You may have heard recently that Substack is adding a new feature for readers to…run a post through AI in order to identify any AI written content within that post…1

I want to make clear something that I hope you already assumed to be true: I don’t use AI to write my newsletters, my social media content, my books. I don’t use it to create my writing schedule, marketing copy, or blurbs. I don’t use it to write my fucking grocery list. Instead, I use this magical invention that each and every one of us has called my brain!

And while I am vehemently 100% against AI being used in writing of any kind, I must take this opportunity to caution you against using AI tools to sus out AI writing.

When you use AI to identify supposed AI, you are putting my words into AI. I cannot describe to you how much of a betrayal that is. Please never put my words into AI, because now you’ve made my words part of the machine that was created to make my job obsolete.

When you use AI to identify supposed AI, you might be forgetting that AI written content was trained on non-AI written work. Ie. my words are fed to AI (and that is true, all of my books from Hot Copy to The Match Faker were used to train AI without my permission or knowledge) > AI is then capable of producing something that sounds like me > an AI tool trained to “identify” AI reads something I wrote and thinks it sounds like the AI that was trained on that something…you see what is happening here, yes? It’s a Backrooms-esque ouroboros.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t be on the lookout for AI writing. Unfortunately, Amazon is stuffed full of it (making it very difficult for real authors like myself and my colleagues to make even the inkling of a living from our work). But please, use caution when trying to identify supposed AI use and definitely think about the impact the tools you’re using to do that will have on our world and on that creators’ work.

I will state again, for the record: I do not, will not, and never have, used AI to write. I find the practice to be abhorrent, disgusting, and morally corrupt.

A sociologist friend of mine, Dr. Alexis Shotwell,2 and I have discussed at length on our walks to and from the gym every morning, the use and misuse of “moralizing” (ie. being judgy) when discussing AI and how moralizing as a way to convince someone not to use AI is almost always ineffective. And while I agree wholeheartedly with the arguments, the ethics, even the data on the ineffectiveness of moralizing…

I find myself incapable of being anything but the judgiest of bitches about AI use.

Basically, what I’m saying is, I do feel like a better person than the people who use AI and IDGAF! Judge me for it if you want, since I am clearly 100% judging others! That is your, as well as my right! I am an imperfect person using an already morally bankrupt platform to share my words with you. Leave me to my moralizing - as a treat!

Let’s shift gears to Something I Have Been Delighted By Recently^TM:

I started watching Heartstopper with my kiddo and it has been an absolute JOY to rewatch this series through her eyes. Her excitement when Charlie and Nick kiss for the first time was effervescent. She launched herself across the couch to wrap her arms around my neck and shake me with glee. When Tao and Elle finally found their way to each other, I thought we were going to have to send earplugs to all of our neighbours, her celebrations were super-sonic.

We’re getting to the end of S3 now, and preparing for Heartstopper: Forever, where I know discussions and portrayals of on-screen sex will take place. My kiddo has known about how bodies make babies for a while now (we received What Makes A Baby by Cory Silverberg as a baby shower gift and I highly recommend it for an age-appropriate way to answer big questions about bodies and reproduction). She’s also often referring to books like Sex Is A Funny Word (also by Silverberg) and How to Love by Alex Norris. But I am feeling a touch nervous for this next step in the conversation!

I used this as an opportunity to speak with my friend, Dr. Rena Bivens3, a professor of communications and media studies, about it during a lifting session recently. Apparently, I source all of my friends from the gym. And she gave me some great tips about how to talk about what we’re about to watch:

• giving options, because consent is key; talk to her about whether she wants to watch these scenes or skip over them and letting her know there’s no shame in either choice

  • giving her the option to watch separately because some kids might feel awkward watching with their parents

• being open to all kinds of curiosity, while also remembering that there are some things kids don’t have to know about

• highlighting consent, because how often do we get to see consent on screen handled so vocally?

I am very scared I am going to fuck these conversations up because my child often has a way of asking questions I haven’t prepared for or even thought of, but I’m also kind of excited to hopefully create an experience different from the one that I had as a preteen, when I was endlessly curious about this topic but met with apathy (at best) or shame and judgment.

Ruby Recommends:

I watched A Nice Indian Boy this weekend and I request that each and every one of you watch it immediately. Funny, sweet, tender. It was a tight 96 minutes that had me blubbering more than once throughout the story. There were some moments that I kind of wished we could have been allowed to sit with a bit longer, moments for marination, if you will. But despite this, I was still so delighted, so touched. I deeply enjoyed this film and hope you will, too.

xo Rubes

When I started writing this newsletter it was very much a “I have a lot of events coming up and I need a place to share them with you” kind of missive.

However, I realized as I started writing it that I am not actually allowed to speak about most of these events so…this newsletter is going to be a lot shorter than I first intended. But that’s okay, because it just means you get to have another newsletter just like this sometime soon!

Of the 6 events I have on my calendar for the latter half of 2026, here are the TWO I am currently allowed to share:

Ruby’s Upcoming Events:

September 27, 2026, 9am-4pm: Readers Take Cornwall

• I’ll have a table at Readers Take Cornwall where you’ll be able to purchase all of my self-published titles!

• Get your tickets here!

October 7, 2026, 7pm-8pm: Rachel Reid On Tour

• Rachel asked me to host her Ottawa tour stop and I was like ok well I’ll check my schedule because I am a very important person with many leather bound books but lucky for her, I was available.1 Just kidding, I said yes immediately, of course, obviously. I am very excited to be in conversation with my dear friend, Rachel, and I hope to see you there!

• Get your tickets here!

A WIP Update

If you follow me on Instagram, you’ve likely seen me post once a week about my weekly word count goals and word counts. This past week, I finally hit 100K in my WIP! I am super proud of this accomplishment. I have (I think) about another 20K still to go.

I am going to be honest, while I love the project and have obviously taken a big chunk out of it, I am not feeling confident about my plotting/main conflict. I am going to keep going, because that’s really all I can do right now. But I anticipate having a lot more work to do on this book before it will be ready to go on submission.

Sharing this here because, I want you to know that you can be 6 books in and still have NO FUCKING CLUE WHAT YOU ARE DOING 😊

I haven’t shared much about this project with followers. Would you be interested in hearing more details about it? I am always reticent to share information about books that aren’t complete or aren’t guaranteed to be published because I don’t want to disappoint readers, but I also realize that maybe that’s just a me problem.

Let me know in the comments if you want to know more!

Reading Update

In the last newsletter, I shared about all of the books I currently have on the go. To give a quick recap, I was reading 7 books because apparently my ADHD was going HARD.

Since then I have finished 1 of those books (Morning Glory Milking Farm) but added one more book to the list, which I also finished: Luxuria by Colette Rhodes.

BOTH ARE GREAT! Highly recommend! Please read!

As more events are announced, I’ll share them here so ✨ watch this space ✨. I hope to see you out and about this year.

xo,

Rubes

This newsletter is going to be a bit of a round-up of “interesting” news and updates. Interesting obviously doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. So, lets get right into it:

Subscribe now

I’m Dragging My Ass Back to KU

If you’ve been around, you’ll have heard that I took my books wide last month. Originally, I had planned to keep my books (specifically, The Match Faker and Most Likely to Match) up on Apple Books and Kobo for the summer, but I haven’t been able to devote the attention to book promotion1 that having my books wide requires while I’m rewriting a book, as well. So, we’re back to Kindle Unlimited (fuck you Bezos).

Once I’m done with this re-write, I will reassess, but I want to say thank you if you were one of the readers who supported me on Apple Books or Kobo/Kobo+ while The Match Faker and Most Likely to Match were available there! As always, your support is everything. Like, literally. It helps me eat.

Read The Match Faker and Most Likely to Match on Kindle Unlimited! And as always, you can buy the e-book or paperback on Amazon or order them through your local indie.

Highly Recommend Watching TV With Your Partner

This is probably the silliest thing I’ve ver said, but let me provide some context first:

I am the TV watcher in my relationship. My husband would probably only turn the TV on for sports if I wasn’t here to use the remote. I’ve always got a new show or an old faithful on the go and my husband will tune in if he feels like it, but we never watch a show together together. If I watch a few episodes without him after he’s sat and watched with me, he doesn’t care.2

However, at the beginning of the year, after a weekend away at a friend’s cottage, I was introduced to reality TV show, Traitors. When I came home, I started the season from the beginning (Traitors US, S4) and my husband was immediately hooked. He’s very interested in human behaviour and Traitors is a great show for that. Since we watched that whole season together, we’ve also watched: the entirety of Traitors US, Traitors UK, Celebrity Traitors UK, Traitors Canada, and Traitors Ireland. We got really into it, hypothesizing about potential strategies, discussing how we’d approach roundtable discussion and confrontation. It was so much fun.

Then we moved on to Taskmaster, which we’ve watched quite a few seasons of. My husband is not a man who laughs a lot. To be clear, he does laugh, but his laughter is not big. He doesn’t really make a lot of noise when he laughs. He mostly exhales forcefully with a smile on his face and that’s how you know he thinks something is funny. Taskmaster makes this man LAUGH. It is absolutely joyous to hear the sound.

Now, we’re looking for a new show, so if you have any suggestions along the lines of Taskmaster or Traitors, I’d love to hear them.3

What Ruby’s Reading Right Now

For reasons that remain unclear, I have a lot of books on the go right now without finishing any of them. This is not a reflection of the quality of the books, but rather a reflection of the sheer number of books I’m reading. But one book that I read AND finished and LOVED was Ruby & the V-Day Vanpires by JL Logosz and Vera Valentine.

It’s a short (about 30 min.), MFMM paranormal erotic romance and the FMCs voice was so fucking delightful I spent the whole 30ish minutes kicking my feet with delight.

