In January, book lovers have an exciting array of options to choose from as the month kicks off with a delightful blend of genres. Whether you have a penchant for Young Adult fiction, Mystery novels, Thrillers that keep you on the edge of your seat, thought-provoking Non-Fiction reads, or heartwarming Romance tales, there is truly something to suit every taste. Moreover, if you happen to be a devoted fan of the Crescent City Series, you’ll be delighted to discover that the third installment in the series will soon be gracing the shelves of bookstores. So prepare yourself to immerse in engrossing narratives and embark on exhilarating journeys throughout the month of January!

What are you most excited about this month? I would love to hear your recommendations in the comments section below! Share with us what books you are eagerly anticipating. 

I did it! I hit 2123 (give or take) words today. 1497 of them were on “Harder to Forget” and 624 of them were on “Centennial Park”. I wanted to get as much of the opening of “Harder to Forget” out of my mind and onto paper. It is starting to shape up to be an adorable meeting of friends, and you can see the little bits of both sides of the story starting to emerge. I find it harder to write Olivia, and that is a new problem for me. I never have issues with my female characters. I usually struggle with my need to make the men I write some sort of apology for the men of the world. But this time, I am finding it hard to write Olivia. She seems so sure of herself, and I am currently struggling with that in myself. It makes her a challenge. I don’t want her to fold where I would, and that sometimes makes me feel very uncomfortable. I am a girl who, for better or worse, never wants to make anyone feel bad, even when they have hurt my feelings. She is very much not that. She has tried to set fire to the bridge between her and Jude for years, but he sees through it. He sees her feelings for him, and his wanting to keep that around for him when it is convenient for him is part of what makes him such a charming asshole in the first timeline. I think part of why she is so difficult is she says everything I wish I could say. And that is the beautiful part of being a writer: all those things you wish you could have said can make their way into your work.

Spencer.

Hello! Sorry for missing yesterday’s blog post. I did some research, but not enough to feel like I could talk about it. Location research will always be a big challenge for me! I added quite a few places to my travel wish list.

Today, I did pretty well. I scouted all of “Centennial Park”, from trains to hotels, apartments to estates. All the gloriously extravagant places make Emerson the weird and insanely rich man he is. The book takes place in LA, Paris, Cannes, St. Moritz, Heidelberg, NYC, and Tokyo. That’s a lot of locations to keep straight. Normally, I just make Notion pages with each location’s requirements. This time, I made a database so that I can sort through and see exactly which apartment, house, or hotel I am working with. It was kind of a pain to set up and set up the link back to scenes, but I think in the end it will be worth it because it will stop me from leaving my writing app to Google something. That is a pretty big momentum killer for me. I really wanted to minimize that as much as possible.

“Harder to Forget” takes place only in LA, NYC, and Seattle. That is way easier because those are three cities I have spent a lot of time in. It means that it is way easier to have the neighborhoods and locations in my head. I made a database for these cities, but I haven’t been as meticulous with the details as I am in the other ones. Plus, there is some overlap that I can absolutely use. LA and NYC are always going to be in my stories because of how important they have been in my life.

I am really excited to start writing tomorrow. I am a bit nervous about the opening scenes of “Harder to Forget.” I really need to make it feel like both sets of outcomes could come from this one singular event. Once we get to the hotel room and the choices start happening, I think it will be easy, but that first part where they are hanging out with friends has to walk a very tight line. I am pretty sure it will be the part of the novel that changes the most through the process.

So good luck to all the folks doing Camp NaNoWriMo in whatever form you are choosing: editing, plotting, writing, or rebelling like me!

❤ Spencer

Today, I hit a stumbling block. I called it that the other day too. I needed to do location research, but I was so distracted by my own wanderlust that it was pretty much a whole wasted writing session. However, I did manage to get all of my scene cards done, so that is a big chore done. I have both physical and digital ones, and I am pretty glad that I got it done.

There is not really much to talk about character-wise as I was just trying to string together the loose outline of how these stories progress. I thought doing two at once would be harder, and it may be once we get to the writing since each character does have a very different perspective, even though there are similar themes of second chances and missed opportunities. Can you tell what kind of failed relationships have had the biggest impact on me? That is part of what I love about writing romance. I can take all these huge mistakes and broken hearts that I have had and make something from them. Sometimes that means laying out exactly why XYZ person is an asshole and making them the villain. Sometimes it means taking the person who unintentionally hurt me and making that fleeting moment something more substantial that others can love and feel attached to as well. There is a Taylor Swift quote that I love, where she talks about this feeling.

“I’ve learned through writing that if something made me feel deeply or anything at all, it was worth it.”

