Available now: Farm Girl!

Dear long neglected blog... I have some news to share...

My debut novel, Farm Girl, is now available for purchase on Amazon in eBook and paperback!

From the back cover:

When Beatrix Hampton, a travel photographer with a passport full of stamps but no permanent address, finds herself searching for stability she heads to the quiet town of Cumberland, Massachusetts. Here, she is embraced by the people and town she spent much of her childhood with, including family friend Cliff Finley and his apple orchard. Bea finds solace in the rhythms of harvest season, but as secrets are unearthed she discovers her ties to the orchard are more than sentimental. Bea must make a decision: will she run like she always does, or stay and help save Finley Orchards? 



I've spent over three years with Bea, Cliff, and Graham in the fictional town of Cumberland, and they are so dear to my heart. I'm thrilled to finally be able to share them with you! My most sincere hope is that you not only read the story, but that you get swept up in it's sense of place, find the characters thoughtful and complex, maybe shed a few tears, and overall love the book. 

Over the coming weeks keep an eye on my social media channels as I'll be posting at least one giveaway over on Instagram, as well as a special giveaway for my newsletter subscribers {click here to hop on the list if you haven't already!}

It would mean the world to me if you could help me spread the word by sharing about Farm Girl by any means you see fit. If you post online, feel free to tag me! 

Thank you for joining me on the adventure that is self-publishing a novel. This is a dream come true for me, and I hope you enjoy reading Farm Girl. 

Writing update: expectations, reality, and hope

The notebook pictured is full of scribbles pertaining to my novel. Several outlines, timelines, character sketches, full paragraphs, lines, sometimes only a word to jog my memory. It's fun to look through and see what stuck. What didn't. What might need to come back someday when an agent or editor has suggestions. 

Last week I began the process of querying literary agents. Prior to that I worked on a query letter template, with the help of a few patient people who held my hand and read my words. I struggled over tone, word choice, and how to capture the essence of a 100,000 word novel into three short paragraphs. But it's done, and after the first email submission, I felt a sense of relief. 

It's a process, getting your novel out into the world. I don't expect to hear anything from anyone anytime soon. But, I do hope that my email will fall into the right inbox at some point. 

Before I hit send to the first literary agent on my list, I had to dig deep and ask myself the question I've been avoiding for months:

Will I be okay with rejection? 

I don't truly know the answer to that. But I'm doing my best to keep my chin up. I hope that keeping some perspective about the business of publishing and realizing that it's all just the nature of the beast, and not necessarily my writing, will help. I've never taken rejection, or criticism well. Writing groups have helped me tremendously with handling criticism. But rejection, it still stings. The fear of it holds me back. But I'm tired of holding myself back, of giving in to fear and letting what I believe other people think of me and my work keep me from pursuing my dreams.

My goal for the summer is to send out as many query letters as possible, and hope that one will stick. While doing so, I'm planning on enjoying time with my children, countless trips to the beach, and some serious self care rituals and routines. For me, that includes getting up early, writing morning pages while sipping tea, exercise, dry brushing {I find it so therapeutic! Look it up if you haven't heard of it}, drinking lots of water, connecting with my husband, and remembering that while my book and my writing is important to me, my worth, my value as a human being, does not rely on finding an agent, and having my book traditionally published. 

But yeah, it'd be nice if I could find a literary agent to represent my book sooner rather than later. 

Managing expectations and reality while staying mildly optimistic will be the true work of my summer. Maybe my life...

spring, distractions, and the homestretch

It's spring here in Massachusetts, finally. 

That means school work, knitting, lunch, and mugs of tea on the porch. Toes warmed by the sun, and sweaters around our shoulders for when the wind inevitably starts up. It's a season of in between, especially in New England, where the weather can change abruptly, but we always hope for the best, knowing to always prepare for four seasons within one day. 

The weather and all of it's changes, the forsythia blooming at rapid speed, changing moment to moment, it's all a beautiful distraction for creative folks. There's so much to look at, to take in, it's a smorgasbord of sensory experiences. And let me tell you, I am easily distracted these days.

I'm at the tail end of the fourth draft of my novel, and I'm ready to be done. By the next blog post it should be completed - fingers and toes crossed. 

