Hi! I'm alive! Somehow, it's been a year since I've sent out one of these. (I'll get to that later)

I have two projects coming up! Soon I'll have covers and buy links and coherent descriptions, but for now:

 

Star Shipped: a contemporary about two actors on a long running sci fi show. Our protagonist thinks he's mortal enemies with his costar and isn't letting the fact that they carpool interfere with this narrative. Coming March 2026.

 

After Hours at Dooryard Books: 1968 New York City. The manager of a secondhand bookstore + a drifter with secrets. Coming this November.

 

I'm so excited about both these books. Star Shipped is light and fun (by my standards); Dooryard is moody and sad and kind of weird.

The past year, in brief: I got sick, I got sicker, a national crisis started, I got a little bit less sick, some major personal upheaval happened, and then I moved across the country. I don't recommend this sequence of events. Anyway! I'm still kind of sick! And I'm still moving, technically (nearly done!). But because of all this, starting last summer I pretty much took a leave of absence from literally everything other than my kids. One of the shittier realities of illness is that even fun things take energy that you just don't have. All of which is to say: I'm so sorry if I didn't respond to your email, message, letter, or post. I'm on my feet and mostly functional now, but it feels like I'm in a They Came Back Wrong story. Except, instead of the creepy and eldridtch type of wrong, I'm permanently tired and embarrassingly earnest. I really can't believe I came away from major illness with the urge to impart life lessons :( 

I feel like I need to acknowledge the current State of Things, which is probably why this newsletter has been sitting in my drafts for weeks. Anyway: We all know that the first pride was a riot. Edmund White (who died a few weeks ago, and whose memoirs and autofiction about queer life in 1960s and 70s NYC are incredible reading) called Stonewall the first funny revolution. The fact that both those statements are true is something I think about all the time, not just in the context of queer liberation, but in anything involving literally or metaphorically throwing bricks at oppressors. So, with that in mind, happy pride.

That's it for now! I hope you're all doing well!

Cat