NOTE: It does not need to be Valentine’s Day for you to enjoy this novella.

Please pick it up if you have 30 minutes to spare. I hope you love it and it brings you as much delight as it brought me!

Here’s a list of the other books I have on the go right now:

1. Wed to the Alien Warlord by January Bell (e-book)

2. A Pack for Autumn by Emilia Emerson (e-book)4

3. Morning Glory Milking Farm by CM Nascosta (e-book)5

4. Wrangled by the Alien Rancher by Ursa Dax (e-book)

5. Easy Money: Cryptocurrency, Casino Capitalism, and the Golden Age of Fraud by Ben McKenzie and Jacob Silverman (audiobook)

6. The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu (audiobook)

7. Romance Your Plan by Zoe York (paperback)

Honestly, that’s it. I told you. “Interesting” this newsletter was probably not! But grateful I am, if you’ve made it this far!

Happy summer Northern Hemisphere babes!

If you’re a Blue Jays fan: I love you! We’ll get through this!

If you’re watching FIFA right now, I hope your team wins, as long as your team is a colonized country beating its colonizer! Watching history be made for so much of the Global South, especially African teams, at this tournament has been so joyous. I wouldn’t call myself a fùtbol fan just yet, but if anything, this tournament has reinforced for me how sports are really just narrative and narrative is life because…

Play me out Danny Rojas:

xo Rubes

I don’t think I’ve made a secret of how hard publishing has been lately; most authors have been pretty vocal. Writing, publishing, and marketing books when there are multiple wars, a climate crisis, a genocide (just to name a few things) is fucking hard. There have been quite a few think pieces in the form of Threads or Substacks discussing how apathetic publishers currently are to picking up books from mid-list authors. Whether you’re a trad or indie (or both, like myself) author, you are expected to be selling ALL the time. Social media is the new storefront. Your books, your writing process, and your life, are all sacrifices to the content gods. But often, even when we chop up our books for content, we don’t end up seeing an effect on sales further down the sales funnel (I hate that I have had to write the words sales funnel in this newsletter at all). And I promise, I’m not complaining. I am getting to a point.

Almost every time I write a newsletter, I find myself staring at my computer screen for what feels like hours. Either I don’t know what to say or I do know what I want to say but don’t know how to say it. This time, it feels even harder than that.

I’ve been working hard on improving my marketing efforts, posting on social media more frequently, identifying content funnels1, even writing this newsletter to you more frequently (thank you for being here ilysm). But doing so has highlighted for me that however exhausting it is to be an author, it’s probably just as exhausting to be a reader right now.

All you get is your favourite authors trying to sell you something. You see trial reels from authors you’ve never even heard of, trying to sell you something. You see tropes and character art and highlighted Kindle quotes, trying to sell you something. I wonder what you think of us, dear reader? Do you wonder if you’re anymore to us than just a transaction? That breaks my fucking heart.

One of the things I hate the most about book marketing is that it often feels so empty, so disconnected from the very people I’m trying to reach. And if it feels that way for me, it must feel that way for you too, right?

I’m so sorry dear reader, if you’ve ever felt that from me. Truly.

I write books because I want to talk about how it feels to be a human, because I want to explore those feelings and experiences. Because I want to share with other people my translation of what humanity feels like to me. And while I can’t speak for all my colleagues, I feel strongly that they want that, too. That beyond all these trends and Canva graphics, that’s all any of us really want: to connect.

Even this newsletter, these words I am typing right now, they are my attempt at connection but also an asset in my marketing portfolio. A way to nurture warm customers at the end of the sales funnel.2

I feel disingenuous while at the same time hoping you understand me, maybe even feel the same way.

I saw on Threads recently that Dead Internet Theory may be upon us.3 Honestly, for a moment I felt relief. I dreamed of a future where I wasn’t locked to my computer or phone. One where I didn’t have to worry what strangers might think of my photos. Where book ideas weren’t rejected or accepted based on how quickly they could hook a TikTok user.

But alas, if the Internet was well and truly useless I wouldn’t be here, right now, trying to connect with you, getting this chance.

This is my roundabout way of saying: thank you for being here. Thank you letting me blather on about my feelings and the moral and ethical debates I had before sending this to you.

Okay, that’s it, I’m done. Publishing is hard. The Internet sucks. But we are here, at least.

Since you probably also want to read about something like remotely book related, here’s a book I read recently and LOVED4:

A movie I watched recently that TOTALLY CREEPED ME OUT in the best way5:

And a TV show that DELIGHTED ME and is my new comfort series"6:

If you’ve gotten this far, please share a book you enjoyed, a movie that made you feel any emotion at all, or your comfort show? Pretty please?

xo

Rubes

Last year, I went off my anti-anxiety/anti-depressant medication. To be fully transparent and TMI, I couldn’t live with not having orgasms anymore and that is one of the side effects of the meds I was on. But as you might suspect, when you are a depressed person who goes off her depression meds, you get depressed! One of the side effects of that is, I cry a lot.

Don’t worry though! After a lot of gentle prodding by my doctor, we found a new medication that helps with my depression and anxiety (and without that one specific side effect, in case you were wondering).

Though I am not crying as much as I was, I still cry! In fact, I’ve cried quite a bit recently, so I thought I’d write about it. Don’t worry, this isn’t all about depression. I promise I have more range than that!

Why Ruby Is Crying Reason #1: I cried because one of my favourite baseball players, Davis Schneider, got sent down.1 Davis “Babe” Schneider is a Toronto Blue Jay. He has a beautiful moustache and his walk-up song is Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan. He’s great on the infield AND the outfield. He’s known for some pretty epic homers and he has an almost supernatural feel for the strike zone.2 He’s also struggled a lot at the plate this year. His strikeouts are on the rise and so he was sent down earlier this week.

I know what you’re thinking. Ruby, this is a baseball player, not your friend. He’s a MAN for fuck’s sakes! And yes, I get it. It’s so embarrassing to cry about baseball at all, let alone MEN’S BASEBALL. But the thing I love about Babe is how hard he works. This isn’t the first time he’s been sent down. It’s happened in year’s past. But he's a grinder. He struggles, he makes adjustments, and he fails. But he never stops working. When you watch someone struggle and succeed and struggle some more over three or four seasons, you want it to stick for them. And I guess also you cry for them, too.

For whatever reason3 it breaks my heart to think that some fair weather fan will see that he’s been sent down and think it’s because he’s a “bad ballplayer”, when it’s far more nuanced then that. They won’t see the guy who homered in his debut in the major leagues. They won’t see a guy who is happy to celebrate with his team, but hates when the spotlight is turned on him. They won’t see a guy who’s a fierce advocate for Narcan access after his older brother died of an overdose.

It wasn’t a surprise when Davis was sent down; we all knew it was coming. And knowing Davis and the hard worker that he is, he will undoubtedly be back, hopefully sooner than later. But the night he got sent down, despite the rule that there is no crying in baseball, I cried in bed to my husband. I acknowledged how absolutely absurd it was for me to be crying. But that’s the thing about feelings. Feelings are like honey badgers, they just don’t give a damn.

Why Ruby Is Crying Reason #2: I cried because I watched Project Hail Mary. I don’t think I need to say more.

Why Ruby Is Crying Reason #3: I cried because I was looking at photos of my daughter after she went to bed. Last week was her birthday and I got caught up looking at her baby pictures, when she was still pink and the newest she would ever be. I got lost in the pudgiest cheeks of toddlerhood, the sweet voice in videos with words only her father and I could understand. My baby is getting so big. She’s tall. She has opinions about hairstyles. She does NOT want my help, but she also really does want my help, it really depends on the situation, but most importantly I should NEVER offer to help and also I should read her mind when she wants help and to do otherwise is actually quite offensive to her culture!!!

I love thinking about the person she is still becoming, the infinite roads laid ahead of her, all the ways she will succeed, fail, and learn. I am so lucky to be a guest on her journey but oh do I miss the little baby she was. Oh, do I long to be nap trapped, to hear first attempts at first words, yes, even to have to ask again, “are you pooping?”.

I long for it so much, I cried. Sue me.

Why Ruby Is Crying Reason #4: I cried because I thought I lost my emotional support water bottle. But I found it. Thank god.

Why Ruby Is Crying Reason #5: I cried thinking about how when I was on my old anti-anxiety/depression meds, they made me so numb, it made it hard to cry. And it wasn’t until getting off the meds and finding new meds that I realized how much I actually love crying. I don’t always love my reasons for crying (#1 is mildly embarrassing), but I love that I am connected enough with my body to do it, to be able to express my emotions physically. I am grateful for new meds that don’t make me so numb and for the catharsis tears provide.

Ok, now that the crying is over, here’s the part where I sell to you (and make myself cry because book marketing is the FUCKING WORST and I am so sorry I have to do it to you).

As you may know, I have moved my indies off KU. The Match Faker and Most Likely to Match are now available on Kobo, Kobo+, and Apple Books, as well as still on Amazon in e-book and in print.

This move may not be permanent! I am just trying to figure out what platforms suit me best as I try to make a go at being an author.

But your support, whether through purchasing my books, borrowing from the library, or leaving reviews for my books, is TRULY so appreciated. I hope I can continue to provide words for you to enjoy. I am working every day to continue to keep this dream my reality and I am so lucky to have you as a reader.

Honestly, it makes me cry.

xo, Rubes

If I told you how many times I’ve attempted to write this newsletter, once again entitled, WAYS IN WHICH I AM GETTING MY LIFE TOGETHER, you’d think I was auditioning for a sitcom’s writers room. Cuz it’s a lot of times. You’d think I’d be more capable of getting my life together to write a newsletter, alas. Honestly, this attempt may not even be the final one (keeping this in for accountability).

