4 weeks until pub day for The Cover Girl!

We’re now in the weeks, not months, stage of counting down to The Cover Girl’s release. I sold the book about two years ago, and I feel like I’ve been waiting for so long, but now time is moving by in double speed.

My finished copies arrived a couple weeks ago. After years of tearing up at people’s unboxing videos, I got to make my own…and I was somehow surprised when I cried as much as I did seeing the book. We focused on e-galleys, so I didn’t have my own physical advanced reader copies. That meant this was my first-first time holding my book. After I stopped the camera, I just held it and wept — the culmination of 9 years of actively striving for this and wishing I could show my dad. It was an intense moment, and worth the wait.

The Final Countdown

So what’s going on in these final weeks? A lot of stuff behind the scenes, and also:

• The final Goodreads giveaway, which is open through July 14 to readers in the US and Canada!

• Figuring out what to wear to my book launch at Quail Ridge Books. If you’re around Raleigh on August 5, or if you know anyone who is, please join us! You can RSVP (so they know how many people to plan for) or RSVP with a preorder. I’ve got my signature ready! (Fun fact I learned: you shouldn’t sign books with your legal signature.)

• And speaking of preorders, Barnes & Noble Preorder sale is on right now, so if you’re not local, you can save 25% on The Cover Girl now through July 11 with code PREORDER25 and a free rewards membership.

  • While you’re there, here’s a couple other books I recommend adding to the list:

    • Beasts of Carnaval, by fellow MIRA author Rosália Rodrigo. I’m so excited for this — the concept sounds amazing and the cover is so gorgeous.

    • Blood Slaves, by fellow 2025 debut Markus Redmond — another book I’m so excited for!

    • Far from the A-List, by Stephanie Burns, another MIRA author, and while this book doesn’t come out till December, it will be worth the wait! (I can say this — I read an early copy!)

• I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention bookshop.org is also running a free shipping sale from through July 11 as well. We love indies!

• Prepublication essays! My team has landed me spots in some exciting places, so I’ve been working on essays adjacent to the book. I’ll share those links in my next newsletter.

• Book club assets! If you belong to a book club that might read The Cover Girl, we’ve put together this handy kit.

The Big Hair Video Lair: Retro Video Corner

As a refresher: in 2015, on a whole different internet, I started a blog about 80s glam metal videos, doing tongue-in-cheek analyses, especially of the girls in the videos. It’s never a bad time for 80s music videos, so I’m reviving the Big Hair Video Lair in this newsletter, in a much shorter form, and taking a trip down memory lane with some older posts.

For example, “Sister Christian” might sound like just a paternalistic power ballad (and the members of Night Ranger might have tried to make that abundantly clear when I saw them in concert 26 years ago, which somehow was still long after the height of their popularity). But the video for “Sister Christian” has time vortexes, wormholes, and the friends we made along the way.

Intrigued? How could you not be? Read the full post from the archive here.

Now Reading

I’m listening to the audio book of A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin, which I somehow missed when it was on the reading list for the competitive book-reading team I was on in middle school. I was also lucky enough to get an advanced copy of Laura Resau’s The Alchemy of Flowers, which publishes July 29 (and is also eligible for the sale mentioned above!). I’m also excited to start We Don’t Talk About Carol, by Kristen L. Berry.

Now Getting Nervous

Me. For the next 4 weeks.