Writing that is so surreal!!

I of course had to go to Barnes and Noble to see it on the shelves, hold it in my hands, and take a gazillion photos with it thanks to my husband who did not know that marrying me would include a forced skillset of photographing me and my books (I think he’s gotten pretty good!) and simultaneously wrangling our children, particularly the two year old who decided she wanted to grab every book available off the shelves

Seeing it at Barnes and Noble was truly surreal

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG is a story I continually revisited in my head as I grew from a teen to a young woman pursuing traditional publishing. Thoughts of ice crusted dirt, gods incarnate, geometrical barracks set against the fluid lines of the mountains, a love so great that it fears no hate, an endless horizon of dust instead of the sea, notices, regulations, questionnaires, orders, and so many different faces and personalities drawn from my own family tumbled through my mind until they finally crystallized into words waiting for paper

It’s a story that has risen from the depths of my soul and showed me reserves of strength I never knew I had as promoting the book online led to constant abusive and racist comments

It’s a story that truly belongs to my family and I’ll always treasure sharing this process with my grandpa, from interviewing him for the book to giving him updates to putting an arc and then a final copy in his hands

I wrote more extensively about TGWSOS for Writer’s Digest and you can find that article here

Stock Shock

Of course, what is a book release without a little chaos?

During the two days of TGWSOS releasing, it went out of stock on Amazon and the indie bookstore which manages my signed copies reached capacity for their stock, meaning all the signed copies available through them were purchased

This meant I got a LOT of messages and emails about delayed orders and I honestly felt so bad every time I got one, as though I was the reason my readers couldn’t get their books. I think its because I don’t EVER take a reader purchasing my book for granted. I know it costs money and that there are so many books available so for a reader to pick mine—ESPECIALLY this one—just means so much to me and I want the process to be as smooth as possible for them. So if you are experiencing a delay, I’m so sorry and your copy will be arriving soon!!

My editor worked tirelessly to make sure Amazon restocked and you can grab it there now with only a small shipping delay (and its on sale right now!). If you want a signed copy, I’ll be signing TGWSOS at my events:

August 5, Fullerton Barnes and Noble at 6pm

August 6, Costa Mesa Barnes and Noble at 1pm

Also, you can email Mysterious Galaxy at mgbooks@mystgalaxy.com or call them at 619.539.7137 to see if they can squeeze in a signed copy for you before Friday, August 4! It will come with 2 free art prints and can be shipped to you

You can also grab a copy in store at any Barnes and Noble or your favorite indie!

If you’re at all interested in THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, I’d be so grateful if you purchased it during this first week of release as all these sales truly help push it out!

So many of you have been there for me through this wild launch and through all the online hate…THANK YOU!!!

May we never forget

You can read it here

And if you want to grab a signed preorder copy with 2 free art prints, you can do that here! However, you can preorder from wherever books are sold. Preorders help so so so much and we are in those last crucial days! If you have or are considering preordering, thank you from the bottom of my heart

Where I’ll be

Launch events are coming next week and I’d love to see you at any of them!! Here is where you can find me!

The big official launch party is on Sept 5 at 6pm at the Fullerton Barnes and Noble. None of these events need tickets and all are welcome. I’d be so honored to see you at any of them

NOTE: the launch party graphics are incorrect!! It is on SATURDAY SEPT 5 at 6pm at the Fullerton Barnes and Noble

I was shocked and so ecstatic that the book club created by the founding member of the snap and pop university, Reese Witherspoon herself, had chosen THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG as one of its Bookmarked reads!

I still can’t believe it! I’ve been grinding it out trying to get this book as much reach as possible on my own social media while dealing with blitzes of hate comments so to have this kind of amplification was just so amazing and validating

Thank you SO much, RBC!

1K+ Books and several murdered sharpies

Over the course of two days, I signed over 1k preorders for THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG! Never have I ever signed that many books and I was so grateful! There were so many notes from readers who have been with me for the past several years along with notes from fellow descendants of the camps and new readers who were just expressing their excitement and support. I was moved and humbled and each preorder felt like someone who standing beside me against the onslaught of hate this book has gotten online

If you haven’t gotten a signed preorder + 2 free art prints, you can still get one because I’m going back for another round as all the preorders hadn’t arrived yet. You can place your order here!

Styled by Sharpie

Ok, I styled myself but considering the fact that I was pretty much holding a sharpie the entire time while wearing these fits, I might as well have been styled by Sharpie. A black sharpie was basically my fashion accessory and also grafted to my hand by the time I finished!

I particularly loved the fairy dress which features illustrations by Cicely Mary Barker. The last dress I wore out that night with my husband and got for $5 at the thrift store

24 weeks pregnant :)

Pub date is SO SOON

I am now in countdown mode to Sept 1! I’ll be posting daily on my social media trying to reach readers and continue to get this story out there. So many of you have shared, engaged, preordered, and been places of comfort as I’ve dealt with the social media hate—THANK YOU! I don’t mean this lightly…I couldn’t have done it without you! Now its time for the final push and then it’ll be time to let go. What a journey its already been. Thank you for traveling with me and, even more, standing with me

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG is such a beautiful book with a copper foil moon and copper foil detailing (its basically live bait for crows, magpies, and anyone drawn to shiny, beautiful things). Of course a photoshoot ensued upon the arrival of my author copies and I’ll include some here

ALSO—I’m off to San Diego to sign preorders at Mysterious Galaxy tomorrow. Preorders are SO important in getting this book reach so if you’ve preordered, thank you from the bottom of my heart and if you’d like a signed preorder with 2 free art prints, there’s still time!! Just grab one from this link! I’ll see it tomorrow and sign it for you!!

Pages of our past: giving a copy to my grandpa who lived through the WWII Japanese American camps

I gave my grandpa the very first copy and putting his history back into his hands was so powerful. Turning silence to ink and giving voice to something that is so often pushed aside or regulated to a footnote in a textbook has truly humbled me and to get my grandpa’s verdict— “it’s a really special book” meant everything to me. My grandparents were secondary parents to me growing up so to share the publication journey with my grandpa has been so amazing. I told him he’s my social media co-star and that he has more of a following on my social media than I do…haha and he agreed!

Here’s some photos I’ll treasure forever

(A very special photo…this is my grandpa with photos from the back of the book, him as a high schooler and, below that photo, his parents, my great-grandparents)

Thank you!

Thank you for sharing this journey with me and these special photos and memories! I can’t believe TGWSOS will be out in just two weeks!

Womanhood & Writing

These beautiful women are my great-aunts, great-grandmother, and great-great-grandmother. They either were incarcerated in American by their own government for nothing other than their race during WWII or had their lives deeply impacted by it as their loved ones were incarcerated. I’m a direct descendent of the camps and it heavily affected both my grandpa (who was incarcerated) and nana’s families

When I sat down to draft my historical fantasy, THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII Japanese American incarceration camps, I thought about womanhood in these circumstances

As I wrote, so many questions came to me. I wondered about privacy, menstruation, desire, and grief, all topics you can’t really find inside the history textbooks. I read letters, returned to the anecdotes I’d been told growing up, listened to oral histories, and worked closely with a Manzanar park ranger to finds the answers to the questions I couldn’t stop asking

For me, the hardest scenes to write were ones like these:

• A woman explaining how to care for a newborn when there is no running water and you are only given three diapers

• Daughters watching over their mother who is suffering from dementia which gets worse at night and there is no safe or secure place for her

• A mother hiding fear from her four young children so they can feel safe and trying to create normalcy for them amid chaos

A teenager girl falling in love when she has every reason to harden her heart and doubt all good things

Keeping the details

I was so passionate about including as many details about women’s experiences in the camps as possible. During edits, it was suggested I either keep a portion about the harrowing process of public showering or what the teenage main character, Violet, must do for her period and cut one of them

I felt it was very important to keep both so I rearranged the passages for pacing while keeping the details. Whenever I could, I grounded the narrative in reality, no matter how uncomfortable it might be

The story in her bones

My research taught me this: survival isn’t just about enduring. It’s also about preserving softness in impossible places

And that the emotional truth of events is often hidden in women’s lives

Here i am with some of the women of my family, my beautiful mama and sister, at the my publisher’s offices

I wrote this book because my family who lived this civil rights violation deserves to be heard. And because the women who endured the camps deserve to be seen in full. It comes out this September from Penguin Random House!

