Next September; February 21 2024

Big announcement, right off the bat! My horror debut, The Other Face of Sympathy, has a tentative publication date for September 2025! A tale (or many tales, even) about the way trauma changes us, occasionally turning the victim into the monster of another person’s story.

I started writing the book in question on November of 2019. I’d hadn’t been doing any writing leading up to then – I had a baby to take care of. My at-the-time partner offered to keep an eye while I went out to a café and got in some Writing Time. I took the subway down to a station south, where I knew there was a pretty big Starbucks with plenty of room to set up for a few hours, and started listening to The Magnus Archives.

Now, at the time, I was in the middle of working on my fantasy series. I figured I’d go and keep going on book 2, even though the series hadn’t even been signed at the time. It was mostly for me that I was writing the second book, honestly. And I’d made some serious progress on it! It was about half-finished, at that point!

So I got to Starbucks, got myself comfortable, and… opened a brand new document to type up the beginnings of protagonist Edward’s story. I wrote up diary entries from people undergoing terrible situations, determining what kind of monster it turned them into.

By April 2020, I’d finished the first draft.

It needed a lot of revision. The beginning and ending changed entirely, and the diaries underwent sensitivity reads for authenticity. I queried it, and while most the rejections were impartial, some of them gave me wonderfully positive feedback.

… And one agent insulted it, and my writing ability, in their rejection, but we won’t talk about that.

My beta readers highly enjoyed this book, so I’m hoping y’all will too. I can’t wait for next September!