Hey, babes!
I hope your week has gone well, and that you celebrated this auspicious last few days with the kind of energy you hope to carry with you into the rest of the year. It’s spring, there was a new moon this week, and it’s now Aries season. The energetic new year in Western astrology. I could go on.
Last week was my birthday, and I spent a glorious day hiking Mount Storm King on the Olympic Peninsula. Not for the first time, or even the hundredth, I was deeply grateful for and stunned at the beauty of the place I call home. I hadn’t tackled a hike since October, and it felt good to push myself. I’m not sure if Mount Storm King is actually less difficult than Mailbox Peak, but I was pleased with my pace and how my body handled the challenge. It was my good fortune that the weather was also clear, warm, and beautiful.
There are 283 days left in this year, and since last week I’ve been in deep contemplation about how best to use them. It might sound odd, but I’ve spent most of my life waiting to turn 32, and now that I’m here, I feel like something big is supposed to happen.
Tuesday night, I realized that I had not been to the beach in months. I’d been feeling anxious, ungrounded, and suffocated—the cold and dark were hitting me pretty hard this winter. The ocean is just a 25-minute drive from home. I’d made a point of going to the beach at least once a week for a long time after moving here. More, if possible. So, last night, I went to watch the sunset. I prayed, talked to the ocean, and watched other beachgoers dig for shellfish.
I’m really very lucky to have simple pleasures like this at the tip of my fingers. The things that really feed my soul aren’t complicated.
Book Recommendations
This past week I’ve been doing a ton of reading to prepare me for the next few books I’m writing, and for enjoyment. I devoured Anne Malcolm’s Wilting Violets (Sons of Templar, NM), the sequel to Wretched Love, in anticipation of the third book. Wrathful Souls was released on my birthday, and she’s sitting on my Kindle waiting for me to pick her up tonight.
Wilting Violets was a fantastic age-gap MC romance with a ton of edgy tension, gut-twisting pain, and steamy love. Anne Malcolm knows how to write a rough-and-ready, scarred, and traumatized love interest and a complicated female lead who blossoms under the reader’s eye. The will-they-won’t-they in this book was intense, to say the least.
I also dove back into a favorite audiobook, Guild of the Cowry Catchers. This is an epic fantasy with all non-human characters. There is romance, a ton of adventure at sea, and mortal peril. I wanted something that would put me in the right frame of mind to write Deep Sea, and I am so glad I have this rich, engrossing, enchanting series to come back to.
What’s Next
Just a couple of chapters left to write on Breaking News before she is set loose into the world and then I turn my attention fully to Deep Sea. Meanwhile, I’m trying to keep my ADHD author brain from spiraling off into the many, many other books I have planned in this upcoming couple of years. One thing at a time.
If you didn’t know, one of my Army buddies, Jacob Summers, has just done a photo shoot with Golden Czermak of Furious Fotog, and he’s got a gallery of bomb photos with tons of looks available for covers. Jacob is an absolutely stellar human, cannot recommend him enough. He and I have already worked out which of my upcoming books he will be covering, and I can’t wait to see him on more. Check him out on Instagram at @captain_valhalla.
Lastly, thank you guys x100000 for the love on last week’s newsletter. Sharing raw work (that was unedited, and gave me minor fits) is always insanely vulnerable. Thank you for the birthday love as well.
As always, I appreciate each and every one of you that comes along on this ride with me. I hope you have an incredible week. Comment or email me at mariahthayer@substack.com and let me know if you were able to read Unlucky! I always love hearing from you.
And hey! Vote, and let me know what you think!
XOXO,
Mariah