The female algorithm

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG has gone viral several times on social media which has brought another dimension to this story and my experience in telling it

I’ve gotten an onslaught of racist and abusive comments and some of them are specifically tailored to me as a woman. I’ve been called a race traitor and accused of “breeding” with a white man while another commenter complained that Asian women breed (Idk why but there was repeated use of the word “breeding” which I suspect has eugenics roots) with white men and then still want to be victims. Another commenter called me a mixed race b**tch. Recently, someone reposted my content to their own followers and the misogynistic comments were insane! I was called “an evil writer girl” who has no agency, which was a first. Someone else said they wouldn’t read my book because I look like I work at Sephora (I’m taking that as a compliment to my makeup skills)

Being a woman is a precarious thing. I’ve seen this time and again in my own life in relation to its dangers and now in my life as an author. However, it is also such a powerful thing. Women hold their history close and soften even the most unforgiving places. We keep stories in our bones like ghosts and when they are exhumed, they live again

Thank you for letting me share my heart as a woman and as an author with you today!

Please considering preordering THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG (releasing Sept 1) to hear these women speak. You can preorder here and get signed copies!

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG is a deeply romantic and heartbreakingly honest book set in a WWII Japanese American incarceration camp and inspired by my family’s experiences. Many of my family members were incarcerated, including my grandpa and great-grandparents. It heavily impacted both my grandpa’s side of the family and my Nana’s side of the family. The book comes out Sept 1

It has gone viral several times on social media

This is a dream come true

I want, so so so desperately, for this story to be told and for this often ignored history to be seen. The publishing industry is a sector which is driven by sales numbers so this sort of traction forcibly creates space for this book and others like it. Pretty much all traditional media has declined to cover it so far and TGWSOS doesn’t have a single special edition, isn’t in any book boxes, nor does it have a private hired publicist (which I’ve learned is more common than I realized!). This means my social media is my primary tool for reaching readers

I have gotten hundreds of messages from other camp descendants and their support, excitement, and bravery in sharing their own stories in my comments and dms has been a powerful experience which stokes the fire in me to get this story out there even more

Additionally, being able to hand an arc to my grandpa and seeing his reaction gives me all the validation I need to promote this book

So please keep this in mind as I now transition to talk about the dark side of going viral and the struggles I’ve had with it

The Cost of Virality and a “Controversial” Book

When I talk to friends about the negative reactions to THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, they are often shocked

The vast majority of people agree that it was absolutely wrong to incarcerate 120,000 people, many of whom were American citizens and that it was appalling to strip them of their homes, shops, possessions, and freedom. Most people don’t understand anyone who would take an opposing view

However, there are some people who defend this action. I’ve always been aware of that and have encountered this mentality throughout my life so it isn’t a shock to me, though I do find it shocking, if that makes sense. In fact, I could easily lay out to you their arguments and perspectives and oftentimes people comment to justify the incarceration as the correct action given the wartime circumstances

Also, because THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG touches on race and is written by me, a woman, people take this as license to say cruel things. A repository of darkness often washes up on the shores of my comment section in the form of extreme and blatant racism against me and my family, misogyny, accusations that I’m anti-American, a clout chaser, a wannabe victim, and the list goes on and on. Once, a particularly obsessed troll (or maybe bot?) kept posting rageful paragraphs once every three to five minutes which was bizarre to witness in real time. Even more recently, someone screenshotted one of my posts to their own followers saying I’m a man from India who is catfishing as a woman. The comments were split between horrible racist comments against people from India and misogynistic comments from those who did believe I’m actually who I am. Truly, there has been some bizarre stuff!

I’ve gone viral in the past for other books and posts but no other books/posts have come remotely close to eliciting this degree of hate

I delete most abusive responses and, as of late, have figured out how to block certain key words though stuff still gets through because humankind is endlessly creative, particularly, it seems, when they want to be vicious. I have, to a certain degree, grimly realized this is the inevitable and tremendous cost of virality. It certainly makes me value every single preorder because each one represents a person who sees this history and who is the antithesis of the people pouring out their vitriol via their keyboards

Handling Enduring hate as a very sensitive person

I would not say I’m a thick skinned or a tough person. In fact, my mom has always said I’m the weakest of her children and it’s true. I’m extremely sensitive and am not the sort who can easily let things roll off my shoulders. So I would never say I “handle” hate just so much as I endure it because I don’t have a choice beyond quitting, which is something I absolutely will not do

(A prayer which has helped me)

Overall, this experience has taught me about virality, outrage, and the myopic way in which people can see the world. It is a lesson I haven’t enjoyed learning but a cost I’m willing to pay if it means this history and story gets told. I share all of this to say that if you ever find yourself in a similar situation and are also a sensitive person, you can still stand strong in your convictions and say what is in your heart

Hear our song

If you are at all interested in THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, I would be so grateful if you preordered it! Few things help as much as preordering!

You can preorder THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG anywhere books are sold online but I do have a preorder campaign set up with a nearby indie that will get you signed copies! Just use this link to preorder—time is running out if you’d like signed copies so be sure to secure your copy ASAP!

(I’ve run preorder campaigns for GRAVE FLOWERS and BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE HERE. I’m currently running one for THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG)

Before I became an author, I never preordered a book

Not a single book

In fact, I didn’t even know you could preorder a book!

But then I became an author and quickly learned that preorders are so. Very. Important. Preorders are a predictive measure of a book’s future success which in turn helps secure bookstore buy-in and publisher support and so in true author form, I always completely panic and try to run successful preorder campaigns in which I offer a free gift to readers who order ahead of time and signed copies

“But preorder campaigns don’t actually increase sale. No one will buy a book because they get a free sticker”

I’ve heard this many times from other authors…and maybe there’s truth to it. But one thing I do know is that I’m going to do literally EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING I can to ensure my books’ success, short of selling a vital organ. Also, even if preorder campaigns don’t move the needle much, I like being able to thank my most dedicated readers with a gift that truly comes from my heart to theirs. After all, they spend their hard-earned money on my work and I never, ever take that lightly or for granted

I do know, however, that the right amount of preorders can change a book’s future. When it came to GRAVE FLOWERS, my twisty royalcore book, I wanted it to be a duology but my publisher decided to wait until it came out to see sales before deciding whether they would purchase it or not. I had a cliffhanger in mind but had to end it in that nebulous netherworld of “this could be a satisfying ending in which we never ever see these characters again but also oh this is open-ended enough that an entire 130k word book can spring forth”

I can’t tell you how much I wanted that sequel and the timing was so precarious because I had other book contracts to fulfill so I very much wanted to secure it as soon as possible to finagle my publishing schedule. I set up a preorder campaign through an indie bookstore called Mysterious Galaxy (I’d used them for BTDKYH as well) and posted about it to my stories every single day and included the information in every reel and post during that time

If you were following Autumn Krause circa 2025, you encountered her basically trying to seduce you with character art and royalcore themed content to preorder GRAVE FLOWERS

(The beautiful gold foiled first edition)

And it worked! I don’t know if it was the consistency in posting (it really was a long-haul effort and very slow build over six months) or maybe the book’s compelling hook (“marry the prince and kill him”) or the fact that my publisher crafted a STUNNING edition that was only available for the first printing…or the combination of all three…but it worked

(I’d never had so many preorders to sign at Mysterious Galaxy! I was so excited!)

