Kathryn Nolan's Blog, page 4

Books that made my heart sing in 2021.

Below, I finally get to squeal about the books that made my heart sing in 2021—and as you’ll see, it was a lot of them. It’s difficult for me to rank books, but I’ll just say that these novels meant a lot to me last year. They kept me company and gave me hope during the second year of a pandemic and intense creative burn-out. They traveled with me through camp-sites, and on road-trips, and to cozy couches in the Catskills and the Berkshires.

My gratitude for these stories is boundless — books are everything. But I know all of you get that. 💗

“Even a wounded world is feeding us. Even a wounded world holds us, giving us moments of wonder and joy. I choose joy over despair. Not because I have my head in the sand, but because joy is what the earth gives me daily and I must return the gift.” -Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

I carried this gorgeous book of (truly life-changing) essays with me all through our travels this summer, when I was spending a lot of time paying attention to tiny, dancing daisies and watching streams flow over smooth stones. This collection of indigenous wisdom exposes our natural world to be one of beautiful connections and joyous miracles. And it exposes the interconnectedness of humans with plants, animals and minerals and the deep responsibility we all have to share our gifts with the world and protect it all costs.

GREEDY by Jen Winston changed my life in the same way that BRAIDING SWEETGRASS did. As in, opened my eyes, made me feel seen, made me curious, made me passionate, had me weeping in understanding. I read this book of funny and affirming essays on bisexuality in essentially one sitting because it was the first time I'd ever seen my own thoughts, confusion and bi yearning reflected on the page. It not only made me feel seen, affirmed and validated in my own bisexuality and its many beautiful facets, these essays also scrutinize power, privilege and white supremacy -- and make the case for collective liberation and a world free of binary thinking.

I started 2021 by reading a sci-fi novella called THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR (by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone) and went around telling everyone it was the best book I’d ever read 😂 I read it practically in one sitting - from the set-up (two women fall in love through letters while on different sides of an epic battle through time), to the perfectly poetic prose, to the romance, the yearning, the imagery. Take this line, for example: “I want to meet you in every place I ever loved. Listen to me. I am your echo. I would rather break the world than lose you.”

*sighs happily for a million years*

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL (lol you thought I was done) 😉 Here are some more (non-romance) novels that shook me to my core: NINTH HOUSE by Leigh Bardugo (dark fantasy, magic, horror), MIDDLE-GAME by Seanan McGuire (an amazing fantasy novel I literally hugged after I finished reading it), THE ONCE AND FUTURE WITCHES by Alix E. Harrow (a dazzling fantasy novel about sisterhood, rebellious women and magic), WE RIDE UPON STICKS by Quan Barry (it’s Heathers meets field hockey meets the witch trials.) THE UNSPOKEN NAME by A.K. Larkwood (a snarky, action-packed fantasy with queer characters and swords!) TINY, BEAUTIFUL THINGS by Cheryl Strayed (gorgeous essays that will wreck your heart), THE SOUTHERN BOOK CLUB’S GUIDE TO SLAYING VAMPIRES by Grady Hendrix (creepy, OTT horror, gory, funny and legit kept me up at night) and THE ECHO WIFE by Sarah Gailey (a twisty, fast-paced thriller).

An ode to romance

I know this sounds a little funny because I, too, am a romance author but thank god for romance, y’all!! When I was in my deepest moments of burn-out and anxiety in 2021, you know what I reached for — those happily ever afters and stories of hope that made me feel cozy, tender, soft and just loved.

Some of the books that made me feel extra soft and tender:

Alyssa Cole’s THE LOYAL LEAGUE series, which are Civil War romances that also have an element of danger and intrigue. I also fell deep into Cat Sebastian’s backlist and THE SOLDIER’S SCOUNDREL is one of the best M/M historical romances I’ve ever read.

When I was deep in ON THE ROPES re-writes, exploring Sarah MacLean’s backlist and Nichola Davidson’s backlist meant the world to me (read both authors if you love incredible regency romance!) And then Joyce introduced us all to the brilliant Stacy Reid and her MY DARLING DUKE which knocked my literal socks off!

Adriana Herrera’s ONE WEEK TO CLAIM IT ALL was sexy, juicy, second-chance deliciousness. WRITTEN IN THE STARS by Alexandria Bellefleur was the dreamy, adorable F/F romance I’ve always wanted. LJ Evans’ CROSSED BY THE STARS was packed with angsty yearning, forced proximity and danger (!)

