Sunday Script: How to Stay Cool and Creative in Late July
It's about a bazillion degrees here. I've all but given up on enjoying the great outdoors. Here's how I'm trying to slow down, stay creative, and savor this fleeting season.
Welcome, booklovers! If you’re new here, thank you so much for subscribing. And if you've been hanging out here for a little while, thanks for sticking with me. The first half of 2025 has been a wild ride. As we head into the second half, I’m going to focus more creative energy and attention on Substack. This is a great place to be and I love the engagement!
This week I'm resurrect my Sunday Script where I share a mix of what I'm watching, reading, listening to, as well as offer a behind-the-scenes glimpse at my writing life. My goal is to offer an authentic take and hopefully inspire/encourage others to chase their big writing dreams as well.
What I'm Watching
We are Seattle Mariners fans here so we are having the best time watching Cal Raleigh hit home runs. He hit number 40 last night so we are really rooting for him to keep breaking records. We watch a lot of baseball together as a family and as August approaches, Steve and I are acutely aware that two of our three birds will be out of the nest in just a few short weeks.
I’m intrigued by the Billy Joel documentary, so that’s on my to-be-watched list. A few weeks ago, I had to fly across the country unexpectedly so I downloaded a couple episodes of The Waterfront but it was not for me. Way too much profanity. I do applaud the creators, though, for subscribing to the Every Character Needs a Problem concept. I believe it’s Aaron Sorkin who says, “Great stories are born from intention and obstacle.” The characters’ intentions and their obstacles are super clear in The Waterfront. Sadly, it's just too raunchy for this conservative girl.
What I'm Reading
I just started Ashley Poston’s new book, Sounds Like Love. I’m enjoying Fire Island by Jane Rosen on audio (narrated by Emily Lawrence). This weekend, I’m counting the hours until my friend Wendy Galinetti's debut novel releases. It’s called A Dangerous Heart, and she collaborated with the brilliant Lacy Williams to write this historical romance/mail order bride story. They have worked so hard on this book, and I cannot wait for it to land on my Kindle on Tuesday morning.
What I'm Listening To
I'm listening to a lot of podcasts right now because I have three book releases coming up in September, October and late December. One part of my marketing strategy involves looking for more opportunities to spread the word about what I write. I try to listen to a couple of episodes of a podcast before I pitch the host for a guest interview. Spotify gives me excellent recommendations, and recently I discovered:
The Whole Writer
Read with Jul
Books, Beach & Beyond with Elin Hilderbrand and Tim Ehrenberg
Tim and Elin’s guest interviews are quite enjoyable. They read books that are quite different from what I normally choose so I love hearing what resonates with them.
If you’re a writer, you are probably aware of The Creative Penn podcast with Joanna Penn. And if you haven’t listened yet, I highly recommend adding some of her episodes to your playlists. Her conversation with Johnny B. Truant about being an artisan author is quite interesting. He helped me reframe my fear about in-person events (i.e. selling books at pop up markets).
I’m also a huge fan of Joanna Penn because she isn’t afraid to embrace using AI tools. She values the use of this technology to assist creatives to be productive AND create our art for a world that desperately needs it. She shared a link to Seth Godin’s recent blog post about the pushback from certain authors against using AI, which in my opinion is a refreshing take.
In fact, I appreciated Seth’s perspective so much that I shared a snippet of his post on my own platforms. It took all of five minutes for a bestselling author to clap back. Ironically, she used the same futile argument some authors rely on when anyone highlights the benefits of using AI to assist in creating art.
It’s almost like she didn’t read Seth’s post.
Folks, AI is probably not a flash in the pan. The outcome of recent lawsuits indicate that judges are ruling based on current copyright laws (as opposed to how some authors wish the law was written). Sure, you can waste time lamenting how books are pirated, or how bad actors are using technology to produce and sell poor-quality books. But let me ask you this: didn’t piracy happen long before you knew about AI? Haven’t poor-quality books been selling well while excellent books languish in obscurity? And if you’re going to rail against the presence of AI in our industry, what are you going to do when readers use AI as the primary means to search for books while the search engines you’ve relied on for years become less relevant?
What I'm Enjoying
Well, I have to confess that I really enjoyed a certain kiss cam situation that went viral. I'm sure you know the one. An entire day of writing somehow vanished because I was on social media scrolling through various people's reactions.
But then this morning in church the person preaching the sermon said, “Hey how would you feel if your sins were up on the jumbotron and the whole internet weighed in?”
So now I'm feeling convicted. But also … that would make a great inciting incident for a novel. Not saying I'm writing it. Not saying I won’t at some point in the future.
Even though it's a bazillion degrees here, we’re looking for ways to enjoy or fleeting family time. We spent a couple of hours out on the lake yesterday. The breeze was nice and there weren’t many people there. Eventually we got too hot, so we headed home.
Writing Update
I've written and revised three books this year for Sunrise Publishing. The first book is almost all the way through the revision process, and it’s available for preorder now. The sneak peek of the cover that the marketing team showed me is gorgeous so I keep stalking the online retailer websites to see if it’s up for y’all to see yet. Hopefully soon.
Books two and three have been through at least one round of revisions, and I’ve started writing the fourth book in the series. I’m also contracted to write my next Love Inspired novel by Halloween, so it's been super intense juggling various deadlines. Frankly, this is exactly what I prayed for and hoped for about a year ago, so I’m trying to be grateful.
I asked my agent to pitch a proposal for a dual timeline magical realism romance mashup back in January and he did. We are still waiting for a response. I don't want to say too much because I don't want to be a negative Nellie. Hypothetically, how long does it actually take to decide to publish a novel (or not)? So far, for me, the answer appears to be more than six months.
Beef. It’s What’s for Dinner.
I don’t know how I got here exactly, but I’m seeing a pattern in my novels: my fictional people like to eat. Which is ironically a mirror image of my real life because the humans I live with like to eat as well. And I don't know why, but when temperatures soar over 100 degrees, I'm even less motivated to cook than I normally am.
We really like eating at Shake Shack, but it's expensive and we already left the house once today and nobody wants to go back out. So I'm going to try Smitten Kitchen's version. I'll add in some frozen french fries that our middle child will toss into the air fryer. We’ll hoover down lots of fresh fruit plus brownies for dessert and all will be right with the world.
Thanks for joining me for this week’s Sunday Script. I'd love to hear from you. What are you watching, reading, or eating to conquer the heat wave right now? Any favorite ways to slow down and savor these dog days of summer? Drop a comment below. Let's chat.