Taylor Swift

I have really embraced this feeling. It directly feeds into my love of paper and pencil. I am forever scribbling notes about my day or what happened or people I see out and about. Life is full of so much inspiration and excitement if you are willing to focus on it. My commonplace notebook has really been the best thing I added to my writing routine. Having an inventory of my feelings and thoughts is nice to flip through when I am writing. I feel like it has helped make my writing less surface level.

So tomorrow, I am dedicating to doing all the location research. I have a lot to do. Hopefully, I can get through it without planning a million expensive trips (jk).

❤

Spencer

Happy Prep Day 2! It was a pretty productive day for me today. I blew through all of the goals I set. There are a lot of logistical concerns I have with Harder to Forget, such as how to format text messages and how to make sure readers know what timeline and POV they are in. I know that I will have to hire a good book layout designer if I decide to self-publish this book. Until that point, I really just want it to be as clear as possible to the people who will be reading it during the editing process. I really think that, in terms of querying/self-publishing, Harder to Forget is probably third or fourth on the list. I really obsess over the idea of a debut novel, probably to a fault. I really want to impress people with the kind of romance/erotica novel that I think should exist.

So let’s talk about each project a little. Today, I worked through the character vault for Centennial Park. It is really weird to have Nick in there at the beginning, and maybe I’ll change that, but he is such a dork and I kinda hate how he is characterized in this first book (maybe because he’s such a dick to my ride-or-die girl Tegan). But it was really fun to look at the character vault for Cornelia Street and see how different and insecure he is compared to when he and Tegan get together. The other thing I worked on today for this novel was settings. This book takes place in LA, Paris, Cannes, St. Moritz, Glacier Express, Heidelberg, NYC, and Tokyo. The thing that is so incredibly dreamy about having Emerson be a very rich French socialite is that he’s rich, and they can go anywhere in the world, running from their problems. Like, I would love to just drop everything and run to Switzerland. The problem is that now I need to spend a day working on the logistics of each of the cities, apartments/hotels, what they do, and how they fit into the story. I have a tendency to get lost in travel research because my wandering heart longs to be traveling the world at all times.

Alright, let’s talk Harder To Forget. This book feels a little bit like a fever dream right now. But let’s take a minute to introduce you to Jude and Olivia. Jude is extremely charming; he has the ability to tell stories that draw you in and make you feel like the only person in the world. He is crazy smart and isn’t afraid to use his intelligence to get what he wants, or hide what mischief he is up to. It’s a very dangerous skill for the timeline where he and Olivia are more of a situationship than a relationship. He is smart and sensitive; even in the “bad” times, he tries to be a good person. I think that is what is so captivating about him and Olivia; you root for them in both timelines. In the “bad” timeline, you want them to just get over their stupid issues and see what everyone else sees. And in the good timeline, it’s just the kind of love that all of us so desperately want: easy, supportive, and super passionate. Olivia is bubbly and sexy and suffers from what I’ve affectionately called Lana Turner syndrome. Men tend to just see her for what a sexpot she can be, completely missing how that feeds into how she loves and how they can be missing the best parts of her by not letting that side lead them to her more emotional side. This gets her into trouble in both timelines. But I think it’s something that a lot of women can relate to. We tend to be boiled down to one trait in relationships, and then we end up resenting that. I don’t think men (or women) mean to do it, but people latch on to what suits them, and sexpot is an ephemeral quality that people tend to devalue after the honeymoon period.

Alright, it’s time for tomorrow’s goals:

• 1/2 of the scene cards for Centennial Park
• 1/2 of the scene cards for Harder To Forget
• Start location research on LA for Harder To Forget
• Start location research on NYC for Harder To Forget
• Start location research for PDX for Harder to Forget

See you tomorrow! Happy prepping!

❤ Spencer

It is Camp NaNoWriMo prep week again. I can hardly believe it’s almost July. Since the end of camp in April, I have been working on how I want to turn Cornelia Street into two books. That has been a process that is harder than I thought, figuring out how to craft the rollercoaster ride that the characters are on. It really means that not many words have been added to the manuscript, but that’s fine. I would like to end the year with one or two first drafts. However, I am trying to embrace this process. Look at all those check marks! I had a pretty successful day today.

So, I am doing a very untraditional Camp this year. I am going to try to hold myself to the goal of writing 2000 words a day. However, this will be spread between two different projects. I just feel like since I will be using the big November NaNoWriMo to write an actual first draft of one of these books, I need to have more options. So, I’m working on two projects this month.

The first is Tegan and Emerson’s Novel: Centennial Park. I hope to get about 30,000 words done on it, plus the plotting and other character work on the side character that needs to be done. I really need to focus on my external conflict in this book, and I’m hoping that free writing and giving my brain something else to work on will help.

