• I ABSOLUTELY JUDGE BOOKS BY THEIR COVER

I need to be attracted to the book first. Pretty package, then I want to see what’s inside. Call me shallow, but if the cover doesn’t make me feel something, the book already has an uphill battle.

• BEAUTIFUL PROSE CANNOT SAVE BOREDOM

I can admire the writing and still not want to keep reading. I have to be in the mood for poetry, I don’t want a novel-length poem. Just not my thing.

• A BAD ENDING CAN RUIN AN OTHERWISE GREAT BOOK

I need the emotional payoff, sorry, not sorry. We’ve been through so much together and at the end of a book I need something. Not saying that there always has to be a happy ending, but leave me with something.

• CHEMISTRY CAN SAVE A MEDIOCRE PLOT

Give me the yearning and I fold every time. If I care about the characters I will forgive a shocking amount.

• I SUPPORT DNFing WITH ZERO GUILT

There are too many books in the world to spend 300 pages being miserable out of principle. If I have zero curiosity or enjoyment after 3ish chapters, I’m done.

• NOT EVERY BOOK NEEDS TO BE “IMPORTANT”

Sometimes I want depth. Sometimes I want chaos. They all serve a purpose. That’s the joy of reading.

Your turn!

What is your most unreasonable reading opinion?

And please make it controversial, I want to be entertained🤣

xoxo,

A.D.

Lochan Bradford, the MMC in PART WOLF, isn’t one of them.

At first glance, he looks like the stereotypical golden boy.

Confident.

Capable.

Respected.

The heir to one of the oldest and most powerful wolf families in the country.

He has the looks, the reputation, the money, and every opportunity someone his age could ask for.

Except freedom.

One of the first things I understood about Lochan was that he had spent his entire life being prepared for a role rather than encouraged to become a person.

His future wasn’t something he discovered.

It had already been decided.

Every lesson, every expectation, every success pointed him toward becoming the next Alpha.

Duty wasn’t simply part of his life.

It became his identity.

And I think that’s why readers sometimes mistake his restraint for emotional distance.

Lochan feels deeply. I was highly influence by the vulnerable recklessness of Romeo from Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juliet.

He has simply spent years learning that feelings don’t get to make the decisions.

Responsibility does.

What fascinated me while writing him was the tension between the man everyone sees and the young man underneath all of it.

He’s capable.

But he’s still young.

He’s respected.

But he’s still figuring out who he is outside everyone else’s expectations.

He’s constantly trying to do the right thing.

Those are the kinds of characters I love writing.

Not because they’re perfect.

Because they aren’t.

Lochan makes mistakes.

He keeps secrets.

He carries burdens that convince him silence is a form of protection.

Sometimes he’s right.

Sometimes he’s spectacularly wrong.

But even his worst decisions usually come from the same place:

He genuinely believes protecting other people matters more than protecting himself.

That isn’t confidence.

It’s sacrifice.

Something else surprised me while writing him.

I expected readers to fall in love with his protective nature.

Instead, I found myself becoming more interested in his loneliness.

How isolating it must be to have everyone admire the future version of you while very few people stop to ask how the present version is coping.

Underneath the heir.

Underneath the expectations.

Underneath the responsibility.

He’s simply a young man trying to carry a weight that was placed on his shoulders long before he was strong enough to choose whether he wanted it.

And maybe that’s why I keep coming back to him.

Because beneath all the mythology, hierarchy, and wolf politics...

Lochan Bradford is really a story about expectation and vulnerability.

About inheritance.

About trying to become the person everyone needs while quietly wondering who you might have been if nobody had needed anything at all.

xoxo,

A.D.

And when I say journey, I mean journeyyyyy.

Mine was long (and hard).

Much longer than I expected it to be.

Before having a baby, I admittedly didn’t give it much thought, but I did think it was a little window after childbirth where you heal, lose some sleep, figure out breastfeeding and then eventually emerge on the other side as yourself again.

That was not my experience.

Motherhood changed my body. It changed my mind (A LOT). It changed the way I experienced stress, loneliness, relationships, sleep, and even myself.

Some of those changes healed.

Some took years.

Some changes are permanent.

