Anyway. Medicine. I knew he would be a phenomenal doctor because not only can he put a band-aid on whatever is wrong with you, he can explain what’s happening quietly and calmly. He feels things deeply, and sometimes when you’re hurting the thing you want most is someone who says, “I know. I get it. Let’s make it better together.”

He decided he would specialize in palliative care fairly early on. I didn’t know much about it, only that my husband felt a calling towards it, and that quite simply was enough for me. Most people don’t know what palliative is unless they’ve lost someone close to them or been involved in hospital and hospice care for a loved one.

Essentially, palliative care is the subset of medicine dedicated to the pain management of people who are very, very sick. It is care that is provided without the goal of making someone better. It is care given with the hope to make their last days as painless and dignified as possible.

My husband entered palliative care with a great deal of purpose. He flourished with the pride of truly meaningful work. I can’t imagine anyone better to have by your side in your final moments. Not only because he is the man I love more than anything, but because he is a good person down to his bones. He cares, and he cares deeply. He talks. He listens. He understands. A patient once expressed regret that he wouldn’t get to see his horse again, and my husband organized a trailer to bring the horse to the hospital parking lot so his patient could say goodbye. This is just one of many, many instances of him listening.

I’ve watched him spend hours on the phone with various departments, advocating for his patients and their families. I’ve watched him have the same difficult conversations over and over and over. Can you imagine being the person who has to share that news with loved ones every single day? “I’m sorry. There isn’t much time left. This is what we can do.”

When I started writing Grim Tidings, I knew Darcy would be a grim reaper fed up with death. I knew Gabriel would be a guardian angel who clings tightly to the identity his profession provides. I don’t think I realized how both would reflect shades of my husband.

Like Darcy, over the last couple years, the work has started to wear on him. I think somewhere along the way, he lost sight of the comfort he’s given people and saw only the pain instead. And so, I wanted to write a book that hopefully reminds him (and Darcy, and Gabriel, and you) that maybe death doesn’t have to be something we fear. Maybe it can be something beautiful instead. Maybe being present for someone’s last moments isn’t a defeat or a failure, but a gift instead.

Is there anything more important than that? To be holding someone’s hand while they take their last breath? To make sure they are without pain? To be the one to go to their family and assure them that all that pain is gone now? That they can rest?

Grim Tidings is a book about death, but it’s a book about love, too. I didn’t realize until I was writing it how closely the two braid together. You can’t have one without the other, I don’t think. You shouldn’t. You won’t.

There is a one hundred percent chance I will dissolve into blubbering when I try to talk about this on tour, so I wanted to write it out here first. I want you to know why I wrote this book. I want you to know about the very good man I love very much. And I want you to hopefully finish this book with hope instead of hurt, and realize that you are not alone in anything.

I’ll share this book with you in just over a month and then it will be ours instead of mine. But first and always, it belonged to my husband. And I wanted you to know that.

Love you. Talk soon.

She wears matching novelty pajamas. She compulsively eats candy canes. She owns an antique shop and thinks everything is a little treasure. She is a people pleaser and deeply empathetic. She makes whimsical choices and enjoys her whimsical little life.

But she is not inept, pathetic, or lacking in any way.

That’s the assumption when we write soft characters, isn’t it? That their softness is something to be fixed. That through the journey of the book, they need to harden themselves. Shift into something sharper to become their very best selves.

I knew when I wrote this book that Harriet’s softness wasn’t something in need of fixing. Instead, I wanted her to step more fully into her empathy as a strength. I wanted her to realize that bleeding hearts are strong ones. Durable ones. That choosing to wear your heart on your sleeve is an act of bravery in a world that can feel so very cold and cruel.

I think we see this a lot with female characters, yeah? They’re “too sharp” “too opinionated” “too messy” “too soft” “too quirky” “too colorful” “too manic pixie dream girl.” Too, too, too … so on and so forth. If a woman is too demanding, she’s a bitch. If a woman is too soft, she’s incompetent. But women exist in all sorts of magical, wonderful variations. We run the full spectrum, baby. We contain multitudes. We do not come in a box with prescribed traits. We do not flatten ourselves.

