Hot Coffee, Hot Book

I have been dying to tell everyone about this.

Normally I try to be consistent about getting my newsletter out on the 15th of every month. I get very anxious if I miss deadlines, even self-imposed ones. I refuse to consider what that says about me. But this time, I have a very good reason for being a couple days late!

I’ve been waiting for the launch of Barnes & Noble’s next “Hot Coffee, Hot Book” deal! Because it’s “How to Survive Camping: The Man With No Shadow”. If you buy anything at the café, you can also pick up “The Man With No Shadow” for $5! With spooky season right around the corner, it’s a great chance to introduce your friends and family to the campground… just saying…

But on a more personal level, it’s pretty incredible to see my book sitting there. In high school I worked as a cashier at Jo-Ann and there was a Barnes & Noble right across the street. I’d go over there on my break for a chai tea. Jo-Ann might be gone, but that Barnes & Noble is still there, albeit in a bigger location now! Feels like it wasn’t that long ago that I was sitting in the old café on my break, in my work khakis, thinking about homework and whatever book I was working on at that age. So it was really neat to walk in today and see “How To Survive Camping” sitting there on the counter.

Also I absolutely love s’mores so this is my time of year with all the s’mores themed drinks.

The s’mores cold brew is mine. The mango dragonfruit refresher is my mother’s. The book is also my mother’s. Yes she bought another copy of my book.

I’m obviously very excited to see it there. But there’s a lot of other emotions too - I feel proud of all the work that went into it. I feel grateful to everyone involved in making this happen - everyone at Saga Press and at Barnes & Noble. And I’m just really hopeful that people pick it up and get to meet Kate and just have a ton of fun discovering Goat Valley and all of the creatures inside.

This now makes two newsletters in a row with a photo of me in them.

In other exciting news, I’ve been hard at work on “Hemlock Hollow” and am thrilled that the first draft is complete… sort of. What I mean is that everything is written, but it’s not quite ready just yet! When I wrote “How to Survive Camping”, I knew where I was going with it but everything in-between was kind of up in the air. Since it was a weekly post on Reddit at that time, that wasn’t an issue, I could write something and toss it out there, and I just had to make sure to keep the main plot going in some way. That’s meant a lot of revising as we’ve worked to get the series ready for publication.

This time, I was a lot more organized with “Hemlock Hollow”, and I feel it’s made a huge difference. I don’t think I’ll be copy/pasting as many chapters into new locations this time around. There’s still some things I need to fix though. I kept notes as I went along of things I knew would be an issue, but that I didn’t want to fix in the moment. So now it’s time to go back, look everything over, and see what I want to correct before I can call it ready!

Between that and revisions to “The Beast”, I’ve got a lot to keep busy with.

The Ancient Things APPROACHES

We’re less than a month away from the release of book 3! Which means this is the last newsletter where I’ll be reminding folks to pre-order. But maybe we’ll do a special book release edition of the newsletter. Anyway, you can find links at the bottom, as usual. And there’s going to be a lot going on in September, so make sure to check out the events section further down.

I’m very excited for this one because it has a lot of things I love in it. Lots of horses. I do love horses. But also lots of Irish folklore! It’s really just a small fraction of what I’ve read, so if you think ‘wow this stuff about fairies is fun’, you should absolutely go read more about it. My favorite stories are always the ones about Manannán, who seems… pretty chill for someone connected to the ocean, honestly.

Also he’s got a really cool horse.

He is not in The Ancient Things, just for the record. Sorry.

You get a lot of photos of the dog because he’s super tolerant of this sort of nonsense.

Upcoming Events

September is going to be pretty amazing. And! I’ll be in New York City! I’m traveling out of Ohio for this one and I’m so excited for it. I’ll be in conversation with Adam Cesare and it’s going to be a great time.

September 8th - Book launch event with Prologue Bookshop - Columbus, OH

September 14th - Event with The Twisted Spine - New York City, NY

September 23rd - Author talk at Way Public Library with Gathering Volumes - Perrysburg, OH

September 26th - Book signing at Dublin Sun Center Barnes & Noble - Columbus, OH