I want to tell you about a few of the new systems I’ve put in place lately in order to “get my life together” because my life always feels quite - for lack of a better word - messy. Think of it as my brain’s Spring Cleaning:

1. I am taking my books off Kindle Unlimited: my 3 self-published books (The Match Faker, Most Likely to Match, and This Time, Next Year) were all available on KU when I first published them, because honestly it was the only thing my brain had the capacity for. Something you may not know about KU is that Amazon requires exclusivity from (self-published) authors, meaning if our books are available on KU they cannot be sold as e-books on any other platform, like Kobo or Apple Books. For some authors this might not be an issue, they are receiving page reads in the hundreds of thousands or millions (authors are paid by the # of pages read for KU books). But it turns out if you’re not one of those authors (😇), Kindle Unlimited might not be the right fit for you. I learned this from romance author Suleikha Snyder, who posted about it on Threads a few months ago. Essentially, she said, “going wide” (ie. removing your books from KU exclusivity and making them available on other platforms) allows you to make more money per copy sold. For the record, I love that KU allows readers to get access to so many books, and I am not making this change permanent, but this is the right choice for me and my books right now. As of writing, The Match Faker is the only book available on Kobo and Apple Books, but in the coming weeks Most Likely to Match and This Time, Next Year will be, too. This problem seems like a weird way to get your life together, but honestly it felt like such a monumental task when I first read Suleikha’s post but now that I’m mid-process it feels like I’m levelling up!

2. I’ve started going to bed at a reasonable time! I know, WILD. I am a notorious bedtime procrastinator but I’ve started sending myself to bed when my husband goes to bed (usually between 9:30pm and 10pm) and holy fuck does it feel better. My sleep is better in general, I’m spending less time on screens, more time reading, and I get to have nice end of day chats with my favourite person before we turn out the lights. Highly recommend 10/10 experience, thanks honey!

3. I do one chore a day. Here’s a little peek behind the curtain of my family dynamic; it requires some background context which you will receive now: I took an indefinite leave of absence from my contracting job last year because of my mental health, so right now my only work is author work. This has helped my brain recover from burnout and its most recent battle with clinical depression, but it’s also meant my husband has had to bear the brunt of capitalist labour to ensure our family has things like a Home and Food to Eat. To be clear, he has been super supportive of this because he wants me to be healthy and happy and like, alive. But now that I’m doing better, I’m looking for ways I can contribute to our partnership in ways that can support him until I’m ready to return to my own forms of capitalist labour. Enter: more housework. Now I already do the daily cooking, laundry, dishes. But I’ve added just a few more tasks to my list and divided them up each one day of the week (2 every other Friday) and I cannot tell you how much I love doing my one little chore every day? For instance, on Mondays, I clean all the mirrors in the house; this may seem silly but you wouldn’t believe how dirty our mirrors. I don’t know if my kid is going around rubbing her dirty hands all over them or if we’re brushing our teeth way too close to them, but our mirrors often look GRUBBY and you wouldn’t believe what a clean mirror does to the overall look of our bathrooms and hallways. My once a day chores also include: the toilets, the kitchen, vacuuming, and towels and bed linens.

Did you know, every time you leave a review you save a book fairy’s life? This is 100% true. If you’ve read any of my books and have left a review of them (on Goodreads, a retail platform, or even social media) THANK YOU. If you haven’t, would you consider saving a book fairy’s life and leaving a review?

Reviews help authors so very much. They show my publisher that people are reading and (hopefully) enjoying my books, meaning they’ll be more likely to offer to publish my next one! They show the algorithm that people are reading my books and (per my understanding of how algorithms work) then shows my books to more people! In other words, reviewing a book helps new readers discover those books AND helps ensure that I can write more books for you to review!

So once again, on my knees, with my heart in my hands, if you could please leave a review for my books from Hot Copy to This Time, Next Year or anywhere in between, you’d be saving a book fairy (I’m the book fairy).

xo, Rubes

I’ve been doing a lot of brainstorming lately, sometimes for myself but more often for friends. I absolutely love thinking about stories and craft and getting the chance to be there for the birth of my friends’ books, and its made me think a lot about how my own books have started out when they were just fresh, blank pages, empty of words but full of hopes, dreams, and best intentions.

I started writing my debut, Hot Copy, in 2015 (for reference, it was published by Carina Press in 2021). I was a new mom, mentally recovering from a high risk pregnancy with a bad case of undiagnosed postpartum anxiety.

I had just finished unsuccessfully querying a dystopian new adult romance that honestly, I did not have the skill to write at the time, and was trying to figure out what my next attempt would be in between breast feeding and getting nap trapped.1

This was a time when Twitter was Romancelandia’s platform of choice and as an (again, undiagnosed) extremely anxious unpublished, unrepresented author, I scoured that space to listen, learn, and make connections (I didn’t really do that last part, all the friends I have made in Books have made ME their friend not the other way around - s/o Meryl Wilsner).

Back in those days (she says from her rocking chair), agents used to do this thing called #tenqueries or even #100queries, in which they’d use their 140, then 280, characters to explain the details of a query from their slush pile and whether or not they’d be sending a full manuscript request or passing.2 While I am not here to argue the benefits or drawbacks of this practice, it did provide me with an (imperfect) idea of what (some) agents were looking for.

While scouring an agent’s #100queries, I saw a post about a query for an m/f workplace romance. If I recall correctly, the agent really enjoyed the voice but (and I am relaying this with as much kindness as I can because this is not a story about what is Good and what is Bad, there is a story out there for everyone and this particular one was just not a hit for this agent, at this time, 11 years ago) was feeling fatigued with the number of m/f workplace romances in their inbox with a male boss and female employee.

And listen to me, listen to me, my friend, this next bit shows you how far I had yet to come in Romance (and I still have far to go) because my mind was blown. I hadn’t yet read a single m/f workplace romance without that specific power dynamic. All the MMCs were bosses, all the bosses were MMCs. All the FMCs were employees, all the employees were FMCs.

My favourite at that time? Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren! We’re talking OG CLo, babyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!

I remember reading that tweet (the agent ultimately passed) and sitting back in my chair at my dining table (I did not, and still do not, have a designated office space of my own) and thinking (something along the lines of) my god, wouldn’t that be sexy? That being, what looking back now seems like the simplest and most obvious of concepts: a male employee and a female boss.

I sat in my wildly uncomfortable dining room chair and vividly imagined what my MMC would do when he realized he had feelings for his boss? And, what kind of MMC would he be? The kind that has no problem taking directions from a woman, obviously. He wouldn’t be like the “alpha” -ish heroes that we were still getting a lot of back in those days (cue the creak of the rocking chair). He would be softer, sweeter, though no less strong. He’d be quiet and self-effacing, bordering on self-deprecating (he’d get that from me).

But he’d be an excellent kisser, and he’d love eating pussy. Of course.

In contrast, my female boss would be…maybe, honestly, the exact archetype you’d expect for a female executive in corporate America? Organized, exacting, dedicated, and hard working; and obviously, everyone would think she was a “bitch” for it.

Who would be able to unwind her tightly coiled bun? Who would be able to make her crack the smallest of smiles in the tensest of conference calls? Who would see her for who she truly was (as organized, exacting, dedicated, and hard working a woman as everyone thinks) and love her exactly as is?

The answer could only be a goofball of the purest form.

Their first hook-up (a scene that survived numerous revisions and rewrites) coalesced in my mind right there next to the breast pump air-drying on the kitchen counter, while my baby monitor’s screen remained blissfully inactive next to my laptop. I wrote it down, a scene that remains one of my favourites for it’s visceral nature, and from there, over months, the story that would eventually be picked by Helen Hoang for Pitch Wars, that would find me an agent, and land me my first book deal, I fleshed out those characters and that story…all from a tweet.

This is not meant to sound braggy…I hope it doesn’t, at least. I am just realizing now as I read it back that it might? The point is not to regale you with my creative genius. The point, my point, is that stories, at their beginning, are kind of like the miracle of life.3 They require an almost perfect set of circumstances to exist and yet, their existence is one of the most mundane, the most ordinary and every day, the most human creations in this world. The origin of stories - at least, this one story - required someone be in the right place, at the right time, with the right mindset. It required time to grow.

And it wouldn’t exist at all without hard work and dedication, joy and pleasure in the practice, as well as a little imagination, some creativity, and varying degrees of pure, dumb luck.

A bit of admin:

I have donated:

• an AMA video call

• a signed copy of The Romance Recipe and The Friendship Study

for the QLN’s Lit for Queer Liberation Auction. The auction closes on March 14th. There are 100s of items and experiences to bid on and your contributions directly support queer and trans folks in Texas and across the US.

QLN’s goal is to raise $100,000 and we’re 30% of the way there. Please take a moment to browse the catalog of offers to find something meaningful for you.

Was this cool? Was this fun? Do you want me to tell you about the origins of The Romance Recipe or some other story? Or was this weird and bit too earnest? I am nothing if not a bit too earnest.

k love you bye

xo Rubes

If I had a nickel for every time I intended to send a newsletter, the US government committed an act of war, I’d have two nickels, which isn’t a lot but it’s weird that it happened twice.

There are many people more eloquent than I who can say a lot smarter things about the US/Israeli strikes on an Iranian girls’ elementary school, so all I will say is: fuck American Imperialism. Donald Trump is a pedophile rapist. Free Palestine. No war with Iran.1

Author stuff:

I have no new books coming out! Not usually something I’d celebrate, and to be totally honest I’m not feeling super great about it, but I’m trying to be more transparent about publishing in general because I think that benefits all of us and makes my brain feel better.

