what is it about you that i adore?

"at the library" by green day & library love (plus book announcements!)

It’s National Library Week in the U.S., which always means something to me, but which means an extra bit of something to me this year. In honor of this week, I thought I’d share some of my favorite library memories and ways we can continue to advocate for the library!

I’ve been going to practically the same library for almost 30 years. The same place where I checked out one book over and over because it meant so much to me that I was doing self-assigned reports on it (The Short Life of Sophie Scholl by Hermann Vinke); the same place where I would sometimes rip out pictures of Dominique Moceanu from issues of Sports Illustrated for Kids (I’m sorry, I know this was wrong!); the same place where teenage me had sexual tension with the owner of a red car in the parking lot covered in punk stickers (this week’s song made me think of it! I never had the courage to talk to this guy but I saw him there all the time); the same place where I read countless romance novels (a lot of them in large print?? I guess it’s just what they had).

This is the same library I had to take a break from when I held on to a book so long I was worried I could never show my face again; the same library that granted amnesty for all past fines and welcomed me back with open arms; the same library I’d pull up to every single week during pandemic lockdown and pop my trunk so they could put my holds inside and give me a friendly wave.

If you subscribe to this newsletter, I assume you’re already a big reader and so I don’t have to sell you on the library. But just in case, a few things I’ve been emphasizing to people lately: the Libby app has been a GAME CHANGER for me, especially with audiobooks. My husband is a voracious audiobook guy but had very strict rules about not spending a credit on a book under a certain length, because he wanted to get his money’s worth. Then I really wanted him to listen to The Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel (coming in around a cool six hours) and so I was like, get the Libby app! You’ll have access to so many audiobooks at the press of a finger! Don’t worry about money! Don’t worry about the length! The only slight drawback is that you may have to wait for really popular audiobooks, but even that’s not so bad, once you get a steady rotation going. When my 25-hour Needful Things hold comes in, hoo boy, it’s going to be like Christmas! But like a Christmas where I decide to really scare myself and put a pit in my stomach, because if memory serves Needful Things is one of Stephen King’s most fucked up books and that’s why I had a hankering to read it again.

My family gets DVDs from the library all the time, and the kids especially love to have little “movie nights” where they just pick something random that looks good and take it home. It’s like bringing all of my best library memories and my best Blockbuster memories together! Depending on your library, you can often get movies online, too, through Hoopla or Overdrive or whatever else. I got several of the titles for my Dakota Johnson Watch that way!

I could go on and on — check your local library’s programmings for classes and storytimes! a lot of libraries offer cool stuff like 3D printers or recording studios or even seed packets you can take home to plant! there’s free Wi-fi access if you need it! when I finally caved and wanted to read that viral Atlantic article about Cormac McCarthy I did it through my Libby app to get around the paywall! Recently someone said to me that they thought “libraries were dead” — and they didn’t mean it to sound bad, they just meant, with so much stuff being online, what can the library possibly offer? The library is VERY much alive, my friends, and is such an important community space that’s not tied to consumerism or capitalism. How many places can you say that about anymore?

Of course, libraries aren’t dead but there are politicians out there who’d really like them to be (which is fucking wiiiiiiiild talk about telling on yourself, library funding draws less than 0.003% of the annual federal budget and offers SO MUCH to communities). There’s an executive order calling for major cuts to IMLS funding, and libraries in smaller districts in particular are already feeling these impacts. The American Library Association has great resources for learning more about what’s going on and what you can do to help — that’s where I got the statistic from. This has been one of the issues I’ve been calling on using 5 Calls, even though *my* state’s governor is like “what if we didn’t have property tax, who needs roads and schools and libraries anyway” so who knows if it’s doing anything. Still feels good to call.

Libraries are also one of those things where you can do a lot locally to help support them! Attend a library board meeting to find out what’s going on in your district, and voice any support or opposition. Hell, look up how to apply for the library board and see when a seat might open up in your area! If there’s diversity you’d like to see in the collection, you can usually suggest titles through your library’s website; if you see a display or something in the collection you like, consider writing an email to go on record as supporting it, because the people who have issues sure do take time to write emails. Ultimately, just continue to use your library! Those circulation and visitation numbers do a lot to prove the need in the community, help guide programming, etc.

