In most writing advice, you are advised of a few things before starting a book. Be able to pitch it in one sentence. Know your characters’ goals and personal wounds. Have not only a general idea of the plot, but know what your story is about.

I have, generally, not always been good at any of this, but in particular, I think knowing what each book is about is something I don’t fully understand until the book is finished. Even then, I often don’t fully understand a book’s heart until I’ve had some time away from its immediate creation. After edits, after other folks have started reading it, after I’ve been able to sit back and reflect a bit.

So on its release day, at this moment, this is why I think I wrote Among the Wildflowers.

• I wanted to write about the bravery of choosing what’s best for you, what makes you truly happiest, even if that comes with huge consequences/breaks your heart at the same time.

• I just wanted to write a farm book!! Writing about our ecological systems and about our food is what I am pretty much always wanting to write about. And it’s cool to just do what you want!

• My overarching goal with this series is exploring the expansiveness of love, fighting back against the narrative that we are only afforded one great love, one happily ever after in our lifetimes. I want to explore the messy area between monogamy and polyamory because I feel there is so much messiness and so much love that fits between those two, that doesn’t always have perfect labels.

  • In particular for this story: There are so many evil exes in romance, which I’ve thought about a lot and have many queer thoughts about. But what if your ex was great, actually? What if your lives just didn’t fit anymore but everything you went through together is still really important? What if you could find new love while still honoring all the love you’ve already been blessed with? That’s what this book is about, and even if not everyone agrees with the mess I’ve made lol, I really believe in the future of Emerson, Luca, Jayden, Daisy, and everyone and everything else that might ever become part of their world.

• Related to the first bullet point, but also slightly different: all my work lately also revolves around art and the toll it takes, both fiscal and mental, and the strength needed to keep trying anyway. Luca’s a writer; Emerson’s a farmer, but their pursuit of their art is the same: the struggle of knowing that it’s everything they are, while the world does everything it can to try to beat it out of them.

• When I sign books, I try to think of one small phrase from that book that seems to capture the essence of that specific story, that I can scribble down in addition to my signature when the mood strikes. There were probably several I could’ve chosen for this one, but I ended up landing on some of the messages from a speech Luca’s mom gives him when he’s having a wee lil’ dark moment of the soul (or, in his own words, a peak emo moment). I am very cognizant that these messages (which I won’t ruin the surprise of here) veer a little messages-you-might-see-screenprinted-on-pillows-at-Home-Goods. Meaning, part of me wants to cringe about it but I am deciding to stand by it anyway, because Luca’s mom is smart! Is it possible that, as I stumble into my mid-forties, I am simply gravitating more toward messages of gratitude that one might see screen-printed on pillows? Maybe!

• Most romances are most compelling when the main characters are markedly different from each other: different, but complementary. It’s what makes the tension and the romance so sweet. I normally strive for this as well—writing markedly different people coming together is also just fun. But in Wildflowers, I admit that Emerson and Luca are pretty similar to each other in a lot of ways. Because sometimes that’s what you need, too. They are both pretty lonely, a bit sad. They are both extremely hard workers and extremely kind. I think they came out this way because I always envisioned this being a generally soft book, but especially in our current cultural landscape, where cruelty is the point, where individualism is seen as the golden goal no matter what the cost to society’s well-being—I just really needed to spend time with two good people being good to each other. I included so many of my previous characters, I made Luca’s family big and loving, I made Greyfin Bay a safe haven because I needed to spend time in community. A few early reviewers have mentioned this book feeling hopeful, and while hopeful wasn’t necessarily a specific word on my mind while I was drafting (even if it’s likely always subconsciously there, being that hopeful is an inherent quality of romance), only when I saw that word in reviews did I realize it meant a lot to me.

If you get to read it, I hope it provides a few hours of being a soft, hopeful place to land for you, too.

Housekeeping

Okay, some less philosophical things!

• If you pre-ordered a signed paperback from me, they should be in the mail this week—or next week at the very latest. (I was hoping to get them all in the mail last week, but there have been countless delays in shipping/the books actually getting to me; alas, self-publishing is always a wild goose chase.) Once my fine local postal employees take your copy from my hands, I’ll send you a confirmation email with the tracking number.

