On belly flops

or, thoughts on failing in public. Plus: tour stops and the prologue of THE MIRROR OF BEASTS! 🪞

Hi there.

You know, in all the years I’ve been blogging, posting on social media, and sending out newsletters, I’m not sure I’ve ever talked about my competitive diving era. Admittedly, it only lasted a few short years, and I was quite young at the time (and, not coincidentally, a lot more fearless with flinging myself off elevated surfaces into water). But it’s also because whenever I used to think about it, a visceral wave of shame and embarrassment washed through me. Like, knot-in-the-throat, heart-clenching embarrassment.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I am not a talented athlete. This is not me being humble, or selling myself short. I was born to be in an indoor cat, one who naps frequently, and I accept this about myself now. The one thing I have always been is a trier. I try, and I try, and I try.

(Please don’t let the creeps of the internet find this photo, amen. 🙏🏻)

I got very into diving because… well, there’s just not that much to do during an Arizona summer and our local public pool had a great diving (and swim!) program. This was back when I wore my very thick glasses and was basically diving with the world a great big blur around me—which absolutely helped when I was on the three meter diving boards, because it was difficult to judge exactly how high up I was. I was so into diving, in fact, that I ended up joining, for an even briefer period of time, the year-round diving program. To this day, I can still close my eyes and hear the distinct slap of a shammy hitting the pool deck.

Then came the meet.

All of these years later, I’m still not totally sure what happened. A brain blip, maybe, caused by a split second of distraction. I was warming up my inward pike (where you jump up and back, pike your hips, and then straighten out again before hitting the water) and I was just coming off the board when I heard the announcer say my name as part of the roster and I just… could not straighten back out in time.

I executed the loudest, most painful belly flop you can imagine. It was so bad that I could literally hear the crowd groan “ooooh” FROM UNDER THE WATER WHERE I WANTED TO STAY AND JUST PERISH INTO THE CHEMICAL-LACED AQUAMARINE DEPTHS.

And when I finally came back up, due to, you know, needing oxygen, it was a fight not to cry because I was in genuine pain, and because I was so unspeakably embarrassed. The sympathetic and horrified looks, the concern, made it worse because it reinforced that everyone had seen it, and if they hadn’t, they definitely heard it.

I know—I know as a rational 30something—that no one but me remembers this ever happening. I know it was such a small thing in the grand scheme of life. But I also believe it was such a formative moment for me that it became the first link in a chain of events that ultimately built out into a pretty punishing sense of perfectionism that manifests most strongly as a fear of failure.

I’ve been thinking about this moment a lot recently as I’ve looked back on my career and taken stock of what I’ve published and how projects have fared. One of the things I didn’t really anticipate at the start of my career—owing to having grown up in the 90s when authors were less visible—was how much of it was going to be public. That people would be able to see my sales figures on Bookscan, that they could check sales rankings, that they would see which editions had gone out of print, and how many people did or didn’t like something I had posted on one of my social media accounts.

Though I tend to post mostly about successes—social media is, after all, a highlights reel—I have definitely belly flopped spectacularly in my career over the years and have had to fight the instinct to stay underwater time and time again when a book didn’t list, or sales slumped, or an edition went out of print. One of the lowest emotional periods of my life—a very public “failure”—was right after the TDM movie came out and the reviews were awful and made sure to comment on how awful the books were as well. The movie not only bombed, but actually set a record for the largest second week theater drop that was only broken two years later.

But would you ever have known that if I hadn’t just told you?

This is what I’m getting at. When it comes down to it, we are all hyper-focused on our own lives and social media only intensifies that focus. Even if it feels like everyone noticed you falling short of your hopes, or saw that you only got a few views/likes on that post, or you didn’t qualify for something you desperately wanted … chances are, very few people did. And the people who did see are most likely just sympathetic, and anyone who isn’t, or is actively seeking out bad news about you, is a gremlin and isn’t worth the energy it takes to care about their opinion. What matters is the bounce-back, and how we feel about ourselves. As the old saying goes, it’s only a failure if you quit.

I say that, but… it’s hard. It’s remained hard all of the fourteen years I’ve been doing this, and is one of the biggest trade-offs of getting to live out my dream as an author. A lot of that is on me as someone who hates to disappoint and is very hard on herself. I’ve had to inoculate myself to the fear of failing publicly over time, and to reframe my thinking about it. It’s a privilege to be in a position to fail, for one thing—if one of my books doesn’t sell well, it’s still incredible that it was actually published. It’s too easy to let myself forget that.

Now when I think of myself on the diving board in the moments before the epic flop, I let myself remember the nerves and excitement and hope I had that I would finish well. Every time I remind myself that it was brave of me to get up there in front of all of those people and judges, it breaks another link in that chain I’ve been dragging around for decades.