I ended the year, utterly obsessed with three audiobooks that brought such happy smiles to my face while walking Walter around Philly: MURDER MOST ACTUAL by Alexis Hall (an f/f, marriage-in-crisis, cozy mystery with Knives Out vibes!), Talia Hibbert’s WRAPPED UP IN YOU (a flirty, festive treat that made my heart shimmer) and Chloe Liese’s THE MISTLETOE MOTIVE (enemies-to-lovers holiday novella with You’ve Got Mail vibes plus a cozy bookstore!)

I cannot wait to see what books I love in 2022. Here’s to more love stories!

2021 ✨

2021 🌻🌈✨💗

Endless, limitless gratitude for the past twelve months, which contained joy and stress, bursts of beautiful creativity but also heavy burn-out, isolation and sadness, but also community and hope.

The Vaccinate South Philly campaign, plus primary canvassing, and the sweet work of the community fridges taught me so much about the imagination required of us all to create the world we want to see.

The characters I got to breathe life into taught me about bravery, patience and tending to my own garden so that I can keep telling love stories for many years to come.

Our semi-nomadic lifestyle is the gift I treasure fiercely - we camped and camped some more, and I did a solo trip that healed my soul. We visited Ithaca, the Fingerlakes, Maine, New Hampshire and parts of Vermont. We lived in the Catskills and the Berkshires. We spent a lot of hours on quiet hiking trails beneath the trees.

I wrote, and revised, and wrote, and revised. Hugged readers and author pals at Indies Invade. Read books ferociously. Had pink hair for a bit. Got a big tattoo and an even bigger Christmas tree. Spent a lot of time with my dog. Tried to appreciate beauty no matter how small.

Loved my city. Loved my friends. Loved my husband. Loved.

Year in Review: ON THE ROPES

This is it, my darlings! The last one! ON THE ROPES released on October 1st and I think y’all know how I feel about this baby: 

Vibes: A cute, flirty, cozy hug of a romance novel. Shy, broody (former) boxer Dean “The Machine” Knox-Morelli is stunned when his old high school crush – sparkly ray-of-sunshine Tabitha Tyler – is suddenly his temporary neighbor and willing to help him turn an abandoned lot on the block into a pocket park. Friends-to-lovers in the sweetest way. Insta-crush like whoa. ‘Parks n Rec’ meets ‘Rocky’ (basically). Nostalgia, hot summer nights, stoop beers, block parties,

My favorite moments: Uh, the whole book?! But seriously - Tabitha falling into Dean’s lap at the bar, their water ice date, their – ahem – date at the art museum, when she’s doing the twist with Dean’s parents, when Dean and Eddie talk about his food needs at the end, Pam!!, all of the neighbors on Tenth Street, Alice’s all-caps text messages, Rowan being adorable, Tabitha’s entire family, Kathleen’s boozy book club saving the day, the – ahem, again – lingerie scene, their sweet memories of growing up together and going to the Lavender Center.

Line most highlighted by readers: “The counselors would always tell us that you find the people who love you more loudly than the ones who don’t,” he said. “That’s your real family, your found family, in the end. To me, it’s what the park represents.”

My favorite lines: (uh, all of them?!) But also:

“You and me?” Rowan said, pointing between our chests. “We don’t hug like that, and I’ve known your ass for two decades. That was like at the end of a movie when one of the characters saves the planet and the love of their life runs over and hugs them while behind them, an asteroid blows up.”

“You’re so full of shit.”

He pulled his phone out. Turned his screen around and tapped at it. “I’m not the only one who sees it.”

It was a text chain between him and his grandmother. The message above was Rowan, asking her if she wanted him to pick up green peppers because there was a sale at the Acme.

The response from Alice, below, read: YOU COULD CUT THE SEXUAL TENSION BETWEEN DEAN AND TABITHA WITH A KNIFE PLEASE GET PEPPERS AND THOSE CRACKERS I LIKE.

I scrubbed a hand down my face with a sigh. It was looking more likely that I was the one who was so full of shit.