  • If you receive your order and something is awry: it arrives damaged; I forgot to include the map and sticker; I wrote the wrong name or spelled your name wrong (THE WORST) (these are all things I constantly fear), please please let me know!

  • Feel free to still order one, if you’d like—I’ll keep this order form up for a week or so and then transition to using my Etsy, where you can order signed editions of any of my self-published works.

• If you’re a bookstore owner hoping to order paperbacks (thank you!!), it should become available soon on Ingram; I just cannot guarantee when. I’m so sorry. You can also order directly from me, if you’d like.

• It should also, hopefully, be available to request for purchase from your local library. If you need this info for your request, the print ISBN is 978-1-737229858.

• There is currently no audiobook, but you will be the first to hear if that changes! crosses fingers

• If you happened to read an early copy and enjoyed it (or whenever you read it, if you enjoy it!), the greatest gift to me would be if you could leave a review somewhere! I appreciate your time and care so much.

• If you got an early copy and didn’t get a chance to read it, no worries whatsoever. As often happens, though, I did make some changes after more feedback—nothing that changes the story overall, just some things that make it stronger—so I’d love if you’re able to read the updated, published version instead whenever you get to it!

Want to read the first chapter?

I meant to copy and paste the first chapter into this newsletter in celebration of release day, but then I rambled about all the above first, so now there’s probably not enough room left in my word limit.

But if you want to read the first chapter before you buy, feel free to read it here!

Okay, that’s enough from me for now! Reminder that if you’re in the Portland area and want to hear me talk about Among the Wildflowers and Greyfin Bay in general (the first event I’ve ever done for the series!), I’ll be chatting about it with Alison Cochrun at Grand Gesture Books next Wednesday, June 10th. You can RSVP here.

Thanks so much for all your support,

xo

anita

We’re a little under a month away from the release of Among the Wildflowers, which means I’m getting all the technical stuff ready—perfecting the physical design of a paperback when you’re the only one working on it is a painstaking process!—but also feeling kind of weirdly distant from the book itself.

Another one of those administrative things is pre-order stuff, and I was hoping to have it all physically available for photos before I posted about it. But the postcards likely won’t be delivered for another week and I want to tell you about it NOW, to help me get back to caring about the book itself again. So here we go!

If you pre-order a physical copy, these goodies will come with your copy automatically. I will also have them available at my in-person launch for the book at Grand Gesture Books with Alison Cochrun on June 10th. (Click this link to RSVP and/or order a copy through them!) If you’ve pre-ordered an ebook, or requested purchase from your local library, or really anything else (I won’t be requiring evidence for any of this) and want the swag, fill out this form. This last option will be an until-I-run-out situation, but hopefully I’ll have stuff leftover and can send to as many folks as possible.

First up: a Short King Farms sticker!

The logo is designed by bestie & graphic designer Manda Bednarik, and the stickers are printed by local Portland sticker kings, Sticker Ninja. I always love being able to support other local businesses when I do these things, and Sticker Ninja’s quality and customer service is the best. They always send a few little extra treats with their shipments, one of which this time was a sparkly sticker proclaiming queer joy is a revolution, a central tenet of Heartwaves (and I mean, all my work?) so it felt especially Right!

Next: postcard with a map of Short King Farms!

I had a really clear vision in my head while writing this book of what Short King Farms looked like, and since almost the entirety of this book takes place on the farm, by the end of drafting I knew I should probably include a map for readers to refer to.

Of course, it doesn’t actually matter if how I picture the farm matches how readers picture it—it’s beautiful, in my opinion, when these things differ—but also, I have always really wanted a map. A grayscale version of it will be included in the final version of the book, but this full-color one will only be available via the pre-order postcard.

Not everything is perfectly to scale in this map—I picture the walk from Sally’s Barn to the wildflower field, for instance, taking a good ten-to-fifteen minutes at least, with a lot more forest between the two. But we wouldn’t have been able to express that without squeezing the actual farming beds—which again, take up more space in my head than is expressed here. Just as I picture the animals’ pastures also being quite large, but there wasn’t room for that on the map while still including the hill to the orchard. Anyway, you get it, BUT—for what we are able to fit in a postcard/single picture, this is approximately where everything is located! And it was so, so fun seeing it all drawn out by Nina Tysovska, who was so kind and accommodating with all my tiny tweaks and requests.

