happy betwixtmas!
a short(ish) little end-of-the-year letter - and a sale!
Hello! I’m writing this letter from an airplane, heading back to London after ten days in the US seeing family and friends and eating and drinking a lot and being incredibly lazy (and spending almost zero time online, cannot recommend this highly enough), which felt much-needed given the state of my brain by the time we reached December this year.
The Brits call the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day Betwixtmas, which I have always found delightful. I am, honestly, not very good at this week. For years, I worked in public libraries, which meant that I always had to work for at least part of the week after Christmas, which made me bitter about all the relaxed families wandering into the library in cozy athleisure while I was being run off my feet by winter break crowds. Then I moved to London and have been writing full-time for two Christmases in a row, and I realized that having this week off is not actually that enjoyable for me, either. Turns out I enjoy relaxing the most when the rest of the world is working (because it makes me feel like I am getting away with something), and I therefore don’t like lounging around being lazy during a week when everyone else is doing the same. (I am 100% positive this says something uncharitable about my character, and I am choosing not to look too closely at it.)
However, I do understand why people love this week, and it does not escape me that this is an excellent week for reading all those books you’ve had lying around all year… which is, in fact, why I am in your inbox today.
book news
So: Christmas Is All Around is on sale in e-book, today only (December 27th), in the US, for $3.99! This is the first time it’s gone on sale, and so a perfect time to snap it up. I know that you are probably thinking, “Yes, but it’s December 27th,” but I have news for you: there is a whole segment at the end of the book set during Betwixtmas, and the dramatic, romantic climactic chapter is set on New Year’s Eve. So now is, in fact, the perfect time to read it! (And if you’re in the UK: it’s been a Kindle deal all month for £0.99, so still time to hop on that deal!)
I’m so pleased that so many of you have picked this one up to read this holiday season; it was something new and different from the rest of my work, and I honestly am quite proud of it, and of myself for embracing a challenge. I don’t know if/when I’ll attempt a contemporary romance again (though I do think it’s fairly likely I will eventually, since I have two different ideas on the [very] back burner in my brain) but it was really fun to get to write about the world around me for once, rather than a heavily fictionalized, somewhat anachronistic version of the past. (More silly historicals are coming from me soon, though!)
I don’t have any other writing news to share; line edits landed in my inbox just before Christmas (on the evening of my birthday, no less; rude!) and I am going to be diving into them starting….probably as soon as I get home from the airport and send this newsletter? Given my aforementioned weird feelings about the laziness of this week, I am actually looking forward to having something to work on. I love this book, and am excited to share it with you next fall, but it hasn’t been officially announced yet (and I don’t like talking too much about things I’m still actively working on, it makes me nervous) so I can’t share any news on that front. But as a small newsletter treat, here is a single line that may or may not be in the finished book (I can make no promises, since I’m still editing it):
Much more news about this book to come in 2025!
five recent faves
Home Cooking: A Writer in the Kitchen by Laurie Colwin
I have seen Colwin mentioned a few times of late, in the context of “everyone loves Nora Ephron but Laurie Colwin deserves to be just as famous” which is enough of an endorsement for me! Colwin primarily wrote novels, but I started with one of her nonfiction books (because I was deep in the middle of editing a book, and often find it easier to read nonfiction when my brain is that fried). Home Cooking came out in 1988 and is. . . so wonderful? I love food writing, and the way Colwin writes about food is so romantic, just in this incredibly glamorous but bohemian, down to earth yet aspirational way that is catnip to me. I, too, want to be a young single 20something in New York in the 1960s and 1970s, eating eggplant on toast and hosting dinner parties in my tiny apartment! I love this book so much. Some of the recipes feel a bit dated and 80s, but honestly I cared more about just reading it and immersing myself in her world than in actually trying to use it to cook. I can’t wait to read her fiction next.
Receipt From the Bookshop newsletter by Katie Clapham
I love this newsletter so much; I look forward to Fridays knowing that it will arrive in my inbox. It’s written by a woman who co-owns (with her mom!) an independent bookshop in a small town in Lancashire, and she basically just sends an accounting of a day in the shop, interactions with customers, funny things she overhears, etc. It’s extremely charming and also I’m kind of jealous, because for years as a children’s librarian I have thought that some sort of newsletter or blog about day-to-day life in a library would be fun to write (the things that happen! every day! in a library! you would not believe!!!), but I never did it because it felt like a weird violation of patrons’ privacy, even anonymized? Slash I was worried it would lose me my job, for that reason? Anyway: fewer concerns along these lines in a bookshop, especially when you are the owner, and I am so pleased someone else had this idea and is actually following through with it.
A Shop Around the Corner and You’ve Got Mail double feature
Obviously, neither of these movies are new to me, but I don’t think I’ve ever watched them so close together as I did while I was in the US at Christmas, and can I just say: I highly recommend? It’s really fun to see the scenes that they basically lifted whole cloth from the original movie and moved into You’ve Got Mail, and it’s also just fascinating to watch the same plot play out in two different movies, set in different cities (countries!) . Also, it’s Christmas, and I maintain that both of these movies are A+ Christmas watching. (The Christmas decorations at the shop in YGM! It should be Christmas year-round in that bookshop!) It’s been a long year, and this is comfort viewing, which I feel is 100% necessary at the moment.
Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis
When it comes to romantasy (a word I have issues with, but that’s a subject for another day), my tastes veer more towards the cozy/charming rather than the dark/sexy, and this one—which comes out in February—is a delight. Lots of loveable side characters, a great set-up for sequels, the romance and fantasy elements are well-balanced, and the whole thing just feels. . . light, cozy, and endearing? I love Burgis’ books for younger readers (Kat, Incorrigible, which is a middle grade Regency fantasy, was a constant presence on my staff picks shelf at one of my former library jobs) and I’m so pleased she’s writing for adults now. One to keep an eye out for when it hits shelves soon!
A Lady Would Know Better by Emma Theriault
Consider this a treat for your future self, if you preorder it now. It comes out at the end of January, and it’s a debut historical romance (Emma previously wrote a YA fantasy!), and it’s delightful. It somehow delivers an amnesia storyline, of all things, in a way that doesn’t seem entirely insane—or, at least, only insane in a good, fun way, not in a totally nonsensical way. I was lucky enough to read an early draft of this, and am looking forward to diving back into a finished copy very soon, because I’m hosting an Instagram Live with Emma at the end of January to celebrate the book’s release—I hope some of you will come hang out with us while we chat all things historical romance!
That’s it from me for today—and for 2024! Thank you all for reading my work during a very long, very weird year; I appreciate it, truly.
Happy New Year!
Martha