Hey creatives! Lots to share this week, up first —
🗺️ my book tour is coming to Los Angeles and Chicago
I’m in full swing of book tour prep — and full swing of getting Let Me Be Your Ghost out there. Two new stops to share this week:
Los Angeles, December 5. I’m signing books at Good Girl Books in Mar Vista (12444 Venice Blvd) on Saturday, December 5, any time from noon to 3pm. It’s a free drop-in signing, so there’s no need to RSVP. Pick up a copy of my romantic thriller and I’ll sign it for you, plus I’ll have some secret gifts for everyone who shows up in person. 🎁
Chicago, March 18 to 20. I’m exhibiting at the 2027 AWP Conference & Bookfair at McCormick Place, and you’ll find me at table T2519 all three days with signed copies of my romantic thriller, some of my other books, and a few gifts. If you’re not registered for the conference, a $30 day pass gets you into the bookfair on Saturday, March 20. Make Writing Your Job and Sutoscience readers, come talk shop with me in person!
More dates are on the way, and every confirmed stop lives on my book tour page. If you’re in LA or headed to AWP, send this to the friend who’ll come with you.
🎁 your last chance to get How to Write a Memoir
This is one of your last chances to get How to Write a Memoir, my unreleased craft book for memoir writers and ghostwriters. I’m not entirely sure when I’m going to release it on its own, so if you want to read it, preorder Let Me Be Your Ghost in any format by midnight Pacific on Tuesday, November 17.
Ebook, paperback, or hardcover all count, from any retailer. Upload your receipt on the claim page, and How to Write a Memoir lands in your inbox right away.
If you’ve already preordered, thank you!! Forward this to the friend who has a memoir in them.
🍵 the last 2 months of the year, from Los Angeles
Happy November! We’re headed into the last 2 months of the year, and I’m here in LA, running around and handling a lot of things I’m excited to share with you soon.
I’m excited (and a little nervous!) for the Let Me Be Your Ghost launch on November 18. Putting it all together is taking a lot of time and effort, but I’m really excited, and I hope you are too.
I’ll be sharing a lot more of the behind the scenes soon — everything it’s taken to put this launch together, from the book itself to the tour.
creating
How serializing my novel on Substack out-earned the book, the written version of my Creative Penn Podcast episode. A self-published book usually nets $6 to $7 of profit, but a serial reader pays around $8 a month and then preorders the finished book anyway, and I walked Joanna Penn through what that math has meant for Let Me Be Your Ghost. The Make Writing Your Job version, I was putting my dreams in the hands of gatekeepers, tells the Hollywood half: the spy show where I got to pick a CIA agent’s brain, and why I walked away from it anyway.
What I learned ghostwriting other people’s memoirs at Make Writing Your Job, from my episode of Brendan O’Meara’s Creative Nonfiction Podcast: how I learn a client’s voice, what I do when a family remembers the same moment differently, and the personal essay that got me a book. If you’re writing your own memoir, it pairs well with How to Write a Memoir.
Chapter twenty-two of Let Me Be Your Ghost, “the black site,” is up for paid subscribers, and it opens with a Richard Lovelace line that sets the mood: “Stone walls do not a prison make.” The finished novel comes out November 18.
290+ Grants, Contests, & Residencies for Writers at Make Writing Your Job. This is the past week’s edition of the opportunities list: a $10,000 poetry prize, a $3,000 short story award, and a $10,000 arts-writing prize that comes with an expenses-paid residency in Washington, DC.
60+ Calls for Pitches That Pay, also at Make Writing Your Job, where a poetry platform is paying £300 per featured poet, a literary magazine is paying $300 for short fiction, and an architecture journal wants essays at up to $250 a piece.
reading
4 indie presses are being sold, and their authors may not get a say in where their books land. Brooke Warner, the publisher and cofounder of She Writes Press, wrote the backstory of Catapult, Counterpoint, Soft Skull, and Hawthorne after news broke that Catapult Book Group would sell its assets and shut down. Publishers Weekly reports that Catapult ended operations on October 30, its union still doesn’t know who the buyer is, and 16 books slated for spring 2027 are waiting on the new owner’s decision. Brooke read a 2020 Counterpoint contract and found no termination clause for the author, so “if an author objects to where their book is landing, they will have no recourse.” My heart goes out to the authors and the staff. And if you’re self-publishing, you don’t have to worry about your book just disappearing overnight. (Brooke joined me for a Substack Live on publishing on your own terms in October, if you want more from her.)
A Court of Splintered Harmony is finally out, and ACOTAR is now a full-blown merch empire. Publishers Weekly’s Sam Spratford reports that the first new ACOTAR book in 5 years came out October 27, with midnight parties at more than 500 Barnes & Noble stores. The series has sold more than 10.5 million copies in trade paperback alone, and since Sarah J. Maas moved her licensing to IMG in June 2025, the official merch has grown to include Knix lingerie, Sam’s Club throw blankets, and Target kettle corn. Some fans who ran officially licensed Etsy shops say their licenses were allowed to expire, while candle maker Sierra Cunningham, who kept hers, calls merch “the closest they can get to stepping back into the story.” As an author, that’s the dream: readers who want to live in your world between books. If you’ve already finished it (no judgment), here are 8 books like ACOTAR to hold you over until A Court of Forgotten Melody on January 12.
Kindle Unlimited is now Kindle+, and some authors are watching page reads vanish from their dashboards. Dale Roberts reports that KDP renamed the subscription on October 22 and added audiobooks, which get paid out of the same KDP Select Global Fund as ebook pages. Since October 21, authors have reported missing page reads, royalty estimates dropping as much as 40% to 50%, and conflicting answers from KDP Support. His advice if it’s happening to you: compare your Royalties Estimator with your Prior Months’ Royalties report, screenshot any gaps, and file a support ticket. Self-publishing hands you the keys, but it’s still smart not to build your whole business on one platform — which is why I’ll always tell writers to build an email list. You can take it with you anywhere.
