I mentioned last year that I got a literary agent. Well, I got a book deal. The book is coming out 9/1 of this year. I’m not naming the title so that Google doesn’t scrape this site and bring it up as a result, but I’ll post the cover so you know what it is…

Going through the publishing process has been really interesting. I had no idea how much work was put into each step of the polishing process. My editor and I went through and fixed a lot of issues, shored up weak points and emphasized the strong ones, making the book stronger. After the book was accepted by my editor, I got paid $$, and then the rest of the process started chugging along. This included copyedits and proofreading (two different things, I learned!), reaching out to authors for blurbs (the short, one-to-two-line endorsement that is printed on the book cover or the first inner page of the book), cover image reveals, jacket copy finessing, and sending the as-yet-not-finally-edited copies out for early reviews.

My favorite part of the whole shebang was getting my galleys — that is, the bound early copies of the book — in the mail. My galleys were initially misdelivered, yet because they were marked as delivered by UPS my team was unaware that I hadn’t gotten them, so they sent me a new set two weeks later.

Now reviews are starting to roll in and though I’m not looking at them (seriously, authors, don’t look at your Goodreads reviews), I did get a trade (professional) review that called my book “sensational” so I’m still riding the high from that.

All of this sounds like it’d be amazing, and I’m trying to be in the moment and enjoy every cool thing that comes along. But a part of me is worried that the more praise this book gets, the harder it will be for me to match it when I write my next book. The book I’m currently procrastinating on by writing this blog post instead.

Or if it’s going to be professionally praised but commercially panned, which also worries me. If consumers hate it or are lackluster about it, and the book fades away without really anyone reading it. That’s a great fear, too.

The more I think about my writing “career,” the more anxious I get. It’s already such an anxiety-inducing path, what with the miniscule percentage of people who get agents and the few people who sell their books on top of that, and the fewer still whose books make any impact in the world. I am lucky, though, that I’ve gotten this far, and also that the people whose opinions matter the most to me — my family, my husband, my oldest friend — all read it and seem to have liked it.

I don’t know what I aimed to do with this blog post. Shine a little light on what happens behind the scenes, I suppose. Or let you know that as soon as a book deal happens, there’s even more work to be done and anxiety doesn’t magically melt away. So yeah.

Tweet Cute by Emma Lord
(Out tomorrow!)

I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley for an honest review. **This review is spoiler-free.**

Summary: Pepper, a high-achieving senior, is the princess of the Big League Burger franchise. Her parents the owners are rolling out a new grilled cheese sandwich and tap Pepper to help with their Twitter presence.

Her classmate and nemesis Jack comes from a small family deli in Brooklyn. He helps with the family business, too — including their social media. When Big League Burger’s new grilled cheese recipe seems to have been stolen from Jack’s family’s deli, he fires the first shot across Twitter. A tweet war begins.

As the two duke it out publicly on Twitter, they are also unknowingly chatting with each other — and falling for each other — on an anonymous app that Jack built. Will they figure out that their spicy memes are the witty repartees of two people flirting?

Okay, this was really cute. A bit cheesy, but cute. Take You’ve Got Mail but make the bookstores into sandwich shops and add teenaged drama, and you’ve got Tweet Cute. I always love this trope of public enemies / private lovers, and this book didn’t disappoint in that regard.

Much like the Grandma’s Special sandwich, this has a lot of layers. Pepper is dealing with her parents’ divorce and her sister’s absence after she’s gone off to college. She’s also stressed with college applications, homework, and balancing the corporate-owned Twitter account (because the person Pepper’s parents have hired has no idea how to do her job). On top of all of that, she’s chatting with an anonymous student that goes by the moniker Wolf, with whom she’s catching feelings.

