It's the Finnnaaal Countdoowwwnnn
de-de-de dooooo de-de-de-de-de~
Hey friends!
We are officially a WEEK OUT from The Dead Romantics! Can you believe it? I sure as heck can’t. It feels like the months just zipped by so fast and also not fast enough.
Commence the week-long montage of me just nervously sweating through every single shirt. It’s going to happen. I’ll just be in Target getting toothpaste and BAM, the sweats just start happening. It’s like menopause, but for anxiety.
You would think 8 books in (or 10? Who’s really counting anymore), I would have figured out a way to circumvent the Nervous Sweats, but alas, there are some things you just can’t escape from. Like death and taxes, Nervous Sweats about the book release is going to catch up to me no matter what.
Even if I somehow blissfully forget about my book release, I’m sure my body will sense a disturbance in the Force and I’ll just start pouring sweat in the middle of, idk, a Chili’s or something. (Does anyone still go to Chili’s? Or have they gone the way of Applebees?)
I have a book due the day The Dead Romantics comes out, I have two other books I’m expecting global edits on dropping sometime within the next two weeks, and copyedits for another book landing in the next month. You would think, with me so freaking busy, my anxiety wouldn’t have time to spin its yarn.
And yet.
There are a lot of fun things coming up in the next week (heck, in the next month!), and I’m so incredibly excited to share it with you all.
I’m excited for everyone to meet Ben and Florence. I’m excited for you to fall in love with the Day family. I’m excited for you to meet the goodest Mayor that Mairmont ever had.
I’ll get into why I wrote The Dead Romantics next week, because it’s fun and absolutely deserves day-of recognition. So in this newsletter, a week before The Dead Romantics hits shelves, I want to talk about the not-so-fun part of writing a book about grief (and love and ghost boners).
I want to talk about having to support and market and shout about a book about grief (and love and happy endings and romance books and ghost boners) while dealing with some of the worst days of my life.
It’s not a secret—at least I don’t want it to be—that my family experienced a tragedy in March. I tried not to talk about it too much on main, mostly because I work through my grief in smaller, quieter ways. (I will talk about The Dead Romantics and why I wrote it in the next newsletter.)
But if it can help anyone, I would like to.
(CW: grief, suicide. Skip down to the News if you’d rather not read it.)
Grief is heavy. It weighs on you like some great and terrible anchor, pulling you down and down and down, and you never have enough energy, enough strength alone, to undo the chain from your ankle.
It’s hard talking about The Dead Romantics when I am still so raw in these new feelings. Because while The Dead Romantics is a story about ghost boners and midnight walks through graveyards and ghostly puns and spine-tingling kisses—it’s also about death. The death of a very close, very loved family member. And while the death in the book is different from the death in my actual life, much of the rest of it was very much the same.
I wrote The Dead Romantics partly because I really freaking love ghost romances, but also because I wanted to have a conversation with myself about the passing of my Oma (my paternal grandmother). She meant the world to me, and in early 2020 I was very much still bereft at her passing 6 months prior.
I didn’t expect, two years later, to be finding my way through a different, sharper kind of grief.
The raw truth of it is: my grandfather (on my mother’s side) passed in March. He died of suicide. It was unexpected. It was terrible. (Though is it ever not terrible?)
Throughout interviews and conversations surrounding The Dead Romantics, I try to keep my thoughts on grief light. I try not to edge to close to those sharp feelings, because it’s a certain kind of irony to be promoting a book about death when a recent one has broken you, and your family, so thoroughly that you aren’t sure how to cobble the pieces back together. (But you are, slowly. It just takes time. It always takes time. Therapy helps.)
No one tells you that men 85 and older have the highest rate of suicide death in the country. Or that 54% of all firearm-related deaths are suicides.
Heck, I didn’t know until March 25th, when I sat alone on my couch after the worst few hours of my life, Googling something—anything—that would help it all make sense. I can laugh about it now, but I cried so loudly that night that my freaking video doorbell recorded it.
I don’t want to tell you about that day, though. I want to tell you about my grandpa.
My grandpa was good.
He was funny.
He always joked that I stole his red hair and left him with none.