The other project is born of my trip to NYC. As a city my younger self longed to be in, I have been really thinking about reflection points in people’s lives. You know those moments where it feels like there are two (or three) paths and you have to choose, closing off the others to you forever. What if you could see both paths? What if the reader got to see the best and worst of the protagonists? Taylor Jenkins Reid does this in Maybe Another Life, and while I liked that book, the story focuses on Hannah. In my book, Harder to Forget, I want to look at the couple at the center of this pivotal point. I feel like having dual protagonists and seeing how these two people in one timeline are the couple that everyone dreams they could be a part of, and in another they are crashing into each other’s lives one ill-fated encounter after another, hurting themselves and others in the process. I want to look at the ways that love makes and breaks us all.

So, tomorrow, for Day Two, I want to:

• Work on Olivia’s character profile
• Work on the Act 1 timeline 1 of Harder To Forget
• Work on Act 1 scene cards for Centennial Park
• Map out the settings for Timeline 1 of Harder to Forget

See You tomorrow! Are you doing Camp NaNoWriMo inJuly? tell me about your project in the comments!

Being an event planner can be a pretty cool job. Lots of it is spreadsheets, budgets, and email. But when you get to go on-site for events and see the work of those hours of toil behind a screen, the job really feels like magic. I was so lucky to go on a trip to NYC this month. I got to do a bunch of cool events and meetings around the Tribeca Festival. I was surprised how much the trip felt like a homecoming, to the city itself and to who I am. I didn’t know how transformative it would feel after freeing myself from the expectations of my family earlier this spring.

New York City has always called to me. My very favorite aunt lived there. Childhood summers were filled with Shakespeare and New York. As soon as the Children’s Shakespeare Workshop I was in was done at the end of July, my mother would ship me off to the misery that is NYC in August.

Flo Ann made those few weeks before school magical. School clothes shopping at Bloomingdale’s, she bought me my first full face of makeup after letting me get it done at the Chanel counter at Saks. She understood the heart of a creative girl who small-town life did not suit. She was that girl 40 years earlier. She grew up in Indiana and fled to the city for college. She went to school for fashion and interior design. She and I saw each other every time I was in the city until her death.

This trip was the first time I didn’t get to sit in the Russian Tea Room and tell her all about the love and love lost in my life, what I was doing for work, or what side creative projects I was working on. I was nervous about how the city would feel without her. It was lovely. I saw so many old friends, met my co-workers in person for the first time. I have been slightly depressed since returning to the very small world I have here in Portland. After hitting the ground running from the red-eye, I managed to make it all the way through the day of setup and run our first event.

On Tuesday morning, I got to have an early morning meeting in Manhattan. The cafe was the perfect place to talk about the magic of new games.

Oh, the stationery stores of NYC are perfect. I visited the West Village location of Goods for the Study. It was such a beautifully curated collection of pens, notebooks, and stationery. I am very lucky to live in Portland, where we have the incomparable Oblation Papers and Press. But just seeing someone else’s curation of Japanese and American stationery staples was fun. I also lucked out and found the highly coveted and newly released Traveler’s Notebook in Olive. So of course, I had to snatch it up.

Tuesday night, I got to see one of the most amazing talks. Sam Lake from Remedy was talking with Mike Flanagan about building horror and suspense in Alan Wake 2. I am such a huge fangirl of Remedy games, so to see these two horror titans talk about my favorite genre was so much fun.

Wednesday was just magical. If I’m honest, it may be one of my favorite days in the city ever. I started the day with breakfast at Chelsea Market with one of my oldest friends. She and I used to work in events together in LA. She was also working the film side of the festival. It was great to poke around Chelsea Market with her.

After a long day of meetings, I met up with some friends for a networking event before meeting up with another old friend for drinks at an adorable little bar in the West Village. Walking Manhattan at night, catching up with people who have come and gone from my life was just magical. I could not have asked for more.

So that’s the first part of my trip. We’re going to do a bunch of Camp NaNoWriMo prep this week. But I still have a bunch of memories and photos to share with you next Sunday.

❤ Spencer

Hello from the road in Billings Montana. It’s time to wrap up Camp NaNoWriMo. It was probably ambitious to think I could write a full 50,000 words while being on the road for the last half of the month. The week I spent at home trying to get my parents settled in their house was also a complete disaster for my mental health and my writing

My final word count was 39,333, which is respectable. I think what is more important is that I’ve really developed Tegan into a character I am proud of. She was always just this lost girl who fumbled her way through life. Exploring her relationship with Emerson really opened up who she is and what she is capable of. There is something formative about the first romance that shows you sexuality and sensuality in new ways. She is caring, compassionate, and open-minded, and I love that she is so willing to take life by the horns and hang on for the ride.