And I think we as a society need to be honest about that part. Some things will never be the same, a woman who has a child may never return to the woman she was before.

These aren’t prescriptions, or guarantees. And I would never pretend that what helped me will help every woman.

They are simply five things that gave my mind and body enough support to keep going when I needed it most🫶🏽

1. FIND ONE PERSON TO LEAN ON

I don’t care if it’s a friend, a family member, a therapist, an anonymous WhatsApp group, or a medical hotline.

Find one safe person.

Someone who will answer the phone.

Someone who won’t try to fix everything.

Someone willing to sit with you in the dark until morning comes.

You were never meant to carry postpartum alone.

I was blessed to have 2 sisters and a best friend who is the mother of 3 and a nurse, so I consider myself blessed. But I also joined a Postpartum WhatsApp group and worked with a therapist.

2. MEDICATION IS NOT FAILURE

After growing and birthing a human, your hormones are doing things they have never done before.

Sometimes your body needs support while it find its way back.

There is no shame in accepting that help. Getting treatment isn’t giving up.

It’s taking care of yourself.

Talk to your doctor, really talk to them about new things you’re feeling, or things you can’t control. I was blessed with a doctor who had worked with many women going through postpartum, and she understood how to help me navigate what I was experiencing.

3. GIVE YOURSELF MORE GRACE THAN YOU THINK YOU DESERVE

Society has a way of minimizing pregnancy and childbirth.

As if you body should “bounce back.”

As if your identity should stay exactly the same.

Creating life is one of the most significant physical and emotional experiences a human can go through.

Recovery is supposed to take time.

It took me 3 years to recognize myself. 3 years to say “hey, I remember you.” Nothing could have sped it up because time is what my mind and body needed. And if I could go back, I would tell myself to be patient, she’s still in there just give her time.

4. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, TOO

Everyone tells you to take care of the baby.

Fewer people remind you that the baby needs you to take care of yourself, too.

A shower.

A hot cup of coffee.

Reading a chapter of a book.

Five uninterrupted minutes.

Tiny acts of self-care every day are not selfish.

Sometimes they’re what give you the strength to keep showing up.

Taking a shower and having a coffee before baby woke up was the first moment I could see through the fog. Once I could prioritize myself, my mind started to become a bit more clear little by little.

5. GO OUTSIDE

I can’t fully explain why this mattered so much.

Something about the wind brushing me, the birds singing, the warmth of the sun.

They reminded me that I was a living, breathing person.

That life still existed beyond the walls of my house.

Even today, birds chirping make me smile.

That never happened before postpartum. Its one of the unexpected gifts that season left behind.

Postpartum changed me.

Some of those changes were painful, some made me stronger. And some are still unfolding years later.

So, if your’e in that season right now, I hope that some of these things help you on your journey.

You are not weak.

You’re not failing.

And you don’t have to walk through it alone🤍

xoxo,

A.D.

Once upon a time, I dreamed of writing a book.

Now, somehow, this is my second completed manuscript.

Happy dance. Pat on the back.✨

My hands hurt, my back aches, my brain is completely fried, but 91,380 words have made their way from my imagination onto the page.

For months, I have lived with Winter, Lochan, Rowan, and Evelyn, and if I don’t take a break from them I may short circuit.

I’ve spent countless hours solving scenes and analyzing emotional trajectories.

But now it is quiet.

And I feel empty and full at the same time.

I don’t have to wonder, plot, or plan what happens next.

I don’t know if writers talk about this enough, but finishing a book can be surprisingly lonely.

You’ve spent months living in a world that no one else has visited yet.

Of course, the process is far from over.

There are edits, and more edits.

Beta readers and ARC readers.

Formatting and cover approval.

Reviews and release day.

But yesterday I got to type two words every writer dreams about.

The End.

And for today…

That’s enough.

xoxo,

A.D.

There was ballet, socializing, people I enjoy, and the general wholesomeness of a life being lived.

I would now like everyone to leave me alone.

I don’t say that because anything went wrong. Quite the opposite. I had fun. I laughed. I showed up. I participated. I was present.

And somehow, all of that has left me feeling like my soul has been put through a delicate but thorough rinse cycle.

