Newsletter, October 2025

Best season, best month. Between apple cider, the beautiful leaves changing color, cozy sweaters and cool weather, and always drafting a new story around this time of year, October is by far one of my favorite months. October also means that we’re less than six months away from the release of The Scales of Lost Harmony, which feels both exciting and surreal!

I have a lot of things to share this month, so let’s jump right in!

 

Cover Reveal Delayed

Some of you may have seen the post on Instagram, but if not, I wanted to mention it briefly here. My cover reveal was planned for September 18, but I unfortunately had to delay it at the last minute due to some trusted friends bringing to my attention signs that my cover art may have been made by generative AI. After looking into the matter further as well as asking professional artists about it, I no longer felt comfortable sharing the cover I had commissioned. My designer and I had signed a contract that AI was not to be used, but I couldn’t feel confident that that promise had been honored. 

I didn’t (and still don’t) have verifiable proof that my designer used AI, just the concerns and red flags many people shared with me, but out of an abundance of caution, I decided to commission a new cover. It’s done, and I am absolutely in love with it. I’m so much happier with it than my original cover, and all that I’m waiting for now is to have the typography placed on the image. I’m hopeful I’ll be able to share it with you before the end of this year.

The Scales of Lost Harmony

SOLH is with my copy editor, and I should have it back by the end of the month. Once that’s done, all that’s left is proofreading and interior formatting, and then I’ll have a real book to hold in my hands! I’m planning on ARC applications opening around the beginning of 2026, so keep your eyes peeled for that email if you’re interested in joining! I’m also still taking applications for my street team, so if you’re interested in helping out behind the scenes and getting some goodies in return, you can find that application here.

I can also share a fun little surprise: I have sprayed edges designed to match the cover. The artist I commissioned for my new cover was very kind and did it for me without even asking, so I’m in the process of finding a way to have some books with sprayed edges printed. I would love to have this as a preorder incentive option pre-release, but depending on how long the process takes, they may not be available until after the book is already out. But either way, sprayed edge editions of SOLH are in the works!! Having a book with sprayed edges has been one of my author dreams for a while, so I’m very excited to see it starting to come to fruition.

 

Project FOS

I know I mentioned in a previous newsletter that I wanted to publish this story in 2026 as well, but I’ve decided to indefinitely shelve it for now. While I was working on self-revisions last month to prepare it for beta readers, something just didn’t feel right. I’m naturally a very intuitive person, so I try to listen to when things are off and figure out why I’m feeling that way because there’s usually a good reason for it.

Ultimately, I discovered there were several reasons the story didn’t feel right to me. First is that it was plot-driven. It might be the only plot-driven story I’ve ever written, and while it was fun to write at the time, it wasn’t satisfying for me to read. I didn’t connect with any of the characters emotionally—it wasn’t just the side characters that felt flat, but the main characters too. Writing realistic characters is one of my strongest skills as a writer, so this was a huge red flag for me that something wasn’t working with this story.

Secondly and relatedly, it’s not the type of story I enjoy writing. It’s epic fantasy, and I don’t like writing epic fantasy because I don’t like writing detailed lore/worldbuilding, quests, battles, etc. But I think the biggest reason this story wasn’t working for me was because I was trying too hard to be “profound” and “literary” and instead lost sight of creating a story that was authentic and meaningful to me.

Maybe it’s just a me thing, but it’s so easy to believe that the things we write have to be “big” and “important” in order to be worth writing. To be Hemingway level quality with the depth and meaning of Dostoevsky or Tolstoy or (insert your favorite classic author). So I tried to write a story that was big and important and “literary,” and maybe it was (probably not 🤣), but it certainly wasn’t me. So I’m shelving this project for now, in favor of. . .

 

Project TGAP

AKA my current, newest hyperfixation. I wrote the first 15,000 words of this book in a week, and every chapter just makes me fall more in love with this story and these characters. It’s my first fantasy romance book, which means my first romance arc written as a main plot instead of a subplot. I was a little nervous about that fact going in, but I’ve been having so much fun writing that those worries have taken a back seat for the moment. (I’m sure they’ll resurface when it’s time to start editing.)

The vibes are the Little Mermaid and Studio Ghibli meet something a little bit darker but still very much wholesome and heartwarming like SOLH is. The FMC is the fae this time (she’s a water nymph) and she saves him. He’s the boring ol’ human except maybe he’s not so boring because he’s got some hidden demons, and seems to end up covered in blood a concerning amount. (He’s a doctor okay. Calm down. 🤣)

This is the book I hope to publish alongside SOLH in 2026 instead, so fingers crossed for two books next year still!

 

Discovering My Niche

Remember when I mentioned that I felt this need to write something big and important and literary? Well, romance stories have been helping me realize that the little things are just as important. That I can just write a story where the world is no bigger than two people falling in love, than the coffee shop that they meet at or the castle they work in or the brushed hands beneath the table as they share a meal.

I’ve been reading a lot of contemporary romance and fantasy romance books lately, and they’ve brought me so much joy. Just seeing inside the world that is another person’s mind is so rewarding to me, even more so than plot twists or cliffhangers or “literary themes” and all these other things I thought were necessary for a book to be good.

Turns out that what I like reading, and writing is simple: people. That’s it. Just people. Their relationships, their lives, their days, their heartaches and hopes—that’s what I care about the most. And when I realized that fantasy romance is a whole genre dedicated to just that—well, sign me up!

It should have been obvious, that the girl who spent her teen and college years writing romantic fanfiction for every fandom under the sun should grow up to be a romance writer. But my desire to write a bestseller or a literary masterpiece or the next great American novel kept getting in the way of me writing what actually makes me happy. Just people and their heartaches and their hopes. So from now on, that’s what I’ll be writing.

Closing

I think this letter is quite long enough already, so all I have to close with is: make the art that you want to make, not that you think you should make. You deserve art that makes your creative heart happy. And your audience does, too. 

Jasmine

Next
Next

Newsletter, August 2025