I was also proud of myself for including the name of the actual book on the back of the postcard, something I failed to do for the Greyfin Bay postcard I made for Heartwaves. Which in my head made sense at the time—I wanted it to look like a real postcard someone would send to a loved one, not just some marketing gimmick—but have since had several signing events with this postcard out on my table. And when I’ve watched strangers who know nothing about me or my books pick this postcard up and stare at it blankly, it has occurred to me that I am not that good at marketing. (But I’m learning! Maybe!)

Something else I’m proud of accomplishing: I now have an order form for (US) indie bookstores who want to order my indie books directly from me. (So Among the Wildflowers, Heartwaves, and any of Moonlighters.)

If you’re a local Portland, Oregon-area store (which includes pretty much any suburb), I’m happy to drop off any orders in person. For any other store in the US, I’ll ship using USPS media mail (the cheapest way possible). All books will be signed (if you want!) and checked for print quality.

Indie bookstores are one of the few things in our current world that bring me genuine joy and optimism for the future. Thank you for all you do!

While I’m here, here are five things I’ve enjoyed recently:

1. This is a Gardening Show with Zach Galifianakis, on Netflix: Obviously, y’all know this show was made for me simply from the title, but it truly is super charming and pure, and in a dark world, I’ll take all the charming and pure I can get. Each episode is short, about 15 minutes, covering topics from growing tomatoes to foraging. He also interviews kids about whatever the topic of the day is, who are always, of course, super cute, and as an extra bonus for me, I turned it on yesterday afternoon after work when my kid was grounded and super grumpy about being grounded. [He can’t watch his own shows whilst being grounded but is free to watch anything we happen to turn on.] He was, accordingly, grumpy at first about watching a dumb gardening show with his dumb mom (during an argument a few days prior he had declared that all adults are boring because all they do is garden, a point spat angrily in front of three adults when that statement was only true about one of them [me] lol). But soon enough he was laughing at all the kid interviews and—against his will!!!—was super engaged!! I almost floated right off the couch!

2. Wreck, Catherine Newman: I loved Catherine Newman’s Sandwich last year, so much, and I recently finished this follow-up. Her writing is so sharp and funny and observant and voice-y, the tone and content super slice-of-life-y, like literally all of my favorite things. But serious topics are always hidden underneath all the laughs, keeping things almost cleverly propulsive. & I feel like Newman had a much taller order with this one: Sandwich took place during an annual summer vacation to the Cape, while Wreck deals with the family back at home in Western Mass. And well, vacation is always more fun and entertaining than real life back home. In particular in this one, there’s a storyline with Rocky’s son that I find myself still thinking about, weeks after finishing it. In a world where there are such clear sides these days, it tackles what happens when someone you love deeply engages in work/something/ethics you deeply disagree with, and idk—it just made me uncomfortable in this way that I think it was meant to, in a way I can’t clearly articulate just yet, but it’s really lingered with me.

3. Noah Kahan: Out of Body, also on Netflix: Obviously I am (slowly) absorbing Kahan’s newest album, even if the fact that he is now so popular and just Everywhere in all my feeds has made me hesitant to talk about it out loud. Which is weird, and frustrating to myself, because I’ve always hated the “I won’t vocally support a thing because it’s popular” stance, which should be obvious from my love of romance novels. Still, I think it has to do with how personal Kahan’s music has always felt for me, and it’s weird seeing it hyper-consumed because I want to get back to it being Just For Me. Which sounds selfish but I think is actually really important in terms of how we consume art—I am constantly trying to get back to the Just For Me mindset with books, too. But anyway—
   
   Before the release of the album, we watched the documentary on Netflix that was made in the period of time post-Stick Season blowing up, when he was playing Fenway Park and trying to work on this new album. It was really fascinating to me how vulnerable and personal this documentary was, how we got to meet his whole family basically; I also appreciated how open he was about his body dysmorphia. But really, this is a documentary about burnout, and there were so many things I related to. In particular, there’s a moment where he talks about how thoroughly disconnected he feels from music, and another moment when he’s talking about Nashville, how he wants to get away from a place where everyone’s always asking about his streaming numbers. Different, obviously, but that’s how I feel any time I even venture onto Threads lol. I don’t want to know your book sale numbers; I want to know about your dog. How your folks are doing, how your garden’s looking this year. I constantly feel disconnected from writing at the same time that I constantly fear it’s the only thing I’m actually qualified to do.
   