This is the part of being an introvert that people sometimes misunderstand.

“I had a great time” and “please do not invite me anywhere else for at least two business days” can absolutely coexist.

In fact, for me, they often do.

This weekend also confirmed that I have apparently entered a new era of motherhood: stage mom.

My 4 year old has a ballet life now.

There are rehearsals. Performances. Backstage chaos. Tiny costumes. Tiny shoes. Tiny people who are somehow capable of creating the emotional intensity of a Broadway opening night.

And then there is me, somewhere in the background, carrying things, waiting for instructions, making sure everyone has what they need, and wondering how someone so small has managed to develop a more demanding social calendar than I have.

There is something very funny about watching your child step confidently into a world that is entirely their own while you trail behind them like an overwhelmed support staff.

I love it.

I also find it exhausting.

The same goes for socializing.

I can genuinely enjoy being around people and still feel the battery draining in real time.

There is always a moment where I can almost hear the internal warning system.

20%.

10%.

Please locate the nearest exit.

By the time I get home, I don’t want stimulation. I don’t want plans. I don’t want to “just pop out” anywhere. I want soft clothes, a quiet room, something warm to drink, and no one asking me anything that requires a thoughtful answer.

Sunday, therefore, is recovery.

Not from a bad weekend.

From a good one.

And I think there is something oddly comforting about finally understanding that about myself.

I used to think being tired after enjoying myself meant there was something wrong with me. That maybe I wasn’t social enough, fun enough, spontaneous enough, easy enough.

Now I know better.

Some people refill around other people.

Some of us refill in the quiet afterward.

So yes, I had a lovely weekend.

My daughter danced.

I socialized.

I did all the things.

And now I would like to disappear into my house, speak to approximately no one, and emerge when my personality has fully recharged.

See you when I’m at 100%.

xoxo,

A.D.

“I don’t want safety to become a person. People leave.” —Winter

In PART WOLF, we are introduced to Winter, who has never had anyone to depend on or a place to call home.

In PART QUEEN we explore Winter confronting whether she can accept love, protection, and belonging without losing herself.

Do you like your FMC to be resistant to help, or do you prefer a damsel in distress?

Before I became a mom, I assumed mother just…had children.

I had no idea they were members of an entirely different civilization.

My induction came at a local play gym.

“Do you have WhatsApp?” were the words that started my access.

I immediately had 200 other women with babies born in 2022 at my fingertips. Honestly, I was so relieved I could have cried.

Something I didn’t expect about new motherhood, was how utterly alone I would feel. So, the connection with other women who had gone through a variation of the same experience at the same time felt like a hug I didn’t know I needed. These complete strangers, became my instant village of advice, comfort, and survival.

Women who were also surviving some form of rediscovering themselves while keeping a tiny human alive, happy, and healthy.

I can’t describe how absolutely magical that first year of meeting these women and watching our little potatoes scoot around was. We discussed poop over coffee, took recommendations from each other blindly, and I can’t really tell you anyones last name. Somehow that never seemed important.

But I knew whose baby refused to sleep unless held upright.

I knew whose toddler would only eat beige food.

I knew who had the good gyno, who had found the miracle teething gel, and who could be trusted to answer a panicked message at 2AM.

Motherhood friendships are weird like that.

You can know the intimate details of a woman’s birth story before you know what she does for a living.

Motherhood strips away the performance part of friendship very quickly.

Well, the babies grew…

The playgroups became birthday parties.

The frantic newborn questions became pre-school applications, and emotional regulation analysis.

Some of those women remained close friends. Others drifted away as routines changed and for some life got back to normal.

But I will always be grateful for my induction into the cult of motherhood, it taught me that motherhood is relentless, hilarious, and unbearable alone.

It’s also full of women quietly holding each other up.

Sometimes with advice.

Sometimes with coffee.

Sometimes by simply replying, “Same.”

Honestly, this can be enough to save a person.

What’s the strangest friendship motherhood has ever handed you?🤍

I am currently working on four manuscripts at the same time, all in different stages.

Even writing that sentence makes me feel both wildly impressed with myself and mildly unwell.

