Hello, you.

The Seven Miracles of Beatrix Holland is out TODAY and I want to tell you a little about how this magical book came into being.

Behind the Story

✨ A psychic tells Beatrix Holland she’ll experience seven miracles.

✨ And then she’ll die.

No problem, though. Beatrix isn’t worried. She is, above all things, pragmatic. She vastly prefers a long spreadsheet to a tall tale.

Then miracles start to happen, miracles she can’t deny.

Which is both 🎉 and 😬 for obvious reasons.

❤️ How This Story Started:

I wanted to write something that I loved. I just wanted to have fun. I didn’t want to aim for a lucrative market, and I didn’t want to write it just because I thought I should. Instead, I wanted to play.

So I asked myself what I loved.

I love (in no particular order):

• Practical Magic (the book but also the classic movie)
• Twin sisters
• Witches
• Teen girls who wear their hearts on their sleeves
• A realist who will never believe in magic (until she does)
• Small island towns (this one is off the coast of Seattle)
• A character finding love where she least expects it
• A character finding FAMILY (chosen or otherwise) where she expects it even less!

I simply wrote this for fun. The writing went faster than any other book I’ve ever penned. I hired my favorite editor. I was going to self-publish it and call it a day, but at the last minute (seriously, it was copyedited and ready to go), I gave it to my agent to see if a publisher would want to do the heavy lifting of publishing it, so I could write the next thing. 🙂

Grand Central Publishing (Hachette) did, and I’ve loved being with them. (That cover! Isn’t it gorgeous?)

Grab your copy now!

All the places (paperback, ebook, and audio):

Bookshop/Indiebound | Amazon US | Kobo | Apple | Nook| Audible | Spotify

It’ll be available in the UK and Australia and New Zealand next week!

---

Release Day

Release Day is always a weird day. You want to CELEBRATE ALL DAY! Also, you have to do your normal workaday stuff. The laundry is taking a long time to dry. The cats’ box needs cleaning (it always needs cleaning).

Today, it’s bucketing down rain in the way that happens when the sky decides the earth has been swearing too much and needs its mouth washed out. My toes are cold. It’s almost time for my lunch break. Often, I go on a walk on my lunch break (I did it once, okay?) but today I want to crawl into bed with the dog and listen to an audiobook, so I’ll allow myself to do that (see: celebrating).

Tonight, I’m ordering Thai food and my sister is picking it up. She’ll bring it over and also deliver peppermint bark that she’s been making (this is an unheard-of treat in Aotearoa New Zealand).

This is a perfect celebration.

But really, the biggest celebration is knowing that soon I’ll hear from readers. Hopefully, they’ll tell me that they loved this book.

I loved writing it so much. It was the most magical writing experience I’ve ever had, bar none, and I do think it shows. ✨

❤️ love always,

Rachael

Website | Facebook | Instagram | Podcast | Patreon

PS – Have you read something gentle and delightful recently? Share your recommendation here! And send this to a friend who needs it!

PPS – The nicest way to help an author is to review the book after you read it. Another incredible way to help is to request it from your local library (even if you already have your own copy!). That lets other find the book who might not otherwise do so.

Traditional Versus Self-Publishing – What’s Right for You?

I might use this space to write about things I want to say on Twitter. (I resent how many years I spent there using up my life-chronicling writer’s brain, and how impossible it is to read my old archive. I’ve been enjoying going through old journals to visit with my younger self, and when I got on Twitter, bam. The journaling stopped. Grr.)

So: I will tell you this. I’ve been sick for a full week with bronchitis, but today I’m finally feeling like wearing clothes and sitting at the desk.

I waited until the fever went away (SMART) to cut my bangs based on a TikTok tutorial and I do not hate the results.

They’ll win no awards, but I guess I’ll keep the fringe a little longer. I was at that terrible point where you need a trim (free at my hair stylist, but then I have to GO there) or grow them out, and today, I chose violence.

Speaking of TikTok, I’ve been enjoying being there. HERE I am. I’m usually talking about writing.

The Only Writing Hack You Need:

We’re in New Zealand! It’s wonderful to be in my mother’s homeland. We’d been planning to move around a lot once we got here until we found a house to rent, moving week to week, with the hopeful destination of Wellington where we’d settle into a rental, but we got locked down eight days after we got out of MIQ (the quarantine hotel where we spent 14 days when we arrived).