Shouldn’t we want to see that reflected in our romance? Don’t soft women deserve to be loved, too?

I wrote this book because I am a soft-hearted, whimsical woman. It has taken me a long time to see that as a strength. I want you to know that if you read this book and see shades of yourself in Harriet, you deserve to be soft, and you deserve to be loved because of it.

The world needs more softness. That’s something to be celebrated. Not scoffed at.

Good Spirits hits bookshelves this October. If you’re looking for a whimsical, romantic story about two lost souls, then I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for.

I love you, my softies.

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Talk soon.

I usually have a pretty solid detachment from the story by the time it gets to release. I turn in manuscripts about a year ahead of publication, sometimes longer, and when release day rolls around my brain is fixated on new projects and new problems and new characters. It makes it easier for me to go into a new release with optimism and enjoyment. It feels like visiting old friends and having a lovely dinner catching up.

But with GOOD SPIRITS, I am not in that floaty, happy space of enjoyment. Instead, I am simmering in a hot pot of expectation and hope. And my hopes aren’t even sales driven!! In a way, I sort of wish they were. Instead, I’m hoping desperately that you will take to these characters the same way I have. That you’ll love them and root for them and embrace the weird, wonderful magic of the Department of Hauntings & Spirits.

I was in the shower this morning, letting my brain bee-bop through whatever and I had the striking thought that—oh, no. I think I care too much about this one.

This is new territory for me. Not the caring—I care deeply about all of my stories and characters. But this is the first time I’ve written something that deviates outside the confines of contemporary romance. I’ve always wanted to write something that dips a toe into magic, and GOOD SPIRITS was the perfect training pool for me. A jaded ghost who has only haunted the worst people. An optimistic antique shop owner who only sees the best. Trinkets and treasures and lost memories and the invisible strings that wrap around them both. I don’t think I’ve ever had so much fun drafting a story before.

Which leads me to here. Now. Staring at the ARC copies on my desk, filled to the brim with the aching hope that you love Harriet and Nolan as much as I do. So much of myself is twisted up in this story, truly more than any other book I’ve written.

I hope you find comfort in these pages. I hope you fall in love with their aching, romantic story. And I hope you find whatever piece of yourself at The Crow’s Nest, with the rest of the lost and forgotten things.

We’ll talk soon. In the meantime, I’ll be hoping.

Becs

It starts off very similar. A phone call in the middle of the night from a kid, asking fa radio host to help their lonely parent. But it winds down it’s own path from there, creating a different story.

My ultimate hope with writing FIRST-TIME CALLER was that you would feel the same way reading it as you did when you watched the film. It touches on the same themes: loneliness, finding your person through chance, all sorts of love. It is my hope that you experience that same thing when you read AND NOW, BACK TO YOU.

Like FIRST-TIME CALLER, AND NOW, BACK TO YOU is also seasoned by a Nora Ephron classic. It begins with a car ride between two people who don’t know each other very well. And from there, the story finds it’s own path. For some reason, fate has brought Jackson and Delilah back together time and time again over the years. Maybe on a trip to the mountains, they can finally figure out why.

I personally think Jackson makes an excellent Sally.

So, I hope you pick up this book when it comes out next February. It’s officially up for preorder in the US and UK. I’ll have a lot more things to say about it as we move closer, but for now … I hope you love their gorgeous cover. ANOTHER absolute stunner from Myriam.

Talk soon, okay?

Becs

Two competing meteorologists are forced to find common ground in this opposites attract, When Harry Met Sally inspired romance, from New York Times bestselling author B.K. Borison.

Jackson Clark and Delilah Stewart have had their fair share of run-ins over the years, often ending in disaster. While Jackson thrives on routine and organization from the comfort of his radio booth, Delilah loves the spontaneity and adventure out in the field. When they’re partnered against their will to cover the snowstorm of the century, they find themselves scrambling to figure out how to work together.

Eager to be taken seriously as a journalist, Delilah offers Jackson a deal. If he can help her ace this assignment, she’ll help him rediscover his long-lost fun side. With an undiscovered chemistry burning beneath their clashes, the unlikely partnership quickly tumbles into an easy and surprising friendship.

