sick, sick, sick. I’m sick, my husband is sick, my daughter is sick. We all keep exchanging illnesses of various sorts for weeks and weeks and weeks.
We cancel our planned trip to visit family in South Carolina.
January 2024
I turn in the first draft of Finders Keepers to my editor a month early, knowing the illnesses still plaguing our household will prevent me from doing much more work on it anyway.
In an attempt to finally stop reinfecting each other, I go on a solo trip to Richmond, my husband stays home, and our daughter goes to her grandparents. This does seem to do the trick for my husband and I, but my daughter comes home even sicker. Surprise! She has a sudden fever of 106 when she gets to the doctor’s office. It’s pneumonia!
Mrs. Nash’s Ashes is published in Portugal on January 23.
Cool, right??
February 2024
On February 13, I boldly declare to Andie Burke at the (awesome) Curious Iguana Romance Book Fair for Adults that I think our family’s health is finally on the upswing! I have a great night meeting readers and signing copies of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes.
On February 14, at 1 in the morning, my daughter wakes up unable to breathe and with a barking cough. We drive her to the ER, where, thanks to the generosity of Nora Roberts’s charitable foundation having donated a very nice pediatric wing, we are immediately whisked back to a private room, where they diagnose her with croup. And also pink eye for the 10th time since December.
The Mrs. Nash’s Ashes ebook goes on sale for $2.99 and it has its second best ever sales week.
March 2024
I get strep.
I also get my edits from my editor for Finders Keepers, and the turnaround time is about five weeks. Which feels doable until I realize I need to rewrite a good chunk of the book.
Promo for Happy Medium really ramps up.
We spend more time at the pediatrician, since my daughter continues getting pink eye every ten days or so. She gets it 14 times total over the course of the winter, which impresses but does not concern her doctors.
April 2024
We finally get to go down to South Carolina to visit family during spring break. The week away from school seems to finally kill all the pink eye germs floating around my daughter’s classroom. I spend some of the trip working on revisions.
I get to see Ruen Brothers in concert again, and this time I meet them after the show. I am not nearly as weird as I could be about it, and so I consider it a success.
I sign almost 200 preorders of Happy Medium at Curious Iguana! There were only 25 for Mrs. Nash’s Ashes. It finally hits me that, dang, my second book is about to come out and people seem excited for it?! I’ve been too busy with revisions to think about it until now.
Here I am with just the online preorders. On April 29, I let myself have a tiny little breakdown as a treat and then go to the Happy Medium launch event through Curious Iguana. There is a goat there named Carroll, and about double the amount of people as last year. It is a wonderful way to kick things off!
On April 30, I spend most of the day in bed keeping up with my Instagram notifications and freaking out.
May 2024
On May 3, I turn in the second draft of Finders Keepers, knowing it isn’t done but that I don’t want to go any farther without input from my editor.
Happy Medium is featured on the USA Today bestseller list on May 8. I am overjoyed. For a moment I feel a little wistful that Mrs. Nash’s Ashes never quite made it on, that it wasn’t the one to lift me to bestseller status. But then I remind myself that readers who missed out on Mrs. Nash’s Ashes last year might now discover it through Happy Medium’s success, and that’s a lovely thing too, thinking about how my books will all support each other.
On May 18, I attend the Gaithersburg Book Festival for the second year in a row. It was my first ever book event, back in May 2023, right before Mrs. Nash’s Ashes came out (we actually needed special permission for Politics & Prose to sell it a few days early!). I am struck by the difference between being a debut author and having two books on shelves. The turnout this year is incredible. People stand outside of the tent when there aren’t enough chairs for everyone, and the signing line is so long I can’t see the end of it when I enter the room. We sell out of books for the second year in a row.
On May 23, I ask my husband, “Hey, know what today is?” After a few guesses, I take pity on him and tell him it’s the one-year anniversary of Mrs. Nash’s Ashes’s publication. And then we agree that it’s been a wild, long, exhausting, sometimes difficult year. But a good one too. A very good one.
book stuff
I know that was kind of long so I’ll keep this short!
Thank you so so so much to everyone who preordered and purchased Happy Medium during its first week out. You helped it hit the USA Today list and gave me the privilege of now forever being able to call myself a bestselling author. I am so intensely grateful!!
Signed/personalized copies of both Happy Medium and Mrs. Nash’s Ashes are now available from Curious Iguana whenever your heart desires them. Personalization requests (to whom should it be made out, any requests for doodles or quotes or anything) can go in the order notes field at checkout. They make great gifts!
Thanks also to everyone who came out/tuned in for the events I’ve done this spring. I have a few more coming up soon, including one with Betty Corrello in Baltimore on May 30 and one celebrating Ashley Poston’s upcoming release in DC on June 26. Maybe I’ll see you?
what we’re reading at our house
me: A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas (ARC); A Novel Love Story by Ashley Poston (ARC)
H: Starter Villain by John Scalzi; Network Effect by Martha Wells
me & H together: Unclaimed by Courtney Milan
h: Kitten Ninja by Colleen AF Venable, Marcie Colleen, and Ellen Stubbings
what i’m listening to on repeat
(Also this video is such a basic yet hilarious bit. I laugh every time.)
you should check out
There’s a bookish charity auction right now benefiting Brazilians affected by the floods in Rio Grande du Sol. I have signed/personalized UK copies of both of my books up for grabs, and there’s a bunch of other great stuff to bid on too. You can also donate without bidding by clicking the green donate button next to the search on the auction page.
I’m leaving out some of those hard times, for reasons of both other people’s privacy and brevity.