While I have no upcoming trad pub deals to announce and haven’t started a new self-pub project since This Time, Next Year (big “I’m 27 years old and I have no money and no prospects” energy), I have finally been able to get to work on rewriting a project that I’ve been working on for years. I’m not sure yet if I’ll be able to sell it or if it will be a better fit as a self-pub project, but I am so happy to finally feel able to write again. I haven’t been able to write since I finished TTNY in November, which probably seems like not very long, but is an eternity for me.

I’ve also been so incredibly lucky to be a beta reader for Rosie Danan’s newest book, Villain Edit, and sorry to rub it in, but it’s really fucking good. There is no pre-order link for it yet, otherwise I’d be telling y’all to get it right now, but promise me to follow Rosie on Instagram, if you’re not already, so you’ll know when her pre-order links go live.

Pod stuff:

You probably already know this since we haven’t shut up about it, but I host Loon Call: A Game Changers’ Podcast and recently, my co-host Ada and I got to interview Heated Rivalry creators, Jacob Tierney and Brendan James Brady!!! Here are some other favourite episodes of mine I want to make sure you’ve heard/seen (a lot of people like to watch podcasts on YouTube now and idk how or why but this makes me feel Old):

1. Skippers: I breakdown “Hunter”, episode 3 of Heated Rivalry, in the context of a rom com

2. Getting Intimate: I breakdown all 16 intimate scenes in Heated Rivalry (the book), covering the blocking, the emotional notes of each scene, and whether the book scene ended up in the show. I made a spreadsheet that you can see on our website. It is my masterpiece.

3. Choreographing Intimacy with Chala Hunter: we also got to speak to Heated Rivalry’s Intimacy Coordinator, Chala Hunter. If you watch on YouTube, you’ll see me staring at her with heart eyes because she is maybe the coolest person on this planet. I would pay to be her intern. It would be an honour to bring her coffee.

4. Deconstructing the Tuna Melt: preparing “Getting Intimate” helped me realize how important the Tuna Melt scene is to the entire book. So I talked about it for an hour! It’s way more interesting than that sounds.

5. Books to Fill the Heated Rivalry Shaped Void: bookstagrammer Esther Reads gives us recommendations for books to read after we’ve read the Game Changers’ series. She breaks her recs down by each book in the series, providing a recommendation for an mm, an ff, and an mf book for each Game Changer! You can get the list here.

I want to try to share more of what I love with all of you! My biggest hope is that you might try at least one of these things for yourself and if you like it too, perhaps you’ll pass it along to someone else to love!

1. Savvy Sheldon Feels Good As Hell: Taj McCoy’s 2022 romance was adapted into a (Hallmark-esque) film and released in December 2025 (I watched it on Crave, in Canada). Amber Riley stars as Savvy and she is absolutely captivating. I was not a Gleek and wasn’t super familiar with her, but she brought so much joy to the role and embodied Savvy’s transformation into herself so naturally. Amber’s co-star, actor Dorian Grey who plays love interest Isaiah, is a Toronto-based actor (and he was also in S1 of Welcome to Derry) and omg he is so handsome and utterly charming as the kind of man finally deserving of Savvy. Also, I fucking LOVE Hallmark movies. We don’t do Hallmark snobbery in this house. If you want to talk about good craft, watch how a writer adapts a full-length novel into a tight 90 minute rom com that hits all our beats and provides the most satisfying of endings. I loved seeing a fellow Harlequin author’s vision come to life, especially in the hands of two actors who threw themselves so fully and joyfully into the roles. There are a few other Harlequin/Harlequin imprint books that have been adapted into movies and my goal is to watch them all!

2. Mortal Monarchs by Dr. Suzie Edge: as a history nerd, who had a British monarchy hyperfixation as a child (and maybe continues to have one…) this was the perfect book for me. I found Dr. Edge on TikTok and love her videos mapping the family tree of the British monarchs from William the Conqueror in 1066 to Charles III of today. Dr. Edge narrates the audiobook herself and she is fantastic. If you are squeamish, this may not be the book for you, but I absolutely devoured Dr. Edge’s passion for this work. It’s not just about the gory details, it’s about what death means to us, who gets to tell our stories after we’re gone, and what those stories say about us, and the people we’ve left behind.

3. “Trap Queen” by Fetty Wap: it’s a fucking love song, y’all! I’ve had this song on repeat for a few days now. There is something effortlessly pleasing about Mr. Wap’s singing voice that makes me feel his love, his admiration, his appreciation for his Trap Queen. The way he welcomes us into the song with a casual “hey what’s up? hello?” and then proceeds to tell us everything that is great about his baby; how he rolls us into a chorus that has the capacity to keep my shoulders bouncing into eternity; Fetty Wap spends 3 minutes and 42 seconds telling us all the ways his Queen makes his life better. Isn’t that the kind of love we deserve from our partners? Isn’t this love: to be seen? To be known? Plus, if you watch the music video from 2015, there is a kid in the background of one of the group shots who is so committed and passionate about lip syncing along with Fetty Wap, he steals the show (check him out around 1:20)

I hope the world is a little safer for all of us by the time I send another newsletter, but even if it isn’t, I hope wherever you are, you are safe and loved and persisting. The world needs you in it, to consume art and to make it.

xo,

Rubes

Last week, I asked my Instagram followers to pick one of my couples for a Valentine’s Day short story and they voted almost unanimously for Nora and Finn of THIS TIME, NEXT YEAR.

So, I wrote THIS TIME, MY VALENTINE and you can read it right now! To download:

1. Click the link above, the book cover below, (or right here)

2. Click the Read Now button

3. Choose the format you’d like to read in by either downloading the story OR reading in your browser. Don’t worry! I’m not collecting your email or information, I promise!

If you haven’t read THIS TIME, NEXT YEAR, you can still read this story but like, you should still read THIS TIME, NEXT YEAR anyway, just for fun! You don’t have to wait until New Year’s Eve, either. Go do it right now! And if you liked it, don’t forget to a leave a review.

If you like THIS TIME, MY VALENTINE, would you consider telling your friends about it so that they sign up for my newsletter and get to read it, too?

I hope you have a wonderful day, no matter how or if you celebrate Valentine’s Day, and I hope you know that you are loved 🩷

xo,

Rubes

I had planned this missive to you for a while and then this morning happened and I can’t just write this without addressing the newest imperialist violence the world is being subjected to. If you happen to be reading this from Venezuela or have family or friends there, I am so sorry and I am thinking of you and holding safety and peace for you in my heart. I understand that Venezuela’s President Nicolàs Marudo is a dictator, while at the same time knowing that the United States government does not have the right to also dictate who the leaders of other nations are, and put those leaders of other nations on trial inside the United States. As a Canadian, and acknowledging that my situation is vastly different, I am feeling scared about what is going to happen next, especially living in the capital.

There’s no good way to transition without sounding flippant, I think? But I hope you’ll keep reading.

As you probably know by now, my life has been consumed by Heated Rivalry since the first episode dropped back in November. It was actually difficult for me to do promo for This Time, Next Year, the spicy holiday novella I released in December, because I was having such a hard time switching gears mentally.

But readers came through. This Time, Next Year has been so well received and has enjoyed my strongest indie launch to date! Thank you to everyone who has read, shared, and screamed about Nora and Finn. I appreciate you so much.

I don’t want this newsletter to be only about Heated Rivalry (well, I do but I know it can’t be), though. So I’ve compiled a list of some other media that I’ve been consuming lately and have dearly enjoyed.

1. HBO’s I Love LA: if you’re also a Heated Rivalry fan, you may have seen the shots that I Love LA star, Jordan Firstman, fired at the show and its leads Hudson Williams and Connor Storrie (I’m not going to rehash the comments made and I’m certain you can google them if you need to). You may have also seen HudCon’s co-star François Arnaud’s response (that was King behaviour; that was our bi hockey daddy earning and deserving his billing). You have have seen Hudson Williams himself share both Firstman’s comments and Arnaud’s response, telling everyone to watch I Love LA, regardless. The thing is, I’d already planned to watch I Love LA because I love Josh Hutcherson and, ironically, have been a fan of Firstman’s work in the past! So I did watch it (not because Hudson told us to! I can make my own decisions tyvm)! I Love LA is absolutely hilarious, irreverent, self-deprecating, and honestly, sweet. Alani, played by True Whitaker, is probably my favourite character, she stole every scene she was in. And honestly, I really loved Jordan Firstman’s performance. Josh was perfect, of course. If you’re looking for something vastly different from Heated Rivalry, but still funny, with a bit of chaos mixed in, and a lot of online personalities (I swear half the supporting/guest cast were TikTok influencers?), I’d highly recommend I Love LA.

   🫚🥤3.5 ginger ales out of 5

2. Crave’s The Office Movers: god, I love CanCon. If you’re not Canadian, I don’t know how you can watch it but like, move here, I guess? The Office Movers features one of my favourite sounds on earth: the Toronto accent, specifically Bramptonian. The Office Movers is about two brothers who run an, you guessed it, office moving company, and their one goal is to sell the company so they can stop moving offices. What ensues is so fucking hilarious, so Canadian, Torontonian, GTA-ian (that’s Greater Toronto Area for the uninitiated), that you might think if you’re not from there you just won’t get it. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Where I Love LA is glossy and rich, The Office Movers is all hustle, heart, and in my opinion, far more relatable. Let me put it this way (and with all due respect to I Love LA), if I had to choose between picking a romance MC from any of the characters in I Love LA and The Office Movers, I’d pick The Office Movers every time. These characters are people I feel like I know, and I don’t think you have to have grown up in the GTA for most people to know them, either.

