november is for crying

ok yeah, now it's starting to feel real, babes

I was in the middle of drafting a post about what a difference a year makes when I received an email with the interior sample pages for my book. I’ve been waiting for a moment in this process where it would actually start to feel ✨real✨, and seeing how my title will be formatted inside the book, my name on the page above Berkley Romance… this is it. This is the moment it feels real.

Crying in the middle of writing this post because I just saw my name on a book!!!

I titled this post “november is for crying” because I feel like I have been doing a lot of that lately. Good crying (seeing interior pages—right now!!, writing my acknowledgements, turning in my copyedits, feeling a tiny bit hopeful about things in the world). Bad crying (being sick, feeling stressed, Daylight Savings with a toddler, experiencing casual anti$em!tism). It’s a lot to be a person right now. It’s a weird time to have your dreams come true. I’ve been reflecting a lot on where I was this time in 2024, a stay at home mom by circumstance not choice, lost, unsure what I was going to do with my life, how I was going to find a way back to myself.

And then a year ago, while attempting to contact nap my fussy two month old who simply would not sleep, my phone rang with a call from an unfamiliar local number. I only answered it because I assumed it was our pediatrician calling me back, and my infant wasn’t sleeping anyway, so might as well not extend the phone tag.

Instead of rescheduling my child’s checkup, I was informed that I had won the romance category of Book Pipeline’s Unpublished contest. It took me a full minute to even register what the person on the phone was telling me. I’d applied back in January, long before I’d gotten an agent, long before I’d had the baby who was now squirming around in my arms, and then forgot about it. I’d applied to many a screenwriting contest back in the day, and never hearing anything back was par for the course.

Old title, same book!

This had been a particularly rough day in my household. My husband was working at the office, which meant the day of solo parenting was extremely long. My child had been particularly difficult going down for all of her naps, and this was the last one, so I desperately needed her to sleep juuuust a little bit.

The lovely Book Pipeline folks explained how much they enjoyed my writing, even the ones judging who weren’t romance readers. They talked through some next steps, and because I was now repped and on sub (albeit with no traction), they had a bit of a different plan to help me going forward.

By the time I got off the call, my baby was fast asleep in my arms.

Winning this contest also meant a bit of prize money. I’d been paid for the episodes of TV that I’d written before, but this was the first time I was making money off of my own voice.

A little peek behind the TV writing curtain: for the most part, writers break each episode as a group, then one person is assigned to pen the episode. That writer will then turn a draft in to the showrunner, and the showrunner will do a pass of their own on the script. Even if the quality of the draft the writer turned in is great, the showrunner WILL rewrite it to some extent, because it ultimately needs to be in the showrunner’s voice. There are many different skill sets one needs to be a TV writer—it’s a combination of being a decent writer in one’s own right, being good in the room (both as a person others want to spend 8-12 hours around a table with, as well as being able to bounce ideas around and pitch on the fly), and the ability to mimic the showrunner’s voice on the page.

So, this small win, a contest that came in a moment where I was still very deeply a postpartum disaster, feeling like I’d really lost my entire identity as anything other than a mom, meant so much to me. This tiny thing that was mine. I was still months away from getting my book deal, and so certain that nothing was every going to come of this book. When I say I was sure so many times that this book was dead, I mean it. It’s absolutely bonkers to me that it’ll be in your hands next fall.

November 2024—I was having *~*A tImE*~* and my child put her hand on my shoulder as if she knew how to communicate that one day it would be OK

I’ve lost the thread (apologies, it was bound to happen at some point!!) and it’s almost time to put my child down for her nap, so please send magical wishes that she sleeps more easily than she did last year when I got that call that gave me a sliver of myself back.¹

What I’m reading

I’m on a dual timeline kick lately (which I’m realizing as I type this may be why all my new ideas happen to be dual timeline…?). I absolutely devoured Erin Connor’s next book, STILL INTO YOU, out 2/10/26. Dax is the ultimate book boyfriend (but back off, he’s mine). IT’S DIFFERENT THIS TIME, Joss Richard’s wonderful debut, which came out 9/30, hugged my tender lil Broadway-loving heart. Both also hurt my feelings terribly (the highest praise I can ever give a book)!!

More soon!

xo R

1. Update: She woke up from her nap screaming after only 33 minutes when she should have slept for at least an hour 🫠 we love teething, especially when it’s molars!!