This post was originally sent through my author newsletter on March 24th, 2023. To subscribe to my newsletter and receive up-to-date news, musings, and more, click HERE.
Did you catch the cover reveal this week for my next book, The Thirteenth Circle? Just in case you missed it, take a moment to bask in this image of utter amazing-ness:
Seriously, how great is that?! It's fun but also a little spooky. Those glowing green orbs give off major "X-Files" vibes. And did you spot the shadowy figures in the background, lurking in the cornfields? Plus all the little details, like the green alien heads on Cat's black shirt and the Erlenmeyer flask Dani is clutching tightly as she runs. (There was even an "X-Files" episode called "The Erlenmeyer Flask" in season one...) I don't know if there's anything I'd do differently on here, to be honest. It's just perfect.
Once a book has a cover, it definitely starts feeling more real. But that's not all that's happening in the world of The Thirteenth Circle right now. MarcyKate and I also got to see sample interior design pages, and we will receive a full set of designed pages for proofreading (this is called "first-pass pages" in publishing) within the next few weeks.
The book will also soon be available as an eARC, or Advance Reader Copy. This is for reviewers and booksellers and librarians to get an early sneak peek—and to start spreading the word! Once those digital galleys start going out, and people are actually reading it...whew. The thing is happening!
Some books have beta-readers, a.k.a. people the author trusts to read early drafts and offer feedback. With this book, having a coauthor kind of meant MarcyKate and I were each other's beta-readers. We didn't send it to anyone else to critique, because we were constantly going back and forth between the two of us. And then, once our agents got involved—and especially after we sold it to a publisher—we had professional feedback coming in. All of which to say, at this point, no one but the two of us, our agents (and their assistants), and our publishing team has read this book.
So having it start to feed out to READERS feels scary and exciting, all at once!
This is an interesting time in a book's life. We, the authors, have done just about all of the work we'll ever do on the manuscript. It's very nearly out of our hands. But the actual publication date is still over nine months away! In between comes a lot of waiting and crossing fingers and dropping little teasers and details and waiting some more. With every month that passes between now and release day, it becomes less and less ours. On January 30th, 2024, it's yours.
And we hope you love it as much as we do.
~Kathryn
What I'm:
Reading: I read Nona the Ninth, the third book in the Locked Tomb series, when the library hold appeared on my phone. It was amazing, just as mind-bendy (maybe even a little more so) than the previous two. But my eye wasn't quite ready for that much text, so I'm back to audiobooks! I am now listening to In the Woods by Tana French. This is technically the first book in the series of Irish murder mysteries I mentioned last newsletter, but it's from the point of view of a different detective, so I don't feel too spoiled by already having listened to book two.
Watching: This is totally random, but...have you seen "Snack vs. Chef" on Netflix? It involves professional chefs attempting to recreate common snack foods, like Flamin' Hot Cheetos and Kit-Kats, without a recipe. The results are...mixed. Making snacks (especially without the help of, you know, an automated factory) is hard!
Listening to: Somehow, I missed listening to Maggie Rogers when she released her first album in 2019. I suspect it's because I was neck-deep in Baby Shark and other toddler requests at the time. Suffice it to say, I really like her! Great singer-songwriter vibes.
Loving: I know I share a lot of my daughter's art in this newsletter, but it really does bring me so much joy. Here is a quick sketch she did of me earlier this week, when she was home sick with a nasty cold and I was attempting to work while also entertaining her. I think it fully captures my working-mom-with-a-healing-eyeball essence...
