I am writing a new book and this blog will provide you with you some details, but not very many.

I haven’t written anything for a while because I recently lost access to my website and regaining that access was a whole big thing. A whole big maddening thing…

Anyway, I’m back now, and while I wasn’t writing blogs, I was writing a new Christmas novella. Although I haven’t really been talking about this one a whole lot, I can’t exactly claim to have been keeping it under wraps either. I’ve actually been brainstorming about it on TikTok with my students and they’ve been offering a bunch of suggestions. Good suggestions!

The TikTok thing is complicated right now because it went dark on Sunday, right? And then it came back on a few hours later with this big “thanks to trump blah blah blah,” and I don’t really know if I want to involve myself as a pawn in one of trump’s games, so I’m thinking about switching over to another platform. It’s a complex issue with which I’m currently wrestling, but the thing we really need to be focused on at the moment is my work in progress… so let’s talk about that instead.

This particular novella (which may end up being more of a novel, actually… oops!) takes place in Radio Park, Oregon. There are some references to characters and locations in other Hannah Rae books, but there is also a slew of new people. 

The gist of this book is as follows: It’s the week leading up to Christmas break. Waverly Fiddler, an English teacher of sophomores, decides to make an early New Year’s resolution that involves wearing heels. (Waverly is very tall already; six feet.) There’s some other stuff going on with Waverly, but the reader learns about it via different perspectives because they only get to follow Waverly through her day on Monday. On Tuesday, everything changes. On Tuesday, readers get to know Waverly’s good friend Jakob Schuster. (He teaches German.) And then there are other characters who provide the viewpoints for other days! And students! There are so many students! And I do realize that I am doing a terrible job of summarizing this, but that’s okay because 1) I’ve had some wine, and 2) the novel isn’t even completely written yet; I’m only on Wednesday!

This is not my best blog and I won’t pretend that it is, but now you at least have an idea of where I’ve been and what I’ve been doing. And if you’re reading this, I’m also going to give you the option to read an excerpt from the new novel. (It’s a very short excerpt.)

But I’m not going to tell you its title just yet…

What I will tell you is this: There is much dialogue. Like… this book has a lot of dialogue. And it’s funny, but it’s not what I’m used to. I absolutely loooooooooooove to write dialogue, but there are so many characters in this novel, and therefore so much dialogue. It’s just… different. That’s all. It’s different.