It also takes a ton of courage to pour your heart into something and offer it up to the public to react to, good or bad. To even just commit, in public, to saying you’re on a journey to chase your dreams. It’s okay to feel disappointment when something doesn’t work out and/or you find yourself facing a setback. Please don’t let the fear of potential embarrassment hold you back from what you want to go after. If you’re worried about what others will think if it doesn’t work out, if you’re also afraid of belly flopping in front of unkind eyes, please remember that I am always rooting for you, and that I believe in you.

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THE MIRROR OF BEASTS

We are less than a month out until release day!! Brace yourselves, because I have a ton of updates/info for you!

⚔️ TOUR DATES

Like I mentioned last month, I’m hitting the road this summer for THE MIRROR OF BEASTS tour! I have a bunch of stops with some fabulous author friends here in the U.S. but I’ll also be doing a U.K. event in the near future—so keep your eyes peeled on my Instagram for more details on when and where! Some of my events do require tickets or registration, so be sure to check out the websites linked below.

• Orlando, FL | Orlando Family Stage with Vanessa Montalban - Tuesday, July 30th at 6:00 PM - Get tickets here! 🎟️

• Detroit, MI | B&N Livonia with Aimee Carter - Wednesday, July 31st at 6:00 PM - More info here!

• Seattle, WA | B&N Northgate with Margaret Owen - Thursday, August 1st at 5:30 PM - Get tickets here! 🎟️

• Menlo Park, CA | Kepler’s Books with Jennifer Lynn Barnes - Friday, August 2nd at 7:00 PM - Get tickets here! 🎟️

• Sacramento, CA | B&N Roseville with Stephanie Garber - Saturday, August 3rd at 5:00 PM - More info here!

• Salt Lake City, UT | The King’s English Bookshop - Sunday, August 4th at 5:00 PM - Get tickets here! 🎟️

• Phoenix, AZ | Changing Hands - Monday, August 5th at 7:00 PM - Get tickets here! 🎟️

🪞 READ THE PROLOGUE OF THE MIRROR OF BEASTS

You may have seen that I’ve been posting little snippets and quotes from MIRROR over on Instagram here and here, but I thought it would be fun to give newsletter subscribers an exclusive chance to read the prologue before anyone else. You may be surprised by the POV character…

🐺 PRE-ORDER INFORMATION + GIVEAWAYS

Thank you so much to everyone who has already pre-ordered a copy of MIRROR! I can’t begin to thank you enough for your support—I know you’ve heard it a million times before, but my career is thanks to your ongoing support. Pre-ordering helps the life of the book more than you know and I would be so grateful if you’d consider putting an order in before release day.

PRE-ORDER FROM: Bookshop | Amazon | Barnes & Noble signed edition | Books-a-Million | Target | Walmart | Chapters/Indigo | Booktopia (Aus) | Dymocks (Aus) | Whitcoulls (NZ) | Mighty Ape (NZ) | Waterstones (UK) | WH Smith (UK) | Amazon UK

And for the many of you who have been asking… YES! I can finally confirm that both Fairyloot (coming 8/20) and Owlcrate (available for pre-order now) are doing matching editions of MIRROR!

If you pre-order MIRROR through one of my two local indie bookstores, you’ll receive a cool collector’s coin! Grab one through Changing Hands (US shipping only) or The Poisoned Pen (US and International shipping available). If you’d like the copies signed and personalized, please indicate that in the order notes. Please forward your order confirmation email to mirrorofbeastspreorders@gmail.com so I can track the number of orders.

If you’re based in the US, don’t forget to submit to get your FREE(!) SILVER IN THE BONE jacket with the new cover art. Per the website, these will likely ship out around the time the book releases at the end of July, into August.

I’m also very happy to announce that UK readers now also have the opportunity to grab a hardcover jacket with the new art! My UK publisher is offering them up as a gift to anyone who pre-orders MIRROR. You can click here to submit your info, or click on the image below!

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RECENTLY…

Reading: I am finally getting around to reading EMILY WILDE’S ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FAERIES after letting it sit on my tbr list for over a year! This one comes highly recommended by author pals, so I’m excited to dive into it. I’ve also made it an unofficial project of sorts to re-read some older romance books I enjoyed in my 20s. This past week, I reread two books from the Black Dagger Brotherhood series (Dark Lover and Lover Awakened). What a nostalgia trip to be back in that fictional world!

Watching: I’m in the middle of My Lady Jane and it’s just as romantic and funny and wonderful as you’ve heard! Once you’ve watched the show, be sure to also check out the incredible book it’s based on!

Listening: I just finished listening to a podcast that featured a crossover between two of my interests, true crime and romance novels: Happily Never After. I’ve also been VERY into AURORA’s new album What Happened to the Heart? I seriously wish I’d had it to listen to while I was working MIRROR—A Soul With No King could be the book’s theme song, and I am 1000000% adding it to the playlist!