There are four separate worlds living inside my head, four casts of characters demanding their own voices be heard. Four unfinished stories, each one convinced it should be the most important thing in my life.

And the problem is, I love it!

I love slipping between them. I love them all always being on the outskirts of my mind.

This is the part of creativity we romanticize.

The inspiration.

The obsession.

The author so consumed by her work that she forgets to eat, sleep, answer messages, participate in ordinary life.

It sounds beautiful when you call it devotion.

But sometimes, it’s really a form of dysregulation.

Avoidance.

Compulsion.

A nervous system sparking until it explodes.

I know that my mental health and my creativity share a wall.

I also know it’s important that they remain in their rooms.

Because if I’m not careful, I can become lost in the creativity. I can retreat into worlds where I control what happens, where everything has meaning, and where real consequences cannot reach me.

And with four manuscripts, there are a lot of places to hide.

I don’t believe that mental illness is the price of creativity.

I do not believe suffering makes art better.

But I do believe it takes a special kind of mind to hear the voices, follow them into worlds no one else can see, and return with something that makes another person feel less alone.

How do you know when your creativity is feeding you, and when it is helping you disappear?

xoxo,

A.D.

I read The Odyssey about twenty years ago.

I remember it was very long.

Odysseus also took a very long time to get where he was going.

Now I’m reading it again because Christopher Nolan has turned it into an estimated $250 million spectacle. I’ll save the geek out for another time, but its the first feature shot entirely with IMAX film cameras👀 When I finish the book, I’m going to buy a painfully expensive ticket and watch it on the biggest screen I can find.

The book hasn’t changed, but I realized very quickly how much I have.

Twenty years ago, I was following the adventure. I wanted the monsters, the shipwrecks, the gods and the next impossible obstacle. I saw Odysseus as the clever hero trying to get home.

This time, I’m reading it as a writer, as a woman, and as a mom mom.

The main thing I keep turning over, is what everything cost.

Odysseus is still clever, but he is also proud, deceptive and responsible for making his own journey more difficult. Sometimes his intelligence saves everyone. Sometimes his ego puts them in danger.

Maybe that’s why he remains interesting, but this time around I find him unlikeable to say the least.

He gets monsters, goddesses, and adventure. Penelope gets twenty years of uncertainty and a house full of men waiting for her to admit that her husband is never coming back.

When I was younger, Penelope’s character seemed passive, maybe even boring. Now I understand how much strength it can require to keep a life together while someone else is off having the story.

We tend to admire the person who leaves, the explorer, the warrior, the person who disappears and returns with scars and stories.

We speak less about the people who stayed behind and carried everything in their absence.

Nolan has taken one of the oldest surviving stories in Western literature and made it as large, loud, and expensive as modern cinema allows. I want the sea, the monsters, and the spectacle. I want to understand why people are paying premium prices to experience an ancient poem on an enormous screen.

But I’m also wondering which story the film will choose to tell.

Will it be about the extraordinary man who survived long enough to return home?

Or will it notice the people whose lives couldn’t pause while he was gone?

Maybe this is the real pleasure of rereading a book after so long, you think you’re returning to something familiar, but the person who read it first no longer exists.

Have you ever returned to a book years later and discovered it had become a completely different story?

xoxo,

A.D.

Do you think this movie is completely fictional, or is it based on someone’s real lift? Sometimes the line between the two is very blurred.

Everything in fiction comes from somewhere.

A conversation overheard. A family secret. An old heartbreak. The affair that everyone knows about.

But how much of real life are writers entitle to use?

Then again, is the human experience so vast, and so interchangeable that nobody truly owns a story?

No one owns grief, or jealous, or betrayal. From the beginning of time, different generations, different lives keep experiencing the same emotions in slightly different rooms.

Maybe that’s why stories connect us. Why we recognize ourselves in lives that are not ours.

There are only so many human stories: leaving, returning, wanting, losing, surviving, beginning again. What makes them feel new isn’t necessarily what happens but who it happens to and how they understand it.

Still, shared emotion and private experience are not quite the same thing.

Nobody owns heartbreak. But somebody might feel that the precise details of their heartbreak, the words spoken, the secrets revealed, the humiliations endured, belong only to them.