Of course, we got locked down in heaven. Just south of Russell, we ended up in a house on the Bay of Islands, and it’s been magical. We’re both working full time, of course, so that’s worked out well, as we haven’t been allowed to do much else as we stay indoors!

While we were at level 4, we took our one walk a day. At level 3, we were allowed to take out the kayaks! Excellent, exciting exercise! We enter level 2 tonight, which means we can get on the road again soon on our way to Wellington! (We’ve found a darling rental that we’re so interested in — it’s lovely and would come with the bonus that the people moving out are leaving the country, and we could buy their furniture from them! Since we have none, how ideal would that be? Please cross your fingers for us – it looks like an ideal place for a writer to be settled.)

I’m not blogging much, but I wanted to make sure that if you want to see lots more pics of our journey, you can go to Instgram or Facebook, where I’m trying to cross-post pics and videos of our adventure at both places.

We’re so lucky, and so grateful, and so excited to be starting our new life here.

Written on December 5th, 2020

It is, after all, 
a command she understands. 
Sit. 
So we do. 
Stay is harder. 
Rest in the breath is only as good 
as your hammock mind allows,
and currently the swing is occupied by:
ten undone monkeys,
a small, cheerful rat,
an elephant wearing a magician’s cape,
and one very nervous jackalope. 

She doesn’t mind the interlopers, though. 
Age has mellowed her prey drive,
and now she nods to squirrels affably.
It’s dulled her hearing, 
and now she enjoys a 
good fireworks show as much as I do.
Her sense of smell is still acute,
So acute it’s asnorable.

But I don’t baby talk at her 
from my cushion
(for once).

Instead, I put on a serious show.
Eyes closed spine straight hands still legs crossed,
ignoring the hammock menagerie
as they perform circus dives into cups of water
and hoot rudely at the crows overhead.  

What I can’t ignore is her: 
Next to me, she sits better than I do.
But then: 
a jostle, 
a shove that would be rude on the train, 
her head juts under my elbow and
without my permission, she’s in my embrace. 

The sign in my mindsky flashes in neon green: 
DO NOT PET DOG WHILE MEDITATING.

But with a wrist-twist, 
I touch her chest, 
and under my fingers, 
the feel of her rough silk 
becomes my prayer. 
She won’t be here long. 
Nor will I.
Stay.
We try. 

She picked Lala. Thirteen years ago, we went to the pound to look at another dog, but the one in the cage next to that one just looked at Lala and asked to be met. In the meeting area, she leaned on Lala, and Lala leaned back against her and that was it.

She liked two things – everyone, and all food. She wasn’t crazy about other dogs, but if you were a human, and especially if you were a human who knew how to carry food in your hands, she was your best friend.

She was the cuddliest dog I’ve ever met. The perfect little spoon. Her snores were so cute that we called it “snorebuggling.”

Once, a man we didn’t know came over to buy a couch we’d listed on Craigslist. He came in the house, sat on the soft, and Clementine raced in from another room, launching herself at him. She tucked herself against him and almost snuggled him to death. That’s how she was for STRANGERS. Imagine what we got from her. Every day.

She enjoyed hammocking with me.

Sun – all day. She soaked it in. (And look at those earssss!)

She was a pocket pitty, thirty-five pounds of love. We always said she looked like a beagle wearing a pit-bull costume.

She was a goofball.

The only picture I’ve ever painted was of her for Lala for Christmas, sitting with the jasmine vine tangled around her neck. She’d constantly get stuck there and then just wait patiently for us to cut her out.

She had her very own cat, Waylon.

Clemmy’s been in hospice for about 6 or 8 months, and had graduated OUT of it twice! (Seriously, Pet Hospice has been the greatest thing to ever happen for our confidence that we were doing it all right, as we trudged this difficult time.)

And hey! We’ve been cooking her food for her morning and night for a year (pancreatitis and kidney disease). SHE LOVED THAT.

And we’ve been home for a solid year! YAY PANDEMIC! Always with her, ready for a cuddle! SHE LOVED THAT, TOO.

And today, when hospice came to help her on her way, her cat helped, too. Waylon was with her until the very end right along with us, and kept his paw on her as she died.

Our hearts are broken. Thanks for loving her, too.