What it feels like to write a book
Or, more specifically, to have written a book
I wrote a book! And no, it’s not The French Honeymoon. (Though I did write that book, too!). I wrote a new thriller, the second in my contract with Sourcebooks. It has an official title, and even a cover. Actually, right now it has multiple covers (more on this in a minute) and it’s scheduled for publication in spring 2026, which feels wild!
One of the great challenges of the creative life for me is what a mental and emotional rollercoaster it is. One day I’ll be pounding out words by the thousand, madly in love with the world I created and the story within. Other days feel like everything I write is absolutely terrible, and the commas are out like swords, waiting to pick up a fight with my tired brain.
With The French Honeymoon, I wrote a post on a day I felt particularly high so I would have something to look back on during the hard times. And it has helped so much! Every time doubt creeps in and I question whether I can even do this, it feels really good to reread that post.
So that’s what I wanted to put down: fresh thoughts and feelings right as I handed in the first draft of my new thriller.
I had the idea for it some time in 2021 but didn’t touch it for a while because I was contracted for other books and had ideas that were further along. But also because it felt like too big of an undertaking. I envisioned this book as a bonanza of POVs and narrative formats and just thinking about it made my brain hurt. Spoiler alert: writing it also made my brain hurt quite a bit, but it turned out to be much more doable than I’d imagined. As always, the anticipation of the hard thing can be one of the greatest hurdles. By deciding to do it anyway, you remove one of the big challenges already.
Because I did it, Joe! There is always a moment in this process (or rather, many moments), when I feel like I won’t be able to finish the book. The feeling of satisfaction and achievement in hitting that Send button is absolutely freaking glorious. The best!
This might be the easiest draft I have written so far. Not because it was easy (wait, what?) but because there was a certain flow to it. The idea had been percolating in the background for years, but once I sat down to hash it out and write the proposal (for my editor to approve), it kind of . . . happened. My editor gave the go ahead quickly and then I went ahead and wrote the book, in about ten months. I have a history of working on multiple projects at once, so it’s been a very long time since I went from idea, to outline, to draft in a somewhat seamless manner. As of right now, this draft is very much how I envisioned it from the get go, down to how it all wraps up in the end. I’m very curious to know what will stick around in the final draft.
While it was a seamless writing process, I wrote this draft through multiple personal crises–welcome to life with a baby and no support system–an incredibly stressful move, a surgery (ugh!) and enough illnesses to power a, wait I don’t know how this ends. Anyway. This isn’t to say that my life is so hard; I only wanted to show my future self that she can do hard things, because she’s done them before.
Right after I started working on this book in early 2024, I came up with an idea I’m soooooo excited about. Part of it was definitely Shiny New Idea Syndrome, but the beauty of it is that it was a huge driver of finishing this book, so I could start working on the next one. That might make me sound like a workaholic, but that’s not it. There’s just so much magic in this work that often it feels like the work is the reward. (However, I did celebrate finishing this draft by eating my weight in cream puffs and macarons).
I don’t know who needs to hear this (me, it’s always me), but placing that comma just right isn’t going to affect whether your readers connect with your story and your characters. I’m a stickler for spelling and grammar and I really believe that details matter, but man I wish I had back the time I spent agonizing over where a comma went in previous books. There are much, much more important things to focus on.
This book is fun. Not just because it’s set in a glamorous world and there are a lot of pretty dresses and parties, but also because I wanted to have a little fun with it, especially after such a serious and dark book as The French Honeymoon. Working through this draft, I kept thinking how nice it felt to find moments of levity in a story about ambition and female rage and every time I did, it was like a little treat.
I had a title I really liked (and so did my team, I think) but Sourcebooks is a data-driven publisher and likes to test things. My beloved title didn’t test well in multiple rounds, so we came up with many other options. It took a while to let it go but now I see that the title we landed on works much better for the genre. I worked the old title into the tagline, so I’d call it a win-win.
And the cover, aaahhh, the cover! I love design and I’m particular about how things look, which can make the cover process challenging (it’s me, hi, I have strong opinions about fonts, and everything else). Ultimately, it’s never up to me, but as an author you always want to love your cover. Sourcebooks sent eight options to look at and I was immediately drawn to one, to the point of feeling “this is it!” But I also really liked two of the other options. So off to testing the covers went. As of now, I have no idea what the final cover will look like, but it’s a relief to know I already like it!
Last but not least, The French Honeymoon is out in just under two months! Now’s the time to preorder it and to tell all your friends about it! It’s so weird to be putting most of my focus on the next book when the last one isn’t even out yet, but this very much falls in the category of champagne problems.
PS: I can’t wait to share more details about my next book, but for now there are a ton of hints in this post ;-)