   I also loved how, like his music, this documentary was so firmly centered around place: I really felt like I was in Strafford, Vermont. My life, like everyone’s, also feels so firmly centered in place—I wouldn’t be who I am without Pennsylvania, Boston, or Portland; I think about all three of these places all the time—so setting has always been really important to me in my work, too. It’s made me think about how connected I feel to other work that’s firmly centered in a specific place, something that isn’t always central to music as an art form but when it is, it really pulls me in/matters to me in the same way it does in books. This is likely the topic of another essay entirely so I’ll stop here.
   
   One of my favorite parts about watching the documentary, though, was that my wife watched it, too, who’s not as big of a Noah fan (she doesn’t dislike him, just hasn’t listened to his music as much as I have) and is generally more well-adjusted than the rest of us, and at the end she said, “I’m kind of concerned for him?” lol

4. Books that aren’t out yet: Some of my favorite books I’ve read this year are drafts of friends’ books that aren’t out until 2027. I think I already mentioned Alicia Thompson’s 2027 book, but since then I’ve also read Ari Baran’s next release, Unsportsmanlike Conduct, and Sarah T. Dubb’s 2027 release, and I loved them both so much. They are both so queer, and hot (while dealing with sex in really interesting ways), and feature characters I can’t get out of my head.

5. Go Away, Best Coast & Weezer: This is going to be one of my top jams of the summer; there’s something so beautifully simple and fun and almost throwback-y and just Weezer-ish about it. I love pop music!!!

I also totally forgot until recently that I made a resolution a year or so ago to finish each newsletter with a photo of the garden and a photo of one of the dogs. A resolution I clearly forgot after a few newsletters, but I’m bringing it back (until I inevitably forget about it again)!!

xo

anita

Hi friends!

ARC signups are available for Among the Wildflowers!

As I say in the form, ARCs to me are mostly a temperature check, to make sure I and the other folks who have already read this book haven’t missed anything too glaring or offensive. Anyone is free to sign up, as long as you are over 18. I’ll choose a small amount of folks totally randomly next week, and send out the ARCs shortly thereafter!

Release for this one is exactly two months away (6.2.26, what a fun date is THAT), and I’m in the process of doing my final, super-nitpicky read-through, similar to pass pages in trad pub, where I try to cut down all my excessive wordiness and maybe fix some of my commas. (I know some of my commas are incorrect but I choose to keep them for voice! I stand by doing a lot of things “wrong” for voice and rhythm! Your choices are your own! Let yourself stand for your gut and exercise free will whenever you are able!!)

This stage of the writing process is always both fraught and restorative for me. One moment I pick the manuscript up to overanalyze every single sentence, I fucking hate it! Then the very next time I try again, I love it so much I want to cradle it in my arms.

You will be shocked to know that this book and the book I currently have on sub both deal with how weird/embarrassing/excruciating making art is. Something I didn’t actually even fully realize until I sat down with both manuscripts recently and was like…huh. Guess I’ve been going through it!! lol (everyone knows I’ve been going through it)

(Although, while it’s a bit louder of a theme in these two recent books, this isn’t a new theme for me at all, really: Mateo in Donut Summer angsts about their art; Aiden in Our Favorite Songs is my tortured poet; and it’s the same emotion, really, for any character who both loves something and is hurt by it: Elle and basketball in How You Get the Girl; Dahlia and cooking in Love & Other Disasters. I know complaining about making art is a common theme throughout all art, which I’m sure many see as annoyingly meta and/or navel-gaze-y, but I don’t know. I’m certainly grateful for all the characters who have helped me work through things, who have taught me things, who have told me things I needed to hear. Isn’t that the point of all this?)

In seriousness, lots of things have been stressing me out lately: THE WORLD; job hunting; dealing with the current day job; parenting and generally surviving as a human; juggling various writing projects and responsibilities; even other media. (I’m reading Atmosphere and watching Pluribus and catching brief bits of when my wife watches The Pitt and I know everything is very good and I’m glad people are making good things but also sometimes it feels like I need a Xanax for consuming anything in this world lol.) But in the midst of it all, any time I am able to work on this read-through and return to the world of Short King Farms again, my whole psyche kind of sighs in relief and says OH THANK GOD.