I got enough preorders for my publisher to offer on the sequel before GRAVE FLOWERS released. I still can’t quite believe it, probably because I have such a struggle and dearth mentality when it comes to social media and getting the finicky algorithm to work for me

(I got to announce the sequel the week before GRAVE FLOWERS came out…lol look at that little note still hawking preorders in the corner…I’d forgotten it was there! But I’m telling you—repeated messaging and consistency do pay off)

(This was the Thank You note I also posted and I get emotional reading it even now. This truly was because of readers who believed in me enough to preorder my book. I’ll never forget it)

And I’m still in preorder land

My next book, THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, is coming out Sept 1 so I’m once again trying to get preorders. This time around, it feels so much more weighty and important. This historical fantasy is inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII Japanese American camps and I want so badly to make my community proud and to also get this book as big of a reach as possible, something which truly is predicated on preorders

I’m doing the same stuff—consistently posting, constantly putting the preorder campaign out there—but I’ve also started using automated keywords to get links directly into reader’s inboxes, which has been a game changer. It’s been tough because this book as garnered some hate (I talk about it in this post) so social media visibility truly is a double-edged sword for me right now. However, I care more about this book doing well so I won’t stop, no matter the vitriol

Lololol and here is where I do my thing—if THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG at all interests you, please consider preordering to give voice to this often ignored history. You can preorder anywhere books are sold but if you order from this link, it gets you signed copies + 2 free art prints, time is running out to do so!

My final thoughts on preorder campaigns:

• I don’t know if the free gift is what motivates readers to preorder (I’d love your feedback in the comments!) but it’s important to me to have one to thank my most dedicated readers

• If you are an author, I think its important to keep this in mind: preorders don’t necessarily determine a book’s sales once it is out! A book with low preorders can still have strong sales after publication date because of word of mouth or the simple fact that your specific readers buy books once they can immediately have them in hand

• Consistency and repeated messaging is vital in getting preorders

• Most authors fund their campaigns entirely themselves so you can offset shipping costs (which can become astronomical…speaking from experience) by offering your gift through an indie bookstore who can include it when they ship your book to your readers. Art prints, stickers, and bookmarks work great for this because they can just be slipped into the book’s front cover!

• It can feel discouraging trying to run preorder campaigns because they take a lot of effort and authors are often told they don’t work so keeping the mentality that they are a token of gratitude to your most dedicated readers helps so much! At the end of the day, even if my campaigns don’t necessarily change my sales, I am happy to show my readers my appreciation

I am never satisfied, which is an affliction as a full time, traditionally published author

I want to write faster

I want to write better

I want to write stronger

Whatever impulse animates the quote “we can rebuild him. We have the technology. We can make him better than he was. Better... stronger... faster” also animates me, only swap ‘technology’ for ‘writing process’

I’m haunted by the idea that if I just cracked my brain’s coding, I can unlock hidden reservoirs of writing genius and spill forth better, stronger novels at a faster pace, thus securing my all-too precarious place in the publishing industry. Who am I in a race against? DEATH. Who set up this panicked race? ME and I’ll probably be in it until the bitter end

In this pursuit, I’ve tried a variety of writing methods in a madwoman’s quest to find the perfect one. Here’s a rapid fire summary of what I’ve tried and my success non-existent levels:

• Drafting with zero preplanning, plotting or outlining: MAY IT BE NOTED ON THIS YEAR OF OUR LORD 2026 AD I WILL NEVER EVER PANTS A NOVEL AGAIN BY GOD…this is how I drafted my debut and it took me ten billion years to write that book. I wrote myself into every corner imaginable and unimaginable. I ended up with a book that I absolutely love but written at a pace which moved slower than frozen atoms with SO many wasted words, scenes, and characters. Put all of that cut material together and you’d have a tome rivaling the length of CRIME & PUNISHMENT

• Beat sheets beat me to death: Templates are the cure! is what I thought next for an ill-fated manuscript that never saw the light of day and had to be taken out behind my laptop and shot. I tried to follow a standard beat sheet but lost my mind on all of beat 2 out of the suggested 15. I found it too rigid and somehow overly simplistic at the same time with little breathing room for subplots. It also felt like I was doing the evil dark art of math

• Outlining is a LIE (for me): I then turned to chapter by chapter outlining and found my life source slowly leaving my body with each paragraph. I wrote an extremely long chapter by chapter outline for THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG….and then it changed COMPLETELY when I sat down to draft it so I was left wondering “well, what was all that for????” When it comes to myself and my own output, I’m extremely demanding. I think it’s because my time is stretched sooooo thin so when I feel like its wasted, I want to throttle my past self and I am left feeling just so furious with reality and myself

This is what ACTUALLY works for me:

I have finally found it. My writing process. I have a three to five page synopsis which is what I sell the book concept on to publishers. I’ve found that a loose synopsis is just the right amount of framework for my particular brain and I can draw an entire 100k+ manuscript from it. The synopsis includes:

• Quick look at the main character

• Quick look at the world

• Inciting incident

• Quick overview of the second half

• A conclusion which is somewhat open ended but it isn’t hard to see how the threads will connect

Here is an example of one. This book was retitled GRAVE FLOWERS (you can grab a copy for only $9.99 right now!) and published last year and ended up being selected as one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Year and was a B&N Bookseller’s Book Club Pick! You can see the synopsis is not too in depth yet gets a lot across

MY SISTER’S GHOSTS Retitled GRAVE FLOWERS

A dark royalcore YA fantasy

PROPOSAL by Autumn Krause

Overview

This twisty, dark-royalcore YA fantasy takes the courtly intrigue of Hamlet, infuses it with the vicious ambition of the Boleyn family, and adds a layer of magic. Ghosts and vengeance abound in a fantastical setting full of crumbling opulence. It will appeal to fans of the HBO hit show House of Dragon, readers who love The Cruel Prince, Red Queen, and Sara J. Maas, and are hungry for more books full of atmospheric world-building, morally gray characters, and intoxicating romance.

Princess Madalina and her elder twin sister, Inessa, were born attached at the hand and separated right after. That’s pretty much the only time the sisters ever held hands—they aremore likely to stab each other in the back than anything else. The girls’ personalities have been shaped in the Sinet family’s forge of ambition and the drive to make their kingdom more than it is: unrespectable and loathsome, a damp place where lies and deceit fill the palace walls like mold.

While Inessa is the focus of the Sinet family as the heir, Madalina manages high society, setting trends, ruling over sycophants, and acting as a gatekeeper to inner court. She also sniffs out alliances for the family and potential threats, and often plays different ambitious aristocrats against each other to keep their eyes off the throne. She has a fun and flirtatious persona but under it is masterful at manipulation. It’s exhilarating to be adored and to feel powerful but each night, Madalina sleeps with one eye open. Deep down, she longs for love and a relationship that isn’t predicated on power, but she’s been trained to suppress the need. Love is only a tool, used to control others. Still, Madalina starts to wonder how long she can sustain this way of life, and secretly begins dreaming of escape.

Then she gets her chance. Inessa, who was betrothed to Prince Dorian (renamed Aeric), heir of a powerful kingdom, appears to Madalina as a ghost. She decries her murder and begs Madalina to help free her from Limbus, a terrifying place of emptiness where souls can get caught, on their way to the hereafter. Madalina realizes she might be able to free herself from her family’s grip and make her own path by taking Inessa’s place as Prince Dorian’s betrothed—though this new life isn’t simply hers to take: she must investigate who is behind Inessa’s murder, as whoever wanted Inessa dead is sure to wish her dead as well. She desperately hopes, though, that once she solves the murder and secures the crown, she will have a chance at a new life.

