Newsletter, September 2025
This month finds me with tired eyes and a full heart. Since August, I’ve been on an editing deadline for two different books. Scales is due to my copy editor this month, and Project FOS is due to my beta readers at the beginning of October. I’m going to be honest—I’m feeling a little bit overwhelmed and burnt out from everything I’ve had/still do have on my to-do list. Hence the tired eyes.
But my heart is also full because I’m almost completely done with a book that has been over 15 years in the making. And now, this month, I finally get to share the cover with you.
The Fulfillment of a Dream
The Scales of Lost Harmony was born in teenage me’s brain during study hall. Even now, I still remember copies of Lord of the Rings and Inkheart sitting on my desk, reading those stories and thinking to myself that I wanted to write something amazing like that. And so I did. I pulled out a plain spiral notebook, a pencil, my trusty dictionary that went everywhere with me, and started writing. What I wrote definitely was not amazing, but it was mine. I held on to that story, revisiting it almost every year for over the next decade. Always around the same time of year, in March (that just happened to be when spring break always fell and I had time to do nothing but write for days on end). Eventually, that ritual became so cemented in my mind that I gave that story a birthday. March 18th. It took over ten years and almost just as many drafts—but now, I’m all grown, and so is that story. On March 18, 2026, you will finally get to read the story that teenage me had always dreamed would be her debut novel. And this is what it will look like.
To you, who hears the music of life, it must sound like the world has lost its harmony…
Asana Vaun can hear people’s souls; their discordant melodies reveal both bodily injuries and emotional turmoil alike. But after a vicious war between humans and mythical creatures—a conflict Asana blames herself for—the cacophony of shattered songs threatens to overwhelm her.
Unable to bear the world’s brokenness, she leaps at the opportunity to use her magic to heal victims of the war in Nalyindi, a nation of creatures particularly devastated by violence.
Despite her desire to help, Asana faces relentless prejudice as the only human in the country. Her only reprieve is her boss, Sugishta, whose silent soul piques Asana’s curiosity. As their professional relationship crescendos into something deeper, she begins to find a home inside the hardened hearts she came to heal.
But an unexpected act of violence forces Asana to choose between saving the ones she loves, or preventing the outbreak of another racial war. Is life the price of peace, or can harmony be found another way?
Interwoven with poetry and song, this new adult fantasy dances between slow-burn romance and world-shattering secrets.
The Scales of Lost Harmony
I don’t think there’s much more I could say that would top what’s already been said above, so I just have a few short updates here. I’m starting a street team! It’s a group of readers who help support an author by hyping up their book(s) and sharing content. In exchange for their help, they get fun perks like access to an exclusive discord server and sneak peeks into things an author might not have shared anywhere else yet. If that sounds like something you’re interested in, you can find more information on the application here! The application will close on September 30th.
The cover will officially be revealed on my social media on September 18, so please keep it a secret until then! I also have another little surprise reveal planned that even you haven’t seen yet, so keep your eyes peeled.
Project FOS
Speaking of covers, the cover for this book just got finished at the end of last month! It is heartbreakingly gorgeous, and it is killing me that I won’t be able to share this one for a long time yet. Revisions on this book have been going well but slow, since SOLH has been my main priority at the moment. Once SOLH is out next year, I’ll be able to start talking more about this book, but for now just know that it’s a dark fantasy, celestial space opera with time travel involved. And it will most definitely make you cry. 🤣
Project TGAP
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to write a book as badly as I want to start writing this one. I have the characters and their arcs fleshed out, and the overall shape and vibe of the story in my head, and honestly that’s about all I need for an outline for a first draft. I have close to 600 Pinterest pins saved under this project folder because that’s all I’ll allow myself to do until my edits for SOLH and FOS are done. Out of all the stories I’ve written so far, I think this one might be the one my heart needs the most.
What I’m Reading
My own writing ad nauseam because I’m an author on two fast approaching deadlines. 😂
Closing
When I sat in my high school literary magazine class, working on this little story with mirror magic and a black girl in a white world who felt like she didn’t belong, I never imagined anyone other than my friends and English teachers would see it. I hoped for it, but I didn’t expect it. As each year passed with this story no closer to publication than the year before, I started to give up on that dream. Being an author felt more and more impossible—I didn’t know any agents or publishers, was terrified to query, had never taken anything other than a high school creative writing class.
And then one summer, I found the YouTube channel of someone named Abbie Emmons. She makes videos about writing craft and self-publishing, and her channel was the first time I discovered there was a path to being an author outside of traditional publishing. Learning that indie authorship was an option gave me so much hope. I watched her videos and thought, “I can do that.”
And I did. The teenage girl in me who carried notebooks and dictionaries everywhere with her came back to life. It took me years to reach the level of knowledge and skill needed to make the dream my younger self had a reality, but in just six short months, a reality it finally will be.