As an author, I sometimes have people apologizing to me for getting my book from the library, as though that means they didn’t support me enough. First of all, that is always a very sweet sentiment, but truly, please don’t worry about that. It’s always an honor to me to have my books checked out through a library — once, I was at a conference and a librarian shouted at me in passing, “Oh! Your book circulates so well!” and when I tell you I have GLOWED AND GLOWED from that compliment (it’s why I’ve hung on to it!). Also, authors DO get money from library licenses of their book! I have no idea how much money lol, it all gets a little lost in the weird arcane opaque thing that is Royalty Math, but I assure you, it is still helpful to authors, not to mention just the extra word of mouth or reviews or Instagram posts or whatever else that help give a book exposure.

The one caveat I will say about this is that book purchases DO help an author quite a bit, not just money-wise but also in signaling to a publisher or retailer that yes, this is a book people are excited about, there is a demand for this book. That has a real impact on authors’ future contracts and ability to write more books. So to the extent you are letting your dollars talk — and times are tough and getting tougher every day, I get it!!! — I do think it’s nice to be thoughtful about which books you want to support. If people buy the newest James Patterson¹ and use the library to read a debut Black author, for example, that keeps feeding into the cycle of inequity that plagues the publishing industry (and every industry).

Which is all to say! I am about to jump into the “these are the ways you can see me on tour this summer/preorder my book/support my book” section, but in a hopefully non-pressure-y way. If you can make it to an event, I’d love to see you, if you want a signed copy, I want to make that happen for you, but also we’re all just trying to survive here and even you reading this newsletter already means a lot to me. But if you want, you can also . . .

Come see me talk about Never Been Shipped in person!

• Tuesday, June 10 at 7:00pm - Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg, FL - in conversation with bookseller/badass writer/fellow Rays fan/all-around cool kid Rachel Knox

• Wednesday, June 11 at 7:00pm - All the Tropes in Atlanta, GA - in conversation with Kate Goldbeck who I really hope will have a Daddy Issues ARC for me, I just keep writing that places until she gets the hint

• Thursday, June 12 at 6:30pm - A Novel Romance in Louisville, KY - in conversation with Xio Axelrod who writes INCREDIBLE music romances in particular, The Lillys are one of my favorite fictional bands

• Friday, June 13 at 6:00pm - The Novel Neighbor in St. Louis, MO - in conversation with KT Hoffman, who you already know is one of my favorite people and writers, and whose gorgeously big-hearted debut The Prospects is ONE YEAR OLD today, they grow up so fast!!!! I am very excited to chat everything friends-to-lovers with KT in particular, because I consider him a true master/connoisseur of that trope

• Tuesday, June 17 at 6:00pm - Book + Bottle in St. Petersburg, FL - this is more a book reading/audience Q&A/signing, so no conversation partner per se, but this is a lovely little bookish spot in St. Pete if you’ve never been

• Thursday, June 26 at 6:30pm - The Gilded Page in Tarpon Springs, FL - in conversation with Ivy Fairbanks, whose upcoming Irish musician book Heart Strings I recently finished and loved

• Thursday, July 17 at 7:00pm - New Romantics in Orlando, FL - a JOINT event with Ashley Poston, who I’ve been a fan of for YEARS and who writes books so singularly hers, unfortunately I do think this event is already sold out because I am not only person who’s a fan of Ashley’s!!

• Wednesday, July 30 at 6:30pm - Parnassus Books in Nashville, TN - a JOINT event with Regina Black, whose upcoming music book August Lane absolutely wrecked me in the best possible way and who is one of the smartest, most thoughtful people you could ever hear from in romance

All the above times are in their respective local time zones, which I will figure out as I’m going from place to place, I guess! A LOT of work goes into putting together these kinds of things behind-the-scenes (a kind of magic alchemy of my availability, bookstores’ availability and willingness to host me, which authors were game to join me, a mix of places I’ve been before and then some new ones, and a lot of other stuff my publicity team had to figure out). I do hope to travel for a few more things before the end of the year, so I’ll add to this list with any updates!

You can also preorder Never Been Shipped from Tombolo Books and put any personalization request in the comments to your order. I love seeing what people request, so I’ll write a lyric or message or doodle or truly whatever! My favorite part of having a new book out is hearing Tombolo tell me that people are writing in with the most unhinged things lol. I do want to be FULLY TRANSPARENT about something which is that there WILL definitely be some kind of swag . . . but I have no idea what it’s going to be yet. It’s been a bit of a stressful part of this book release, behind-the-scenes, I won’t bore you with all the details but it’s totally my fault. So there will be at least a sticker or a guitar pick (I did order some of these from Etsy, we’ll see how they look), but I just don’t know.