Which is all to say—working on this book has been very comforting, and I hope reading it is the same for you, too.

Also: it’s not officially announced yet/there’s no RSVP link or anything, but I will be chatting with Alison Cochrun about Among the Wildflowers at Grand Gesture Books here in Portland on Wednesday, June 10th at 6 PM.

This is the first event I’ll have done for anything in the Greyfin Bay universe, so I’m both excited and nervous! Please come and chat about queer love on the Oregon Coast with me. Thank you as always to Grand Gesture’s Katherine for always supporting and encouraging me.

Reminder that you can pre-order a signed & personalized paperback copy of Among the Wildflowers (if you live in the US) using this form. And pre-order the ebook pretty much anywhere! (The paperback will also be more widely available for purchase on release day.)

Lastly, I just threw up an AMA over on Instagram, but you can also ask me anything right here. :)

Okay, off to get more work done! Much love to you all,

anita

Hey, friends! This will mainly be a quick admin/news kind of newsletter!

First up: How You Get the Girl is on sale (ebook) for $2.99 all March!

Next up: I have an entry in the Lit for Queer Liberation auction. It’s your choice of whatever three of my books you’d like, signed and personalized (if you’d like), along with a guaranteed eARC of Among the Wildflowers when I have those ready.

Next: I have a couple chill events coming up! This Saturday, I’ll be celebrating the first birthday of Portland’s queer indie bookstore, Always Here! Rosiee Thor and I will be hanging out from 12-2, signing our own books but also playing guest booksellers as we recommend lots of other books, too.

Also, looking a bit ahead, I’ll be celebrating Indie Bookstore Day on April 25th with Endless Wonders, a new queer-owned bookshop in the Montavilla neighborhood. I’ll be hanging out and signing books from 2 - 3 PM.

I also now have a form available for signed & personalized paperback pre-orders of Among the Wildflowers. I’m doing it the same way I did pre-orders of Heartwaves because it worked well for me, even though I’m sure there are better ways to do it. Just fill out the form—while paying careful attention that you type your full mailing address and correct email address—and I’ll send you an invoice via PayPal for $23 ($18 for the book, $5 for shipping). Once that’s paid, I’ll send you your book + swag whenever I have final copies available!

Unfortunately due to costs I can only ship books to US readers right now, but readers from other countries are also free to fill out the form and I’ll mail you the swag and a bookplate (no charge). (Hopefully I’ll have details about what the swag will be soon.)

I’ll hopefully also have a form to sign up for ARCs, as well as an order form for any indie bookstore who might want to order copies directly from me, in the coming months.

Reminder that Among the Wildflowers is my let’s-fall-in-love-and-have-lots-of-sex-on-a-farm m/m romance set on the Oregon Coast. It’s out June 2nd. Ebook pre-order links should now also be up on all platforms, including Kobo and Bookshop.org.

Okay, I think that was all the news I had to share. While I’m here, here are five things I’ve been enjoying lately:

• I didn’t know 2026 would be my year of Gay Tennis Romance, but I am so very down for it. So far I have loved both The Open Era by Edward Schmit (coming in June) and In Your Court by Kit Haley (coming in May), and I’m just as equally looking forward to reading Thirty Love by Tom Vellner (just out!).

• I also can’t stop thinking about how much I loved The Shots You Take by Rachel Reid. This book is everything I want (to both read and write), and finding a book like that in the wild/outside of my own head is the most comforting thing in the world.

• I recently read Fredrik Bachman’s newest, My Friends, and while I’ve read a couple others of his (My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: I liked it!; Anxious People: didn’t love it), wow wow wow did I love this one. Again, it’s kind of made for me: all about art and sadness (sad gay people in particular) and youth and love, so yeah, I ate it up.

• I have also been making my way through Avon Gale’s Scoring Chances series and having a wonderful time. Last year I read historical romance almost exclusively to save my sanity; you can see what this year’s theme so far has been. I do not apologize. Actually, I do for how fuckin’ white these bullet points are; I’ll do better next time; but I don’t apologize for gay sports and/or sad gay people.

• I’m also currently enjoying a draft of Alicia Thompson’s 2027 project which I can’t tell you anything about since she hasn’t yet but sometimes I like to brag.

Okay love you all, sorry to every other country in the world about the United States,

anita

Hello, friends! I have written another book.

