This morning I woke up and my first thought was, is this book going to give me a mental breakdown? and for some reason, this felt like a good time to start telling people about it. Even though Iām still editing it, and I havenāt nailed down a release date yet. Is this a sign the mental breakdown is already in full swing? Possibly!
If youāve had the misfortune of knowing me or hearing me talk at any point over the last year or two, youāve likely heard me mention this project at some point as Coast Book, or Beach Book, or That WIP I Kept Working On After It Was Rejected Even Though I Really Should Have Been Working on Other Things. I feel like I have been working on it forever. It is possible itās making me mentally unwell. It is possible I always think this about every book.
Itās tentatively called Heartwaves, and here is an equally tentative synopsis:
Mae Kellerman is content. After forty years of ups and downs, she has a meaningful job at a queer community center in Portland, Oregon. She has an apartment full of plants, a ride-or-die group of friends.
Until the day her best friend and mentor actually does up and die. Leaving Mae with a hole in her heartāand a shocking amount of money from his inheritance.
Before she can think about the cash, she has to focus on throwing his perfect death party, followed by spreading his ashes on the Oregon coast. Only then does she take a breath, and in the process, stumbles upon an empty storefront for sale in the tiny whale-watching town of Greyfin Bay. Overnight, an old dream surfacesā¦and her newfound inheritance could make it possible.
If only Dell McCleary didnāt stand in her way.
Real estate agent and owner of said storefront, Dell only sells property to the folks actually invested in the best interests of Greyfin Bay. Not some Portlander with pink hair who breezes in on a whim. A Portlander who, irritatingly, refuses to take no for an answer.
As Mae upends her life for the pursuit of opening a queer-owned bookstore in a conservative coastal town, she and Dell are forced to work together, navigating prejudices and past traumas along the way. But as opening day of Bay Books grows nearer, Maeās heart grows increasingly tangled with her landlordāsāeven if his own heart might already belong to someone else.
Heartwaves is a contemporary queer romance that explores the risks and rewards of life in any landscape, and the freedom to lift the limitations we put on love. Ā
This book started for me as, and I think most strongly remains, an exploration of small town romanceāand I mean classic, mass-market small town romance, with flowers and cottages on the coversāa sub-genre that has always brought me immense comfort, at the same time that I grapple with it deeply as a queer person. A queer person raised in a small town who now lives in a liberal city, specifically. In a way, itās me paying tribute to (while grappling deeply with) romance as a wholeāthe tropes are incredibly familiar, but then along the way I make everything weird.
Hereās a list of my favorite things about it:
theyāre both fat!
theyāre both in their forties!
theyāre both bi/pan/queer/whateverthefuck!
everyone is nonbinary!! not really butā¦ā¦itās at least 50/50 with cisness in this one
for actual information though: Mae and Dell are both stereotypically feminine and masculine presenting, but the pairing in my heart is nb/nb
a pack of dogs named Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young
books! I think Alexis Hall said once that every writer, at some point, will write a book about books, so here I am. the world is horrifying; why SHOULDNāT I indulge in a little fantasy about opening a bookstore with a view of the ocean, tell me I canāt!!
related: Iāll Make You Bookshelves as a love language
plants and flowers!
matcha lattes!
tattoos/beards/pink hair/pretty nails
a butch elder who owns the IGA
crying to Judy Garland
crossovers with some of my favorite previously written worlds (see: me just having a good time)
by accident, itās an incredibly slow burn (sorry/youāre welcome)!
While these are all fun things, the more I work on Heartwaves, the more I worry that it has become, perhaps, a bloated document of me simply needing to explore many things for myself rather than, per se, Making Good Book.
At the same time, if one canāt self-publish a magnum opus of Exploring Things One Needs To Explore At the Time, what is even the point of words?
So, other than exploring queerness in small towns, Heartwaves also explores:
the guilt of leaving a public service job for more selfish pursuits
grief!
related: getting old and watching people you love also get old
the concept of polyamory
feelings about gender while being stereotypically femme and masc
mess
like, sometimes you move a lot throughout your life and love a lot of different people and make mistakes and hurt people and have people hurt you and sometimes your memories just all feel as big as your dreams!! and you are very competent but also messy
And then as a bonus, I thought itād be cool to sit with some of my worst fears and learn more about PTSD.
Soā¦thatās about it!
Iām hoping to publish Heartwaves in June or July. Iām hoping to send out a small number of ARCs/be more competent about all of this soon.
Hope youāre doing as well as you can,
xo
anita
I'm so excited to read this!!!
Oh dang, that sounds like so much fun! Can't wait to read it!!