   🇨🇦🐺🦆4.5 stupid Canadian wolf birds out of 5

3. Fan Service by Rosie Danan: I honestly wasn’t sure if I should include this. At this point, I feel like everyone knows who Rosie is to me, not just as an author but as a person. In case you don’t though, and in the name of full disclosure, here’s what you should know about Rosie before you read this review: I love Rosie with all of my heart, more than my heart. If I didn’t have a family I would move in with Rosie. That is not hyperbole. I was a bridesmaid in her wedding. I talk to her every day. She knows the worst things about me and loves me still. Rosie is another piece of my soul. But none of what I think and feel for Rosie takes away from these other facts I am about to list for you about Rosie: Rosie is a generational talent. When Romance historians look back on the literature produced during this era, they will pinpoint Rosie as one of the best, on the vanguard, always moving our genre forward, challenging all of us to be our best. And with that, Fan Service is the best book I read this year. Here’s the blurb:

   The only place small-town outcast Alex Lawson fits in is the online fan forum she built for The Arcane Files, a long-running werewolf detective show. Her dedication to archiving fictional supernatural lore made her Internet-famous, even if she harbors a secret disdain for the show’s star, Devin Ashwood. (Never meet your heroes—sometimes they turn out to be The Worst.)
   
   Ever since his show went off the air, Devin and his career have spiraled, but waking up naked in the woods outside his LA home with no memory of the night before is a new low. It must have been a coincidence that the once-in-a-century Wolf Blood Moon crested last night. The claws, fangs, and howling are a little more difficult to explain away. Desperate for answers, Devin finds Alex—the closest thing to an expert that exists. If only he could convince her to stop hating his guts long enough to help....
   
   Once he makes her an offer she can’t refuse, these reluctant allies lower their guards trying to wrangle his inner beast. Unfortunately, getting up close and personal quickly comes back to bite them.

   Again, because we are friends, I always feel like I need to preface my reviews with information like, “I saw all the work that went into this book,” as if that somehow takes away from how the book makes me feel, what it means. But I didn’t have to see all the work she did to recognize what Rosie did with this book. Not only did she write two characters who have the ability to be unlikable and yet so very loveable. Not only did she write a book that made me laugh out loud. She built an ENTIRE fictional TV series PLUS the online forum to go with it. She made me wish these characters were real, but also the TV show I never got to watch was real, too. Fan Service is a masterpiece and I hope, if you haven’t read it yet, you put it to the top of your TBR.

   💋5 gimme kisses out of 5

4. Seven Days in June by Tia Williams: I have been listening to this book very slowly on audio (the speed has nothing to do with my enjoyment of the book, I just, for Reasons, need to be in a specific headspace when I’m listening to fiction audiobooks, especially romance fiction audiobooks). That being said, Tia Williams writes humour and intimacy and especially YEARNING in a way that should probably be studied (I’m looking at you Romance historians). There’s a line in Seven Days in June that absolutely took my breath away, that made me stop in the middle of the sidewalk in minus 13 degree Celsius, to rip off my gloves and pull out my phone and quickly type out the quote so I wouldn’t forget it. Here, MMC Shane (no relation to Hollander) tells Eva what she means to him: I wanted to drown myself in your fucking bathwater. Yes, I’ll give you a few moments. Lines like these are what Romance is made of. The truest yearn a (gender neutral) girlie could hope for.

   🐟🥪 5 tuna melts out of 5 and I haven’t even finished yet

This is already WAY too long! But if you’re still here, please stick with me just a bit longer for a bit of shameless promo. I’ve already mentioned my newest book release to you but did you know I’ve also:

1. Started a podcast with my bestie Ada. You can listen to the first 4 episodes of Loon Call now. In true chaos fashion, we had originally planned to release the first episode, recapping episode 1 of the series AFTER the last episode of the show was released, but then we watched episode 4 and texted each other in the middle of the night and decided to start the podcast halfway through the TV show because we just couldn’t stay quiet about it anymore. So episodes 1-3 of Loon Call recap episodes 4-6 of Heated Rivalry, and episode 4 of Loon Call recaps episodes 1&2 of the show. Our next episode (that’s 5 if you’re not keeping track) is gonna be for all you Skippers out there! Listen to Loon Call.

2. Made a playlist of songs used by Heated Rivalry editors. I do not have a talent for edits myself, but the editors in our fandom are, without a doubt, the very best. Every time I find an edit I love (usually multiple times a day) I add the song to the playlist. As of writing this newsletter, the playlist is almost 4 hours long. Listen to the Heated Rivalry Edit.

And as always, if you’ve read This Time, Next Year, please consider leaving a review or recommending it to a friend! This book has become so popular almost exclusively on word of mouth! Thank you so much!

And if you’re still reading this, thank you. More than anything in the world, I hope 2026 is a year of hope and love, a year for miracles, and peace.

xo

Rubes

*play me out Hollanov:

In this newsletter I’m going to tell you what to read, ok? Ok!

Warning: This list will be short and it will include one of my (new) books

1. Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid! Did you think I wouldn’t mention Heated Rivalry, just because I haven’t shut the eff about it on every other platform? Clearly, you don’t know me very well. Seriously, though, I reread this book last week trying to tide myself over in between Heated Rivalry adaptation episode drops and good god it’s just so good. This book is a masterclass in using intimacy as plot. It should be studied, it should be put in the Louvre. If Harlequin ever gets their acts together and gives us tie-in covers I WILL be buying them. And if you’ve already read Heated Rivalry, make sure you read literally every other book in the Game Changers series, please and thank you very much.

2. Finnikin of the Rock by Melina Marchetta: I reread this book (and the whole series of which there are three books) last month as a bit of worldbuilding research for an upcoming book idea. I was trying to describe this book (and, again, the whole series) to a friend the other day during a writing date and its honestly so hard to express what this book (and series) means to me. It’s painful, honestly. Like you’ll experience pain when you read it, but you’ll say thank you for it. You’ll lean into the bruise. This book (and series) will remind you that the pain means your alive and how lucky that is. The best way I can describe this book, after many attempts is: imagine if Melina Marchetta was an alien and she travelled to Earth to observe us and when we asked her what she found, she wrote this story and said “here, this is you, and you are terrible, the worst, but also you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. And by you, I mean humanity. I mean your capacity to hurt and your capacity to hope.” I don’t know what else to say, but please read it.

3. This Time, Next Year by Ruby Barrett: Hey that’s ME! Yes, my first novella came out on December 9th and it has the best cover ever! Do you know the story of the cover?1 Because it’s absolutely magical. This Time, Next Year is a frenemies to lovers, spicy holiday novella. And I think you’ll really like it if you like: yearning, green flag heroes, 5 increasingly sexy New Year’s Eve kisses over 5 consecutive New Year’s Eves, books that won’t take you more than a day to read, watching two people fall in love over text message, or if you vibe with anything in this graphic:

This Time, Next Year is available in print, e-book, and on KU. If you are not a KU reader, don’t worry! In the new year, I plan to move all of my self-published titles off of KU and take them wide to more platforms!

Anyway, tell me what you’ve been reading (if not these books) OR read one of these books and tell me what you think!

Also, if you decide to read MY book could I awkwardly beg you for a review on the reviewing platform of your choice? I would greatly appreciate it!

xo, Rubes

Just a quick note to let you know that I’ll be leading a FOLD Academy Workshop on Writing Intimacy in Genre Fiction this Saturday, October 18 at 12pm EST, and its FREE so if that sounds interesting to you, register here.

I had the absolute honour of attending the FOLD Festival (Festival of Literary Diversity) this past spring and got to meet so many incredible authors and readers, and participated in some of the coolest events (like a Literary Cabaret and Romance High Tea). So when FOLD Program Coordinator, Hudson Lin, reached out and asked if I’d be a part of the FOLD Academy series, I was yelling yes at my computer screen before I finished reading her email.

Here’s more info:

Writing on-page intimacy can be intimidating for even seasons authors. Ruby will lead participants in a discussion on the art of on-page intimacy that is inclusive of all genders and heat levels; help attendees identify the heat level they are comfortable with; provide advice on how to approach intimate scenes using the effective language; and, how intimate scenes can and should be used to progress plot.

This workshop is for writers of all skill and experience levels.

I love working with the FOLD and talking about s*x in genre fiction and I hope I’ll see your faces this Saturday!

xo

Rubes

You’re probably familiar with the song “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” because it’s pumped through every mall speaker in December and included in most Spotify Holiday playlists.

Written by Frank Loesser1 in 1947, it was first recorded by Margaret Whiting, though I’d argue that the most popular version is Ella Fitzgerald’s. I’d also argue that it’s the best version.

Here’s a quick ranking of the top 5 best covers of What Are You Doing’ New Year’s Eve?

1. Ella Fitzgerald (1960); I mean, I don’t know what I could say to you about Ella Fitzgerald that hasn’t already been said, her voice has a texture, a softness, a throatiness that is specific to her

2. Zooey Deschanel and Joseph Gordon Levitt (2012)2 ; this was the first version of the song that I remember hearing/viewing and the two of them have a captivating chemistry that makes me feel like they’re truly singing for each other

3. Margaret Whiting (1947); honestly, I’m just a sucker for audio that sounds it’s age so I have to give it to Margaret for this

4. Nancy Wilson (1963); she brings something a little different to her version and I really appreciate that she’s tried to make it her own without making it too different either

5. Kacey Musgraves (2016); honestly, there’s not much that Kacey can’t sing

But back to the song.

Here’s a little known fact that Loesser felt a lot of performers didn’t understand when they sung his song: the singer is posing this question far in advance; she’s asking, essentially, if her and the questionee are in a long-term relationship. In a way, it’s not actually a holiday song. According to Loesser’s daughter and biographer, Susan Loesser, the song is actually set in spring.3

All this to say, me asking you what you’re doing on New Year’s Eve in late September or announcing my next book, This Time, Next Year, a spicy New Year’s Eve holiday novella, last week is actually not that early if we’re going by Frank’s standards.

