Due dates as deadlines

A surprise / update from Caitlin

This piece is going to be short, and you’ll see why.

FIRST, the surprise (or maybe not)…

I’m pregnant!

Obligatory belly photo courtsey of Beck Dorey-Stein

Very pregnant. Due in less than two weeks. (If you think back on my less-than-stellar posts in November and December, you can thank my day-long morning sickness for those.)

All is well. I’ve had a ridiculously healthy pregnancy. Baby has dropped down and could hit the launch button any minute now.¹

SECOND, the related good news for you…

I’ve lined up three months of guest posts for a substack maternity leave! You can expect reading & craft posts, per usual, from new and familiar voices.

It’s gonna be awesome. I’m excited to read them and lurk in the comments, probably while nursing or pumping or eating ice cream.

And THIRD, a writing update, and why this post is short…

I used the baby’s due date as a writing deadline and got a new novel draft to my agent a couple weeks ago. (The novel I referenced here.) And…drumroll…she’s psyched about it!

Where would I be without Tenor

I think I’m finally writing the novel that will be my second published novel. My law school friends always remind me that I do my best work up against a deadline, so maybe writing to beat the baby’s arrival was the perfect situation for me. Or maybe this idea just needed a long time for gestation. (The book-baby comparisons abound.)

Based on conversations with my agent, I’m going to make some character-based edits before we send any pages to my editors. It remains to be seen whether we’ll have something worth sending before this kid arrives. (It definitely won’t be a fully edited manuscript, but there could be enough words that it’d be worth sending a teaser of what I’ve got cooking.) We’ll just see what happens at this point, given that I could have a couple weeks to go or just a couple minutes. That said, I’m content to believe that I’ve finally hit the trifecta: good characters, good plot, and something to say. 

This baby is bearing down on my pelvis, so I’m spending most of my free time and energy on the novel, hence my short update post. I hope the coming months are really enjoyable for our readers; in addition to Andromeda’s continued brilliance, we have some interesting stuff in the hopper, thanks to my incredible writer friends who’ve agreed to help me take a maternity leave. And I’ll be back in the fall: back to Substack, and back to my book baby.

But for now, consider today the start of my Substack maternity leave. In two weeks, you can expect a piece from the hilarious and dastardly Erin Flannagan, who is an award-winner suspense writer and aggressively kind person. (And next week is Andromeda per usual!)

Whether you’re a long-time reader or are looking at this for the first time, thank you so much for supporting us, and I hope you enjoy these next few months of guest posts!

1. I would like you to know that my three-year-old daughter wants to name the baby Boom.