Happy Holidays from Dave!

And welcome to all my new subscribers too!

Happy holidays, everyone!

Special welcome to all the recent new subscribers, too. Thanks for being here!

Hope your 2022 has been great. Here’s to an even better 2023. It’s been a busy year, hence the general lack of updates from me.

What’s been going on?

Nicki and I are working on a book together.

We’ve also been preparing the launch of our first books for Joy Revolution (our publishing imprint dedicated to love stories starring people of color): Talia Hibbert’s hilarious YA debut Highly Suspicious & Unfairly Cute in January and the amazing Queen Bee regency revenge story by Amalie Howard in April.

I went on tour for City of Orange. I really missed seeing fans in person! Some updates there too, but I can’t talk about them quite yet.

I also contributed a story to Neal Shusterman’s Scythe anthology, Gleanings. Great fun to work with one of my favorite colleagues.

Nicki and I have been busy developing ideas for TV/film production with our wonderful partners at Anonymous Content.

What’s been on my mind?

I still very much want to share everything I know, so I’ll continue talking a lot about the craft of writing: quickly (but beautifully) drawn characters, sparkly dialogue, and plot structures that work, and so on.

Also, wouldn’t it be fun if we critiqued books and shows together? I recently watched Bullet Train, which is weirdly both better _and_ worse than the incredible novel by Kotaro Isaka. I’m also halfway through Spiderhead (based on my hero George Saunders’ short story Escape from Spiderhead), and let’s just say I have notes, mostly regarding the Marvel-ization of culture.

I’ve also been thinking about the color yellow a lot.

What do I have planned for the new year?

I really want to hear from you guys! Lots of you are writers, both published and yet-to-be, and I can talk shop all day. To that end, I plan on using Substacks’ new-ish Chat feature for the chance to get to know you better directly.

Newsletters rule, and…

…social media drools. Instagram and TikTok pale in comparison to the fun I have meeting you in person and through this newsletter. I do social media because I have to; I do this newsletter because I actually like to. So let’s keep the good times rolling on into the new year!

One of my early resolutions is to write shorter letters to you all but on a more frequent basis. So more soon, I promise!

— Dave