The Lead Up: What I Imagined for My Book's Debut vs. What Actually Happened

Don't Forget: No One Knows Who You Are

A few things up top:

Memoiring Book Club chose my debut memoir, Hotshot for its November pick, so make sure to go subscribe! And buy Hotshot! And if you’ve read it, please rate it or leave a review where reviews matter (Storygraph, Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes & Noble…or tell your local indie bookseller how much you loved my book and ask them to display it face out :)). The book makes a great gift for anyone who’s been a minority at work, worked manual labor, expressed interest in ecology and history, loves the outdoors, is queer and/or trans, has a difficult relationship with their mother, has experienced gender discrimination, or loves memoirs and nonfiction. Honestly there’s something for everyone in my book. But content warning for EDs, addiction, parental suicide, and SA.

If you’re in or near Miami, come see me at the Miami Book Fair.

ALSO!! Kirkus named Hotshot as one of their BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR!!!!! Woohoo!!!

Warning: If you would like to remain blissfully unaware of the complexities of publishing a book, don’t read this. I’ve warned you! :)

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It feels pretty vulnerable to tell you what I imagined for my book’s release, because I was semi-delusional.

I knew how my publisher thought my book would sell (decent, but not bestseller by any means). My agent told me to keep my expectations low. But this was impossible, because imagining a successful debut was what kept me going for over a decade, slogging through one book, then this one, revision after revision, waiting months to hear from my editor, turning around revisions at the expense of my physical and mental health. Sacrificing so much.

You can read about all of that in my last post.

Here’s what I knew:

• Although movement was glacial in the 1.5 years since turning in my first draft, things accelerated– apparently so quickly that my book had what was called a “crash production schedule,” which meant publicity didn’t get a long lead time. I found out that this had happened a couple months before my book’s release, when I asked about book clubs and was told they hadn’t been able to submit my book because there wasn’t enough lead time.