The Dream That's Finally Within My Grasp

The day has finally come that I get to share my amazing secret with you!!

The big day is finally here! ❤️✨ Late last year, I hinted to you that I had a secret to share, one that was life-changing and dream-achieving all in one. I’ve spent 11 months holding this secret in and now the day has arrived that I get to share my book news with you!!

I am so incredibly THRILLED to announce my debut Upper Young Adult novel, IN THE COMPANY OF KILLERS, will be published by Little, Brown Books for Young Readers in North America AND Hachette Children’s Group in the UK & Commonwealth in early 2025! 🎉😭 *cue endless flailing & screaming*

In the Company of Killers follows the story of Tasha and Leo, my mafia children I’ve dubbed them over the years, and their glamorous, messy, dangerous, and most importantly, fun lives (well, fun for the reader! haha). This is a story for the people who are obsessed with slow-burn romance with lots and lots of pining and drama, girls fierce and angry and unabashedly confident in themselves and the boys who adore them for it, dramatic love triangles, and did I mention DRAMA?! This is OG Gossip Girl with mafias, guns, murder (obvs), and battling for the crown (aka the role of Boss). I love everything about it and every version that has existed to get to this moment. If you also love the Sopranos, Succession, These Violent Delights, and/or the Kingdom of the Wicked series…then I hope you stick around for the release of my book.

There will be a future newsletter taking a deep-dive into how I got this book deal. Family & friends have remarked on how they can’t believe the amount of crazy twists & turns this book has had. Honestly, I can’t believe it most days, too. While I will talk more about it in depth at a later date, I can’t go without sharing a little bit of information on how I got here. So, please enjoy the slight-flowery version below! I know I’ve waited a very long time to tell it to you.

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This is what it looks like to fight for your dreams. 

Five years ago, I started writing a story. A story that was fierce and fun and glamorous in all the ways I loved. For many years before it, I tried to find my voice in writing and the stories I wanted to tell, but I could never land on the right one at the right time. When this one came along, I knew in my heart it would would change my life for the better.

So I fought for it. And fought for it some more. I got my wonderful agent and her team because of this story, who fully believed this would be the one to change my life, too. Life was looking so, so amazing. Like everything I’d dreamed and hoped for and then some was about to come true.

Then a year ago in the most amazing, all around fantastic way possible, someone asked about that story. The one I had always thought would be the story to change my life. She wanted to read. She was interested. A person who had that final magic I needed to make my dreams come true. 

And reader, they did. 

I spent over ten years fighting to become a published author. Years of unabashedly declaring my love for telling stories and wanting to let others get the chance to read them.

Now a year from now, I get to share this one with you.

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When I was fourteen-years-old, I asked a friend who I was doing a “photoshoot” with (because what else do fourteen-year-old suburban girls growing up in the 2000s do when they’re armed with drugstore makeup, a digital camera, & endless time on their hands?) to take a photo of me “working” on my first-ever book. It’s the one shot I have from that spur of the moment request during that precious, innocent, fateful era when I decided I wanted to Do The Thing and actually try my hand at writing a full length novel. (Though, I had no idea of category labels at the time, only that it was a fantasy with heavy, heavy inspiration from my favourite video games ((Hi, Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess)) and all the various manga tropes I was obsessed with at the time).

That photo is in the collage above and to the left. How I adore it. It’s a clear reminder of who I’ve been doing this for all these years. That highlighted hair, terrible eyeshadow, black nail polish girlie with a stack of writing journals & notebooks beside her and a terrible first attempt at a book (I recall describing the male love interest as having Edward Cullen’s looks, which is extra hilarious given that I’m now being published by the imprint behind Twilight) who had big, vast dreams outside of her little life and the creativity, drive & delusion to find her way to them.

(You probably wonder why I called myself delusional, but trust me, I had heaps of it until publishing later humbled me badly, but again, more on that in my next newsletter).

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I also recall promising to show you something special I teased about in my last newsletter! After I got my book deal, I commissioned the fantastic Arthur Shahverdyan to do a piece to celebrate the news and to use for future promotional materials (keep an eye out for more details on that!). It’ll go live soon on my socials, but for now, you’re the first one to see it in all its glory!!

Isn’t it beautiful?! I’d asked Arthur to do a movie-like poster of my characters with the title and he absolutely delivered. Tasha & Leo are stunning and look exactly like they do in my mind’s eye. You can see the intelligence in Tasha’s eyes and the longing in Leo’s. They’re like an updated Blair Waldorf & Nate Archibald — and as a friend said, “they could step on me and I’d thank them” which also feels very Blair & Nate-coded!

These two have been with me since 2018. Discovering & building upon their relationship with themselves, each other and those around them has been a true gift even when facing hardships to get their story out there. I hope when the day comes where they’re no longer just my book babies that these two stir the same kind of excitement, love and adoration in new readers’ hearts as they have in mine.

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As I write this announcement, it’s about 2 months out from when it’ll go live (I am a planner at heart). I sit in my sweats with the winter sun already gone and a candle burning from a local small business I like to support. And while I spent eleven months ripping my book apart and putting it back together again with the help of my phenomenal editor, in some ways it still doesn’t feel real. I spent so many years manifesting this moment for myself, cheering friends & colleagues on for achieving their shared dream while consoling my tender heart, telling her our time would come. Now it’s finally my turn and I feel incredibly blessed. There will be lots of time to focus on my determination to make this a long-term thing, but for this moment, I’m basking in the miracle of everything that has occurred until now. So many want to write a book, less actually do, and even fewer fight through the unknown, unique battle they’ll face to get to the moment when the magic of the right “Yes” is finally within their grasp. And through years of sheer grit, passion for storytelling, and stubbornness to not give up, I finally get to look back at my timeline and smile.

Whenever you’re doubting yourself, I hope my story of fighting for my dreams helps fuel you to keep fighting for yours.

Now, who else is ready to see what’s in store for In the Company of Killers?

Take care.