Little does she know just how perilous things are about to become. Inessa wasn’t sent to actually wed Prince Dorian but to assassinate him in their wedding chamber—and now Madalina’s parents expect her to do the same. She can’t trust Prince Dorian. And Dorian’s uncle (who wed the Queen Mother after the prince’s father died under suspicious circumstances) also wants the throne.

Like all Sinets, Madalina has blood on her hands, bodies in her wake, and betrayal in her heart, but, in the end, she might have just enough of a soul to be the only one left standing…or so she hopes.

I’ve found this is the right amount of scaffolding which still allows for the book to live, breathe, and tell me what it is so I don’t get lost in what I want it to be. I draft at a fairly high level of prose though I do always do a round of revision which focuses heavily on elevating it further after the first draft is finished. While drafting, my mind comes alive in a way I haven’t experienced with anything else—it feels almost inhuman in how mechanical yet monstrous it becomes as it obsessively scans the story’s horizons, looking ahead for what’s to come and what storylines need to be connected and which reveals to place where while also ferociously eviscerating what doesn’t work and hunting down solutions to plot holes, inconsistencies, and developing the magic, world, and characters.

So far, I’ve used this process on these books. I’ve included the pov details for each one as well:

GRAVE FLOWERS, out now. “Marry the prince and kill him”, primarily one first person pov from the cynical princess but also includes snippets from an old book which includes a secondary first person pov of a mad king

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, coming Sept 1: “A divine favor can change everything." After abandoning my overlong and way too detailed outline, I drafted it using only a short synopsis and all my extensive historical research. It is dual pov and alternates between Ren, a lone wolf from an abusive family, and Violet, an art-loving girl who sees the world in figures from Japanese folklore. It also has a second person pov ep It’s set in a WWII American Japanese incarceration camp and is inspired by my family’s history

If you are at all interested, I would be SO grateful if you preordered THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG. This book means so much to me. If you use this link to preorder, you can get signed copies and two free art prints!

WILTED CROWN, coming fall 2027: “Rule your kingdom, rule your heart.” This is the sequel to GRAVE FLOWERS and includes my most povs. There are first person excerpts from a vicious princess’s diary and then the main pov is first person from Princess Madalina with some third person pov from Prince Aeric. Since the narrative focuses on the push and pull cat and mouse games between Madalina and Aeric, the two povs add so much tension and depth to the story

TBA Penguin Random House book, coming fall 2028: I can’t share in depth about this book yet and I drafted it in about three months with this method. Of course, I will give it two focused revisions before sending it in. It is all first person pov from a male mc. He’s moody, broody, and despairing, my fave kind of mc

BLOOD ART, coming fall 2029: “Immortal art. Mortal despair.” I loooove this book! It’s Jane Eyre x Dorian Gray x Dracula and just DRIPS dark Victorian gothic vibes. It is dual first person pov between the fmc and the mmc (I drafted this manuscript before selling it to my editor but wrote it with this method and my editor ended up buying it off the synopsis and one sample chapter)

That’s five books written with this method and I have found it works so well for me!

Here’s what I would say if you were trying to find your best writing process:

I only found my writing process because I fumbled through four books in which I did not have a writing process that was ideal for me. It can take time to find your process and honestly it probably will be a combination of methods. The more you draft novels, the more your mind expands with not only technical writing skills but in regards to imagination as well and the more you learn what suits you best. Allow for your process to be unconventional and tailored to your specific strengths

Your writing process is the path you map while you walk. It doesn’t have to look like anyone’s else’s map and the more you write, the less it likely will—and I think this is usually a sign that you’ve found your specific way!

!!Time is ticking down to preorder THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG and get signed copies with 2 free art prints (you can do so from this link)! If a sweeping WWII love story set against the Japanese American incarceration interests you, I’d be so grateful if you preordered!!

It was probably the busiest weekend of my life and I loved every moment! Growing up, I always knew I wanted to be an author but I never had any concept of what professional author life looked like. I had no idea that there are so many events to attend and things to do that take you so far beyond your laptop screen that suddenly you’re staring at a professional recording mic or at a giant room full of faces waiting to hear you speak and you’re like, “I’m not sure how I got here but my God what a view”

(Right before the “Girl Dessert” romantasy panel at Comic Con San Diego. As a girl from a blue-collar family in Los Angeles, this felt like a dream…I was like, nobody pinch me!)

Anatomy of an audiobook recording

My publisher, Penguin Random House, asked me if I’d record the author letter and dedication for THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG. Even though it’s historical fiction (with magic!), it is inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII Japanese American incarceration camps so it is my most personal work yet and so it was very meaningful to be asked to do this

I have never ever recorded anything before so it was surreal and thrilling to go to a recording sound studio with a director and a producer to record my parts. The studio was in Newport Beach and literally right on the docks. The whole area and experience felt very coastal Lana del Rey

I was nervous but the director was incredible. I did best when I asked her to read the lines so I could hear it said aloud and then do it myself. Lol I am a person who fixates to the extreme so when she told me what to say, I literally didn’t hear her, I only heard how she said it because delivery is what I had in mind. This showed itself when she instructed me to change the words from “read this book” to “listen to this book” and I was like “yes, yes, totally, got it” and proceeded to emulate her delivery 100% while saying “read this book”

I also struggled with the words world and valiantly. Since the book is set in WWII, world kept popping up haha. I know now how to perfectly pronounce these words. Wurld. Vahl-yent-ly

I don’t personally listen to audiobooks but my kids ADORE them so I hear them often in our home and honestly that helped too because I thought of the way those actors sound, which also helped my delivery. After, the producer told me it was funny that I liked hearing how to say the lines first because apparently audiobook actors can get insulted if you advise them on to say the line and can conflict with the director. Not me! I was like PLEASE JUST TELL ME HOW TO SAY THIS

(I’m 20 weeks pregnant so when this baby is older, I’ll tell them they were part of the audiobook recording and made me out of breath while trying to record lmao)

Preorders help so so so much so if you’d like to preorder the audiobook, you can do so here or anywhere audiobooks are sold online! While I make absolutely zero promises about my delivery, I’ve heard the voice actors for Ren and Violet and will make all the promises that they are amazing!

Chronicles of Comic Con

Comic Con San Diego is truly an author milestone so this felt like a huge achievement to be asked to panel and sign books. Comic Con is a celebration of imagination so it was wild to think that my own imagination had led me here

(This photo again because I feel like it really captures the SDCC experience)

(Repping my personal favorite fandom, Dracula)

I was on a romantasy panel called “Girl Dessert” with so many other amazing authors. I had the best time talking about forcing crowns and marriages on my poor characters in GRAVE FLOWERS (I love reluctant royals and arranged marriages between rivals! Give me 109403840283042309823 of these tropes)

(you’ll never not catch me not finding the camera)

Afterward, I signed copies of GRAVE FLOWERS, BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE HERE, and even some arcs of THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG!

(My husband found his fandom lmao…honestly, I could not have done this without him! It was such a busy weekend but he drove and figured every single aspect out, from making sure I got where I needed to go to always making sure I had water and food and encouragement)

I am so tired—today its back to homeschool life with two kids, a toddler, and one on the way along with lots of approaching deadlines—but that weekend was amazing. No notes. Just a lot of gratitude. Thanks for joining me!

The hidden cover is an emotional, heart-wrenching illustration and quote. Violet and Ren hold hands and I love the caution in their grasp. The quote is:

The quote, illustration, and spine details will all shimmer in a unique copper foil against a matte black hardcover. No matter where you order from, this will be the edition you get!