What Dean and Tabitha taught me: Honestly? Everything. This was truly a book of my heart, but it also showed me in a very real, very scary way, that I was struggling through creative burn-out and exhaustion. I made it through this book by the skin of my teeth, then promptly took an entire month off writing (first time not writing since 2016) and re-worked my publishing schedule and deadlines for 2022, carving out much more time for rest and rejuvenation. Luckily, I’d experienced some horrific burn-out in 2016/2017, so was able to recognize what was happening and make the changes I needed – though it’s never easy to do stuff like that, Dean and Tabitha taught me it’s as vital and necessary as air, food and water. I will always be grateful for this lesson.

As a bisexual lady, I was thrilled to write my very first bisexual main character. The second that Tabitha appeared on the page – with her goofy humor and loveable charm – I felt called to tell her story through the lens of being a queer woman and the many unique ways that her sexuality shaped her life, her struggles and triumphs, her reactions and her relationships to those around her.

 

I’m always overjoyed to see bisexual folks get their own happily-ever-after…and for Tabitha to find that love with Dean was extra special. Dean’s own experiences being raised by gay parents also shaped who he was and his world view, and he was – in so many ways – the perfect person for Tabitha. Kind, compassionate, thoughtful, and understanding of the things they experienced and shared in their support group.  

 

As a bisexual person in a straight-passing marriage, it was a privilege to write a love story that looked like my own and to celebrate love, identity and relationships in all of their many beautiful and unique forms. In the end, Tabitha Tyler helped me discover and celebrate my bisexuality in a new and beautiful way. She helped me learn to be more me.

Year in review: OUT OF THE BLUE!

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Vibes: Pro surfer Serena Swift is famous for riding the biggest waves in the world. Also, she might still be in love with her ex-husband but it’s no biggie. Probably. Except she gets a new corporate sponsor who assigns her a bodyguard for her next competitions and – whoops – the bodyguard is her cocky, charming, bearded ex-husband Cope McDaniels. ‘Blue Crush’ vibes for reaaaaaallll. Tropical, sultry, beachy feels. Adrenaline plus danger plus fraught eye contact when the MCs are both trying to be ‘professional’. Suits. Punching. Surfing. Snarky fights, Vegas weddings, steamy sex (of course).

My favorite moments: Cope opening the file and having to pretend that the woman in the photo isn’t his legit wife. Seeing each other again for the first time after four years. The wipe-out scene (forever!!). Serena training to hold her breath for four minutes beneath the water. Marilyn, Dora, Quentin and Caleb. The first time Serena says ‘husband’ and not ‘ex’. When Cope braids her hair. When they talk about his dad and Serena admits that she sees him in the water when she surfs. The Elvis Presley sisters (!!!). The weddings rings they’ve kept in their wallets.

Line most highlighted by readers: “On this planet, our actions have more impact than our words. So we always have to do the right thing.”

My favorite lines:

“Bodyguards that are ex-husbands of mine don’t command jack shit.”

Serena’s chin tilted up in full defiance. She thought she had me.

Making sure I held her gaze, I bent down until our noses were barely two inches apart. Her pretty eyes darted down to my lips, and I smiled—slow, confident—to let her know I caught the mistake.

“I’m not your ‘ex’ anything,” I said. “That would imply either one of us had filed divorce papers, and we surely haven’t. Legally, you and me? We’re still married as hell.”

What Cope and Serena taught me: From a craft perspective, this book forced me to revise and revise until I could weave together a second chance love story with a suspense plot that had its fair share of complicated structural bits. This was my first time writing a married couple and I loved discovering Serena and Cope’s limitations – and how that might lead to their break-up when they were young and especially hot-headed. But I had to figure out how these two could find their way back to each other with bruised hearts that weren’t fully broken. They taught me so much about tenderness and communication between your characters!

Personally, I wrote Serena Swift at a time when I needed to be surrounded by as many strong-willed, out-spoken, pissed off women as possible – women who refused to stay quiet in the face of injustice, women who were dismissed when their feelings weren’t ‘polite’. She reminded me that our anger is a gift, and that same anger, with time, can be translated into the real work of creating a better world. Our words our powerful. Our actions even more so.

I spent hours watching videos of women surfing the biggest waves I’d ever seen. It’s hard to describe the joy of witnessing that kind of human achievement. Every time I see Maya Gabeira ride that 73-foot wave in Portugal, I cry. Because I can’t stop thinking she did it, she did it, she did it.

Year in Review: Not the Marrying Kind

I'm feeling especially grateful and happy-weepy for the three romance novels I released this year, so I thought I'd do a little overview of each one!