A writer can change a name and still leave someone completely exposed.

So perhaps the line isn’t between fact and fiction. Maybe it lies between recognition and revelation.

Are we using an experience to explore something universal? Or are we reproducing someones private life?

I don’t have the answer for that. Our lives overlap too much and even we we tell our own stories, other people appear in them. Our memories contain their words, our turning points involve their choices.

We may have the right to write what happens to us but that doesn’t mean we own every part of what happened. Or does it?

I think this is something that I will always question and try to be conscious but also art has very few confines in my eyes.

What do you think, how would you feel if you recognized your life in someones fictional story?

xoxo,

A.D.

You wrote the book. Your name appeared on the cover. Perhaps there was a tiny, slightly severe photograph of you tucked away at the back, accompanied by a paragraph confirming that you lived somewhere and had, at some point, received an award.

That was enough.

The authors I grew up reading felt like mythic figures. I knew their names, their stories and the worlds they had created, but I didn’t necessarily know what they ate for breakfast. I had no idea what their bedrooms looked like. I was not invited to watch them get ready for the day.

I liked it that way.

Their absence left room for mystery. It allowed the work to feel larger than the person who made it.

That mystery was also part of the appeal of becoming a writer.

The main appeal, of course, was and will always remain an obsession with words. With stories. With escapism. With the peculiar magic of arranging ordinary marks on a page until they become a person, a place, a wound, a world.

But there was another attraction too: the possibility of being known through the work without necessarily having to stand in front of it.

I could write the book.

The book could go out into the world.

I could remain somewhere behind it.

This, apparently, is no longer the deal.

In 2026, readers don’t only want the book. They want access to the author.

They want to see your face. They want glimpses of your life. They want the desk, the coffee, the morning routine, the inspiration, the struggle and the person behind the words. Preferably delivered regularly, attractively, and in flattering natural light.

The modern writer is no longer merely expected to write.

She must also appear.

The job description has been quietly amended. It now includes a willingness to become a personality, a presence and, on particularly exhausting days, a content strategy.

Because if nobody sees you, how will they ever see the book?

And I understand why.

There are more books, voices, and distractions competing for our attention than ever before. Readers want to feel connected to the people whose work they support. They want to know that there is a real human being behind the cover, not a mysterious book producing creature sealed inside a distant tower.

That desire isn’t shallow. In many ways, it’s lovely.

But the irony is that writers have always given readers access.

That is what the book is.

A reader can spend hundreds of pages inside a stranger’s imagination. They can meet her fears, fixations, desires, and darkest possibilities. They can recognize truths she may never be able to say plainly.

What readers are asking for now is access outside of the work.

And that is where I begin to feel uncertain.

A book can be deeply personal without being a complete record of its author.

Access is not the same thing as ownership. Connection does not require total exposure. Intimacy does not have to mean documenting every corner of a life for public consumption.

Perhaps that is the balance I am trying to find now. How to be present, without turning my entire existence into content.

I can talk to you more about myself. I can share the stories behind the stories. I can talk about the things I’m reading, thinking about, wrestling with and learning to live without.

I may even show my face from time to time.

But I would still like to keep something behind the book.

Which brings me to this photograph.

When I needed a picture of myself with my novel, I held the book directly in front of my face.

It may be the most honest author photograph I will ever take.

Here I am, it says.

But also: look at the book.

I am learning that visibility doesn’t mean surrendering privacy entirely.

I became a writer so I could hide behind the book.

It turns out the book may still be the place where you can see me most clearly.

xoxo,

A.D.

When I first stopped drinking, I thought I was simply giving up alcohol.

Like a lot of people, I used alcohol to quiet the overwhelm. To soften to the loneliness, To take the edge off a hard day.

The problem was, that wasn’t actually helping anything, it was just a perpetual delay.

It wasn’t until I stopped that I realized alcohol had been taking more than it was giving.

My waistline, my sleep, my mood, my mornings, all suffered in the wake of alcohol.

Giving up alcohol remains one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever given myself🤍

Today, instead of sharing a Monday Mocktail recipe, I’d like to share a few of my favorite alcohol free substitues that made the social side and habit side of sobriety feel surprisingly seamless.

