one year as an author!
Plus, my thoughts on changing a WIP from YA to adult
Hi all! Was February crazy for anyone else, or was that just me? I feel like I’ve barely managed to come up for air after a wild month—Gods Beneath the Ice launched, I went to RomantasyCon in California, I turned in pass pages for Drown the Bones, had the cover reveal for Drown the Bones, and continued working on my secret project.
Thankfully, March is giving me some space to breathe!
bbts has been out for one year?!
as of yesterday, March 11, Blood Beneath the Snow has been on shelves for an ENTIRE YEAR! Which means I’ve been a published author for an ENTIRE YEAR!
The time seriously flew by, but I feel so lucky that I’m literally living my dream. 13-year-old me would think I’m the coolest person in the entire world and that means so much to me.
Also, thanks for reading my work! I’d continue writing even if I knew no one would ever read it, but having you on the other end of my words makes me so excited to keep doing what I love.
signed copies!
If you’d like to order a signed copy of any of my books, now you can! I’m collaborating with one of my favorite local indie bookstores, LAGG Bookstore, to always keep signed copies in stock. If you want one mailed to you, check out their website! Or you can always stop in if you’re around their physical location—which I highly recommend, it’s an incredible place. Pretty sure I’d live there if I could!
Note: Right now this is just for BBTS and GBTI. But there will be a signed preorder campaign for Drown the Bones, too! It’ll just come closer to publication (in November).
writing updates
As a little FYI for where I’m at with things right now…Drown the Bones is finished! Done! Out of my hands! Pass pages (where I go through and do a final read for grammar and any typos) are complete and the book is headed to production.
In the coming months, you can expect to hear news about ARCs (advance reader copies) going on NetGalley for you to request! I also have some other exciting things coming up for Drown the Bones that I have to keep secret for now, but know that I’m really excited to tell you all about them as soon as I can!
what I’m reading lately
I love talking about what I’m reading but I don’t get to do it as much these days since so much of my focus is writing! But some books that I’ve enjoyed lately include…
Death Between the Stars by Nico Vicenty (sapphic sci-fi with a haunted spaceship)
The Wolf and the Crown of Blood by Elizabeth May (adult romantasy with dark romance themes)
Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett (a cozy adult romantasy that I listened to on audio)
craft talk
Now that my life is a little less hectic, I’m excited to start using this newsletter as a space to talk about writing craft again! For today’s topic, we’re going to discuss changing a manuscript from YA (young adult) to adult.
why this topic?
Well, at this point I’m a bit of a professional. Before getting my publishing deal, I’d written three books. Each of those three was, you guessed it, young adult. But now, by the time all three of them hit shelves, they will each be written for an adult audience.
I had a few reasons for this.
1. I wrote YA because I read YA for so long.
I wasn’t truly reading much adult fiction until I was in my early twenties. YA has always had a soft spot in my heart because it’s when I became obsessed with books.
But the more I started reading adult books, the more comfortable I felt moving into that genre. I think I was under the impression for a long time that YA was where the good stuff was—the coming of age, adventure stories I craved, with the exact type of longing romance I loved. But when I discovered those things were in adult books too, I began to love that age category as well.
It wasn’t long before I wondered if maybe I wanted to be writing for adults instead of teens.
2. The themes of my stories often lean darker
Young adult books often handle heavy themes, of course. But I loved seeing new adult really begin having a breakout moment around the time I was working on BBTS for the first time. Books where the protagonists were still “coming of age” in a way, but they were older and went through darker things.
A lot of the themes I naturally gravitate towards in my writing tend to be “crossover” material. They could work for an older YA audience or they could work for a new adult audience. Which leads me to my third reason for switching age groups.
3. My YA versions were not selling
Look, I know there’s often a taboo around discussing the publishing market. But I think that’s dumb. We’re all trying to make money and exist in a capitalistic society, so if we can manage to make money from our artwork? I’m calling it a win.
I have taken all three of my young adult books on wide submission with my agent. The first was Blood Beneath the Snow. We got nothing but rejections for eight months on that book before I started having a nagging feeling when I would browse at a bookstore or look at my submission sheet or see the deals being announced by my peers.
The feeling that suddenly, YA was becoming more difficult to sell than adult.
Romantasy for adults was having a boom moment (and still is, frankly). The demand that skyrocketed after books like ACOTAR and Fourth Wing was in full swing, and I knew that Blood Beneath the Snow could BE one of those books with very, very minimal editing on my part.
Because the book was “crossover” and had darker themes…I really just had to make everyone a little older. The relationships a little more matured. But with new adult rising in popularity as well, even the coming of age themes could be left in for some of it. I knew changing it would not compromise the vision I had for the story, so I made the edits and had my agent send it out to some adult editors and imprints. Just to see.