But when other feelings start to enter the equation, can Jackson and Delilah withstand the storm? Or does what happens in the mountains, stay in the mountains?

See Less

I did not know my son was going to be born that day. That was very much not the plan. I had other plans, in fact. Plans that included stockpiling at least twenty thousand words into a new manuscript before the little guy arrived so I could spend the next few months not doing any writing at all.

But then, as I was finishing the first chapter, I got a headache. And as that headache slowly got worse throughout the day and turned into vision loss, I took my blood pressure using my handy dandy home monitor. A necessity for my high risk pregnancy. I saw the numbers and called my husband crying. He came home from work and immediately drove me to the hospital where I was quickly shepherded to the Labor and Delivery wing. I remember sitting in the hospital in my little paper dress, asking my doctor if there was any chance I would get to leave. She gently patted my knee and said, “Not without your baby.”

I wasn’t ready. We hadn’t finished the nursery. We only had one box of diapers. My daughter was at school. I had approximately 19,250 words left to write out of my 20,000 goal. I was not physically, mentally, or emotionally prepared to create life that Tuesday afternoon at 3:36pm. But, best laid plans and all that.

My little boy was born twelve hours later, gorgeous and screaming and utterly perfect in every way.

We still did not have any diapers.

The next few weeks did go to plan. I did not do a single second of drafting. I published BUSINESS CASUAL. I did pass pages on FIRST-TIME CALLER. I did copy edits on GOOD SPIRITS. I snuggled a squirming, sometimes scream-y, bundle of fuzzy-headed joy. I learned how to be a mom of two, instead of just one. I did not even think about Jackson. Not once.

But I could feel my laptop staring at me from the corner of the room. The time was quickly approaching that I would have to start work on drafting again. And when the time came to finally open that document and dive back into the world of Heartstrings, I was stuck.

Worse than stuck. I never used the word block, and I still don’t think that’s what it was. It was more like—I was depleted. That magical place in my head where all the words come from was just … gone. The string between my head and my heart and my hands was severed. I’ve always said that the most magical place a writer can be when drafting is when you are unaware of the words you’re writing down. Well, I was firmly on the opposite side of that. I was painfully aware of every. Single. Word.

I felt broken. I felt defeated. One deadline came and went. So did another. I forced the words out even though I knew they were wrong. I knew Jackson’s story, and I knew his character, but it felt buried. Unreachable. I finally turned in a draft that I wasn’t proud of, just because I couldn’t bear to have it with me any longer.

When I first drafted Lovelight, my daughter was eighteen months old. I was out of the postpartum haze and in a groove of new parenthood. I forgot what it was like in those early days. And I didn’t even realize this was the reason I was struggling so terribly with Jackson until very, very recently! I was expecting my brain to snap to attention, despite the very real trauma I had gone through. Giving birth is not easy, people!! And I was expecting perfection from myself. I was demanding it.

I struggled postpartum with my daughter. I struggled postpartum with my son. I started to think that maybe when I created these whole humans, I lost a part of myself. But that didn’t feel quite right. Maybe instead, I gave that piece of myself to them, and I had to take time to figure out how I worked without it. I had to find the missing piece and re-stitch myself around it. And that takes time. And care. And grace.

I got the first round of edits back on Jackson’s story about a month and a half ago. They were thorough, as I expected. But a magical thing happened when I opened that document. Jackson started appearing on the page. Slowly but surely—with time and patience—the magic was coming back.

Both Jackson and I (and probably Berkley tbh) breathed a sigh of relief.

This is what the edits looked like for Jackson’s book. I lovingly call it, Frankenstein’s monster.

So if you are struggling postpartum, know that you are not alone. If the words aren’t coming to you right now, know that you’re not alone. I’ll have more to share about Jackson and Delilah’s story over the next couple weeks, and the thought of that finally fills me with excitement instead of bone-deep dread. This story put me through it, but I think they’re better for it. I know I certainly am.

Talk soon, okay?

Becs

“Hm,” she said.

