Hello, friends. Long time since I posted on here, but I wanted to announce on my website as well as my social media that I will be publishing my debut YA novel, A Season for Falling, in September 2026 with Storytide/HarperCollins! I am so excited. I LOVE this book, and I sincerely hope you will, too. Below you’ll find the gorgeous cover, illustrated by Kelley McMorris, as well as the story of the journey to publication that I included on my Instagram announcement. If you’re as big of an autumn / Gilmore Girls girlie as I am, please consider showing your support by pre-ordering!

I love hearing about process and story origins, so I thought I would share more behind the scenes here. I’ve had the idea for this story since 2017. For the first 5 years, it existed as around 10k words in a document tucked away deep in my computer. I went back to it now and again, but never with focus, because I’d convinced myself I “didn’t have a good enough YA voice.”

But in the summer of 2022, I didn’t have any pressing deadlines, and my sister mentioned she wanted to try to write a book for fun, so we decided we would meet on Zoom 3 times a week and each of us would work on something. I pulled out my dusty YA project and drafted it that summer as a “creative exercise.” Thanks to the company of my sister, I did finish a draft of it. I had no expectations and put zero pressure on myself. It was the most fun, playful drafting process I’d ever had. When I was done, I thought, “that was fun!” and tucked the book back away again. I didn’t re-read it, I didn’t even tell my agent that I’d written a draft of a YA. I just put it away and moved on. Then I had a baby, got swept up in edits for THE WRONG WAY HOME, etc. it wasn’t until *1.5 years later* that I decided to re-read it, revise it, and on a whim, share it with my agent. As soon as I sent it, I was full of regret and wanted to claw it back.

But my agent ending up loving it, and sent me editorial feedback in early 2024, and then somehow, it fell off my radar as I focused on other projects and I just…stopped working on it. Again! Then, almost another full year later, he reminded me he still wanted it. And so feverishly, I got back to work.

And despite literal *years* of misgivings and doubts, we sold it. At an auction, with six bidding imprints! (Forgive my flagrant boasting here. It’s been 9 long years to get to this point, and I am proud!)

All of this to say: it can take a while. A LONG while. You may have doubts that it’ll ever go anywhere. But if it stays in your head, if it keeps bothering you, I say stick with it. You never know what could happen!