Jack has his own issues: feeling like the “stupid twin” in the shadow of his golden-brother Ethan, he feels like he’s destined to inherit his parents’ deli because that’s all he’s good for. He created this app for students to chat anonymously among each other, and is sort of feeling things for someone named Bluebird, but he’s also kinda attracted to the snarky, scholastic swimmer Pepper that he likes to torment so much. And he’s pissed that this Big League Burger seems to have bitten his family’s sandwich recipe!

But also! This story has a lot to do with social media, its presence in our everyday lives, and how it affects youths of today. The tweet war leads to other hits that highlight Pepper and Jack, like Youtubers condensing what’s going on with #CheeseGate, a foodie website moderating a tweet contest, and photos of the main characters going viral. It made me really glad I didn’t go to high school when social media was a thing.

It’s a touch long. The drama drags out. Will they or won’t they? Obstacle after obstacle are hurled at our heros. A few side plots were sewn up a little quickly. It’s not a story that takes itself too seriously, and it does very little with diversity (I think one friend, Pooja, is a person of color, and Jack’s twin Ethan is gay, but the rest of the cast is straight and white). But ultimately, this was a cute romcom that I think people will hunger for. Four stars.

Books read: 9
Number of re-reads: 1

Ratings of the books I read:
4
4
0
No rating: 0

Rejoice, all! I had a good reading month, with a surprising number of great reads.

Five-star reads

When They Call You a Terrorist by Patrisse Khan-Cullors & Asha Bandele | Just. Really good.

Heavy by Kiese Laymon | “I learned you haven’t read anything if you’ve only read something once or twice.” This book is amazing. Every line highlightable, every sentence weighted with meaning infused from the one before it. I can’t even explain how good it is. One to re-read again and again, for sure.

The Bone People by Keri Hulme | This is not an easy book to read, because it doesn’t follow many rules of language, but it FEELS like a story. I don’t know how else to put it. Read for Read Harder (ownvoices Oceania)

Lucky Broken Girl by Ruth Behar | I don’t read much (or any) Middle Grade, but I really enjoyed this story about a young Jewish Cuban immigrant who breaks her leg in the summer of 1966. Confined to her room for many months in a body cast, she goes through a ton of emotional growth and learns to appreciate her life. The diversity in the story is A+. It was written for a young audience but gently touched on a lot of grown-up themes, including racial equality and immigrant rights.

Four Stars

Permanent Record by Mary H.K. Choi | I was super excited about Choi’s sophomore novel, about a guy named Pablo who meets the famous actress Leanna Smart — and there’s instant chemistry. This was less about their romance and more about Pablo’s growth as a human. Still good, but not exactly what I was expecting.

Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie | A retelling of Antigone (which I wasn’t super familiar with before), this story follows a Muslim family in the UK, the brother of which is wrapped up in ISIS. It was beautifully written and not very long, but packed a punch.

Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton | I was feeling generous since this is the very last of the alphabet mystery series and I grew up on them. It’s probably more of a 3.5-er, but I love Kinsey Millhone so much that I’m willing to let it go.

Miracle Creek by Angie Kim | A courtroom drama about an experimental medical experiment gone awry, killing two people, and the aftermath. The story picks through all of the witnesses’ stories and we slowly uncover the truth. It took me about two weeks to recover from this one. I didn’t love the end… hence 4 stars.

Rereads

I reread Geekerella by Ashley Poston and it was still great!

Other Bookish Things…

I announced it on Twitter, but…. I have a literary agent! Yes, I wrote a book, now have an agent. I will probably update on the particulars of that in a separate post one of these days. But I’m over-the-moon excited and can’t wait to share more soon!

How was your month?

Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (Goodreads)
Rep: Bisexual/gay rep, Latinx/white lead

I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley for an honest review. **This review is spoiler-free.**

Summary

First Son of the United States, Alex Claremont-Diaz, creates a publicity snafu when he accidentally brawls with Prince Henry of Wales at a royal wedding. Damage control dictates that the two men have to play it off like they’re friends — even though Alex can’t stand Henry, that uppity MFer — and they are thrown together for a long weekend and photo op in the UK. Unlikely as it may be, Alex and Henry begin texting at all hours and learn what is underneath each other’s hard veneers; soon, they fall in love. But while Alex’s mother is working on her presidential reelection campaign, and Henry can’t come out due to strict royal regulations, Alex has to wonder: is this love worth the sacrifice? How can they have their happy ending when so much is riding against them?