Reader, I took that ‘hm’ and ran with it.

I started drafting GOOD SPIRITS in the early spring of 2024. At the time, it was called IN GOOD SPIRITS, and my plan for the series was a book for the Ghost of Christmas PAST, PRESENT, and FUTURE to each have a book. But as I started building the world and my version of the afterlife began to take shape, I realized there was so much more I wanted to explore. And so, the Department of Hauntings and Spirits was born—the bureaucratic afterlife where our ghosts are employed, and where we’ll be spending our time for this series.

Holiday Spirits. Poltergeists. Grim Reapers. Possessions. These are some of the offices within the Department. In GOOD SPIRITS, we’ll get a peak at the office of Holiday Spirits, but we’ll see a few others, too.

(And if you haven’t yet realized that GOOD SPIRITS is a ghostly pun, well. Now feels like a good time to point that out to you.)

Nolan is a deeply lonely man, hardened by a century of haunting the very worst people. And Harriet, despite her circumstances, is the human embodiment of looking on the bright side. Writing a love story between a ghost and a mortal had it’s challenges (don’t worry, there is absolutely a happy ending), but it also allowed me a creative freedom I haven’t found within contemporary. I love these characters, and I hope you do, too.

Fun little things before I go:

- When you preorder GOOD SPIRITS from East City, you’ll get a bunch of fun things like character tarot cards and a stunning art print. You can check out the details on my Instagram, and place your preorder here.

- Barnes & Noble is currently hosting a 25% off sale on all preorders. Ordering a future book from the past version of yourself is something the Ghost of Christmas Past would really enjoy.

Talk soon, okay?

All my love.

Becs

This week, I want to talk about Nora Ephron, ghosts, and weather phenomena.

It’s no secret that my latest release, FIRST-TIME CALLER, is loosely based on the Nora Ephron classic, Sleepless in Seattle. I like to say loosely because while the plot deviates significantly, my hope was that you get the same feelings reading this book as you do when watching the movie. That holds true for the entire Heartstrings series. When I say book two is loosely inspired by When Harry Met Sally, I mean that it shares some of the same overarching themes, and I hope that you get that same ooey-gooey feeling when you read the book.

Speaking of book two, that is the very manuscript I am currently avoiding by writing you this update. AND NOW, BACK TO YOU was the very first book I tackled after the birth of my son, and reader, it was the worst draft I have ever written in my life. I have never struggled so mightily with a story before. The dialogue felt wooden. The characters were strangers. I could not for the life of me find my flow. I blame sleep deprivation and, you know, bringing an entire human being into existence.

But something magical happened in the second draft. Everything clicked. I was writing a particularly impassioned monologue about weather phenomena (corn sweat is apparently a thing in the midwest) and, I don’t know. My brain just figured it out. Jackson became crystal clear and so did his love story. I am tidying up the rest of that story this week and I am absolutely BUZZING to share them with you. We’ve also been working on cover design, and when I say my jaw DROPPED at the sketches in my inbox. Jackson and his slutty little glasses are criminally hot. I feel so lucky to have such a talented illustrator turn her pen to my characters.

After I finish up the developmental edits on book two of the Heartstrings series, I’ll turn my attention to writing the first draft of book two in the Ghosted series. If you haven’t heard, I have two simultaneous series running. Heartstrings is my nod to early 90’s romcom classics, and Ghosted is a magical romp through the Department of Hauntings & Spirits. The first book in the series, GOOD SPIRITS, is set to release this fall. It’s about the Ghost of Christmas Past who has been sent to haunt the wrong woman. Together they have to figure out why he’s there under the ticking clock deadline of Christmas Eve. It’s magical! It’s whimsical! I also think it’s the most romantic story I’ve ever written.

I’ve been itching revisit their world with book two. I can’t say much about it, but we’re visiting a different in the Department of Hauntings and Spirits. I’ve been playing a lot of (Don’t Fear) The Reaper over here.

Okay. I need to actually get back to writing now before Berkley starts spraying me with a water bottle like one of those cats. Thanks for being here with me. I can’t wait to chat more.

Talk soon.

Becs