💡 I Finished My Novel (Want to Read It Early?)
The edited draft of Let Me Be Your Ghost is done and every chapter is scheduled. Now I'm opening applications for beta readers.
Every chapter of Let Me Be Your Ghost now has a publish date.
I finished the rough draft a few weeks ago. Now the first pass of the edited draft is done too, and I’ve scheduled the entire rest of the book on Substack (!!!). The whole novel, queued up and waiting to find you.
It feels completely surreal. It does every single time I finish a draft and a big round of edits. This is when the book stops being a private thing between me and my document. Suddenly it’s real, and it’s exciting and scary all at once, because it means one thing — I get to share with you, my readers!
Some of you got here early and have already been emailing me your thoughts on the chapters as they come out, which I so, so, so appreciate.
Which brings me to the fun part.
📕 I’m Opening the Book Up to Beta Readers
Beta readers are an important early voice in my books. My nonfiction book Write for Money and Power had 90+ of readers, and they made it a sharper, better book. Now it’s this novel’s turn.
Here’s how it works: I send you the entire draft, you read it for free, and you give me whatever level of feedback you want. That can mean detailed notes in the Google Doc, or just three things you liked and three things you think could be improved. As much or as little as you want. It’s a pretty low lift.
As a thank you, beta readers who finish the book get:
Your name in the acknowledgments of the finished book
A free copy of the finished ebook when it comes out
Priority access to my future books — first in line for early reads from here on out
The one thing I’m asking for is speed. I’m looking for readers who can get through the book in a week or two and send feedback within the next 30 days, because your notes will feed directly into the rewrite pass I’m working on right now.
Apply to be a beta reader below if you’re interested!
📚 The Book I’ve Been Carrying Since Hollywood
I started developing this story back in my TV writer days in Hollywood, and it’s been with me ever since. There’s a lot of my real life that inspired elements of it (I’m a ghostwriter, I live in San Francisco, and I’ve worked with plenty of tech professionals), so Lola’s world is built from true-to-life detail — but of course, wildly fabricated and 100% fictional beyond the basic premise. The murders, I promise, are fully invented.
I’ve been calling it a romantic thriller: a romance novel with thriller elements and a murder mystery to sleuth through.
At heart, I’m a romance reader who loves thrillers and murder mysteries, so this book is me checking every one of my own boxes.
The romance is the center point, though, and every pass I make on the manuscript is about turning that dial up further. If that’s your kind of book, I’m excited for you to read it.
And if you’re new here, you can catch up on the first four chapters for free right here.
✍️ My Biggest Lesson So Far in Serializing Fiction
A note for the writers reading this: I wrote a whole guide on how to serialize fiction, and this stretch has confirmed the biggest rule in it.
The more of your book you finish before chapters start going out weekly, the better everything gets. With the full novel scheduled, I’m not writing toward a weekly deadline anymore — I’m spending that time on deeper edits and real, creative thinking about marketing. Chapters in the bank buy you a clear head.
Serializing this book has been ~ so much fun ~ and getting to watch new readers find Lola and Ezekiel every week is my favorite part. Thank you for coming along on the journey.
I hope you’re having a great weekend. See you in the story. 🌉
-Amy