I have never said this before until now, but I have a mother who does not care about Mother’s Day.
Because of this truth, I have loathed and loved Mother’s Day in varied ways over the years. When I was young, I used to believe it was modesty which prevented my mother from requesting special attention for the day, so I swung on the pendulum of affection and meticulously made plans. I would scour shops for days for gifts, find the prettiest floral cards in which to detail my feelings, and then proudly hand them to her with swelling anticipation.
She would hum a reply of thanks and set it aside, only for it to lie dormant and forgotten beneath a stack of paper mail on the dining table.
She was never cruel, but she was indifferent, which felt just as agonizing.
I would tread the path to potential love excessively, and repeatedly, always hoping for a different result. Every year I would write my heart out on cards and every year they would become just another Thing To Deal With.
I grew up to become a disappointed daughter, then later a resentful daughter, until, in due course, anger wound its way around my wrists and chained me to the dispirited reality of grief that I would never be the daughter she wanted, nor she the mother I needed.
If you live long enough with that kind of reality, anticipation becomes a desperate need for validation, left to tug on you for constant attention. Until you become, like I had, tired of the anger and resentment, and realize therapy is the best path forward towards acceptance. With my therapist I’ve had since 2014, we began the deep work of emotional excavation.
That is the place in which I began to write Starling Darling in 2020.
I know daughter grief well. I know the dimensions of its room, I have memorized the shape of its windows. I have lived with the view of the world outside and watched with envy.
I have said this before, but Starling Darling was the book I needed to write before I could write anything else—but my statement, while true, lacks nuance. I knew the story I wanted to write, but I never wanted my book to be therapy on the page. My greatest hope for the book was that the people who might relate to the grief of this particular kind of daughter-hood would find it. That it would answer the invisible question one asks in life: is this only happening to me?
What I learned in writing Starling Darling is that in order to write the story in a realistic way, I needed to understand both the mother, Rowan, and the daughter, Lucia. Even if completely fictional, I needed the emotions to be unequivocally truthful. While I have never chased a stolen heirloom halfway across Europe, Starling Darling captures a feeling of loss and rebuilding of self that many seem to connect with.
It was the only hope I ever had when publishing my debut; to put words out there that light the way for others and say, you are not alone. I have found joy in connecting with people who understand. It is a surprising kind of relief.
For those who, like me, experience Mother’s Day to be complicated, tricky and rife with emotion—I see you. Let us all light the way together toward a different future than the one we were raised with.
Photo by Sam Hallett
I’m on Substack chat now! There’s a thread of introductions with other readers and it makes me so happy. It’s a really nice avenue to connect in a more direct way, and one of the best parts of the platform. Inspired by that, I decided to do things a little differently this month and share some of the questions I’ve received from Substack & Instagram in a Q&A format.
Q: What scenes do you find most enjoyable to write?
A: This question is two pronged—can I ever answer a question straightforwardly, you ask? (the answer is no, brevity is not in my vocabulary)—I enjoy writing scenes where there’s a lot of banter. In the Romantasy I’m currently writing, the funny dialogue between twin sisters has come so naturally that it will be a miracle trying to convince anyone who knows me that I actually wrote it. That has been extremely enjoyable, and surprising. The scenes I am most comfortable writing are those involving grief, which is not exactly the question being asked, but I really like doing things I’m good at so in a strange way, I enjoy writing them because they are easier for me.
Q: How long did your first book take you to write?
A: The short answer is seven months. The longer answer is also four years, but there were three versions of the book written before I ultimately settled on the final version. And honestly, even while my editor Miranda was reviewing the final copy, I was still rewriting the letter from Rowan to Lucia up until the very, very last minute in October 2024.
Q: Will you only write romantic suspense?
A: I love this question—yes and also, more than only romantic suspense, like romantic fantasy, and a still-in-inception phase, young adult fiction.
Q: I’m obsessed with your book cover. Who designed it?
A: I get this question a lot and it makes me so glad! Lauren Bencivengo painted the cover of Starling Darling and I am commissioning her for my second book, One Night in Warsaw. She is incredible, and she also sells originals of her work on her website.
I chose the self-publishing path because I relish having creative control over aesthetics, especially as it relates to my writing work. I design my book covers and marketing materials, which utilizes such a different part of my creative brain. Designing a book cover is truly is one of my favorite parts of being an author, which is interesting because it might seem like they’re very different things, but I think they’re closer aligned than most people think. What your cover looks like might say a lot about the style of your writing, and can help authors find their true audience with visual elements.
Depending on how many questions I receive, I’ll include a few questions in each newsletter. You can ask me here, or here.
I am currently in second revisions of One Night in Warsaw. The work is extensive, but I’m very excited about sharing more with you soon. While I don’t have the exact date yet, I am aiming for the fall.
I was disappointed by this at first, because in my ideal world I would publish two books a year (which is already quite a lot), but the truth is that in order to put out quality work I’m proud of, this is the pace best suited for that. It allows me to let ideas simmer, to get space from my writing in order to let it breathe and see how I feel about it after completing a draft.
If you’re hoping for me to publish more books, rest assured I am actively working toward putting good stories out there in the world! Your readership of my newsletters has a very big impact for me, and tells me what people like to read and that there are people out there reading my words.
As far as upcoming projects, I have many projects lined up: the Romantasy trilogy, a non-fiction collection, and a story geographically connected to a big part of my life (any guesses??).
This past month I’ve been bouncing between books and shows. I started watching a cute Kdrama that takes place on Jeju island called When Life Gives you Tangerines. I began watching the second season of Floret on Max, and immediately stopped in my tracks at the part where Erin, the owner of Floret says, "I think you're lucky if you get to see that your work mattered but so often you have no idea like you can do your best and you can pour in everything that you have and you can try to make the world better. But how do you really know if if it worked?" I’ve been sending letters to new friends in the Starling Club, and receiving mail too; I got a really thoughtful card and chocolate bar from a local company in Oregon. I started reading The Geographers Map to Romance by India Holman which is a super cozy romance and the prose is beautiful. Tonight I’m off to see Sinners—I’ll let you know what I think next month!
May the rest of your month be filled with small and big joys. Thank you for being here.