Book: Not the Marrying Kind

 Release Date: January 8th

 Summary/Tropes: Type A, punk-princess Fiona Quinn – who is obsessed with getting married – falls for her childhood friend -- cocky bad boy (and anti-marriage) Max Devlin -- while they plan a benefit show to save a famous punk rock club in NYC.

Vibes: Sexy, sparkly, feel-good, sweet and packed with tender, funny love. Ambitious good girl learns to embrace her inner wild child. Charming bad boy falls head-over-heels in love for the very first time and can’t figure out why his heart feels so fast or his palms keep sweating. Also, he can’t stop doing awkward finger guns every time she smiles at him.  Late-night concerts in the city. That feeling when a cover band plays your favorite song. Crowd surfing. Opposites attract. Bad boys on motorcycles. Sex in supply closets. One hell of a record collection.

My favorite moments: The meet cute on the fire escape. Roxy and Edward’s sex swing in Chapter two. Goth wedding dress shopping. Pop and Angela’s date in Central Park. When Max sees Fiona dancing to The Clash and his heart explodes. That first kiss (!!!!). The sex scene on the motorcycle that isn’t even a sex scene but it’s as hot as one. The Quinn sisters defying gravity. When Roxy shows her mom her wedding dress. When Fiona shows up on the motorcycle and Max tells Mateo he’s been crying at love songs and eating ice cream every night. That fucking HEA.

Line most highlighted by readers: “My cocky, commitment-phobic bad boy wasn’t at all what I thought I needed. But he was everything I wanted in this world.”

My favorite lines: “She appeared crystal-clear beneath a shining spotlight, dancing and singing without a care in the world. This was Fiona unchained and without a plan. This was Fiona in her birthright, the daughter of musicians, a child raised in music venues and on tour buses. In my seven years on the road, I’d seen some epic natural beauty. I’d watched sunsets over canyons and sunrises on desolate beaches, had ridden my bike through famous mountain ranges and across wide deserts. And Fiona Quinn dancing to the Clash was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.”

What Max and Fiona taught me: As the Quinns would say – chase your joy and don’t give a shit. But also, the many drafts of this book taught me that it’s okay if it takes a few tries to get your characters right. Trust your characters, trust your process, trust your muse! I was 65k into the second draft and Fiona and Max were *still* off, so I had to hack through the weeds back to the beginning and painfully rewrite it another couple of times until their love story became obvious. I have a clear memory of sitting on the couch in Vermont (summer 2020), and going through that fire escape Meet Cute line by fucking line, over and over, again and again (“okay so Max says….this, but then later Fiona does this so the reference would happen here…which means he actually says this, now, instead of that, here. And then the next line would be…) I couldn’t just plow through it. I couldn’t ignore what they trying to tell me. I had to listen better, is all. I try and listen better now (in all things).

Big Thick Energy

We got a big-ass tree, my friends.

In true South Philly style, Rob and I always get our Christmas trees from a man named Rocky who has a spot set up under the highway and next to the Dunkin’ Donuts (literally cannot make this shit up. You know Dean and Tabitha get their tree in the same spot 😉)

This year, Rocky offered us a “big hefty BEAUTIFUL boy” (his words) and Rob and I made our usual impulsive decision of saying “yeah, sure, toss him in the van!”

This big, hefty BEAUTIFUL boy is about six feet tall and a million feet wide. Wrangling it into our very small, very narrow row home required a brute strength and patience I did not know I possessed. It then broke our tree stand — snapped it right off inside the trunk as Rob and I basically just gave up and fell over laughing.

As a temporary solution, we wedged the tree against the wall. See photographic evidence of size below — it’s so wide, we could only sit on one half of our couch. We couldn’t watch TV and it kept surprising us by just falling over towards us/onto us. Given our teeny-tiny house, we assumed once the stand arrived we’d have to re-arrange every piece of furniture to accommodate this beautiful boy’s size.

We were right.

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By the next day, Walter no longer had a healthy dose of fear for this beast (even though it fell on us like at least three times). Here’s Walter taking a nap next to the tree, which by day two was just slowly sliding down the wall in a creeping fashion.

When we sat on our couch this was our literal view, I am not even lyin’ 🤣 It was just TREE ONLY TREE.

On the third full day without the delivery of the new tree stand, the situation had deteriorated rapidly:

By some kind of miracle, the replacement tree stand we ordered arrived shortly after I took this picture from our kitchen (making a kind of 😬😬 face as I did so). The tree stand is aptly called THE GOLIATH.