Obviously, you all know how that ended, haha. My editor bought the adult version in January 2024 and the rest is history!
okay so…what about the other two books you mentioned?
Great question. My second book was a YA sci-fi that's a strange mix of romance and horror. It’s also sapphic. Because I believe in looking at the business part of publishing as frankly as the craft side, it’s an unfortunate truth that I knew from the beginning this book would be a hard sell.
However. It had an incredibly commercial hook, so I didn’t lose all hope.
We took it out on submission in tandem with BBTS, actually. And got an offer of publication for the YA version! I ended up turning the offer down, because they wanted to pay me zero dollars for it. And as much as my work is art — important art, at that — I couldn’t afford to work for free. And yes, it was a Big 5 publisher that made me this offer.
After that (frankly, terrible) offer, we took it off submission while I worked on prepping BBTS for publication. Later, when I returned to it, I was enjoying working in the adult space and decided to age it up. This is still currently a work in progress!
For this one, I’m doing significantly more to change it than I did with BBTS. My edits include:
Aging up the characters
Giving them new wants and needs at the beginning of the story
Making the romance elements a bigger part of the story, including tying those arcs in to the characters’ arcs as a whole
Making the horror elements scarier (yes, I have squicked myself out writing this book many times)
Streamlining some of the first act for pacing purposes
Adding in more profanity
Adding in a sex scene
Giving side characters more page time
Reworking plot lines that have to do with AI to be more relevant to current issues with such technology today
Giving one of the FMCs OCD (apologies to her)
Not all of these things HAVE to be done because I’m aging the book up. It’s been a couple years since I’ve touched this book and I’ve grown as a writer since then, craft-wise. A lot of the changes felt kind of natural now that I’m more comfortable with working on stories and writing for an audience. And if I see a way to make a book better, I’m going to do that!
But some things were pure overhaul because of the age difference now. For example there’s one character who couldn’t leave her situation at the beginning of the book because she wasn’t an adult yet. Well, now she is an adult. So she needed a new motivation for staying, and then I had to review her motivation for leaving when the time came. Did the two motivations match up in intensity? Were the stakes high enough? If not, I had to dive in and fiddle with it until it felt better.
I’m not finished aging this one up quite yet, but I do love it and I know I’ll get there soon enough!
the last book that was originally YA was Drown the Bones
Yep, that’s my book coming out in November! But here’s something that might surprise you about aging this one up.
I made no changes to it.
You read that right. And the reasoning is fascinating (even in my opinion). We sold Drown the Bones to Berkley XO, which is a new imprint publishing crossover stories specifically. For a long time, “crossover” books have been shelved in YA. So when they acquired the book, I kind of assumed that’s what was going to happen.
Later down the line, I was informed that the sales team had decided to shelve the XO books in the adult section. This is clearly a business-oriented decision. Several other “crossover” imprints have been announced in the past year and a half and they are all doing similar things, focusing on new adult instead of upper YA.
The market is changing. The readers who were responsible for the big YA boom in the late 2010s are grown up now, and they’re looking for adult books! It only makes sense that publishers want to follow them.
The change in shelving situation didn’t call for any changes to the book. I did choose to add a sex scene to the novel, but it was kind of there already — it was just fade to black when I assumed the novel was going to be sold to teens. Now, it’s…not fade to black anymore, haha.
I honestly think it’s kind of fascinating to look at publishing through a sales lens, and while it’s something I do fairly often, even I hadn’t expected that kind of thing to happen!
will you ever write YA? or are you doomed to be an adult author forever now?
I definitely do want to write for teens again at some point, but for now I’m very content having my work shelved in the adult section. I read mostly adult books these days, and it’s fun to think of myself on those shelves, where my favorites also sit. I’m also honestly enjoying building a “brand” per se, and knowing that if my audience enjoys one of my books they’ll probably enjoy the others as well!
Once I’m more firmly established and I have a good, solid YA idea (one that can’t be converted into an adult book no matter how hard the industry tries), I’ll step back into that space.
I have a YA book. Should I be changing it to adult?
I can’t answer that question for you, unfortunately. What really matters is whether the book feels true to your vision if you consider aging it up. But I also don’t recommend “writing to trend” or trying to time the market. Things go out of style as quick as they come in, and writing a book is a long, long endeavor.
Your best bet is to write a story you love and then pursue publication. If you’re looking for a literary agent, find one who is passionate about your work and your voice, and who will be honest with you about the state of the market while also being optimistic about your unique stories selling to the right editors!
if you have other questions, leave them in the comments
I’m happy to answer any questions you might have about this process as I went through it, so please feel free to drop them below!
I’d also love to know what other things you’d like me to give craft or publishing business advice on, so feel free to drop topic ideas as well.
Thanks for reading, friends! I hope you have a great rest of your March!