my book is coming out this november!

updates and some book promo in honor of brat summer :)

i’m officially coming out of my hiatus to announce that my debut novel The Beautiful Name is coming out this November, 2024! i’d originally planned for a 2025 release, but i’ve been in an editing (by myself and with help) and formatting cave for the past two months, along with a pretty severe case of writer’s “block.” i put block in quotes because i don’t really see it as a block so much as a lack of motivation. more like writer’s laziness. regardless, the inability to write anything else except for a scant poem and a scattered, disjointed few paragraphs of a futuristic short story that I quickly lost interest in, made it possible to speed up the book release.

i’ve taught myself, with youtube tutorials, how to use indesign (yeah, the greedy adobe monthly subscription that i will cancel as soon as i am done using it and hopefully the lawsuit the US govt is levelling against them will get me some money back…). i’ll be using ingramspark to distribute both the print and ebook version of my book. now all i have left to do, after agonizing over fonts and margin sizes and gutter sizes and discovering that my book comes out to 600 pages, all that’s left to commission is the cover. oh, and i have to find a suitable photograph of myself and write a bio for the back flap, because i’ll be damned if it doesn’t look professional.

600 pages you say? wow, you really need to cut some of that down! i tried, and after deliberating with editors, myself, and beta readers, who all (to my surprise more than anyone’s) said that they didn’t believe any major parts should be cut, i’ve decided that the people who don’t have the attention span simply won’t read it, and that’s actually a good thing. call me a stubborn artist who is ‘too attached’ to her work. i’d rather be a stubborn writer than a boring writer, or worse, a resentful writer who wishes that scene or that chapter were included, and on her deathbed will be yapping at the hospice nurse about how she should have listened to her better judgement because if she had, she would have been a bestseller. also, it was only 430 pages in word doc, but once i put it into the size of an actual book, with font that was readable, and margins that were acceptable as the market standard, well, that added quite a bit of bulk.

yes, it is 600 pages. but it’s 600 pages of dark academia, secret society meetings, friendship conflicts, clandestine eavesdropping, queer love, doomed love, flawed college students who will do anything to fit in, gossip pages, cliques, drug dealers, car chases, betrayal, toxic relationships, beautifully complex ones, parental wounds, generational wealth (and trauma), sororities, old fraternal orders, a cult, canadians, americans, witches, and magic substances….

and this is only book one :).

the official synopsis is as follows:

Since childhood, Diana Foster and Carmen De Luna were inseparable. But after suspecting her father of hiding a dangerous past, Diana pushes Carmen away to protect her from the Foster family history. Lena Asai, Diana’s new neighbor, gets swept up in the Fosters’ dark tide when she begins a romance with Diana’s brother Quinn.  

In her first year at Mondegreen College, Carmen witnesses her professor leading a ritualistic meeting of a secret society, during which he ingests a strange purple substance. When Carmen decides to seek the truth about the society, what she discovers poses a threat to the social balance of the College, and to her roommate’s friend group, a circle Carmen is unwittingly thrust into. 

Logan Richardson is the professor’s son and heir to the society’s seat of power. He has rejected everything his father indoctrinated him into, including the society itself, known to his peers as the Jargonauts. But as scenes from his past plague him, his future place in the society descends upon him. 

Livvie Deveraux is quickly losing sight of herself amid the partying and social codes of her sorority in the university beach town of Claren, leaving her best friend Naomi in the lurch. When Livvie meets a dealer of the purple drug, Neil Austen, they fall fast for each other. But their relationship is strained by addiction and the man who Neil owes money to and is running from.  

Though estranged or strangers, Diana, Carmen, and the others are connected by one entity: the wealthy and patriarchal cult controlling the town of Mondegreen. Before long, they find themselves deeply entrenched in the society’s machinations with no discernible escape. 

here are some pinterest photos that encompass the various vibes of the novel (in lieu of a book trailer lol):

Mondegreen, the college and the town, one of the main settings of the novel:

more mondegreen vibes

Claren, one of the other main settings of the novel:

now, for the characters. first up, Logan Richardson:

Carmen De Luna:

Livvie Deveraux:

Naomi Starling:

Diana Foster and Lena Asai:

Neil:

listen, i wasn’t a tumblr girl in 2012-2015 for nothing. there will be more promo stuff coming soon, and the first chapter is still linked at the top of my substack page!!

cover reveal coming soon!! and more random writing!!