🥂NA Sparkling Wine

🍏NA Savanna 0.0

🍋NA Hard Seltzers

🫚Anything with fresh ginger (the kick makes me forget its not a cocktail!)

✨Sparkling Water, loads of ice, and a wine glass

If you don’t drink, or you’re drinking less lately, whats your NA beverage of choice?

Cheers to clear minds, beautiful glasses and showing up✨

xoxo,

A.D.

There are places that become part of who you are.

Not because you lived there.

Because they never really let you leave.

I don’t think it’s the streets we remember.

It’s the feeling.

Warm summer nights that seem to last forever.

The smell of horses and fresh cut grass.

Country music drifting through the air.

The local rodeo where half the town showed up.

The porch where conversations lasted long after the sun went down.

The people who knew your parents before they knew you.

Small towns remember everything.

Your first heartbreak.

Your biggest mistakes.

The dreams you chased.

The reasons you left.

And sometimes...

They’re the only places that remember the version of you before the world convinced you to become someone else.

That’s the feeling I’ve been chasing while writing Remember How to Ride.

Long before I knew Maya.

Long before I met Langston.

I knew I wanted to write a story that felt like driving home with the windows down after a summer night you’ll never quite forget.

Maybe that’s why I keep coming back to this manuscript.

It’s reminding me that sometimes the stories we need most aren’t about finding somewhere new.

They’re about finding our way back.

I’d love to know...

What’s one place that still feels like home whenever you think about it? 🤎

xoxo,

-A.D.

For a long time, I thought I was searching for a place.

After I left my hometown, I moved... a lot. Every new city carried the same quiet hope: Maybe this is where I’ll finally feel like I belong.

It never happened.

Then I became a mother.

Somewhere in the ordinary moments of building a life for someone else, something shifted. I stopped looking for a place to belong because I realized I’d been measuring “home” all wrong.

Home was never an address.

It’s the people I carry with me.

The voices that instantly make me smile. The ones that can cross oceans and somehow make the distance disappear.

I live on a different continent now than the one I grew up on.

And yet, every now and then, I hear a familiar voice, laugh with someone I love, or hold my daughter close... and I think,

Oh. There you are. Home.

So I’m curious...

When you think of home, do you picture a place... or a person?✨

xoxo,

A.D.

Every writer has that one story.

The one that quietly lingers in the background while you write everything else.

The one that patiently waits its turn.

For me, that’s LEFT ON BASE ⚾🤍

Maybe it was inevitable.

I come from a sports family. My baby sister played Division I softball. I have a cousin who came within reach of the MLB, and countless family members who coach or played Division I baseball and softball.

This story is about what happens after the final inning.

About the dreams we chase.

The ones we lose.

And the ones we never expected to find.

LEFT ON BASE is a haunting literary novel about loss, memory, and the long road to redemption.

STATUS: Rough Draft in Progress

The more I write it, the more I realize every story I tell, no matter the genre, is really about people trying to find their way back to themselves.

Fantasy gave me magic.

Southern romance gives me home.

This story is teaching me about forgiveness.

And maybe that’s one of my favorite things about being a writer. Every manuscript introduces me to a part of myself I didn’t know was there.

Sometimes I choose the story.

Sometimes the story chooses me.

I’d love to know...

What’s a book that completely surprised you by becoming one of your favorites? 📚

I had never experienced that level of overstimulation before. At the end of the day, I’d pump and dump, pour myself a glass of wine, and tell myself I deserved to unwind.

One glass slowly became a bottle.

When breastfeeding ended, the wine didn’t.

The demands of mom life were relentless, and before long there was a little something extra in my coffee mug every morning. Sprinkle in the 24/7 worries that come with being a new mom, and I found myself never without a drink discreetly hidden away in a tumbler.

Eventually, something had to give.

At first, it wasn’t my health I was thinking about.

It was my weight.

No matter how healthy I ate or how much I exercised, I couldn’t lose the baby weight. Those extra calories were adding up, so I challenged myself to do 30 days without alcohol.

And wow...

