Spring Happenings 🌱 | Furthermore May 2026

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming

at one of my favorite Seattle indie bookstores, Lovestruck in Seattle <3

The Sun and the Starmaker came out a little over two months ago and it still feels brand new to me. I’m hearing from readers every day who loved the book, and to my absolute amazement and delight, you all have kept it on the New York Times bestsellers list for ten weeks (!!) at this point. I’m honestly floored, and so happy that Starmaker is resonating the way that it is.

Thank you so much to those of you who have talked about, read, shared, recommended, requested, or reviewed The Sun and the Starmaker. There are so many incredible books in the world and too little time to read them all—thank you for spending some of your precious time in Reverie.

the Starmaker launch event with my dear Adalyn Grace

The Starmaker tour was beyond my wildest dreams, and it was incredible meeting so many readers, booksellers, and writers along the way. If you came out to see me, thank you so much! I really loved this tour and will cherish all the memories made for the rest of my life.

Since getting home, I’ve turned in two projects and am very eager to start talking about them as soon as I can! If you’ve been following along for a while, I started talking about the first project waaay back in 2018, so I’m particularly impatient to announce it. It’s different from anything I’ve written before and has been a really rewarding challenge for me—it felt like it was just beyond the stretch of my capabilities, and I tried my best to rise to the challenge. More soon!

I also went on vacation with my family, which was so lovely. I finished the second aforementioned project on my flight out and then didn’t open my laptop for an entire week. It was wonderful, and I arrived home feeling very rested and rejuvenated. I had three goals for my beach vacation: 1) read a ton, 2) eat delicious food, and 3) return home exactly as pale as I was when I left, and I’m happy to say I accomplished all three of those things.

my shirt says “send me home when I’m full” which is my basic approach to travel

While I was away, I read Dungeon Crawler Carl by Matt Dinnimin (highly recommend the audiobook for this one!), Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke, and The Kaiju Preservation Society by John Scalzi. I can’t remember the last time I read so much, and it was an absolute JOY.

And that brings us to now. I’m expecting line edits on one project and developmental edits on another, and I’m truly enjoying this season SO much. I’ve felt so energized and inspired, I love everything I’m working on, and I wake up grateful every day that this is what I get to do.

I’ll have a few more events this year, which I’ll be sure to share about here and on Instagram, but otherwise the rest of this year will be devoted to the writing itself, and I’m so looking forward to it.

Now that we’re up to date on everything, you can expect this newsletter to resume its normal schedule (the first Friday of the month), with some deep dives into my writing process to come. I love connecting with you here, and if there’s anything in particular you’d like to hear more about, let me know in the comments!

A Moment of Gratitude

If you haven’t read Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir yet, please go do that. It’s one of my all-time favorite books, so I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about the movie, but it was an absolutely masterpiece. Once you finish the book (which I’ve heard is fantastic on audio), go watch the movie! I’ll be seeing it for a second time in theaters and will promptly purchase it once it’s available to own.

It’s been a long time since I’ve loved a movie so much (if you’ve been a subscriber of this newsletter for a while, you’ll remember the last one was Top Gun: Maverick which I loved so much I watched twice in one night 😂), and it just made me so grateful for stories in all their iterations.

Something I especially love about Project Hail Mary is that it’s an ultimately hopeful story. There are a lot of horrible things going on in the world, and Hail Mary (both the book and the movie) left me feeling hopeful and excited for the future. I also just really love watching humans (and rock-like aliens) do extraordinary things.

So here’s to writing extraordinary stories and doing extraordinary things. As always, thank you so much for being here. 🤍

Love,

Rachel

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