When I think of my newsletter as a newsletter, I feel no motivation to actually write it out. At least that’s my excuse every month when it is time to drop another newsletter for the people who have been generous enough to follow me. I owe you all this newsletter, and I want it to be good. Writing has always been the thing I love most, and it’s always been personal for me. In fact, the more personal my writing, the better it tends to be. So, my newsletter will change a bit. To you, it’s still reading my thoughts. But to me, it needs to be a little deeper. I’m treating this as my diary from now on. So, things may get deep, but you are now reading a private conversation between me and my diary. Okay, let’s do this.

👑 Dear Diary, I have to admit that I feel a little bit let down. On June 1st. I published my first book of 2024, called ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕄𝕒𝕪 𝕀 ℙ𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕐𝕠𝕦. It’s a sequel to a book that I know people loved, The Darkest Kink. It had been a while since I’d written a sequel, and after publishing ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕄𝕒𝕪 𝕀 ℙ𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕐𝕠𝕦 I was quickly reminded why.

My writing career spans much longer than the books I have up for sale on multiple retailers. I had an entire backlist before The Therapist came out and changed my life. I had a book called Kingpin, and it was the highest selling book I’d ever published until fairly recently. It was a huge success. I mean, I was convinced that I was blowing up and that every book I published after it would be huge. And what better way to take advantage of the momentum than to publish a sequel to my biggest book? So, that’s what I did. I wrote and published Long Live the King, only to watch it flop like a fish out of water. It was brutal, and I vowed to learn my lesson and never publish a sequel again, or at least not until I wrote something even bigger than Kingpin.

Fast forward to 2024, and here I am after publishing a sequel to a book that had the best 1st-month sales of my career. The Darkest Kink was monumental, and I was convinced this was the time to publish another sequel. Well, it looks like I was right all those years ago. ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕄𝕒𝕪 𝕀 ℙ𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕐𝕠𝕦 hasn’t sold much. However, the love it has gotten has been tremendous, and I am forever grateful for it. My fans make me feel so special, and I love them all more than words can describe. But my sequel days are coming to an end. Now that I write books literally for a living, sequels just don’t seem like the right move to make for me. For whatever reason, I just can’t sell them. I wish I could hug and thank every single person who has bought ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕄𝕒𝕪 𝕀 ℙ𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕐𝕠𝕦, and let them know that I truly appreciate them showing love to such a dark book. Contrary to the numbers, I still think ℍ𝕠𝕨 𝕄𝕒𝕪 𝕀 ℙ𝕝𝕖𝕒𝕤𝕖 𝕐𝕠𝕦 is my best book, and I will build off of how good it felt to write it. It is just going to be a while until I publish another sequel.

So Diary, you may be wondering what’s next. Well, I’m working on my next book already. I’m over 30K words in, and it is going so well.

It’s a slow-burn BDSM romance, and even though I’m probably not even halfway through it, I’m OBSESSED! Hopefully, this next one will be another perfect release that will tempt me to write a sequel 😅 I think I’ll announce the title in my next entry. I don’t want to say too much when we’re just getting acquainted.

Anyway, I’m really excited about the future, Diary. I have a new agent, one I’ve always admired and wanted to work with (shout out to my first agent, Ena! Good luck with all of your future endeavors!), and as usual, I intend to keep growing bigger and bigger over time. I have another book signing coming up in just over 2 weeks in Connecticut, and I can’t wait to meet more readers and fans. So I’m glad you’re here, Diary. You and I are going to have lots of fun together! Just not with sequels 😅

Until next time 👑

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I just started this, hoping it would pull me out of a terrifyingly long book slump. Marie Lu is one of my favorite authors, so I have gone into this with very high expectations. Well, 27% in … and it feels like I’m still in a slump 😭