I was lucky enough for Julia (@thebookishanimator_) to create this absolutely stunning cover for me. There is a WHOLE ASS STORY about this cover and Julia, Ada of Be the Archetype (@be.thearchetype), who did the typeface for this cover, and our dear friend Esther (@esther.reads) who brought it all together.

But that story deserves it’s own newsletter, so for now I’ll just say this is Julia’s FIRST COVER and I cannot express to you how special it is to me to get to write the book that holds this incredible honour.

Ever since I first heard this song (ie. watch Zooey and JGL sing to each other) back in 2012 I’ve wanted to write a New Year’s Eve romance. Regardless of when the singer is supposed to be singing this song, there is something so romantic about “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” And, I’d argue, about New Year’s Eve, as well.

Maybe it’s having been raised on movies like When Harry Met Sally, where (spoilers) Harry runs across New York City to tell Sally that “when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with someone, you want the rest of your life to start right now”.4

Maybe it’s listening to songs like this one. Or the inherent romanticism (for me) in the idea of smooching being the first thing you do to start a new year. Maybe it’s the glitter or the fizziness of champagne. Maybe it’s the heart pounding quality of fireworks.

But I think New Year’s Eve is the perfect setting for a romance. This Time, Next Year is a frenemies to lovers, opposites attract, slow burn romance, told over 5 increasingly spicy New Year’s Eves.

If this feels like an even somewhat interesting story to you, I’m going to do my obligatory, PLEASE PRE-ORDER THIS BOOK. You have NO IDEA how important pre-orders are to a book’s success. If you can’t pre-order, please share this book with your friends!

And please go ahead and tell me: what the heck ARE you doing for New Year’s Eve? I don’t have plans yet, but I’m looking forward to the smooching, either way.

xo Rubes

Today I publish my 5th book. I cannot express how excited I am for you to have it. Not just because it was something I wrote while in the depths of severe depression, something that kept me alive. Not just because it was something that I truly love and enjoy. But also because, now I can finally pause my second job as a content farmer.

I was talking to my dear friend Ada of Be the Archetype, trying to describe how difficult this piece of the job is for me, the content piece.1 I finished writing this book a while ago but I have spent so much time having to pick apart what is left of it and turn it into content that I have a hard time seeing the book for what it is.

But now, today, I feel a sense of freedom. My little book is free to fly, maybe fall, maybe soar, who knows. But it’s out of my hands now and into yours.2

And, oh, I hope you love it. I hope you love Chloe, who is a bit of a mess, frankly. But trying. Wanting to be better, to be her best. Not just for the people she loves, but for herself.

And Dean, sweet, sad, pretty Dean. Dean with his long eyelashes and pouty lips and hair in his eyes and if you pictured Josh Hartnett circa Pearl Harbor, well…I wanted to write a man who was hurt, who is hurt, who can be hurt, but who can also put himself back together.

I don’t know if I succeeded in those goals but in the end, that’s not for me to decide. They’re yours now.

buy Most Likely to Match

Most Likely to Match is available on Amazon and KU and in print. You can also request it at your local indie order because it’s also available on Ingram Spark, and available online at other large print retailers. Or you can request your library carry it, as well.

Finally, if you like Most Likely to Match, I’d be forever grateful if you also left a review, either on Amazon or Goodreads or wherever your precious heart desires.

I’ll have more to say soon about what’s next, including books and at least one event, but for now, I am going to go sit in the sun and read a book just for fun and not make a social media post for as long as I can last.

Thank you fo rbeing here, for reading my books, for reading this book.

xo,

Rubes

I re-read Rachel Reid’s Heated Rivalry and The Long Game recently (Game Changers #2 and #6). Like I just finished them last night. I have already shouted all of this into Rachel’s DMs but I wanted to do it here too because if you haven’t read these books I really think you should.

Rachel recently announced that Heated Rivalry, an m/m hockey romance, has been adapted into a TV series and I don’t know if it was just the excitement of that or what but I just had to reread my two favourite hockey players (like favourite of all time, including fictional and real life players). I have a very tenuous relationship with hockey. As a Canadian, I have been surrounded by hockey and hockey fans my whole life. I have also been surrounded by hockey players. I’m not going to go into too much detail here because this is not really what this newsletter is about and I also don’t want to get into some Not All Men/Not All Hockey Players discussion, but reading hockey romances has been so healing for me. I am not sure that I will ever call myself a hockey fan — I am a baseball babe for life — but I no longer change the channel in disgust when a hockey game comes on and that’s on hockey romance authors. For real. The power y’all have.

Rachel’s Game Changers series, dismantles so much of the toxic masculinity in the sport, and I am so thankful it exists but right now I want to list the things I love about Heated Rivalry and The Long Game specifically:

1. Ilya’s obsession with Shane’s freckles

2. how Ilya thinks Shane is so boring and yet is so fucking gone for him

3. Shane’s bitchiness — more bitchy men please!

4. the mental illness and ED rep in The Long Game specifically; reading these books while I am in a deep cave of depression was so affirming. I felt so safe and seen.

5. just generally, Ilya’s intense need to be a shit disturber. Truly no notes.

Please read these books, and then go and read all the rest of Rachel’s books. Hockey will break your heart, but Rachel’s books will put you back together again.

In case you missed it…

I am looking for ARC readers for my next indie release, Most Likely to Match.

If you’re interested you can sign up here: https://www.rubybarrett.com/ruby-links

Or could I humbly ask, if you’re very excited for this book, could you preorder it? Preorders are such a huge help for authors because your preorders tell the Amazon algorithm that people want to read the book and then the book gets put in front of more people’s eyeballs.

You can preorder Most Likely to Match here: https://a.co/d/32IIIIW.

I just wanted to take a moment to say thank you to anyone who has slid into my DMs recently to tell me they enjoyed reading my books — literally any of my books. It’s no secret that I have been struggling recently. Writing and authoring is hard when the world isn’t grumbling around you, when secret police aren’t snatching innocent people off the street, when one country isn’t trying to obliterate another country, or an entire group of people, off the face of the earth. I have struggled with my mental health my whole life, but if I can be totally honest, I’ve been the lowest I’ve ever been lately.

But every once in a while, I get a message from a reader telling me they loved Lulu in The Friendship Study. “I am her!” is what I hear most often and guess what, my love, Lulu is also me, which means that you and me, we’re the same.

Or they love The Match Faker, Nick’s glasses, or Nick and Jasmine’s exploration of intimacy.

These kinds of messages are, quite literally, and a little embarrassingly, helping to keep me alive right now. You cannot imagine how much it means to me, how I feel a little less alone when I hear from you. Thank you.

If you have read The Match Faker, or any of my other books and have told me about it, thank you. If you have told SOMEONE ELSE about it, an even bigger thank you.

I am doing everything I can to keep putting words out into the world and sometimes it seems very pointless, not just because of *gestures at the world* but because often it feels like no one is listening. So when you tell me that you’ve heard me, you have breathed a little life into my fire.

Thank you thank you thank you.

xo Rubes

hello lover,

I’m not doing well. If you’re alive and reading this right now, chances are you’re not doing well either. Here are some things I love or have been loving lately that you may hopefully also love:

1. Reservation Dogs: yes, this is a Taika Waititi show so you probably already know that it’s good but I cannot say loudly enough how fucking good this show is. It has immediately jumped into my top 5. I will be rewatching it again very soon. Talent and skill oozes from every frame of this show, from the likes of Waititi, to the main cast of 4 young indigenous actors, to the supporting cast, the writers, costume, editing. Truly, all and every ounce of this show left me fully satisfied and yearning terribly for more. Watch it. Watch it again. Do it as a treat to yourself.

   

2. Gentle feedback: today, when I showed a friend my not very good attempt at a graphic promoting the Match Books (The Match Faker, book 1; and Most Likely to Match, book 2) they said, “this is such a great branding opportunity that I wanna try a few more options” and it just felt really nice to be acknowledged for my effort while also challenged to do better in a safe and compassionate way.

3. Stranger Things: my child loves Stranger Things, especially the Demagorgon, and in anticipation of the new season coming out later this year we decided to watch the show again from the beginning. There’s no better character combination then Steve and Dustin.

   

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   Thanks for reading hello, lover! This post is public so feel free to share it.

   Share

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   Also, Jim Hopper? Daddy.

   

4. Marrying Winterbourne by Lisa Kleypas: how are all of y’all out here hawking Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent when RHYS WINTERBOURNE EXISTS? I’m sorry, I’ve never read a Grand Gesture like FIVE FUCKING MINUTES BEFORE. This book blew my mind for the Grand Gesture scene alone and if you haven’t taken the time to read Lisa Kleypas I need you to stop what you’re doing and start reading right away.1

5. My kid: the other day, to win an argument she said, “period. end of sentence. no add-ons” and then she dabbed. I don’t even remember what we were arguing about but I will remember the look of triumph on her face for the rest of my life.

6. Pogos: if you eat meat, might I suggest eating meat on a stick? I’m on a big Pogo kick and they’re just so deliciously delightful!

   

7. The Materialists: listen, I know what you’re all going to say, but honestly, I THINK YOU’RE WRONG! I thought The Materialists was good! And I thought it had chemistry - maybe it’s the neurodivergent in me, but when I saw everyone saying it had no chemistry I was like, huh? Did we watch different movies? When Pedro Pascal told her: You are valuable, the ENTIRE THEATRE swooned. Listen to me, I watched that movie with a lesbian and even THEY swooned. Pedro’s power is astronomical. And then Chris said, in that Boston fucking accent, I’m a beggar for you. ARE YOU KIDDING ME? That’s Ruby-hero coded if I do say so myself.

You know what? I’m feeling a little bit better. Thanks for letting me dump all this on you. The simple act of sharing some of my favourite things with you has made me feel good.

I’d love if you shared some of your favourite things with me (unless one of those things is Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent then no thank you very much).

