New Series Announcement: Writer’s Log!

What really goes on behind the scenes of a novel?

Hello friends! And welcome to a new series I’m calling Writer’s Log.

Folks often ask me how I come up with ideas for my stories. I don’t always have the answers. Writing is such a fluid, intimate, and intense process for me, that it can feel magical in some ways. The period of writing and revising a book is something special, and something I often forget. It’s also something that I wish I could give more insight into for aspiring writers. I think if folks could see how messy and uncertain the process is, they would feel more confident in getting started (and continuing) on the journey.

With those desires in mind, I’ve decided to keep a writer’s log while I work on my fourth novel that I will share each week. I’ll share about what I wrote and what I’m thinking and feeling related to the writing process. I’ll keep it spoiler-free, since I’m hoping people will want to read this one when it is ready. These will be minimally edited and polished. Basically, this is my writing journal, and I’m giving you access to it.

Without further ado, let me catch you up on the process for this book.

Working title: Amy

Genre: Gothic psychological suspense (I think). Genre for this book has been tricky for me to define. At first, I was thinking it was a thriller, but it feels more suspense-like. Once I started looking into Gothic texts, I decided to shift things more in the gothic/horror direction, and most of my contemporary reads right now are in that space.

If you’ve read my previous books, you know this is a big change for me! My first three novels are contemporary romances, though I’d say they sit nicely between romance and what we’re currently calling women’s fiction.

Why the genre change? It didn’t feel so much like a choice, really. I like to follow my intuition as a writer, and the unconscious writer part of me didn’t want to read or write romance. (Believe me, I tried.) Once I told that part of myself it could write whatever kind of book it wanted, it took me in this direction. My work has always dealt with heavy themes—grief, trauma, avoidance, neurodivergence—and the shift into something darker makes sense for me. I’m really excited (and terrified) to show what I can do in a new genre.

What it’s about: The book is about a disillusioned journalist named Amy Sterling. She works for a small-town paper writing fluff pieces instead of the hard-hitting investigative stories she’s always dreamed of writing. She spends her free time obsessing over missing persons’ cases. At the start of the novel, she is feeling frustrated and stuck. Her career isn’t where she wants it to be. She is always busy but never seems to get anything done. She’s been with her boyfriend Julian for a few years—he’s charming and devoted and yet…something feels off. She’d rather not think too hard about that something.

When Amy’s estranged best friend Cyrus reaches out with an offer to collaborate on a career-defining story about Marcus Winters—the eccentric tech-billionaire from their hometown whose wife’s unsolved death is somewhat of a local legend—she jumps at the chance to reinvent her career (and herself).

But returning to her hometown of Bar Harbor, Maine is more unsettling than Amy anticipates. A long-buried diary connects Amy’s life to Mrs. Winters’ in ways she can’t ignore, stirring unsettling memories of a fire, a mother who vanished without a trace, and fragmented moments too strange to be real. Marcus Winters seems to know more about Amy than he’s willing to reveal, and even Cyrus seems to be keeping secrets. With every layer of manipulation and betrayal Amy uncovers, the less certain she is of who and what she can trust—including herself.

When the truth reveals itself to be more disorienting and dangerous than she could have ever imagined, it threatens not just her life, but her sense of identity and grip on reality itself. To survive, Amy will have to face the terrifying truth she’s buried within herself—one that holds the power to propel her into a bright new future—if it doesn’t consume her completely first.

The process so far…and where I’m at now:

Usually, I write a book a year. That all fell apart after I finished my most recent novel, Last Call at the Local. That book was released in January 2024, but I finished writing it around March 2023. Since then, I’d come up with a few ideas, but nothing that excited me enough to get me to my keyboard. I was in a real reading and writing slump.

A lot was happening in my life. Basically, I found myself in a long dark night of the soul. It was a transformative period of my life where I had to be the focus project instead of a book. I’m still in the transformative part, but most of the heavy lifting has been done.

By the time a book is released, I’ve usually finished the next thing. This time, I hadn’t even started it. It was tough for me to let go of guilt and fear and allow myself to not write. It was what I needed.

But in Summer of 2023, I found myself interested in the topic/theme of manipulation. This is the real seed that, over time, became Amy. I didn’t do much, simply let the seed germinate in my mind. I told myself that I was in “crow mode” – the period of time where I collect shiny things that spark my interest in the hopes that eventually, they’ll come together into something awesome.

It wasn’t until around October of 2024 that my little seed started to take shape. I knew I wanted to write specifically about narcissism in some way—not the kind that people throw around all willy-nilly, but true DMS-5 style narcissism. My seed was setting down some roots.

About a month later—I remember because it was the full moon in Taurus in November 2024. I was hanging out with my husband when BAM! I could FEEL the story inside of me. I didn’t have plot details, but I had enough. I had a character—my husband said the name Amy and I knew immediately that Amy was my main character. I didn’t know the details, but I knew what I wanted the story to feel like, what my goal in writing it was, and that was all I needed to start moving forward.

It has been a slow process ever since. I have been through a lot of ups and downs since then that have made writing a challenge. I spent a lot of time reading and thinking and slowly tinkering. I truly began drafting summer of 2025. I thought I would draft the book furiously over the summer, but it didn’t happen. I did get a lot of work done on it though, enough to finish a book proposal and loop my agent in on what I was working on.

Long story, short: I’ve got about 18k words in a zero-draft. My prologue and first chapter are solid. I’m currently working on chapter two, which I had written before, but decided to change. My goal is to have this book drafted and looking sharp by March of 2026. You are truly with me at the early stages of the drafting process, so welcome!

Here’s what is really holding me back on this book: Myself. I’ve got the idea. I’ve got most of the plot. I’m ready to go…but I keep finding distractions because I’m in my head. I’ve never been so anxious about writing a book before. What I am trying to do with this book is ambitious. I’m worried I’ve bit off more than I can chew. I care SO MUCH about this idea, that I’m terrified of writing it because what if I can’t pull it off? What if I’ve built it up so much and it…sucks. Falls flat. What if no one wants it?

I already know that the solution to this is to just write. Embrace the shitty first draft. Remember that all can be fixed in revision. Stop being a perfectionist. Keep going even when I’m afraid of failure. The universe wouldn’t give me this book if it didn’t want me to write it. And only I can write it.

What can you expect? Each week, I’ll send my writing log. It’ll explain what I did each day related to writing, even if the entry for that day is “Nothing.” I want to share what is going on in my head and what it looks like when I’m working on a book. I hope it will be interesting and useful to your own writing practice, and I hope it will help me to stay accountable.

So be on the lookout! Next Monday, I’ll drop the writing log for this week. Fingers crossed I have some interesting progress to share! What are you hoping to see in these posts? Drop a comment and let me know!

XO,

SGR