I didn’t know I needed this book until I read it.

I have so many thoughts about this book, but the biggest is that I didn’t know I needed this until I read it. Yes, it’s adorable; yes, it’s hot. But also, it’s so hopeful.

From the trope of enemies-to-friends-tolovers done well, to heartwarming side characters and intriguing side plots that bring the full breadth of the story to life, I loved almost every second of this book. There is so much juggling going on, but Casey McQuiston executes it all flawlessly, especially the realistic and touching budding friendship to romance between Alex and Henry. They were full of adorable, sweet moments, and also fraught moments of pain and confusion that made me wonder how they were going to make it.

I also loved Alex’s relationship with his sister June and his on/off again relationship with the VP’s granddaughter Nora; Henry’s complicated relationships to his family, including a stuck-up Philip in line to the throne and his wild/misunderstood sister Beatrice; Henry’s flamboyant fashionista friend Pez… The relationships between all of the family members, which is convoluted and complicated but rooted in caring and love, and family friends and enemies in politics, all felt real and believable.

I like this timeline

My only issue with the story was that the timeline took a while to figure out. I expected this story to be in the near future, perhaps 2024, but it actually takes place now. In some alternate universe, Ellen Claremont won the 2016 election as a Democrat and moved her son and daughter into the White House, and the reelection campaign takes place from 2018-2020. The royal family of England still has the Queen (this time, Mary) as the matriarch, but the rest of the family tree is different: Henry’s mother was a princess who married a commoner, and the three heirs are different from the current royal family.

I think I read in the author acknowledgments at the end that she started this book in early 2016 and then had to reevaluate where to take it after our last presidential election. So it’s packed full of hopefulness, to the brink of idealism. I almost wish that the author had fabricated a regal line to dress up, because — practical as I am — I spent too much time figuring out the edges of what was in the real world now vs. what was made up or embellished for this story. It seems to me that switching the timeline would have been easy and would have also saved me some mental gymnastics as I tried to figure out when everything took place. This is why I deducted half a star.

The added bonus of being a Texan

I think everyone who reads this book will be so thrilled at the amazingly-written romance between Henry and Alex, which is established well before the halfway mark, so this is not a spoiler by any means. Their love is amazing, their families’ responses to their relationship is believable, and the tension throughout as the secret risks exposure gave me lots of feelings.

But.

I feel like, as a Texan, I have to talk about the absolute uplifting back story of Alex becoming the FSOTUS (which is not a spoiler either). Alex’s other home is in the Hill Country near Austin, where I live. The author successfully encompassed the feeling of the liberal-blue of Austin and the surrounding conservative-red of rural Texas. Her description of how Ellen, nicknamed the Lometa Longshot from a small town in Texas, rose to the highest seat in the country was so inspiring — I wanted it to be real. Her nuanced view of politics in Texas, especially that of Ellen winning in 2016 by getting enough electoral votes from all the big states but lost her own state — felt believable.

For those readers outside of the US, or even outside of Texas, I’m sure this side plot about Ellen’s political career won’t feel as poignant as it does to me. But it plays a big part in a large chunk of the story, and it was cathartic in a personal way for me.

I want to see a real world where an Ellen Claremont, divorced mother of two, formerly married to a Mexican-American congressman, Democrat, and general good person could win the presidency. I want to see a world where two high-profile guys can fall in love across international lines and hold onto that precious feeling for as long as they want, without fear of repurcussion.

This was a great read. 4.5/5 stars.

Red, White & Royal Blue will be out May 14.