It took us…well, let’s just say it was a monumental team effort between us, rife with a lot of physical comedy that could have been filmed for a CW-style sitcom.

BUT NOW LOOK AT HIM. HE IS MAGNIFICENT. And we only had to move all of our furniture and rearrange our entire first floor to do this! This is normal!

….and later that night, some magic happened:

Walter turned four!

Walter turned ✨four✨ yesterday!

We adopted this spunky, playful, silly rescue pup with the big ears (and big personality) three years ago. With a lot of love and patience (and like giving him everything he wants all the time 😂) this precious baby has transformed from a shivering stray to a happy adventure pup!

We couldn’t have asked for a better dog for our family and lifestyle. Walter loves road trips even more than we do, will hike 10+ miles with ease, and is chill with every campsite or random Airbnb we rock up to. There’s no greater joy than exploring this world with this joyful boy and Rob and I are forever grateful for his presence in our lives. ❤️❤️❤️

(Walter was rescued from a high-kill shelter in Texas where the dogs have 24 hours to be adopted before euthanasia. He had been slated for it, except the rescue volunteers noticed how much he loved licking faces and believed him to be a candidate for adoption. We are so so so grateful for this action every day)

Indies Invade Philly 2021!

The City of Romance Reader Love

I’ve got a lot to say about last weekend’s book signing here in my hometown, and even a week later I’m still bursting with joy and gratitude.

From Thursday night onward, I was surrounded by so many of the authors and readers and bloggers that make this community such a special place. A feeling of joy and gratitude filled every space where romance lovers were congregating.

I got to hug and chat with so many readers who said some of the sweetest and most thoughtful things. I've also got boxes of gifts and cards waiting for me to open and I'm already pre-crying over it! Thank you for waiting in a long line and letting me squeal all over you and write silly, illegible things in your books. It is an honor, always, to write love stories for all of you and I am so glad they brought measures of comfort and escape during the past eighteen months.

This career is a gift. Happily Ever Afters can change the world. They are radical acts of joy that have the power to transform our neighborhoods, our communities and each other. And when we write new worlds onto the page we begin making that transformative joy a reality. You are all a part of that magic and I felt it everywhere this weekend.

That Halloween when Walter was just disappointed.

My husband Rob and I have a lot of things in common that we absolutely love — vegan food, hot summer weather, hiking trails, road trips — but maybe our favorite thing on the planet is pictures of dogs dressed up as dinosaurs for Halloween. I don’t know what’s wrong with us, we just like it okay 😂 So our first year with Walter, we bought him a little dinosaur costume for Halloween and were extremely jazzed for our dreams to come true.

Walter does ‘passive resistance/acceptance’ well — I like to think that being a stray dog the first year of his life (pre-rescue) has made him amendable to most situations happening around him. But this series of pictures demonstrates his feelings on this costume better than any description: “hey, what’s that in your hand?’ to “I already hate it” to “I hate it but I’ll sit here” and then in the last picture, when I picked him up, (you can tell it’s three years ago because I have short brown hair, ah!) his look of canine malaise and disappointment never ceases to send me into complete hysterics.

Don’t worry, we took him out of it pretty much immediately. At the house we lived in up in the Berkshires, it had an old, noisy radiator that made Walter afraid and so we just bundled up and shivered our last month so that our dog wasn’t scared. 😂 That’s the kind of dog parents we are!

Anyway - happy Halloween from me, Rob and Walter (sans costume!) 🎃👻

Happy one-month birthday to Dean the Machine and Tabitha! ❤

ON THE ROPES has been out in the world, warming hearts and steaming up Kindles, for one month now. I’ve been overwhelmed with the response to this little love story about Dean the Machine and his adorable and epic crush on his friend, Tabitha Tyler. As Dean would say: “You find the people who love you more loudly than the ones who don’t. That’s your real family, your found family, in the end.”

Thank you for supporting this romance novel about close-knit communities, found families, neighbors helping neighbors and nostalgic summer nights. Thank you for supporting a love story about a broody, shy hero healing from wounds both visible and invisible. And a sparkly queer heroine finding an authentic love that allowed her to forgive herself.

Every day, I walk the streets of South Philly and picture Dean and Tabitha on their stoop on a hot summer night, sharing a Yuengling and laughing, and I know their Happily Ever After is perfect for who they are.