Here is also the stunning full dustjacket spread. It is so full of movement and soft, beautifully curved lines. These lines contrast the hard geometry of the camps, where long barracks and rigid barbed wire formed militant lines everywhere. It speaks to the spirit of endurance and finding beauty amid a time of darkness

Get your copy!

You can preorder THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG wherever books are sold! However, you can get signed copies + 2 free art prints if you order through this link. Thank you so much for all the love and support so far!

Ren and Violet, the lovers from THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, my historical fantasy inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII Japanese American incarceration camps, have somehow taken over my substack and would like to speak with you…..also hide me omg because they have every right to want to kill me after what I put them through (ducks behind laptop)……

Violet: Ren, look natural. The readers are here

Ren: How is this? Do I look natural? Or more like a guy fighting fate who hasn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since chapter one?

Violet (gives him a sympathetic expression): All right, so your story arc isn’t the easiest (sympathetic expression becomes firm) Still, you need to look like someone who wants people to preorder THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG during the Barnes & Noble preorder sale

Ren: Ah. Right. The sale where they get 25% off by using the code PREORDER25 at checkout? The one that only lasts for four days?

Violet: Exactly. And Premium Members get an extra 10% off. Tell them why they need to buy it now

Ren: Because it’s a heartbreaking story of hope as defiance, magic, and a love so great that it fears no hate?

Violet: No, because the author told me that if we don’t get enough preorders, she is going to cut our budget and replace all our romantic, tension-filled scenes

Ren (does not like this AT ALL, stares in absolute horror): She...she wouldn’t dare. I mean, the book comes out on Sept 1…would she even have time to rewrite it??

Violet: I don’t know, Ren. Do you want to risk it? Readers, please click the link so we can still have our kissing scenes. Our kiss in the library is my favorite!

Ren (sighs, steps closers, catches her hand): Even if the author did try to write our scenes out, I’d find a way to get them back

Violet (softening, her cheeks tinting pink): Why?

Ren (quietly, looking down at her like there’s no one else who even exists): Because I need them. I need the moments when I get to hold you, even when the rest of the world is falling apart around us. I can get through the other scenes just so long as I have you

Violet (gently squeezing his fingers): You’re a hopeless idiot, you know that?

Ren (smiles the sort of smile he only smiles for her): Only for you. Now, let the readers click the link so we can get back to our story…and that kiss in the library

Me, the author: are they gone? Phew, okay, they didn’t see me. But omg, Violet and Ren are so ridiculous. There’s no way I could ever write out their story and if I tried it wouldn’t work. Their love isn’t just a subplot. It is the beating heart of this entire book. It’s the proof that even when reality is torn apart, having someone worth fighting for changes everything. They proved to me that there’s nothing more powerful than a love that fears no hate and that will stay with me forever

Now, wonderful readers, while Ren and Violet’s love never dies, the Barnes & Noble preorder sale really is a fleeting thing. If you want to hold this book, this defiance, this beautiful, devastating love in your hands, please use the code PREORDER25 at checkout before the 4-day window closes and help show the world that there is a place for this often ignored history

Hi, July

Some exciting things Ill be doing in July

• THE GODS ARE…listening: In July, I’ll be recording the author letter for THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG audiobook! The producer for the audiobook suggested it and I was so honored and excited. I’ll bring you all along on my Instagram stories so follow there to get a bts look at recording at a studio. The audiobook will have two narrators, one for Ren and one for Violet. I love both their voices and can’t wait for you to hear them for yourselves. You can preorder the audiobook here

• I’ll be at Comic Con in San Diego!

  Panel Name: Girl Dessert

  “Here's a treat for readers who love to devour Romantasy”

  Panel Date/Time/Location: Sun. 7/26/2026, 10:00AM-11:00AM, Room 24ABC

  Post Panel Signing:

  Signing Time/Location: Sun. 7/26/2026, 11:30AM-12:30PM, AA07

Just two months until THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG releases! I’m so excited, nervous, and doing my best to promo it as much as I can right up until then…thank you for sticking with me. It means everything and then some

(with my groupies at a book event I moderated)

I’ve discovered motherhood means being constantly interrupted. Whether I’m fielding urgent requests to help dress a small army of dollies or to come see the latest range results of the homemade catapult, my children are always drawing me into their orbits and I absolutely love it

But I was reflecting on how interesting it is that my daytime life often involves the inability to finish my own sentences and even thoughts without having to find a missing croc or mediate a parlay due to a sibling squabble while my nighttime life involves the very precise art of linking together thousands of full thoughts which at some point equal a 100k+ word novel

If being an author is about finding the right words, motherhood often entails forgetting what words even are. Motherhood isn’t for the faint of heart but neither is writing

Yet as I was reflecting on the contrast of being a mother who can never finish a sentence and an author who finishes many, I found that the two halves of my life make a very messy but intact whole, one which equals me—a woman who loves being a mother and who loves writing books

For me, I’ve found mother and writing complete each other through their differences. Motherhood is chaos, writing is catalyst. Motherhood is a love so deep it confounds me, writing is a passion is strong it commands me. Motherhood is a state of being, writing is an act of expression. Sometimes motherhood is a hunger which cannot be satiated as I cling to my children exactly as they are while knowing they will change so much in a year, a month, a day. Sometimes its writing that’s the hunger which hollows me out from inside as I struggle to find just the right words in the empty spaces between my ribs

All the while, I’m aware that words and books keep. Babies and children don’t. I will always remember this as busiest season of my life…and I’ll weep when its over

What I’ve been reading

No books!! At least, not as of late, which is very sad indeed but I just don’t have the time right now. However, I do like to read little things here and there because it feeds my mind. The most recent thing I read was Fyodor Dostoevsky’s letter to his brother. He recounts being marched out for execution and having his sentence commuted at the last moment. It details the awakening of his spirit once it was snatched back from death’s eager maw and I was like dang, where else can you read a firsthand account of something like this??

Life is everywhere life, life in ourselves, not in what is outside us —Fyodor Dostoevsky, letter to his brother, 1849

What I’m working on

This is a look at a book-a-year/full-time author life

• THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG promo: I am doing everything I can to promote THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, my historical fiction inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII Japanese American camps. It’s about hope as defiance, magic, and a love so great that it fears no hate. I was so excited because Lea Salonga commented on this post (its pinned)! She’s the incredible singer who voiced Jasmine in Aladdin, Mulan, and sang on Broadway as Fantine, Eponine, and many other roles, along with acting in George Takei’s ALLEGIANCE, which is about the WWII incarceration. It was an honor to have her swing by my instagram!

You can get signed copies + 2 free art prints if you order through this link. Preorders help SO much so if you have preordered or plan on it, THANK YOU!!!

