After almost a decade of writing this book, blogging, and being a houseplant hoarder, my dream of being a published author is coming true.

This elusive book’s creation (back 2017) is why I started this blog. I knew in order to get published one day I’d need an “author platform,” which is basically an audience of people who like you enough to buy your book. With this in mind I began a blog. “I’ll be able to practice writing,” I thought, “it’ll be a way to share my knowledge with the world. Maybe someone will read it.” Fast forward almost 10 years (good lord) and my blog has been doing great (despite my recent lack of posting) and that whole “book dream” was gently set on then back burner since other things had come up. Like a global pandemic, existential dread, turning 30, moving, changing jobs, finding what I actually want as a career, a small quarter life crisis, and also just existing day to day with endless doctor and dentist appointments, two-hour Target runs for things I don’t need and grocery shopping. ANYWAY.

The whole idea of a publishing a book became this lofty dream that, while it fueled the birth of this blog, seemed like something chaotic and unreachable, involving a type of commitment I could not keep among the throngs of daily tasks and my homemade job. But there always was a small voice in the back on my head telling me to make it a priority, to you know, just work on it. And for years I did. I wrote more of the manuscript, edited it, but then life would get in the way and back it would go. I just kept saying “soon.” But if not today, when?

At the end of 2024, for a variety of reasons, I began to attempt to put my life in order and prioritize what I wanted. It began with bullet journaling. I read Ryder Carroll’s The Bullet Journal Method in September 2024 and it changed my life. I’m not a this-book-will-fix-all-my-problems person but I finally felt like this was a system that could work. Before I had lists everywhere, Notion pages, stuff on my phone and notes app, post-its, reminders on my hand, a calendar, but I was always disorganized. I’m pretty sure I have undiagnosed ADHD since I literally move from one thing to another without finis-

-hing them. I’m shocked I was able to keep up a blog at all and actually publish posts.

While my Lorelei brain was in constant overdrive, I finally word vomited it all into a bullet journal. Over and over again the words JUST FINISH THE BOOK came up in caps, loud and yelly. Then I knew: it was time.

I want to see my book in Barnes and Noble.

This was always my dream. Some people, when they visualize success, they think of money, followers, free PR packages from Sephora, but I just wanted to go into a bookstore, see my book, and buy my book. This was my Roman Empire. For a while I thought about self-publishing. My husband used to co-run a bookstore and did publishing for small authors, so I would be able to go that route easily. But since I waited this long, I wanted to do it the “real way.” The tears, the querying, the rejection, all of it.

This past winter I locked myself (I’m not joking) in my office and painstakingly created dozens of versions of book proposals. I cold called emailed over 50 literary agents that represented non-fiction and five publishing houses. Each agency sometimes needs a different form of a proposal, so there was always editing, answering questions, showing a different part of the manuscript. I did this every day for 8 hours a day for weeks. THIS TAKES SO MUCH TIME. But finally, most of them were sent out so all I could do is wait for rejection. Minutes later after my first submission, I got this:

Mind you, this is what you normally get – six to twelve weeks of silence before you receive a response back from an agent. Agents have so many queries to scan through daily, so basically you are in a pile until they can get to it. I got my first actual rejection surprisingly shortly after, on Valentine’s Day. That day I became a man.

March rolled around and I waited, would query some more, worked on my manuscript when an email came in from Timber Press, which is a publishing division of Hachette Book group. They were interested in publishing my book and I cried as I read the email.

I met with them that week, and they loved the idea. After the meeting I sat in my office and sobbed heavily into Harvey’s fur for 10 minutes while I called my mom in tears and said “theywhannnapublissshhhthebooktheylikeme.” It was one of the happiest moments I have ever felt, no joke. I couldn’t (still can’t) believe it was really happening and I actually felt like maybe, just maybe, I could get this thing done. But I needed an agent. Thompson Literary scooped me up shortly after (getting the publisher before the agent doesn’t happen very often but it’s really good when it does) and soon I had an agent and publisher.

Things got slower after that. Then came contracts, negations, money, lawyers, and all of those details that are important but not really exciting. My mom, Annie, who is an illustrator and is illustrating the book, also needed an agent and do to all of the contracty things too, so it was pretty much a waiting game until today: when everything was set and it is announced via Publisher’s Marketplace (that’s the real deal):

The book will be, in a sense, my blog but in book form. It’s a book about houseplants, pets, designing your home with plants, plant care, cute pictures of cats, diagrams to make boring information less boring, and so so much more. It’s the book I wish I had when I was getting into houseplants.

Next comes meetings, promo, lots of writing and editing for a Summer 2027 release, which seems so so far away but books take time. And yes I will have signed copies and will (hopefully) be doing events around the country.

Thanks for being with me from the start if you have, and thank you if you read this whole post. This is VERY EXCITING!