Two months until The Cover Girl arrives!

Hello, and welcome to the first issue of About a Girl! Thank you so much for subscribing.

The girl that’s on my mind these days is Birdie Rhodes – the cover girl herself. She’s been with me since 2014 (though her name was Libbie until 2020). And two months from now, on August 5, Birdie will be out there, no longer just mine. 

But that’s the point. Both THE COVER GIRL and the first book I tried to sell are about women on the fringes of pop culture stories because I grew up watching way too many VH1 rock docs and always found the girlfriend mentioned in passing more interesting. But what’s her story? is the question that drives a lot of my creative life. 

If you ever listened to a classic rock song about a teenage girl that has aged horribly but also wasn’t right to begin and wondered, what’s her story, THE COVER GIRL is for you.

The Countdown Is On

What’s happening two months out? Some exciting things! Including:

• A Goodreads giveaway, running now through June 15. You can win an advanced copy!

• My first trade review in Publishers Weekly. I remember getting Publishers Weekly at my very first job in college textbook publishing. We’d circulate each issue among the team, and I’d make note of all these wonderful-sounding books. And now they’ve called THE COVER GIRL “an alluring debut”!

• My launch event is scheduled at Raleigh’s Quail Ridge Books, aka the bookstore of my heart and I still can’t quite believe it.

• Model Mondays on Instagram, where I’m going a little deeper into my research and sharing some stories from the real-life models who are mentioned in passing in the book. I’m especially interested in sharing about these women’s advocacy work and the ways they used their platforms. I will also be taking every opportunity to talk about the Battle of Versailles because it might be my Roman Empire. My first post is about Tina Chow.

The Big Hair Video Lair: Retro Video Corner

So back in 2015, the internet was a different place, especially for writers. And because I was writing something else adjacent to the subject, I started a blog about 80s glam metal videos, doing tongue-in-cheek analyses of some favorites and hoping it might help the project I was working on. It’s never a bad time for 80s music videos, so I’m going to revive the Big Hair Video Lair, in a much shorter form.

Summer’s upon us, so it’s a great time to revisit Y&T’s “Summertime Girls.” “Summertime Girls” is, theoretically, a meditation on women walking around in warm weather-appropriate clothing — a time-honored tradition in rock music. It’s also a celebration of Turbo half-shirts, jams, the lost art of rollerblading while carrying a boombox, and trying new things with your partner without giving up your identity.

If you want to know more about metal girls trying to have fun in the sun, gym class flashbacks, and beach robots, you can check out the full post here.

Now Reading

I’m currently reading – and loving – OLD SCHOOL INDIAN by Aaron John Curtis. Before that, I finished the incredible memoir RESTAURANT KID by Rachel Phan. Just two of many amazing 2025 debuts!

Indie Bookstore Hype!

Finally, authors Veronica Bane and Mary E. Roach are teaming up for the Indie Bookstore Preorder Party June 27-29. This will be a great way to save on preorders and support independent bookstore and authors. Visit @authors4indiebookstores to learn more.