• Drafting my 2028 Delacorte book: I can’t share the title or any details but its about a hero in disgrace who must, against all nature, rise without wings. Haha here is where I say it is not literal wings, though the book does have lots of magic. It’s my first time writing an entirely male pov (I’ve done dual but never an entire book told from a dude’s pov). Tonally, it’s historic, harrowing, and deeply romantic. Here is an aesthetic:

• Getting ready to revise WILTED CROWN for the first time: WILTED CROWN is the sequel to GRAVE FLOWERS. It’s set in Radix, Madalina’s violent, rainy kingdom. There’s new deadly grave flowers, ghosts, and so much push and pull between Aeric and Madalina that they might as well be playing tug of war. I’ll be getting my first revision letter from my editor around the end of June. The first round is always the most drastic and this is a very twisty story so I know I’ll be WORKING but I can’t wait. Here is an aesthetic for WILTED CROWN

• Pitches/proposals for 2030 and onward: I’m contracted until 2029 but am already planning with my amazing agent and thinking far beyond that. In the coming months, I’ll be working on pitches for Peachtree and Delacorte, my publishers. Those pitches tend to be only about a page but I have so many ideas swirling in my head so I’ve been mentally working on them and figuring out which ones I want to pitch. Here is an aesthetic for one I’ve already discussed with my agent and am feeling very good about

Thanks for stopping by! There’s always a cup of tea for you here

Let me know if you like these types of more general life newsletters in the comments! Usually my Substack covers specific updates for THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG but I love trying new things

When I first started posting about THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, my historical fantasy inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII American Japanese incarceration camps, I floundered

Booktok and bookstagram goes feral for romance-fantasy hybrids full of corsets and crowns (I love these!), contemporaries that deal emotional wallops, and fast-paced thrillers with murderous spouses and long-buried secrets

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG doesn’t fall neatly into any of those popular categories and I’d be damned before I started romanticizing such a grave injustice. My book is historical fiction which is more difficult to sell in the YA category (though it has immense adult crossover appeal) and also has speculative Japanese folklore elements. There’s no dark academia schools, secret inheritances, or dragons. It’s about two teens torn from everything they know and forced to live behind barbed wire. It’s deeply romantic, heartbreaking, and blends WWII historical fiction with Japanese folklore fantasy. It’s about hope as defiance and a love so great that it fears no hate. It’s a book that holds my entire heart and is one I’ve been writing in my head for my whole life

I wasn’t certain how social media would respond—if at all. Looking back, I think I’d long adopted the mentality of camp descendants, one which knows their families have suffered a great civil rights violation and atrocity but that the world has moved on. After all, I remember seeing shelves of WWII historical fiction books at the bookstore growing up but very few to none that featured the American Japanese incarceration camps

Uncertainly, I tried the usual sorts of bookish content. Character art. Short-form animations. Quotes. Nothing clicked but I was so desperate for TGWSOS to reach readers that I kept trying different things. Eventually, I poured my heart into a long-form carousel, even though conventional wisdom said to prioritize reels. I just wanted, so badly, for the world to understand why this book is so important. My friend and incredible author Breanne Randall suggested using automated keyword responses for trail reels—so basically telling social media users to comment a specific word to get sent a link to the book (her social media marketing is AMAZING!! Her books also are!!). I cannot tell you how dumb I felt asking readers to comment REMEMBER for a link but realizing I cared more about getting this book out there than any embarrassment, I randomly added the option to a carousel. I didn’t think anyone would comment the word and I thought the carousel would get a few thousand views, which is my typical reach

I posted the carousel and the first REMEMBER was from a friend who was being supportive and I smiled at her kindness and thought she’d be the only one

But then, a few days later, REMEMBERs flooded the comment section. I hadn’t even set up automation because I was certain I could manually handle any that came in. After spending two hours on my phone trying to respond to them all and getting very sore thumbs for my troubles, I hadn’t even cracked a dent so I set up a free trial for automated responses

That carousel and another one went viral soon after it (by viral I mean 100k+ views in a short window of time) and everything changed

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG got an orange bestsellers banner, was 1228 out of all books in the world on Amazon, was one of the top three bestsellers on Bookshop.org, I got 1.1 million views in 30 days, and I gained 13k new Instagram followers

It was amazing to see and I texted my grandpa, who had been incarcerated during the war, every milestone

Another thing that has been so powerful is seeing comments from the descendants of survivors. I knew there were so many of us but I didn’t know so many would bravely share their stories. I am honored whenever any of them recount their experiences and it lights a fire in me to get this book into as many hands as possible

As of right now, I have another post doing very well and I’m so grateful for the traction and the readers who are helping give voice to this often ignored history. When I look back at earlier this year and how I felt like I was spinning my wheels trying to find readers, I’m just so deeply relieved and thankful that I found something that worked

If I have any takeaway about virality and books, it’s this: what works for one book doesn’t work for another and you truly have to keep experimenting, even when its disheartening and nothing seems to be working. When something does connect and it catches the favorable winds of the algorithm, it truly can change a book’s future. Also, once something goes viral, the algorithm seems to recognize it and is likely to push out similar content from you—so repetition with some slight variances seems to be important

Also, if you were one of the readers who preordered, THANK YOU from the bottom of my heart! If you haven’t but are interested, you can preorder from this link and get signed copies and two free art prints!

Place your preorders here

You will also get two art prints as a thank you gift! One is a stunning vintage inspired depiction of the book by Altar and Orb and the other one is Ren and Violet surrounded by magical swirls. It truly captures how their love is so great that it fears no hate. It’s by Metallonia

Just be sure to get your order in by August 28! Mysterious Galaxy ships internationally and your order will come wrapped at no extra cost and you can pick the print you want from their options at checkout

Few things help like preorders so if you’re at all interested in THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, I’d be so so so grateful if you preordered it. Preorders demonstrate to the publishing industry that there is a place for this often ignored history. I can’t do it without you!

(Meeting the penguin irl)

This past weekend, I went to NYC and got to visit one of my publishers, Penguin Random House. THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, my historical fantasy inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII American Japanese incarceration camps, is publishing this September so it was wild to go see the place where all my editors emails originate!

Something that was unexpected and special was a post I put on Instagram went viral and also did very well on TikTok, triggering a swell of preorders….so it was really fun to visit while that was happening in the background. You can check out the post here. I didn’t have automated responses set up for the keyword REMEMBER because I didn't think anyone would comment it and was very wrong and shocked when REMEMBERs overtook the comment section. In the hotel at night while my husband watched tv, I responded to them manually! My thumb was so tired lol

But back to the visit! One of my sisters and my mama got to come too and as we walked through NYC to get to the offices, I instructed them to lock it down because they are a force to be reckoned with and would have no hesitation asking mortifying things like “will you make Autumn’s book a bestseller?” They agreed to be on their best behavior

(I loved sharing this moment with them…even tho I was stressed at what they might say lmao)

We entered the lobby and got sent up to the Penguin Random House offices! We walked in and were met with the smell of new books, so I figured we were in the right place

(All the imprints had signs in the little library area so here I am with the Delacorte sign, which is my imprint)

It was truly as magical, glossy, and fascinating as you might imagine. We got to see the different departments and see so many iconic properties that PRH has brought into the world, including the Little Golden Books and Anne of Green Gables

(No big deal just my childhood in books)

And I got to see my book there! Arcs of THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG were at both my publicist’s desk and one of my editor’s desks

(Behind me is the Delacorte Press Summer 2026 season!)

It was so weird and so amazing to see my words just casually hanging out there

(These two photos are the act of my family)

Lol and then my sister posed with my book like she was the author and my mom made me take a photo with my book and other random books she put into my hands because she apparently had a vision of me in a photo with an armload of books…I’m telling you, this is why I had to force them to take solemn vows to be chill before we went in

(Team TGWSOS)

I got to meet my publicist, Rachel, and of my editors, Makena. Makena also had family who were incarcerated during WWII so it’s really special that she’s working on TGWSOS

(Author wall)

At the end, I signed the author wall and the only remotely interesting thing I did was choose to sign in red….otherwise, I panicked and left no pithy witticisms or punchy insights and just signed my name with an ocean wave because the sea is symbolic in TGWSOS

It was honestly the best time and to be there for this specific book which means so much to me only made it all the more unforgettable. Thanks for joining me! If you’d like to preorder THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, you can from these places:

Barnes and Noble

Bookshop.org (supports indies!)

Amazon

Penguin Random House

Or from your favorite indie…I’m currently in the process of setting up a preorder campaign with Mysterious Galaxy

Any support of THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG is so appreciated!!

