Book Deal News!

I guess this means I'm really an author?!

Hi all! In last month’s Substack, I gave a little teaser: a picture of myself at the Great Point Lighthouse on Nantucket, in which I am holding up two fingers on each hand. The caption reads something like STAY TUNED, dear reader, for some news! A reminder in case you forgot, missed it, or are new here:

So here is the news! While I was on Nantucket for two weeks in September, my agent negotiated a two-book deal for me with Mira, the publisher of DAUGHTERS OF NANTUCKET.

My new novel is titled SHE MERCHANTS OF NANTUCKET and it’s a sea-faring adventure, with lots of action and some inevitable seasickness. I call this style of writing “drama with a side of dramamine.” I may get that printed on t-shirts for the book tour.

A few weeks ago, my editor and agent announced the deal in Publishers Marketplace, which made it feel really official.

SHE MERCHANTS is not a sequel, but rather a cousin, if you will, a stand-alone novel about new characters that inhabit the same world as DAUGHTERS. However, if you enjoyed DAUGHTERS, there will be fun Easter eggs for you. Yay! Set five years after the Great Fire, in SHE MERCHANTS, readers will get to briefly visit with some of their favorite characters from DAUGHTERS before getting aboard a clipper ship with the Starbucks…and then meeting up with one of my personal favorite characters from DAUGHTERS in part two of the novel.

Having published my debut at 52 years old, I feel like this a moment to pause and celebrate. For the promise of this announcement is that, by the end of it, I will have published three novels. Three! Three is my lucky number. Three feels substantial. Three feels like a career.

The goal/hope is for this new novel to come out in 2026, which means I need to complete it by spring of 2025, which isn’t that far from now. Like maybe I have 4 months left, or 5 tops. To write a 450-page historical novel without feeling overwhelmed, I outline basic plot points and scenes and then write my way toward them, breaking the book down into chunks.

My writing goal in September was to get my characters around Cape Horn, thus finishing Part I of the novel and beginning Part II. It didn’t happen. I’m writing every day, and my ship, the Shooting Star, is making definite progress, sailing down the coast of North America, crossing the equator, making its way from Brazil to Argentina (which wasn’t called Argentina at the time, but rather the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata) and yet I still haven’t managed to get my characters around Cape Horn. There is wind and stormy weather. There are storylines to develop. There are sharks and whales and dolphins. And parties! And lots of the aforementioned drama.

And then I realized I had the same issue when writing DAUGHTERS. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get to the fire, signaling the beginning of Part II. I kept writing and writing, and still — I needed my characters to do so much before I set that fire. So, yesterday, I pulled DAUGHTERS off the shelf. How many pages is Part I? Please, say 200 pages. Please, I thought.

Turns out, Part I of DAUGHTERS is 210 pages long. Yes! Because here I am, close to rounding Cape Horn with my sea merchants in book two at page 196. Which means my journey is right on track.

And I can’t wait for you to hop on board with me.

xo

Julie

P.S. Here are some books I’ve read and loved in the last month:

Sophie Kinsella’s WHAT DOES IT FEEL LIKE is a gut punch and a gem at the same time. Kinsella is the author of the Shopaholic novels. As a shopoholic myself, I feel like Sophie Kinsella really gets me, and also like she’s been my close friend since the early 2000’s. Which is why, learning that, in 2022, Kinsella was diagnosed with stage four glioblastoma, I was just wrecked. After having brain surgery, Kinsella had to learn to walk and talk again. She had to learn how to find the words again to write. In real life. And what she wrote was this novel, about an author who is diagnosed with glioblastoma and learns how to write again. I know!!!! Get it now!!!!

I also highly recommend Rufi Thorpe’s MARGO’S GOT MONEY TROUBLES, which walks a tightrope between light and serious in the best way possible, Marjan Kamali’s incredibly moving and poignant follow up to her wonderful novel THE STATIONERY SHOP, THE LION WOMEN OF TEHRAN (keep tissues nearby), and Gabriella Burnham’s terrific and important coming-of-age novel WAIT, which is set on a Nantucket very different from the one you might know.

Happy reading!