I love her so much that I feel her story is really two books: one about her and Emerson, and one about her and Nick. There is just so much with Emerson that I want to touch on. The romance is darker and sexier than Nick’s, but there are still plenty of tender moments. When I think about having to cull out scenes between the two, I feel sad. Emerson is too good and too hurtful of a person to be just a side story in someone’s life.

So later this week, when I am finally at home back in my office, I am going to try to craft a plot around the scenes that I have and split out the Nick storyline over the two books. The first book will set up the meet-cute for Emerson, and the second book will focus on all of the reconnection.

I hope you all had a successful Camp NaNoWriMo. I am planning on having a weekly writing update on the books as I continue the process. There are also plenty of road trip posts coming up, so check back soon for those.

If you haven’t noticed, every blog post this month has a song lyric for a title. I’ve complied a Spotify Playlist of those songs. You can check them out here

See you soon. ❤ Spencer

Hello from my hometown. Sorry for the silence; I had hoped to get at least one blog post up a day this month. However, this trip home has been way more emotionally draining and expensive than I could ever have imagined.

Home has always been a loaded concept. The place of my birth, my parents’ house, has never been the shelter from the world and its darkness that the word “home” conveys. I used to think that it was all my fault. I rambled around that Victorian house with untreated ADHD, and not a clue as to what a bisexual was, or that I could possibly be one. I was a literal nightmare, leaving destruction in my wake for the majority of my teens and early 20s. This trip has put that blame to bed. I was a child, one who needed help. Granted, that wouldn’t really be available for some time. But instead of dealing with the challenges that came with grace and love, it was manipulation, disdain, and distance.

Home is where I feel centered in who I am. Home right now is Portland; in my 20s, it was LA. Who knows where it will be in 5 years or 10? There is a large distance between the Spencer who exists here in Indiana and the Spencer that is real. I always chafe at the differences between the two. The Spencer that my family finds acceptable feels like I’ve lobotomized my entire personality as I shove myself back into the closet, to the sounds of Fox News coming from my father’s TV.

I’ve shared how hard this week has been on Instagram stories. It has been heartwarming to hear from some of you. It’s sad that many of you also feel lost in the place society expects you to feel the safest. I don’t think that is unusual. I think we tend not to talk about it, especially when you are the weird kid from a small, conservative town.

I’ve been thinking a lot about my book and if I will ever get it published in my parents’ lifetime. How would I handle that? My characters are queer, poly, and kinky AF. The decision I think is best is that I don’t think I will ever share the news. Why kick a hornet’s nest? They could never respect the boundary that I wrote this book, but I don’t want them to read it. They would never be able to abide that it wasn’t a book that was written with their comfort in mind. How could I not think about what the neighbors would think, how people would feel about how I was raised?

Speaking of my book, I am at 30,833 words. There are four days left. It is unrealistic to think that I will hit 50,000 this month. I am also coming around to the idea that it is unrealistic to think that Tegan’s story is contained to just one book. I am thinking duology, maybe a trilogy. But really, the romance of her and Emerson, and her and Nick are the ones I want to focus on. I do think there is room for a third book of her being carefree and slutty that could be fun.

For the rest of the month, I am just going to write scenes that I think would be fun to explore with Tegan. Then next month, I will focus on taking those scenes and crafting them into a book. I really think that July NaNoWriMo could be a final edit and polish month. I am so motivated to work on this. It has brought me so much joy in such a rough time. I cannot wait for you all to meet Tegan, Emerson, and Nick.

Talk to you soon

❤ Spencer

Hello from Davenport, but I am going to take a second to talk about Omaha. I had such a great time there. The hotel I stayed at was definitely my favorite of this trip and probably one of my favorites of all time. So, if you go to Omaha, you should stay at The Cottonwood Hotel.

The hotel used to be The Blackstone Hotel and has a pretty storied history. One of its claims to fame is that it is the birthplace of the Reuben Sandwich, one of my favorite kinds of sandwich. I am currently eating the most disappointing sandwich at a hotel in Iowa, longing for that spicy mustard perfection from last night.

Writing has been going slow, it is hard to fit it in with driving, work, and travel. A lot of times, I am just so tired by the end of the day that I can’t think clearly enough to get a rough sketch of the scene. I am hoping to spend some quality time with it at my parents’ house though after they go to bed.

So, quick little recap, I’ll have two posts tomorrow: one in the morning and one in the afternoon.

See you tomorrow! ❤ Spencer.