This isn't much of a post today, just a place holder until next week. My brain is tired, my creative energy is being used elsewhere, and I so desperately want to finish this book. I posted on Instagram Stories that I'm over it, and wish I had given myself a harder deadline than the end of April, because I never finish early. I'm a procrastinator, and yet a work horse, and would have finished weeks ago if I set the date as such. Now I know. Instead, I've worked slowly, methodically, through this draft with lots of wiggle room and places to move lazily along. Days off, sick days or busy days. Days to lose a bit of motivation... 

But here we go, into the homestretch. Until next week... 

Editing, editing, and editing some more

These days are full of colored pens, typed pages, and a clip board. Each day I sit down with the clip board, the chapter at hand staring at me, and I dive into the hard copy and strike words, change sentences, or close my eyes and try to remember why I thought writing a novel was a good idea in the first place. Pen marks made, I move to the computer and fiddle with words, save the draft, stack the marked pages under my desk with the other edited pages, and then grab another chapter and put it on the clip board for the next days work. 

I'm about a third of the way through this - what I hope will be the last - working draft. At this point my family is invested heavily in my work: my husband has read the entire book and has given invaluable feedback, my children ask questions about the characters and plot, and they don't bat an eye if I sit down in the living room with my clip board while they're playing. It's part of our daily lives, our rhythms and routines. 

It has taken much work to get to this point. 

And so I sometimes sit and wonder what the next phase will look like. Honestly, I have no idea. With a self imposed deadline of the end of April for this draft, I should be in good shape to start querying agents this summer. 

With that comes patience, rejection, dedication, but also room to start writing another first draft of something else. The next novel. 

Can I tell you something? The idea of that creates all sorts of butterflies in my stomach. Because yes, it's work. Dreadful and tiring and painful work at times. But... writing books is what I've always wanted to do. 

And I'm doing it. 

So I'll edit on, knowing that this is all part of it. I'll edit on fully knowing that there's no guarantee that this particular book will ever see a bookstore shelf. I'll edit on with hope in my belly and all sorts of questions on my mind, forever thinking about the next book.

Because that's what writers do. We ask questions, and we have unfathomable amounts of hope.

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Baby steps and giant leaps

I'm sitting here with my mug of steaming hot tea, a to do list, and the first chapter of my novel printed out and with pencil edits throughout. Procrastinating. But also, I wanted to come here and share a bit of an update, to share about my book. 

Let me tell you, that statement feels like a gigantic leap, and triggers all sorts of impostor syndrome symptoms within me. 

Because yes, I have a book. But also, it's far from done. There is no book deal. No agent. No publishing plan. Yet.

The thing about writing a book is that it's done in baby steps. Hundreds of baby steps. Building word on to word, sentences into paragraphs, pages into chapters, and on and on. Right now the book is over 300 pages. It's not entirely a mess, but it's in need of some work. And, once I'm done with it, it's only the beginning.

So maybe I'll tell you what's on the horizon, and where I'm at today. Because if you're along for this ride, I want to be honest with you: writing a book is a long and involved process. And then when it comes to publishing... it's just as long and involved.

Right now, I'm working on the fourth draft of my novel. It's tentatively called Farm Girl, and is about a young photographer named Bea who doesn't have a permanent address, who finds herself wanting to go home. The trouble is, the only place she ever felt at home was her now deceased grandmother's house. So Bea travels to the orchard across the street from her grandmother's house and stays with family friend who was like a second father to her as she was growing up. She quickly finds herself tied to the orchard and community in ways she never expected...

It's a quiet, sweet story, the type I enjoy reading. I think that's important when you're writing fiction, to write something you'd want to read. Anyway, I'm on the fourth draft, and I'm just beginning the real nitty gritty type of editing. With each draft I've peeled away layers to reveal the actual story, and now I'm at the point where I can easily see what needs to stay and what needs to go - what is essential to the story.

This stage feels daunting and tedious, terrifying but also creative and kind of fun. It's a different type of adventure than the rest of the writing process has been.

It's also been the hardest to jump into.

Maybe because I know it's going to be a lot of work.

Maybe because I know once I dive in, I won't want to come up for air.

My goal is to finish this next draft by the end of April. It's doable, I know it is. So here I am, with my pencils and highlighters, ready to take the next baby step. But first, more tea...

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