Hello! It’s the new year, somewhat inescapably. So much has happened since I wrote the draft of this newsletter, I don’t even know where to start. The month of December was kind of a disaster around these parts, for reasons I will get to later, and the global political events of the last three days are so bizarre and terrible, I don’t even know what to say about them, except possibly a long and offensive string of blasphemous/curse words.
Putting that aside, about two weeks ago, when I was putting together my announcement for the release of The Alignments, I started thinking about my relationship with music, which is highly…obsessive, I guess is the word I would use. I have the tendency to fall in love with a song and then listen to it over and over again a truly egregious number of times. The song gets tangled up with whatever I’m working on, until I can later recall the circumstances of writing the novel by listening to the song. This is the way that my books get assigned theme songs—what song became special to me when I was working on it? What song came, in some warped way, to typify what I was trying to do?
These are the theme songs of the books that have been released:
- Dionysus in Wisconsin: Big God, by Florence and the Machine. (I mean…)
- Old Time Religion: Old Time Religion, by Pete Seeger and Arlo Guthrie.
- Troth: Harmony Hall, by Vampire Weekend.
- Lazarus, Home from the War: Half the World Away, by Oasis. (Although this book had a lot of good songs, and eventually it’s kind of what got me into Springsteen.)
- The Alignments: This Will Be Our Year, by The Zombies. I didn’t realize at the time that it was from an album called Odyssey and Oracle, but when I found out…well, it’s appropriate.
As I work on the third draft of Renaissance, two songs have been battling it out for the position of theme song. I’m excited to see which one wins.
Speaking of which…
Here’s the news, in order of least to most important:
0/ Thank you to everyone who bought/read/left a review of The Alignments. I really appreciate you.
1/ At the end of the year, I usually do a blog post listing all the books I read in the previous year and short reviews of each. That post has gone live and can be found here.
2/ I have updated the series roadmap to include The Alignments and release info about Renaissance. I know I previously said it would be out 3/2. Because of all the stuff that happened in December and how stressed out everything was making me, I’ve moved the release to 4/13. I hope this isn’t too much of a disappointment. I hate having to change it. I was just having anxiety dreams and I needed to release some of the steam. But I’m very happy with the new schedule, which leads to…
3/ Renaissance is up for preorder here. Other sites to follow! Here is the cover and blurb:
June, 1971. As the academic year draws to a close, Sam and Ulysses are looking forward to a quiet summer. But when Ulysses’s grandmother is hospitalized, it becomes clear that relaxation is not in the cards. Unable to accept that her fall was an accident, Ulysses begins to investigate whether it may be related to a cult from their past whose mysterious and powerful leader seems to be popping up all over town.
Sam’s doing his best to hold things together and be supportive, but it’s hard when his new husband is barely listening and keeping him at arm’s length every time family is concerned. And on top of everything else, the library has something urgent to tell Sam…
As they reunite with old friends and prepare to bid farewell to others, Sam and Ulysses will see their marriage tried, their lives threatened, and meet an old enemy they thought long dead.
If you preorder it, let me know and I will send you one of these postcards for free!
I know the big issue is that some people really love paperbacks, and I can’t do paperback preorders. But you can still get one!
- if you buy the paperback in the first month or so and let me know, I’ll send one to you
- if you come to an in-person sale, you can get one free with purchase (and I have a special Laz postcard too if you buy his book)
- that’s it I guess
4/ It’s traditional at the beginning of the year for an author to lay out what they’re hoping to accomplish. The last six months of 2025 were quite stressful, riddled with my own illness (I wound up getting diagnosed with asthma); our dog dying; moving one kid to a new daycare; the unexpected diagnosis, decline, and death of a friend; and then immediately thereafter we did two rounds of the flu. As a consequence, my list of goals is a little pared-back. Still, I think it’s not bad:
- Publish Renaissance in April! I’m really excited about this.
- Start work on an audiobook version of Dionysus in Wisconsin. It’s time. Doing an audiobook is a little scary, but I love audiobooks so much, and I want my work to be accessible that way.
- Maybe another short story or novella, I’m not sure yet. I love writing novellas, but I have learned they don’t take less work than novels.
- The next Laz novel, ideally by the end of the year. This is a book about what happens when you take someone who is already kind of stressed out and on the edge and give him one more thing. Which is currently how I feel. So that should be good.
In a lot of personal ways, 2025 was not a great year. I prefer less fascism, less strife, fewer deaths among my friends. But it was also a fun and productive year—I published Lazarus, Home from the War, a book that went on to be named to the best of 2025 list by the biggest romance podcast out there. I published “Sparking Something,” which is a moody little AU scene that I really enjoyed working on. And I published The Alignments, which came out so much more awesome than I thought it would. I edited and put out seven episodes of the podcast, which is not what we usually shoot for but considering everything? I think I’m happy.
It was a year where there was a lot going on, and I think I’m proud of myself for getting through it. I’m glad you all got through it too, even if you’re feeling bruised by what you went through. I hope you have had some time off to recover, whether that meant making cookies and going to see friends or sitting in a darkened room listening to The Mountain Goats and reading hockey romances. (I have done both of these lately.) And I hope that if you had a 2025 like mine, you have a better 2026. I don’t necessarily have any clever reasons to hope that 2026 will be better, I just think at least it’s going to be different, which can be its own type of better.
Upcoming Events
In ten days, I’ll be presenting at the Wholehearted Writers Week!
At the end of next week, I’ll be selling books at the Well-Red Damsel’s Damsels Not in Distress event (January 18), which combines sword yoga with a romantasy book sale. There are yoga classes offered at 10, 11:30, and 1pm; the book sale is 11am-3pm. If tickets are still available, they’ll be here. I do not know what sword yoga is. It sounds fun? The event will be held at the Baird Center in Milwaukee (400 W. Wisconsin Ave.). You can also check out the Well-Red Damsel’s website here. We will also have some little felt things (hopefully bookmarks!). I do not know if the print copies of The Alignments will have arrived or not. Check my social media for updates closer to the date.
More events in March, but I won’t bother you with them just now.
No book reviews this month, because I just posted my list of everything I read in 2025. See you in February!
