Octobering

Remember my newsletter? Neither did I.

Or at least, I didn’t want to remember it. It lives in the same space as social media and every junk drawer in my house, whispering that I need to deal with it. I’m not good at doing things that don’t have deadlines, or that I don’t have to do every day, or that seem like less fun than napping.

But here we are. My deadlines are taunting me, lingering in other people’s hands. My junk drawers are overflowing with half-dead Sharpies. And my social media—let’s just not even think about that. Newsletter it is.

Now

I’ve tried three different pumpkin chocolate chip recipes so far this month, trying to remember which one I like best. I’ll forget by next year and bake all three again, trying to remember which one I like best. (Spoiler: all of them. It’s a pumpkin chocolate chip cookie. What’s not to like.) Next month will begin the process of trying every gingerbread and ginger molasses cookie recipe I have, trying to remember which one I like best. This would all be solved if I just collected the recipes and kept good notes, but maybe the forgetting and retrying is part of the tradition. My family doesn’t complain.

As evidenced by my excessive baking, I’m stuck waiting. Waiting on the next round of revision for Dracula and Lucy, which I need to finish before I can give my brain over to drafting something else, which I need to get to so I can give my brain over to coming up with the next idea, which I need to write because I also have to come up with the next next idea, on and on forever. Sometimes people tell me they envy my process because from the outside it seems easy. Draft a book in a month or two weeks or a week! But it requires obsessive focus, which renders me pretty useless for nearly everything else. Whenever I hit these waiting periods I swear next time I’ll be better and I’ll work on other things instead of stewing. Or barring actual writing work, I’ll clean out that junk drawer. I’ll get to all those other tasks that have piled up while I was lost in a draft or a revision.

But, much like my endless cookie trials, I never remember those vows. Maybe the forgetting and stewing is part of the process.

Regardless, I’m waiting. And my brain hates waiting. I should probably bake some more cookies.

Then

Speaking of waiting, I’ve been thinking about querying.

Next month is my fifteen year anniversary of signing with my agent, Michelle Wolfson. Fifteen years! When Michelle pulled my query out of the slush pile and took a chance on me, our oldest kids were preschoolers who are now in college.

It’s got me nostalgic, so I thought I’d share a little bit about the very earliest days of my publishing journey. In short, it was an absolute nightmare. I’m still not over the trauma of querying. If you’re there, I’m sorry. It sucks.

There was one day when I got a rejection on a full manuscript request and started miscarrying what would turn out to be a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy within an hour. It felt like I was being rejected on a cosmic level. Maybe that’s too personal, but querying is too personal. You’re sending your heart and your hopes and your passion out into the void and hoping someone sees the spark there and will help you make it a flame.

And then you get ten or fifty or a hundred no thank you’s and you wonder how that spark can survive. But I hope you keep going. I hope you keep writing. I hope you crouch protectively over that spark and do whatever it takes to keep your love of telling stories. It’s precious, and it’s important, and it’s worth protecting.

I also hope you find that yes. The right one. The one coming from a person who will work with and for and alongside you and your stories.

I still laugh thinking about how during our first conversation, Michelle specifically told me she didn’t like books with “creatures.” Then I gave her Paranormalcy, a book with every creature ever. It was a sign of things to come, since I now regularly give her horror, which she can barely stand to read. Only during the day, with all the lights on, and only a little at a time.

Sorry, Michelle. But obviously not sorry enough to stop doing this to you.

One of my favorite things about Michelle is exactly that, though—she’s game. If I decide I want to do it, she’s going to figure out how to help me make it happen. I couldn’t ask for a better business partner or friend, and I sincerely hope those of you out there querying find a similar dynamic.

Fifteen years ago I was a desperately hopeful dreamer. Twenty-five books later, I’m still a desperately hopeful dreamer, but with more people helping me make those dreams a reality. I never lost that spark, and it still keeps me company in my heart, always.

Next

This Saturday, October 21st, I’ll be at the Las Vegas Book Festival. Come see me! On Saturday, October 28th, I’ll be at the Encinitas California Barnes and Noble for a spooktacular Halloween signing. I picked the most controversial costume I could think of. That’s right…I’m going as candy corn.

If you missed it, HIDE: The Graphic Novel came out! It’s a gorgeous and thrilling and heartbreaking full color adaptation of Hide, and I love it so much I can’t even believe it’s real.

Haunted Holiday, the fifth and final book in the Sinister Summer series, comes out in January. If you haven’t given these books a try, please do. Both because I think you’ll love them, and because they’re my absolute favorite things I’ve ever written and it’s so hard to figure out how to get middle grade into the hands of young readers.

Want to bake some pumpkin chocolate chip cookies? This recipe was the winner this year. (Because of familial food allergies, I made it vegan by subbing the butter and using vegan chocolate chips.)

Until

next time, please remember to guard your sparks, whatever they may be. And if you, too, are stuck in waiting limbo, pull up a chair and a cookie recipe or three, and we can quietly lose our minds together.

XOXO (which I initially mistyped as SOS, which feels just as honest)

Kiersten