He taught me how to fish when I was little, but he always had to bait my hook because no way was I sticking a hook up a cricket butt. In kindergarten I drew a picture of us fishing and proudly titled him my “Master Baiter.” (My kindergarten teacher had some words for my parents.)
He had a singing fish he’d always press like a Magic Eight Ball, as if it’d divine the future for him in its kitchy phrases.
He always sat in his sunroom with his binoculars and watched the boats come in and out of the marina on the far side of the cove.
Whenever we’d go out on the pontoon, he’d moon the neighbors. They’d always come over for drinks afterwards.
Once, he caught a fish with his bare hands.
Another time, he took a backflip off the dock.
He smacked copperheads with lead pipes.
He could McGyver anything—literally anything.
He loved ‘57 Chevy Bel-Airs, and he once owned a red one with dice in the rearview mirror. He drove it until the floorboards rotted.
Whenever I went to visit, he’d always tell me how proud he was. “I’m so proud of you, granddaughter.” He’d say it just like that, with a big-ass grin, like I’d won a Nobel Peace Prize or cured world hunger, even for things I’d long-since dismissed as ordinary in my job.
I turned in a book.
“I’m so proud of you, granddaughter.”
I sold another novel.
“I’m so proud of you, granddaughter.”
Here’s a cover for my next novel, Papa!
“I’m so proud of you.”
He was one of my favorite people in the whole entire world.
He always will be.
I know this isn’t the kind of newsletter that you expected a week out from The Dead Romantics, but I had to get this heavy bit out of the way so that next week (Tuesday!) I can to talk to y’all about my inspirations for The Dead Romantics—including stories about my late Oma, Reylo fanfic, ghost boners, and Addams Family Values! It’s going to be a lot of fun.
In the meantime, thank you for letting me share a little bit about my grandpa with you.
If you, or a loved one, is experiencing any sort of mental distress or suicidal ideation, please talk to a doctor. Or visit the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. You can also reach them by dialing 988 in the US.
Please support Everytown and national gun legislation. Call your senators. Let’s change things.
Have You Pre-Ordered The Dead Romantics yet?
Join Me On Tour!!
Seriously, who doesn’t wanna come and listen to me spit out some sick puns? You know I have them for days!
June 28th - 7 PM ET. Hosted by Likewise! Come join me for my virtual launch!
July 9th - 2pm ET, Fiction Addiction, Greenville, SC. In person! You get to see my beautiful face and confirm that I am, in fact, five anxious cats in a skinsuit! (If you want to pre-order from them, please do so here!)
July 26th - 7 PM ET. Hosted by Barnes & Noble! It’s a virtual zoom event with none other than Ali Hazelwood!
August 18th - 7 PM ET. Virtual Summer Reading Panel at Oblong Books! Speaking of which, have you pre-ordered your signed copy from them yet?
Geekerella and Princess and the Fangirl are $1.99!
Geekerella and The Princess and the Fangirl e-books are on sale for $1.99 through this month! Feel free to spread the word!
Win a Copy of Some of My Favorite Books!
Enter the Giveaway here!
Around the Internet
USA Today included The Dead Romantics in their “June's top rom-coms” list! This is what they said about The Dead Romantics! “Florence and ghost Benji’s tentative steps to connection play out against the backdrop of Florence’s journey to make peace with her past. Even if you don’t believe in ghosts either, you’ll root for them to believe in each other.”
The Young Folks included The Dead Romantics in their “June 2022 New Book Releases: Summer Reads” roundup!
Also, Sweatpants & Coffee mentioned The Dead Romantics in their “10 New Books Coming to Shelves Near You, June 2022” list! Hurrah!
And lastly, while we have you, we’re excited to share that She Reads included The Dead Romantics in their roundup of best bookish contemporary romances! Yay!!
You know what else can wake the dead? My mom’s snores. It’s like she’s buzzsawing through an entire cedar forest. (ba-dum-tssss)
Well! That’s about it for this newsletter.
I’ll check in again with you all on June 28th! One week and counting — let the Nervous Sweats commence!
Stay classy, stay hydrated, and stay chaotic, my friends.
xoxo,
Ash
I am so sorry for your loss. Thank you for sharing your Papa with us. Sending you and your family love.