And as a final thing, there’s another Goodreads giveaway going on for Never Been Shipped, open till the end of the month! Goodreads adds + shelves + giveaway entries do also help signal interest in a book, so I appreciate anyone who participates in that stuff!!! I myself can’t because it’s the weirdest thing, I’m on Goodreads every single day but my own books aren’t on there lol.

Anyway, let me know if I’ll see you at all this summer, and either way, let me know your favorite library memory because I always love hearing about those!

Currently reading . . . I just finished Losing Sight by Tati Richardson, and loved it! Tati has such an easy, relatable way of writing, I can’t even describe it but I’m just fully in her books from the jump and having the best time. In this one, Tanika is a sports reporter (a super competent one, and I LOVED all the stuff about her confidence in handling Thursday Night Football and then her bigger career ambitions and the way she breathed life into lesser-talked-about sports even when her network was trying to keep her down). Tanika swears she doesn’t have time for love . . . or to go get herself the glasses she desperately needs now that she’s over 40. Gideon is the widowed optometrist she ends up seeing (pun intended), and she’s surprised by how drawn she is to his sweet, sexy demeanor, but also by the unexpected side effects that come with her new eyeglasses (yes, there’s a speculative twist to this book!) I feel like my Goodreads review really summed it up, so I’ll paste it here so you can see my final shouty thoughts:

(Me whenever anyone politely inquires whether I did something that I thought was a waste of time lol: “Listen, we talkin’ about practice. Not a game . . . not the game that I go out there and die for, and play every game like it’s my last. Not the game. We talkin’ about practice, man, I mean how silly is that?”)

watching . . . I finished Bad Sisters and loved it, but it was definitely on the darker side so I went back to watching Emily in Paris partly because I just needed a bit of light frivolity. And then! What did Emily in Paris hit me with?! (Extremely light spoiler ahead). Sylvie has two tickets to the opera, and when her hot-then-cold man doesn’t seem to want to accompany her, she offers the second to her coworker Luc, who is THRILLED at the prospect of seeing this opera. He wears his tuxedo to work! He’s singing arias in the hall, like this man is a FAN. And then he spills tomato soup on his snowy white tux shirt and Sylvia uses it as an excuse to get out of taking him to the opera, but don’t worry because her man ends up showing up after all. Uh, excuse me, I could give a FUCK about Sylvie and her date, I wanted Luc to be able to enjoy that opera!!! He’s the only one who really seemed to want to go and no tomato soup should stand in the way of that!!! This show might be too much for me to finish if this is the kind of shit it’s going to pull. Justice for Luc.

The appreciation Luc would’ve had for the opera is the appreciation that MY family had for A Minecraft Movie, which we saw in the theater last night. For some reason, this week I had about 10 different ideas for newsletters and one of them was just about this experience, because it was really special in a lot of ways. Minecraft was something I really shared with my son in particular when he was younger, and so I was surprised by how nostalgic the movie made me for all those days of admiring his redstone builds or looking up herobrine mods or whatever else. We watched a lot of DanTDM Minecraft YouTube videos (we even went to see DanTDM’s live show on tour!) so I was gratified when *I* spotted the YouTuber in the background of the storage auction scene even when no one else in my family did! I know that face! The movie understood the Promise of the Premise, Jared Hess of Napoleon Dynamite fame is EXACTLY who you want directing this movie, Jack Black has a way of making even something as simple as “My diamonds!!” really sing (it’s more like Ma diamonds! with that trademark unhinged grin of his), people in the theater were applauding at key moments, it was just a great time. Highly recommend it.

A fun fact that I used to be embarrassed to share but now fuck it, I’m leaning in, is that DanTDM was kinda my face-cast for Asa in With Love, from Cold World so when I say I KNOW that face

listening to . . . Another version of this newsletter (that truly, nobody wants) was just going to be about Sum41 because I AM in too deep right now but also because I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Deryck Whibley’s memoir and then went back to listen to Sum41’s music more. What I could’ve told you about Deryck Whibley before a week ago was: a) he’s the frontman for Sum41, b) he laughs when old people fall, and c) he was married to Avril Lavigne. But the memoir is more interesting than I thought it would be, especially if you’re like me and like learning more about the 2000s music scene and the music industry in general (stuff I thought a lot about for drafting Never Been Shipped!). If Sum41 ends up cracking my end-of-year music lists, though, I’m going to be pissed . . .

1. I’m picking on James Patterson here only because he can take it! He’s doing just fine. Also, once I taught a student named James Patterson and I was very proud of myself for never making the obvious joke. I feel like he must’ve heard it a thousand times?