My body thanked me.

My mind thanked me.

It wasn’t easy.

Actually, it was really, really hard.

But after those 30 days, seeing how much better I felt made me want to keep going.

The I Am Sober app became one of my biggest motivators. Watching the days add up made me genuinely proud of myself.

Then I discovered Quit Lit, and I became obsessed. I highly recommend, THIS SOBER LIFE, to anyone trying to quit alcohol.

The more I learned about alcohol, what it does to the body, the brain, and why it feels so difficult to stop, the more something inside me simply... clicked.

For the first time, I wasn’t trying to quit because I felt like I had to.

I genuinely didn’t want it anymore.

Looking back, that’s one of the biggest blessings of my life.

I'd love to know... what's one habit you've let go of that made your life unexpectedly better 🤍

xoxo,

A.D.

Recently I was forced to give up my precious magical liquid.

I was experiencing headaches, struggling to sleep, and all signs pointed to coffee being the culprit.

I expected to miss the caffeine jolt.

What has taken me completely by surprise is how much I miss the ritual.

The earthy smell that hits me the second I walk into the cafe. Dopamine.

The barista knowing my order on sight. Serotonin.

That first joyful drop on my tongue. Bliss.

Coffee was never just a drink. It was my little morning ceremony.

Okay… maybe it was a little about the punch of an Americano, black with three sugars, because I can confidently report that black tea is not having the same effect🤭

But I’m choosing to focus on the ritual instead.

So now I’m on the hunt for a new magical liquid.

One that gives me all the comfort, all the joy, all the morning magic…

…with none of the side effects.

What starts your morning with a little bit of magic✨

xoxo,

A.D.

If you’d asked me six months ago what I’d be obsessing over after Part Wolf, I would’ve guessed more wolves.

More politics.

More fantasy (Book 2 in the Bradford Wolves Series, Part Queen is in progress).

Also, somewhere along the way, a cowboy walked into my imagination.

I didn’t expect to be writing a Southern romance this year, but the more time I spend with this story, the more it feels like it had been quietly waiting for me.

I think I’m writing about home🤍

The feeling of home…

I grew up in a small town, and some of my happiest memories were spent in the sunshine, around horses. I’ve always felt more comfortable with animals than people🫣 There was a freedom in those days that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

Maybe that’s why this story found me.

Lately, my writing playlist has been filled with country music, and every chapter seems to smell like leather, coffee, and rain☕🌧️

I’m not chasing magic this time.

I’m chasing a feeling.

I want readers to feel the heaviness of Louisiana humidity before a storm finally breaks. I want them to hear boots crossing an old wooden porch. I want them to feel the quiet that only exists in wide-open spaces.

I’m still writing about family.

About grief.

About healing.

About finding your way back to yourself after life takes an unexpected turn.

The working title is Remember How to Ride🐎

A woman returns to her grandmother’s Louisiana farm after her life unravels in New York. As she rebuilds a life she never expected to come back to, a quiet cowboy next door, old family wounds, and the land she thought she’d left behind force her to confront grief, rediscover herself, and remember how to ride, in every sense of the word.

And I’m finding this to be one of my favorite things about being a writer. Every book teaches me something about myself that I didn’t know before.

Sometimes I choose the story.

Sometimes the story chooses me.

And maybe…

Just maybe…

A tall, dark, handsome man in a cowboy hat has been waiting for me all along❤️

I’d love to know… what’s the most unexpected book you’ve ever fallen in love with?

xoxo,

A.D.

However your holidays look this year, I hope you find small pockets of joy that feel like they were made just for you. Thanks for being here with me in this wild, beautiful in-between.

www.adgallo.com

– Ash

The website is officially up, this Substack is open, and I’m somewhere between exhilarated and terrified!

For so long, my writing lived in quiet places; notebooks, late-night documents, whispered ideas I wasn’t brave enough to release. Hitting publish feels like stepping into the light for the first time. Exposed, yes…but also free.

This space will be where I share the heart of my work: the essays, the behind-the-scenes sparks, the small truths that shape my stories. If you’re here, thank you. Truly.

Subscribe, stay close, and get ready; we’re just getting started.

XO