Or if you’d like more of my favourite things: they include my books! Could I beg you on my hands and knees to read The Match Faker and/or preorder Most Likely to Match?

I love these books with all my heart and I know we’re not supposed to say things like this, but I feel like they don’t/won’t get the recognition they deserve, ie. recognition for being horny and tender in equal measure.

And if you have any extra luck to pass around, I have a book on sub right now, a sapphic haunted house romance set in Toronto’s Gay Village and I’d love for nothing more than to one day put it in y’alls hands!

The world is terrible, but you are not. Find what you love and share it! We need more love and more sharing in this terrible, terrible place!

xo

Rubes

I was part of a romance panel today at a local Indigo (the Canadian equivalent of Barnes and Noble for my US buds) and we were given the choice to give a short reading of one of our books or talk about our publishing journey. I pulled an audible on the organizers and they were very gracious, to let me instead read aloud my thoughts on AI.

If you’re not chronically online like me, you may not know about how more and more authors are using AI to write books, and if you don’t have severe anxiety like me, that thought may not fill you with the kind of soul-sucking existential dread that makes hit hard to get out of bed (or maybe you feel that way without anxiety and that’s normal, idk what’s normal anymore).

Anyway, I feel like if you’re reading this I’m preaching to the choir as it were, and this isn’t anything in particular or specific, just some silly thoughts, but if you make it all the way to the end, you might get early access to something ✨cover shaped✨:

When you use AI to do your job for you, any aspect of your job, it is making you dumber. This isn’t hateration. This isn’t fear of progress. This is biology. This is fact.

Every problem we solve starts out first in our brains as a map. And as we problem solve, our brain draws that map into neuronal pathways. When we learn something new or make a mistake, our brain might erase a leg of that map’s journey and chart a new course. But every single problem we solve gets added to that map. Think about our brains at the end of our lives. There are billions of kilometers of cartography inside us, knowledge and skill that can’t be seen, but that we can follow through life like the back of our hands.

Developing a skill like responding to a simple query email or writing a book requires an abundance of other skills: critical thinking, clarity, communication, are just a few. When you ask AI to do that job for you, your brain still writes a map but it is far shorter than the one you’d get if you’d done that work yourself. Instead of a map filled with offshoots and alternate routes and eraser marks and conditional functions (eg. if X happens, then do Y), your map is quite short. Your map is barely a journey at all. Instead of a map that could take you around the universe, your map can take you to your toilet.

What does that map look like at the end of your life?

Maybe you’re ok with AI’s use of millions of gallons of clean water to generate one simple query. Maybe you’re ok with AI creators’ using the work of artists, writers, and thinkers without their permission (my life’s work has been stolen by at least one billionaire to feed his AI monster). Maybe you’re ok with pouring more money into the greedy may of already obscenely wealthy people.

This is not meant to be a judgment. It is easy to justify using AI, because its creators made it that way.

This is about more than the moral or ethical implications of AI use.

This is about us, our brains, our biology. Every time you use AI you are deciding what kind of map you want to have:

Made of well-worn paper, softened over time and use, pieces added on at random angles, arrows, and scratched out destinations, and yes, even shortcuts. Maps so big we need to lay them out flat on the floor because no other surface can hold the lifetime of work our brains have done.

Or, standard 8.5”x11” copy paper, no longer warm from the printer, lacking even that freshly faxed smell, no creases, unfolded. Perhaps the only mark on it, a smear of feces in the upper left corner.

I want to draw better maps, for myself, for our world. I want to be a trailblazer.

Alright, you made it! If you want to see the cover for Most Likely to Match one day early, you can:

Thanks for being here folks and I hope you have a happy, blessed, and safe Pride!

xo,

Rubes

I am the mother of a miracle. All of us are miracles in the way that we are all products of an unpredictable combination of time and circumstance, luck and biology. Life is a miracle in the way that it is a prehistoric mixture of atomic stardust and light and billions upon billions of unrecorded moments.

But I am the mother of a miracle. A person who makes not so much sense biologically. A person why is very much made of stars, who is bright and warm and who can explode too many times her size and inexorably pull you into her own gravity.

Miracles do not, according to my dearest Rosie, have to be understood. That’s part of why they are so special, she says.1

And my miracle, my stardust, my unpredictable combination of light and luck, is very, very hard to understand.

If I were ever asked to present for 30 minutes on one topic I am an expert in outside of my own field, my presentation would be on: complete agenesis of the corpus callosum.

The corpus callosum is a bundle of millions (billions?) of nerve fibres located in the middle of your brain. It is the highway that passes messages back and forth between the left and right hemispheres of our brains.

In other words: it is integral to our physical and cognitive functioning.

If you have agenesis of the corpus callosum, you don’t have those nerve fibres. Well, you may technically. You can have partial or complete agenesis of the corpus callosum meaning you could have no corpus callosum at all (complete agenesis) or a shortened or thin corpus callosum (partial agenesis).

There are a number of reasons we might not develop a corpus callosum while we’re being made. It could be a genetic blip, or a chromosomal disorder, but no matter what it’s usually found (or not found, as it were) by ultrasound, confirmed through MRI, and discussed in hushed voices and sympathetic tones, in rooms separate from where all the other pregnant couples are.

There are a myriad of outcomes that result from not having a corpus callosum. You might hear words like “failure to thrive”, severe cognitive and developmental delay, and understand that no matter what, your child’s life and your life will not look like what you thought it would.2

I know all this because I was once pregnant, and I was once taken into a separate room, and I was once told in hushed and sympathetic language, that the baby I was making inside my belly didn’t have a corpus callosum.

Because miracles are so hard to understand, doctors couldn’t point to a specific reason why the bundle in my belly didn’t have a corpus callosum. Luck, they guessed. Though they didn’t use that word.

On account of being so miraculous, they couldn’t tell us what to expect. We had to be prepared for the worst possible scenario and every other outcome on the path to “normal”.3

Because my miracle was so hard to understand, I felt, distinctly, that I should not give birth. I felt, in that way that feeling feels like knowing that if I kept my baby inside me forever, she’d be safe. Within the control of my body, it wouldn’t matter if my child was missing a piece of her brain, it wouldn’t matter if she might suffer, or struggle. Inside the tiny universe I’d created in myself, my little one would be safe.

I was scared of the possibility of a disabled child. I was grappling with my ableism. I was also afraid, as all parents are afraid, of my child experiencing suffering because even though we all experience suffering, I hoped my child would be the first child to never know it.4 This world is not made for people who are disabled, I know I don’t need to tell you.

We named our miracle hope. Not Hope. We named her after a Lainey Taylor character, in the hope that the hope in her name would make us feel hopeful, would give her hope, would fill the world, my womb, our hearts, with the hope we so desperately needed.

Hope bolstered us, buttressed me. Hope, that inexorable human need. Hope, that’s been here forever. Hope, that we’ll have for always. Hope like stardust, sprinkled over everything. Hope like light. Hope, like us, like her, like life, is a miracle.

My babe is here now. Some call it earthside, which has always felt strange to me. She was already on earth. Once I was her earth, the soil in which she spread her roots and grew. And no matter how much I wanted to keep her, I couldn’t.

And that’s when the miracles began.

Her doctors don’t know why she is the way she is. They have no explanation how a person with, what amounts to, a number of catastrophic diagnoses can walk and talk and develop and grow.

She was discharged from all her specialists. Her neurologist stared at her toddling and babbling around the examination room in awe of her. A man who devoted his life to understanding the awesomeness of the human brain, was awed by hers.

My miracle. My baby.5

This is not to say she does not have struggles. She does. Because, I think, it is impossible not to struggle when we are missing a piece of our brain. You’ll forgive me for not going into those struggles in depth and I’ll trust you to trust me when I say that yes, she is disabled, and no she doesn’t look it.

When you are a miracle and hard to understand, people notice. People feel uncomfortable when they know they can never understand you, so they decide, make the conscious choice, to misunderstand. All people do this, but other children?

Other children do this, especially and very specifically to little miracles.6

And that is where my prayer comes in.

How many mothers are praying to something or someone for their babies?

Too many.

All of us.

And I don’t know why my heartfelt pleas might be heard over others’ or if they should be heard. In fact, they shouldn’t.

Mothers pray in Palestine. They pray in Yemen. They pray in Ukraine. Mothers have prayed for decades, for centuries, millenia. Mothers pray for food, for warmth, for second chances, for one more minute, one more moment.

If unanswered mothers’ prayers were fossil fuels there’d be no climate crisis.

My prayers are just one in a billion, one in so many miracles. But I still must pray because that’s what mothers do. We breathe light and life into each momentary miracle. We hope. When we have nothing left, we hope.

If you are reading this, you can’t do anything. And I’m not a religious woman, but I understand a little bit about faith and I know that’s not the point of a prayer.

If you are reading this you can hope with me, though. And I know, there are so many hopes and prayers you have to lend your heart to and you don’t have to, but I’ll still be here praying and hoping.

Dear Universe,

Be gentle with my miracle. She is so very different but she doesn’t know yet how important her differences are.

Dear Universe,

Give her strength. Fill her with light, with love, infuse her with the stardust of her ancestors.

Dear Universe,

Don’t let her sweetness disappear. She is dried mango, a chocolate kiss, a sugar plum and a spoon so full of sugar. Do not let her dissolve.

Dear Universe,

Keep her fire burning. She is a Big Bang, a black hole, my most momentous occasion. Keep her gritted teeth, her low growls, her spit, and curses. Keep her armour, the one I gave her when she left me. The only gift she could take with her.