This book is a DIVINE RIVALS meets ATONEMENT historical fantasy inspired by my family’s unjust incarceration in the WWII American Japanese camps and is full of magic, hope despite heartbreak, and an epic, divinely-touched romance. My grandpa was incarcerated with his family at the Santa Anita Racetrack and Gila River camp let me interview him for TGWSOS. He has been following along as this book went from a proposal, to a multi-house auction, to now the phase of arcs

I’d always offered for him to read drafts of THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG but he wanted to wait for the final product haha which is understandable and he will avoid encountering lots of typos this way (including the fact that I named like three characters Mary on accident), so he’s a wise man

On Sunday, I gave away the very first arc to him

(The painting on the wall is one I grew up seeing hanging in my grandparents house. It’s of my nana and grandpa and was painted by my uncle, who is a self taught artist. It was like my nana was there for this moment too. Her side of the family was also heavily impacted by the incarceration and their photos are in the back of the book)

It was a very meaningful moment that was basically a lifetime in the making and I will always treasure it. I also gave another arc to my mom and she candidly recounted to me how she felt when first visiting Manzanar as she thought about her dad and grandparents being incarcerated despite their loyalty to America

During this phase of publication—arcs going out into the world = reviews coming in—I get very angsty. I’m so grateful for Penguin Random House’s support for this book but I’ve also been trying to so hard to market it myself through my social media and have been feeling a certain amount of preemptive despair over the fact that I can’t control the algorithm or whether people will care about this story. The WWII Japanese American incarceration is so often ignored and I get scared that the same attitude will prevail and this book will get ignored as well

But when I gave my grandpa the arc and saw his reaction and then gave my mom her copy, I became so very aware that this was a book I had to write and that, as a direct descendant of the camps, I am honored to carry this haunt of history and to use my voice to break the silence around it, no matter how far it carries

Thank you for sharing this very special moment and photos with me!

If you’d like to preorder THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, you can do so at these places:

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

Penguin Random House

Or from your favorite indie…I’m currently in the process of setting up a preorder campaign with Mysterious Galaxy

Any support of THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG is so appreciated!!

It now has two blurbs from authors who need no introduction — Erin Craig (HOUSE OF SALT AND SORROWS, THE THIRTEENTH CHILD, oh and just the official PHANTOM OF THE OPERA series…she literally gets to hang out with Andrew Lloyd Weber!) and Stephanie Garber (CARAVAL. My heart melts at the word alone because CARAVAL is truly a fairy tale world for hopeless romantics)

“A Triumph” — Erin Craig

“Beautiful” — Stephanie Garber

I’ll remember these words forever

What its like drafting on deadline (which is what I’ve been doing this week)

My second Delacorte book just got approved so I’ve been working on drafting it every night! I’ve been marveling at how once you have a few books out, you get to write much shorter book proposals which get approved to then be turned into whole books. So from a 1500 word proposal, I’m now drafting an estimated 100k word book (though lately my first drafts have been ending in the 120k-130k territory). My proposals have gotten shorter and my books have gotten longer lmao!

Proposals…but they don’t involve marriage

• GRAVE FLOWERS (dark, twisty royalcore/”marry the prince & kill him, don’t fall in love”…out now)

• WILTED CROWN (GRAVE FLOWERS sequel, “rule your kingdom/rule your heart”…coming fall 2027)

• THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG (WWII devastating romantic fantasy set in a Japanese American incarceration camp and inspired by my family’s experiences…coming this Sept)

Allllllllll these books sold on proposal and were written on official deadlines! So UNAMED MYSTERIOUS DELACORTE BOOK is my fourth book to draft in this way

When I first had these book contracts lined up, I would literally lie awake at night in my bed, scared and thinking “HOW AM I GOING TO DELIVER THESE??”

Now, I can honestly say I’ve grown as an author and am no longer daunted by writing books on proposal but get excited to jump in, knowing that ofc trouble does indeed wait—it always does in the form of plot holes, inconsistent characters, faulty magic systems—but that I have the ability to figure it out (knock on particle board)

When it comes to writing, there’s often the sense that its a magical art which entails some amount of mystic power to enact. I’ve come to believe the magical part is the innate desire to write while the mystical power is simply developing the craft by doing it A LOT and being responsive to feedback and lessons learned along the way

Here’s how I draft:

• As quickly as possible. I try to hit 2k words a day and write every day. I’m a homeschool SAHM so my writing occurs entirely at night and on the weekends, though weekend can be touch and go

• Planning my writing session ahead of time. My brain is my notes app. Throughout the day, I’m thinking ahead and mentally sketching the outline of my session. I’m not thinking about the fact that I need to draft a billion more words, I’m ONLY thinking about which scenes I’ll write when I sit down at my compy and the notes I want them to hit. Setting details, little bits of dialogue, a word that’s just begging to be used…all those things will start plummeting into my mind and I stretch them like canvas around the wood frame of the scenes. I start to get excited and by the time I sit down, I’m dying to let the words out

• Sprinting. I use immersive 2 hour sprints to keep me focused and once its done, I turn on an ambience. I require a digital fire, rain, and old world opulence to keep going. Someday, I need to dedicate a book to Abbie Emmons because her sprints are literally how I’ve trained my very scattered and easily distracted brain to focus

Right now, I have 12k words. I started drafting one week ago on March 25 but didn’t draft on Sunday and didn’t have much writing time on Saturday either because of family obligations…this is just to show that there is no perfect writing week! I don’t think I’ve ever had one, in fact, but somehow the books all get written

Other than drafting, I’ve been trying to promote THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG as much as possible, mostly through my Instagram, which you can check out here. If you’ve preordered, shared about it, or interacted with my content in any way, thank you!

—Autumn

It is currently 25% off during the Barnes and Noble preorder sale! You can grab it here!!

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG is:

• Dual POV between two characters: Ren, who thinks he’ll never escape his broken past, and Violet, who’ll do anything for those she loves. They see each other for the first time at different times. I really enjoyed giving them their own first encounter. Ren is stricken by Violet IMMEDIATELY (tho he also IMMEDIATELY denounces it as an infatuation that he will destroy) and Violet is completely intrigued by this sullen boy who won’t look at her (of course, the last thing she cares about right now is love but somehow she can’t shake his face from her mind. She muses, “if God made him beautiful, he certainly didn’t make him happy”)

• Full of Japanese folklore. You’ll encounter gods, magic, spirits (including ones which eat nightmares!), and a mirror inhabited by a ponderous samurai ghost amid the cracked desert earth and ramshackle barracks

• Follows true historical events…it was so important to me to ground this book in the actual events surrounding the Japanese American incarceration camps. While a sweeping love story and the eerie magic unspool in the story, it is truly a gritty and unflinching look at the experience which tore apart the lives of so many families up and down the West coast, from having Evacuation Sales in their homes to living in quarters divided by thin sheets at the camps. Specifically, TGWSOS recounts the events leading up to a bloody uprising at Manzanar, a tragic revolt which both Violet and Ren get swept up into

• Is comp’d with DIVINE RIVALS, LOVELY WAR, ALL THE LIGHT WE CANNOT SEE, and LAST NIGHT AT THE TELEGRAPH CLUB

  

  

  May we remember, may we stop repeating—help tell this story

  We’ve all seen them…historical fiction books set during WWII (often including a cover with a woman in a 1940’s dress walking away underneath war planes—no hate, I love them!) and movies/shows about major events like D-Day (again, I’m a fan! That scene from Pearl Harbor in the parachutes has stayed with me lol) but while the incarceration happened on American soil and is inextricable from WWII history, it is scantly covered in books/movies/shows or even high school history textbooks

  However, the Japanese American incarceration is my family’s lived experience and as a direct descendent of incarceration camp survivors, I know firsthand its grave reality and the vital importance of never forgetting this atrocity. I would be so grateful for any support! Please tell the booksellers, librarians, and teachers in your life about it and consider preordering it (Again!! 25% off right now!!)

