First things first…I have very exciting news.

Even typing this makes me want to start shaking for the ten thousandth time.

We sold a book!! Two, actually. My debut novel The Secret Lives of Immortals is coming in March 2027 from Orbit/Redhook!

And thus I graduate the Gemini Harvard of keeping a secret, to present you with many more (wink wink) in 2027. To quote the press release:

The novel is the tale of He Ling, a woman from fourth century China who is tricked into immortality and must settle with the consequences of her long life, as well as the actions of the alluring man who betrayed her. With the epic scope of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue and The Ministry of Time’s irreverent, unapologetically modern voice, The Secret Lives of Immortals is a genre-defying work of speculative fiction that will break your heart and put it back together again.

Read official announcement on The Bookseller, if you have a subscription!

It’s a few months until pre-order links are live and the cover is revealed. Stay tuned for that. As of now, I am still polishing this book into a real object with my lovely team.

If you do eventually pick up this book, you’ll be spirited off to ancient Luoyang, Rome, and London; medieval Ireland; 1800s Salinas, and perhaps most nostalgically, 2009 NYC. Countless other places, too, conjured just 4 u.

More about my rather shocked state below, for our usual pep talk.

Friends of the SFPL Block Party

The Brown Handler Residents will all be reading on June 6 at the Friends of the San Francisco Public Library block party! Come buy some books, enjoy some crafts, and listen to some readings. Details here!

…and now, the pep talk:

So! how does it feel to finally catch the mailtruck?

When I write these pep talks, I typically make some tea and coooooook for a while in my terrifyingly yolo Obsidian newsletter scratch file: it’s literally named, ‘Newsletter scratchpad’ and is currently approaching 7,000 words.

I’ve been prepping this announcement post in advance, and it has taken a bewildering amount of time to finish it. After writing my very exciting news in minutes, I kept writing these long, spicy++ essays to go underneath this announcement.

They wouldn’t start out that way. I’d be writing about process or inspiration and suddenly I’m like, “Oh my God, friend, this literally started with a photo you took in Rome as a child, why are we now doing 10 pages on the forced mantle of cultural authority, you’ve got to stop doing this.”

I know why. I’ve been to therapy!!

When I read debut announcements like this from other people, I think, wow, how exciting! I want to know more about the project, about how this happened, tell me whatever! Celebrate! and then probably that gif of the kid with the cake and crown.

But now that I’m here myself, I think I’m still contending with the big subliminal question:

How does it feel for a lifelong dream to come true?

Or, How does it feel to be the pug that finally caught the mail truck?

Answering that question is scary. It feels amazing! It doesn’t feel real! I’m so thankful and thrilled beyond measure! It feels like my entire self is going to shoot out of my eyes and mouth via those spotlights they put outside of concert arenas to piss off the entire city!

A lot of the time when I write in this space, I am writing about gentle perseverance, artistic dignity, finding humor in the wtf of it all, and focusing on the work. I write to you and myself as we walk through the woods. It takes endless earnestness to persevere in your practice and to continue making work when no one seems to want to see it.

Turns out it takes earnestness when someone does want to see it, too. Because there is certainly a part of me that wants to avoid being earnest. And what better way to avoid being earnest than to distract with a spicy little essay about the forced mantle of cultural authority? (‘little’)

When I realized what I was doing with these essays, I thought, man. Maybe I’ll just drop the announcement and flee. However, I don’t want to embrace a binary of ‘gallop in with a bellicose screed’ and ‘disappear into the wallpaper’. It’s not what I would want for any of us.

So earnestness it must be.

—

Last year, when it became clear a deal was probably going to happen, I read the inciting email, crumpled to the floor next to my desk, and cried face down for twenty minutes. Supa chill.

I have been writing (and finishing!) book-length works since I was 13. I am now days away from 39. I have endured multiple jean rises and eyebrow shapes, created life twice, had three dogs (the most recent of whomst is, as we have established, 17), gotten a degree, worked numerous jobs, quit numerous jobs, written countless pages and a decent handful of books.

Writing is the way I understand my world. If I do not write, I do not know. Perhaps this sounds facetious. Nope. With the way my brain is designed, if I do not take notes on a book or essay, it is gone from my memory forever, pretty much as soon as I close the cover. As I have been saved by writing and books, I am doing my best to reach out across the void in this language that makes sense to me, as well as leave some things behind: warp string for others to lattice their yarn into.

At the end of the day, my job remains the same. Get words on the page. Make some durable meaning out of this thing called life.

There is nothing I have worked for longer than this. Not the entirety of my design degree and subsequent career, nothing. And I worked. I slayed excessive adverbs and personal demons alike to become the writer who would write this book.

The Secret Lives of Immortals is a story about magic and power and foreigner status; a little dangerous flirtation slash codependence with that scamp you just cannot let go of; dismantling hyper independence, and, yes—it is a book about immortals. It takes place over 1600 years. I’ve lived a paltry sliver of that, but there is something parallel in the life-epic nature of this book and the entire life’s journey it’s taken for me to get here.

I hope it is obvious after reading; this is not so much a book about never dying, but rather how to be alive. And that is earnest; heart broken open; especially when something good happens and you are terrified your tiny jaws won’t fit around that big scary mail truck bumper.

AHHHH! Thank you for reading this. Who knows where it all will lead, but we’ll find out together in this space.

Random ephemera

I feel like my message logs at this point are half ‘just saw the news! 😍’ (book) and ‘just saw the news 💀’ (world).

That’s making stuff in 2026, I guess.

In an effort to cope, I have downloaded a horse game called Ranch at Rivershine to distract my inner child so at least part of me is innocent and carefree. The 7-year-old within is probably, like, finally, girl, you have a credit card and you’re not buying every horse game on the market????

I’ve been playing a lot of cozy games lately instead of revenge scrolling at night. I would play Pokopia if I had a switch 2, but it’s probably good for my family and deadlines that I do not. My recents:

• Ranch at Rivershine: The controls are admittedly not the greatest on the Steam Deck, admittedly, but I am looking forward to having twenty thousand pretty ponies.
• Fields of Mistria: For the Stardew and Coral Island fans. I expected this to be a fairly simple and satisfying farming sim dupe, but I have burned countless hours in this game.
• Sticky Business: I literally used to pack little boxes IRL for my own store. This is a very cute small game where you design stickers according to customer wishes and pack them up.
• Tiny Bookshop: Another peaceful game where you run a literal tiny bookshop in a seaside town and make recommendations to the townspeople.

Until next time,

xoxo Ash