Happy July, my friends! I’m flabbergasted we’re already more than halfway through 2025 😱 

[NOTE: This month’s newsletter will be on the shorter side and mostly a bundle of vibes. You have been forewarned!]

I’m finally back home in Portland and ready for a beautiful PNW summer. Summer in Oregon is one of my favorite seasons because while it can get sizzling hot, everything is blooming and gorgeously vibrant. I have a month and change of free time before I go on deadline, so I’m trying to jam all the PNW summer things in early. Gotta hop around to different food cart pods. A trip to Oaks Amusement Park is always fun. Ice cream from Salt & Straw is a must, of course. And maybe this year will be the year I finally try river floating???

And in between all the summer shenanigans, I’ll probably be sitting in front of the AC trying to get some words on the page. I’m excited for each of my books to get to their next goalposts this summer, both big and small. ☺️

Here’s a snapshot of where all my projects currently are at:

👀 Vague 👀 Fun for My Poets

After my secret ✨vague✨ thing happened at the end of May, life immediately got super hectic (travel, life stuff, a few emotional rollercoasters, etc). Which made prioritizing writing HARD. Which is, of course, exactly when book stuff popped up and begged to get written.

At the top of June, I was presented with the option of diving into a small round of edits now or waiting until later in the summer. My fingers were itching to open up the doc and get to work, even though I was about to hop on a plane to go visit my sister in Chicago.

But between writing sessions at the airport and frantic late night typing on my sister’s couch, I managed to finish and send off my updated draft. ✌️

My Gothic Ghosts and Girlies

While my poets are taking a short break from their murderous antics, I decided to check in on my gothic horror girlies.

My adult debut, The Wives of Herrick Hall, was the first book I ever wrote. I drafted it in 2022, and though I did several major revisions afterwards, I haven’t touched it since 2024 when it sold to Quill & Crow.

Writing Tyrant Spell and revising it with my agent taught me SO MUCH about the writing and revision process. My agent is one of the kindest people I know, but she can tear apart a manuscript like no one’s business (in the nicest, most loving of ways, I swear!). Her tough love really challenged me as a writer, and after I sent off my ✨vague✨ revisions, I wanted to give Herrick Hall the same treatment. So I’ll be diving into that a bit during my summer respite ahead of going on deadline, and I’m so excited to return to my haunted mansion full of vengeful ghosts and two women reluctantly falling head over heels for each other.

My Other Sapphic Girls

are still misbehaving, so we won’t talk about them. I’ve had to take a break from their story to tackle all of the above, but they’re still aggravating me in the back of my mind—refusing to let me go—so I know this book will somehow work out eventually. 🥲 My goal is to get it to beta readers before the fall (or very early fall, depending on deadlines), so it can get into my agent’s inbox later this year. Will that happen? Who knows? I hope so!

And that’s my June (and upcoming July) in a nutshell! But before I let those of you still reading go, I have something to beg of you! 

Do you have a dream writing office and/or home library aesthetic? If so, I am desperately pleading that you send me pics 🙏 Monte and I are moving (hopefully) soon, and I will finally have the chance to create my own library. I’ve never written in a space that’s entirely my own before (I’ve worked mostly at dining room tables and a desk tucked in the corner of our bedroom), and I am so excited/daunted by curating a space like this. If you’ve done this before, or have a vision board, I would love to gasp and marvel at your gorgeous pictures!

I hope everyone has a wonderful July, and I’ll see you in August! xx

-Julie