Dear Universe,

You rotten, miserable universe. You cesspool in this multitude of macrocosms. Be kinder to her. Do you know how lucky you are? To have this gift? To get to experience this miracle? Do you know what it’s like to feel hope crawl into bed beside you too early in the morning? To feel hope slip it’s sticky hand into yours as you cross the street? Do not squander this opportunity I bestowed upon you when I decided that I could no longer keep her as Schrodinger’s baby, when I made her “earthside”. Make other miracles like her. Make them kind like her and make them friends with her. Make her feel not alone. Make me feel not so helpless, Universe. God, please.

And while you’re at it, you useless universe, make the Palestinian mothers’ prayers, the Yemeni mothers’ prayers, the Ukrainian mothers’ prayers, make all the prayers of the all the mothers that have whispered, screamed, and swore devotions into the universe, come true.

Answer them.

Answer us. Today of all days. Do not leave us on read. Today of all days, do not ignore our calls. Today of all days, you good for nothing Universe, hear us. See us. Do not let our gnashed teeth be for nothing. Do not let our rivulets of tears in the sand be for no one.

Today of all days, of all the days that have been lived by all the lives, today, give us this one thing, more than flowers or breakfast in bed or macaroni artwork, more than anything give us our prayers on Mother’s Day.

Because what is the point? What is the point dear Universe of these miracles? Of these bodies we nurture, this luck we gamble in? What is the point if we cannot keep them safe? What is the point of our hearts beating outside the safety of our ribcages, of their perfectly formed pieces existing outside the safety of our individual little earths? What is the point of making me and every other mother — miracles in and of ourselves — the mother of her own miracle?

What is the point, you feckless universe, of all these billions of suffering miracles dusted in your limitless starlight?

And why is it hope?

Help mothers in Palestine / Help mothers in Yemen / Help mothers in Ukraine

As we get closer to the Most Likely to Match cover reveal 👀 I’ve been thinking about the other beautiful art work I have planned for this book and how lucky I was to get one of the most beautiful covers I’ve ever seen for The Match Faker as well as awesome art.

Last year, in preparation for The Match Faker’s release, I did something I’d never done before: I commissioned NSFW art. If you’ve read the book you’ll know what I mean by the bathroom scene.

If you don’t know what I mean by that, you should read the book.

Anyway, I knew I wanted the bathroom scene to be the scene to pop my NSFW art cherry because it was one of the first scenes I ever came up with back when I first started thinking about the book that would become The Match Faker in 2021.

The artist I commissioned, @dextrose.png, was also super lovely and gave me not one, not two, but three versions of that scene. Each one progressively NSFW-er then the last.

Here’s the first one:

And while I’d love to not be a tease, you can see the rest if you join my chat, which is also where I’ll share the Most Likely to Match cover first as well as more NSFW art.

xo,

Rubes

hello, lover

I’m struggling. It’s a combination of things, this I recognize:

• I mean have you seen the world lately?

• I recently signed with a new agent who (whom?) I love but change is hard.

  We’re preparing to go on sub soon, something I have done three times in my life but only been successful once (the sale of my debut Hot Copy lead to one-book contracts for all of the rest of my books

  But after taking two other books out on sub with no offers with my previous agent, I am feeling nervous about outcomes that aren’t even close to coming true yet

• Anyone with a brain reading this will know it’s true and please don’t take this admission to mean that I didn’t think it would apply to me but: self publishing is hard!

  I feel like all I do is annoy my followers with book promo

  That being said, thank you to each and every one of you who’ve read and shared The Match Faker

• Writing books is hard!

  I’m writing Most Likely to Match, the next book in The Match Faker universe.

• I’ve just come off my anti-depressant/anxiety meds and you’re probably thinking to yourself, Ruby maybe you should get back on them and while I hear you, for reasons that are their own newsletter I am not sure I’m ready to make that commitment yet.

• I’ll end this list here though it’s not finished, but you know, parenting, day jobs, existing with care and compassion for others and myself, the environment, this world. All of it is hard.

All of it amounts to struggle.

I desperately want to be the kind of person — wife, mom, author — who can do it the way I see all of you doing it. It looks hard, but it’s possible, the writing, the working, the success. But none of it feels possible to me and sometimes it means I:

• am late to picking my child up from school and a corresponding sense of shame when I make eye contact with their teachers or office staff

• cry when the Blue Jays lose their home opener and then cry harder when I recognize how absurd it is to cry over baseball, over men, who play baseball. Over MILLIONAIRE MEN WHO PLAY BASEBALL FOR A LIVING.

  

• freeze.

  My most common response to ADHD overwhelm is to freeze. It’s also the most common response I’ve had to traumas in my past. I think that connection to trauma is what makes the shame that comes with freezing so painful for me. Freezing (of the fight/flight/freeze triad) feels like the most passive reaction. It’s the one that makes it easy for me to tell myself that I did nothing to stop the trauma. That actually, I let it happen. Actually, it’s my fault. I wanted it. Actually. Once, I froze, and it ripped me apart. Once, I froze and it doesn’t matter that in my recesses of my lizard brain freezing was the only thing I could do to keep myself safe — or as safe as possible — and alive. I was still frozen. I still did nothing. I was nothing. Once I froze and now freezing is associated with pain and shame and the deepest kind of self-hatred I could imagine. So now, when my brain simply cannot do a thing, when there is so much happening inside my mind that I can’t catch a wisp of an idea, when my brain shuts down, a different kind of frozen fear, it feels the same.

It feels like I did nothing. I am nothing. And worse, it’s my fault. I wanted it this way.

I don’t know that I have an answer to any of this, other than putting it here instead of keeping it in a brain who’s chemicals are sometimes self-destructive is a bit of an answer. But I did want to share some of the things I do to keep heart, keep up, keep breathing, keep here when I feel frozen in an already frozen lake of my thoughts.

1. Tell someone: last week I told Rosie I was struggling and she dropped everything to talk to me because, my loves, our friends love us. Don’t believe whatever horrible things your brain may tell you. Your friends want you to be okay.

2. Read something: I’m re-reading one of my favourite baseball romances Fire Season by KD Casey, a book that is also about someone who is struggling, but who loves, loves baseball, loves life, who wants to be here.

3. Make paper cranes: my child got into origami for a hot minute and we still have a package of origami paper and sometimes I make myself something that requires skill and consideration, something that requires my time and effort and concentration for longer than a moment. Something that is delicate and pretty and makes me proud.

   

4. Eat a fruit: isn’t there something so lovely about fruit? Every bite invites a splash of juice upon your pallet. Mother Nature’s candy. Even just an apple, cut into slices, help me feel fresh and alive.

5. Look at photos of my friends’ babies: to remind myself that I want them to grow up in a world with me as their auntie because I want them to always have a person they can call when they’re worried they can’t call their mom.

6. Take my child out for hot chocolate and a treat: and then I just listen to them talk. About their day, about the things they see on the street out the window. All children are miracles, for the record, but I have the special designation of being the mother of a true and literal miracle. A child who should not be, but is. Being their mom is scary and hard but also the most wonderful honour and blessing and when I drown I think about them and how it couldn’t be nothing that I am their mom. It couldn’t be a mistake that they are my miracle.

7. Look at art: preferably, in person, but we have the internet for a reason and it’s not porn. Every feeling I have right now, every feeling I’ve ever had has been portrayed in paint and ink, has been carved into marble and etched into wood. Every thing I hate and love about myself has been felt before. I am not special, and that, surprisingly, is kind of lovely. We have all been here before. We will all be here again. We endured, we even made things out of it, the most beautiful things. To feel this, to freeze, to drown, is hard, it is suffering, and I will not glorify it but I won’t deny myself the privilege of being alive to feel it.

8. Lie on the floor: stretch, roll, just lie there.

9. Find words to keep my head above water: right before we started a metcon (metabolic conditioning for the uninitiated) at the gym my friend shared a poem, Peanut Butter by Eileen Myles, that is too long for me to share here but that I will link here and that somehow made me want to try harder 10 seconds later when the workout started. These are my favourite parts:

I keep a notebook of my favourite lines from books I’ve read, here are some:

You swallow her with your eyes. I’m surprised there’s any of her left for the rest of us to see — The Scorpio Races, Maggie Stiefvater

Adam smiled cheerily. Ronan would start wars and burn cities for that true smile, elastic and amiable — The Raven King, Maggie Stiefvater

If you can’t be unafraid…be afraid and happy — The Raven King, Maggie Stiefvater

Daughter of my heart. Twice-daughter, my joy. Your dream is my dream, and your name is true. You are all of our hope — Days of Blood and Starlight, Laini Taylor

I choose to drown in hope, than float into nothing — Finnikin of the Rock, Melina Marchetta

If it’s an abomination, Dad, you’re just doing it wrong. Bear down hard, then release. It’ll fit better — The Angel, Tiffany Reisz

It is here that love is to be found - not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin — The Saint, Tiffany Reisz

There is the sudden. There is the eventual. And in between, there is the living — Two Boys Kissing, David Levithan

We do not start as dust. We do not end as dust. We make more than dust — Two Boys Kissing, David Levithan

Love is certainly never safe, but it’s absolutely worth it — Get A Life Chloe Brown, Talia Hibbert

And then, here are some from Fire Season, because it’s what I’m reading right now:

I don’t really have a purpose in sharing these other than they make me feel something that doesn’t suffocate. They make me want to tread water, to fight, to flee, or if I must, to freeze. They remind me that that sometimes we do the best with what we have. That freezing isn’t as passive as it looks, that sometimes it’s the thing that keeps us here a little while longer. That struggling is hard but also it’s living.

If you’re struggling in Canada, please consider reaching out to services here.

If you’re struggling in the US, please consider reaching out to services here (I’m sorry if this isn’t the best resource, I tried to stay away from government agencies since I’m aware that the Trump administration has recently gutted many of them).

If you’re struggling anywhere, please know you are loved, by me, at the very least.

xo,

Rubes