Among the Wildflowers is the second book in my Greyfin Bay series, the sequel to Heartwaves.

Like all my books, though, each should be able to stand alone; you do not have to read Heartwaves to read this one. Reading Heartwaves, in this specific case, will definitely give you more context, as one of the main characters of Among the Wildflowers is Luca Yaeger, who features somewhat prominently in Heartwaves as the guy one of the main characters of that book was in a situationship with. This is my series about mess!!

I will say, though, that I think Heartwaves is a much heavier book than Among the Wildflowers, and as such, if you haven’t read either and aren’t in the mood for heavier themes, you can feel free to skip Heartwaves and jump right into Wildflowers! (While I do, of course, hope you go back and visit Mae and Dell someday.) I was really excited, in the first book, to build out the town of Greyfin Bay and get into all my queers-in-small-town feelings, particularly being queer in small American towns during the era of Trump, and I also put a lot of grief in there, and I love that book a lot but this one is pretty much just two dudes falling in love on a farm without too much trauma at all, if that’s more your style. (Well, I should say that there is still some trauma, of course; this is still me we’re talking about; it’s still a romance novel with fucked up people who need to heal; but there’s not too much of it on page in this one is what I’m saying.)

Here’s an official summary that I hope isn’t too embarrassing:

Owning a farm is Emerson King’s lifelong dream come true—even if achieving it has cost him his marriage.

Now, a year after his divorce, Short King Farms is in dire financial straits. One bright spot on the horizon? Money from his friends Ben and Alexei, who are renting out the farm for their wedding. But even that might be in jeopardy: the farm is a mess, not at all ready for a hundred person wedding. Emerson needs help, desperately—if only he could afford it.

Luca Yaeger has spent his life as a fisherman with only one problem: he’s never actually wanted to be one. What he truly wants to do is write, but all that’s brought him is pain. When he receives his hundredth rejection for his novel, he decides it’s time to give up the ghost for good. After, of course, he heads to the local brewery for a small pity party first.

There he finds a sad farmer—and an opportunity for a new life.

In exchange for room and board, Luca offers to work at Short King Farms for free so Emerson can better prepare for the wedding. The farm is beautiful, the fresh start Luca has been looking for—even if his growing feelings for his new boss are useless, being that Emerson is definitely still in love with his ex.

But when it comes to all the stress Emerson is still under—maybe Luca could help with that in other ways, too…

As the wedding approaches, Luca and Emerson grow more and more attached. But when the past comes calling, they must decide what the future holds—for the farm and for themselves—after the final wedding bells toll.

Among the Wildflowers is a gentle gay small-town romance that explores the costs and rewards of following our dreams, and the messiness in expanding our expectations of love.

My much shorter tagline I’ve been saying to make myself laugh is:

Among the Wildflowers: sex pact to save the farm

Is that a phrase that makes sense?? I’m sure reviewers will figure out the answer to that; hopefully they don’t tag me.

Another thing to know that I couldn’t fit in the synopsis: Emerson King is also a single dad, if you like that trope, but he amicably co-parents with his ex, so sometimes I feel kind of weird calling him that? Like he’s technically single but he’s not doing this all on his own, you know? And these are the kind of thoughts that make me bad at listing tropes.

Anyway, there is also a very good cow named Sally.

Among the Wildflowers will be out on June 2nd. Next time we chat, I’ll put out a call for ARC readers, but I need my shit a little more put-together first. There will also be paperbacks eventually, and hopefully one day there will be audio for both this one and Heartwaves but I don’t have any news for you on that front yet. For now, I’d love if you added Wildflowers on Goodreads.

And yes, the title obviously alludes to the Tom Petty song. Which has long been one of my most steadfast writing songs, so it was inevitable it ended up as a title of mine—it first showed up on my writing playlist for Dahlia Woodson back in the day. (Who, wouldn’t you know, briefly shows up in this book.) It’s not just a throwaway title, though; there is an actual wildflower field on the farm that takes up a lot of oxygen in the book. I just did a search through the manuscript in its current form to see, and “wildflower” currently shows up 31 times, which—I almost thought it would be more, but still. Lotta flower talk in this gentle gay ass book.

I am very nervous about this one, as I am always nervous about books, but I really hope at least some of you like it.

More soon,

xo

anita