Love and Spaceships, Vol. 2
Geeky stories with romance and one or more wormhole metaphors
People, I have news!
I was signed by a literary agent!
This is something I’ve been trying to do for SIX YEARS, so, yes, it’s a big deal. I’m now with Cathie Hedrick-Armstrong at the Purcell Agency. I’m so excited to have her championing my manuscripts and helping them be made into books. My bio is up at The Purcell Agency. Woo and Hoo!
The manuscript she picked up is called HASHTAG, CELEBRITY CRUSH. It’s a romcom for sci-fi fans.
Here’s the logline:
and the mood board:
Generally, I write sci-fi, so how did this come about? I’ll give you the short version…
Back in January 2020, I signed up for the NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge. This is a contest where they give you a genre, subject, and character assignment and you have a handful of days to write a short story of a specified word count. My first assignment was:
I wrote a short story called TRUST FALL about an agoraphobic board game designer who falls for the girl in charge of his booth at a convention, and I won first place in my heat. I haven’t published it, but I’m giving my newsletter subscribers access to it here. If you’re wondering why it references 2020 and not the pandemic, it’s because I wrote it in January. Who freaking knew, right?
I won first place in my second heat as well with a magical realism fairy tale and then choked on the third heat, so I didn’t win the contest, but… I learned that I could write romcoms. I guess all that yapping about getting out of your comfort zone does have some merit.
Then Covid hit
We were all stuck at home without a lot to do, so I got this idea that we should watch the Avengers movies as a family, in the recommended order. Mark had seen them, but the girls and I hadn’t. So we did.
welp… we got a little obsessed.
We loved the stories and the characters and the fact that the movies were a whole bunch of sci-fi fun that didn’t take itself too seriously. The teens sent me bloopers and clips from promo tours, and I started to get a little nostalgic for those trips to L.A. I used to make for my old job. So, just for fun, I wrote this novel, stuffing it full of wish fulfillment, name drops, and sci-fi references. I had such a great time writing it and revising it a gazillion times with help from my beta readers, critique partners, mentor Lisa Amowitz, and editor Michelle Hazen. I can’t wait to see it grow up into a real live book!
In the meantime, if you’re looking for more smexy sci-fi to read, check out Emily Colin’s Sevin Sins series. It’s one of my favorites!
It’s a dystopian enemies-to-lovers that’s a FOREWARD INDIES Award Finalist and #1 Amazon Bestseller. I think this testimonial sums it up nicely:
Check out the trailer here.
And thank you to all of my new subscribers, which is basically you if you are reading this, because the newsletter is brand new and this is only the second installment.
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