  New character art is coming!! Here’s a progress sketch

  There’s a very intense and romantic scene between Violet and Ren which occurs in the back of a military truck which is full of beautiful furnishings for an official’s wife, emblems of home and civility which have cruelly been stripped away from them

  This is an in-progress sketch…I can’t wait to see it in full color and detail! It’s by the absolutely incredible Lyzis

  

  TYSM!!

  So many of you have already been so supportive of THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG and I am truly grateful! Be sure to follow me on IG for more insights into this book and my life as a full-time author

  Love,

  Autumn

I was so excited to visit Arizona but one thing that was on my mind was how my grandpa, great aunt/uncles, and great-grandparents came to the state under very different circumstances when the U.S. government forcibly transferred them to the Gila River camp in Arizona after making them live in horrific conditions at the Santa Anita Racetrack in California. I was asked about TGWSOS during my panel and it wasn’t lost on me that my family had been held about 50 miles north of where I was standing and speaking. It was a very sobering full circle moment

(I am so grateful for any early support for TGWSOS! The story of the Japanese American WWII incarceration is so often untold. Nothing helps like preordering! Requesting it on Netgalley is also hugely helpful)

100,000 readers + desert sun + me

The Tucson Festival of Books is an immense reader kingdom of tents and booths that overtakes the University of Arizona for a weekend. I was so honored that Peachtree, my amazing publisher, sent me there to promote GRAVE FLOWERS/you can get it for $9.99 here, my dark royalcore fantasy, and BEFORE THE DEVIL KNOWS YOU’RE HERE/you can get it for $8.99 here, my gothic Americana folktale. So off I went, ready to talk about the deadly flowers in GF and the deadly apples in BTDKYH (you can’t pick or eat anything safely in those books! Best to just stay indoors away from nature)

First of all, wiw

(Ootd)

I wore a dress with puff sleeves and platform Doc Martens I got from a thrift store lol bc I like being tall

Pov: you’re on a speed date with my dark and decadent books

My first event was author speed dating! There were 8 tables of readers and authors spent 8 minutes at each table. I walk fast, talk fast, think fast, write fast, and work fast so I was in my natural habitat lol—promoting fast! Of course, I was a little too fast because at my first table my pitch was done in like 4 minutes lmao but I kept mentally revising it in my head and adjusting it and by the end, I had a tight little set with time for a bit of QandA

(Ready to make readers love me in under 8 minutes)

Forgive my handwriting pls

I signed books three different times throughout the day. Idk what this says about my confidence levels but it always feels like a Godsent miracle every time a reader asks me to sign their book. It is truly such a joy every time. Even if I live in an active state of terror of misspelling a name

(How I look the entire time book signing as I attempt to read lips and practically lay across the table to hear what’s being said)

Words…except its out loud this time so there’s no backspace

I was a guest on a podcast which I believe was run through a high school book club! They’d all read GRAVE FLOWERS and had so many good questions and insights. I’ve never done an in-person podcast so it was a relief lol because usually I make some sort of technological mistake when recording them long distance and delete half the file. This time, all I had to do was sit down and talk into the mic. It was so amazing to connect with young readers! They were so smart and fun!

(So much of being an author is an internal art but then suddenly you’ll find yourself in a room full of people being recorded on a podcast. I’m always like wait I’m used to everything staying between me and my computer screen)

Romantasy Panel: Secrets, Love, and Betrayal—these are a few of my favorite things

I was on a Romantasy panel with Sunya Mara and Sasha Peyton Smith (who were absolutely divine)! My favorite part was talking about how the romance interweaves with court structure in GRAVE FLOWERS and how Madalina and Aeric’s first meeting is at a ball in front of a ton of people (she refuses to dance with him, even though she’s sent to marry him) and then the very first time they touch is at their betrothal (wherein Madalina notices Aeric is hungover from the night before and is pissed but can’t say anything because they are literally in the middle of a public sacred ceremony in a cathedral)

(It’s always so fun to not only talk about your own books but hear other authors talk about theirs too)

RL STINE!!!!!!!!!!

Ok, this was SUCH a highlight! I was in the author room and it was empty aside from me and RL Stine and his entourage. I had a very intense internal war about whether I should approach him (“No, Autumn, he’s decompressing and doesn’t want to talk to a random right now” “omg, YOU HAVE TO YOU WILL NEVER GET THIS CHANCE AGAIN”). Honestly, what won out was the thought of telling my kids and Mark I met an author they adore and being able to tell them what he was was like

So I approached with the sort of trepidation of a peasant approaching a high king and he saw me, smiled, and motioned me over. Not only did he take a photo with me, but he read my name on my nametag and asked me about my books. Did I tell him about them? No. Because I was rambling and telling him all about my husband and kids loving his books and how I wasn’t allowed to read them growing up but I always stared at the GOOSEBUMPS covers and combined them with the titles in my mind to fill in the stories so it was like I read them. Honestly, he was one of the kindest, most gracious people I have ever met. I’ll always treasure this memory

(If RL Stine has no fans, I’m dead)

Tysm, TFOB!

I think my time at the festival was the busiest I’ve ever been in my life but what an honor! I loved every event, every interaction, every moment. Thank you for having me, Tucson Festival of Books

At 3pm pst today, I’m sharing an incredible promo animation for TGWSOS so be sure to follow along on Instagram to see it! It truly captures the spirit of TGWSOS

-Autumn

I’m so excited to reveal this exclusive character art of Ren and Violet, the main characters and lovers from THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG, my WWII romantic fantasy inspired by my family’s experiences in the WWII American Japanese incarceration camps. These artworks are stills from an animation by the absolutely incredible Metallonia Art. I’ll be sharing the phenomenal animation on my Instagram this Tuesday so follow me there to see it!

Here is Ren, our lone wolf who is haunted by his past. He falls deeply for Violet but tells himself that its just infatuation. If you saw his heart, it would be broken but he’d never acknowledge it

Meet Violet! She’s a dutiful daughter but her mind is an arable land from which she conjures monsters from Japanese folklore to sketch. Few love more fiercely than Violet. In a “pick your fighter" scenario, you should ABSOLUTELY pick her because she rides hard for those she loves—and she’ll express it!

Get Early Access to THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG

THE GODS WILL SING OUR SONG is available on Netgalley! You can request it here and be one of its very first readers!

After years of research and pouring my entire heart and soul into this book, I am ready but so so so nervous. This nascent stage of a book’s life is so tender yet so vital for its success. I want this book to succeed so badly and I want it to bring honor to my family and the 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who were wrongly incarcerated by the United States government during WWII. Oftentimes, books like these get overlooked because they tell us something about our history that can make us uncomfortable so I truly need your help

Preorders and requests on Netgalley are literally invaluable so if you would consider preordering it or requesting it on Netgalley, your help would make a huge difference. Also, if you would spread the word and tell the booksellers, teachers, and librarians in your life about it, I would be so grateful

(My grandpa, who was incarcerated in the camps as a child, has been there every step of the way during this process and I’m so honored to tell this story)

Byeeee I’m off to TFOB!

Today, I’m trading sunshine for mega sunshine and getting on a flight to Arizona. I’ll be at the Tucson Festival of Books to promote GRAVE FLOWERS, my twisty dark royalcore Hamlet retelling! Here is where I’ll be:

I can’t wait! I’ll be sharing everything in my insta stories so follow along there or, if you’re in Tucson, come say hello :)

Love you, mean it!

-Autumn