"So, is your book out yet?"

Just as I was finishing this post, we got some VERY EXCITING NEWS about SEX OF THE MIDWEST, so look for more about that soon.

In the meantime, if you want to help an author out, here are some things you can do:

1. If you’re a librarian, journalist, educator, blogger, or journalist, you can go to NetGalley and request a review copy of SEX OF THE MIDWEST. You’ll have to become a member, but it’s free.

2. Go to Goodreads and mark SEX OF THE MIDWEST as “to-read.”

3. If you do get an advanced copy from NetGalley, go give SEX OF THE MIDWEST a review on Goodreads.

4. Subscribe to this newsletter so you get all the updates!

“So, is your book out yet?”

This is what I hear a lot when I’m out and about in my small town. Which is, you know, awesome, because it’s usually followed by, “Tell me when I can buy it,” and I will never not be grateful for people who want to buy a book.

Also, I can see the sort of confusion on my friends’ and neighbors’ faces when I tell them that, no, the book is not out yet. No, they can’t buy it quite yet (though pre-orders are coming very soon). Yes, I have been talking about this book for what seems like a very long time. Yes, yes, yes, book publishing, even in 2025, is still a very slow process.

I learned this all firsthand when I self-published my young adult novel, FAIR GAME. My previous books were traditionally published or a textbook published by an academic press. In those cases, I had limited control of the publishing timeline. The only things that were within my power were how quickly I wrote the book and how quickly I got through various rounds of copy edits and proofs.

The rest was a lot of waiting in which I myself wondered, what’s the hold-up? I would hear nothing from editors for weeks and months, followed by an urgent email telling me that they needed me to go through all the copy edits in three days! That’s an exaggeration, but when you’re the author, publishing feels like a lot of hurry up and then slow down. A lot of, WE NEEDED THIS YESTERDAY! followed by crickets. It all felt sort of baffling until I tried to bring a book into the world on my own.

There are a lot of moving pieces involved in turning words on the page into a book in someone’s hands. Of course, there’s a book cover, which is the exciting part and seems fairly simple. But there’s also the interior design, which involves picking a font and turning a Word document into something that looks like a book. This is not a skill that most writers have (I certainly didn’t) and so you have to find and hire someone to do this work, which takes time.

You’d think you could, in the meantime, design your cover before that interior design work is done, only the cover design includes the spine and you don’t know the width of the spine until you know how many pages (as well as the type of paper, which determines thickness) and you don’t know how many pages until your interior design is done.

When you’re publishing your own book, there are also ISBN numbers to acquire and much technical work getting the book uploaded to whatever printing service you’re using. Then ordering galley or advanced review copies, partly to make sure it all came together into something that does a passable job of looking like a book.

Thankfully this time, the amazing team at Galiot Press is handling all of those logistics. As a small press, it’s all hands on deck. But even at the bigger presses I’ve worked with, it’s still a slow and sometimes chaotic process. Hurry up and then slow down.

For SEX OF THE MIDWEST, we currently have a cover, which I’ll be revealing soon (if you’re a paid subscriber to

Galiot Press Substack

, you can get a sneak peak). We have actual galley copies, which are a version of the book without a cover that often get sent out to potential reviewers or bookstores or other people who might create some buzz about the book.

The book is also listed on NetGalley, which is a website where bloggers, reviewers, journalists, librarians, booksellers and other members of the media can request an advanced copy of the book for free. And the book is listed (without a cover) on Goodreads, where people can mark it as “to-read” or review it if they’ve read one of those advanced copies. I can report that two people, according to Goodreads are “currently reading” the book and two people have marked it as “to-read,” though one of those is my editor and therefore probably does not count.

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

So right now, it’s mostly waiting. And realizing that two people who I do not know are perhaps reading my book as I type these words. Which fills me with terror. And awe. Perhaps in equal measure.

SEX OF THE MIDWEST isn’t the first book of fiction I’ve published. FAIR GAME was also a novel, but it didn’t hit as close to home as these stories do. SEX OF THE MIDWEST draws deeply on material from my own life and my own community. It is in so many ways, a love letter to small towns. I wrote these stories in part to make people understand what it’s really like out here in the hinterland. In “flyover country.” In a “red” state. It is, in some ways, a shouted declaration—“Our lives in small towns are also important and complicated and, yes, often, beautiful!”

In other words, I have some skin in the game. There are things at stake with this book. I want people to “get it.” If they don’t, it will be a little soul-crushing. Just the other day, I re-read the very ending of the book, a scene which so far makes me cry every time. Will it move anyone else? I am tender about this book. Vulnerable. It is terrifying.

I’ve already decided I probably won’t be reading reviews. Well, okay, I’ll be making my husband, Jeff read them first and then letting him tell me if I should read them (this is also what I do with letters from the faculty evaluation committee). I’m trying to channel my inner Georgia O’Keeffe, who largely did not care what critics said about her paintings (except all the sex and vagina stuff, which really pissed her off). For the past few months I’ve been living inside the pages of the new novel I’ve been working on, which is a good place to escape. Soon, I’ll be diving back into those edits, which will be an excellent distraction.

I’m also so grateful, given the state of publishing right now, that this book is coming out into the world at all. I’m so thankful for small presses like Galiot who are willing to put themselves out there and take risks. This this book is being published feels like a minor miracle. It’s not a political book, but it’s not apolitical, either. Maybe in our current world, all books are political. Maybe they always were.

In the meantime, people at the beauty salon and the library ask me, “When will we be able to buy the book?” And I’m also very grateful for that.

Thanks so much to all the new subscribers and especially the two new paid subscribers! I appreciate it so much!