The Life of a Book; June 3 2026

Glad Day’s next book fair takes place June 14th, and I’m going to be there selling my remaining stock! I only have 24(!) books left, in total. Once those are sold… That’s it. That’s all the books that have been printed.

I have very mixed feelings about this, as you might imagine. On the one hand, it’s been exciting, getting to go to these markets! I’ve had a great time getting to meet readers and chat with other authors. But…

It’s really saddening to know this is It for The Other Face of Sympathy.

I don’t know that I’ve talked much about the origins of this book. If I have, I’ll beg your indulgence, because I’m being nostalgic in the weirdest way. I actually wrote this book during a pretty miserable time.

Things were going downhill very quickly in my 10+ year relationship, though no one would communicate with me about why that was. I hadn’t had much time for writing, with a new baby in my life that I was kind of taking care of on my own – friends would come by to help periodically, but I was exhausted, stagnant, and didn’t understand why everything felt so wrong.

I was given one day off in November to take my laptop off to Starbucks and get some writing done. I had another project on the go, and fully intended on working on that… until I sat down with my drink, opened a new document, and started to write fictional diary entry after diary entry, creating the stories that would wind up in The Other Face of Sympathy.

Once I got started, I didn’t stop. At every possible opportunity, I was writing. I literally would be feeding a baby pumpkin puree with one hand and typing with the other.

Then my relationship officially came to a close in February, and I left the apartment my ex and I shared, going to temporarily stay with my in-laws. This was 2020.

And, well. Y’all remember what happened next.

We all locked ourselves down as Covid-19 spread like a nasty rumour. Ironically, my ex and her new partner decided to escape the danger of a population-dense city by staying with her parents, too, so we were all under one roof. I won’t lie, I was treated really badly in this time (not by her parents, they’re lovely people, but as you might imagine… Her new partner was not a fan of me). I spent a great deal of time quarantined to one small bedroom.

I wrote the rest of the book that spring. I revised, I sent it out to beta readers, I made friends via this book. I think it may have helped me survive one of the lowest points of my life.

And now its life is over. It will exist in archives, but this version of the story is finished.

I hope I can tell it again someday.