French adventures and a MIRROR update (and teaser)!
Plus, vote for SILVER in the GoodReads Choice Awards and become my favorite person!
Hi friends!
I’ve returned from quite an epic journey—a twenty day trip to France and Italy! My body and brain still haven’t completely recovered from the nine hour time change, but I shall persist in writing this newsletter and would like to apologize in advance for any weird typos you might find.
Before I give you my MIRROR updates and tell you about my travels, could you do me a huge favor?
I was REALLY surprised and thrilled to see that SILVER IN THE BONE has been nominated in the YA fantasy category of the GoodReads Choice Awards this year. I absolutely didn’t expect it (I mean that sincerely—a friend had to tell me it was nominated because I didn’t even look 💀), and it’s a bit of a long shot given how many amazing titles are nominated, but I’d love to see SILVER make it through to the next round. If you haven’t voted yet, would you consider being my personal hero and voting for her? You can click on the image below to be taken to the voting page. Thank you so much to everyone who’s already voted!!
THE MIRROR OF BEASTS UPDATES
Just a quick update this month, as I sadly can’t give you the update I was hoping to, at least not yet. I swear a cover is coming! Soon, even! I just wrapped up copyedits on THE MIRROR OF BEASTS, and they were mercifully light—I’m not sure my poor jetlagged brain could have handled more. 😂 I’m now waiting on pass pages of the book, where I get to see it laid out in book formatting for the first time.
As promised, I have a little sneak peek for you!
Pre-order THE MIRROR OF BEASTS
Signed and personalized copies: Changing Hands (US only) or The Poisoned Pen (US and International)
BOOKSHOP | BARNES & NOBLE | BAM | AMAZON | TARGET | WALMART
FRANCE ADVENTURES
I have to tell you guys, I’m honestly a little overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to recap my adventures in Europe! Also, I’ve just discovered that Substack has a recommended length limit for each post, so I’m going to have to save the Italian portion of the tour for the next email.
There’s so much I could tell you about each of the cities I was lucky enough to visit, and all of the readers I had the best time meeting. In France, the tour brought me to Lille, Lyon, Nantes, Toulouse, and finally Paris. As someone who’s only had the opportunity to travel to Paris in the past, I was really eager to get to see different parts of the country… and I was not disappointed!
I traveled with two new friends, Janis and Adrien, who work for my publisher De Saxus, and I truly can’t thank them enough for 1) translating between English and French for both myself and readers, 2) going on adventures with me on our days off, 3) making sure everything ran smoothly, 4) lugging around an enormous poster of my face (known to us as Scary Alex—don’t make eye contact with her for too long, she’ll mesmerize you), 5) helping me manage my comically large and heavy suitcase as we traveled by train (SO FUN!! I LOVE TRAINS! AMERICA HAS TRULY FAILED US ON THE TRAIN FRONT!), 6) making sure I didn’t get lost and/or fall down staircases (true story), 7) gamely pretended not to be alarmed by my caffeine intake and obsession with the 1989 (Taylor’s Version) release, and 8) just being genuine darlings.
(From the top, left to right: 1) the case of the beautiful French edition of SILVER, 2) Rainy Lille, 3) Old Lyon, 4) Rainy Nantes, 5) the Château des ducs de Bretagne in Nantes, 6) riding the three story ocean steampunk carousel in Nantes, 7) one of said steampunk fish you could ride in, 8) Taking the train to Toulouse, 9) Rainy Toulouse)
I made so many fun memories with them, from trying snail (verdict: very chewy) to the first time, to discovering they grew up watching a Tom Sawyer cartoon1 they thought was American propaganda but is actually Japanese anime (the theme song is an earworm), to riding inside a steampunk angler fish on a three story carousel!
Thank you to everyone who came out, often in rainy and chilly weather, to meet me and get your books signed. I was so moved to finally put some faces to social media handles, to hear how you discovered my books, and learn how these stories have impacted your lives. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I’d be lucky enough to have books published all over the world, and that I’d one day be able to travel to meet you all. 🥹
My sister, Stephanie, met me in Paris at the end of the tour! We went to Versailles and lived our best tourist lives, walking through the gorgeous gardens, eating chicken nuggets in said gardens as one does, and visiting the Queen’s Hamlet (we were complete dummies and walked through the pouring rain instead of renting a golf cart 💀). Steph also booked us a little dinner cruise down the Seine and the views were honestly breathtaking.
.All right, I’ve officially exceeded the recommended length limit so I’ll leave it here for now! ❤️
They were genuinely shocked I hadn’t ever heard of this show! And when I asked the folks at my Italian publisher if they grew up watching it too, I found out that they grew up with a different anime, called Lady Oscar (Also known as The Rose of Versailles), which I HAVE heard of. Our volunteer/handler in Lucca, Andrea, explained the plot to us and I am still 😳 about the ending.