One hundred pink Substacks

Thank you for indulging me

March 2025

This is my hundredth Substack.

Thank you for not heckling me off the stage.

It’s just a small pink stage, and hardly a stage – more of a letter slipped under the door.

That’s why I called my Substack page Letters from America. I wanted to be in touch with you.

I also wanted to make myself a kind of scrapbook. You think you’ll remember all the new things you try, the new things you see, and all the new things you do.

Of course you won’t.

I’ve written a Substack every week for nearly two years.

When you create your Substack page, you can set up categories. They’re like regular features in a magazine.

I made eight: Book Events, What I’m Reading, Food, Travel, Outings in DC, Shopping and Decor, Art and Museums and Thoughts About Things.

At the 100 posts mark, I’ve written an almost equal number of stories in each category.

I didn’t have to do that. But I like to put my Smarties in rows, and eat until I have an equal number of each.

There’s another reason I write Substacks.

It’s probably bad luck to share my dream like this, but the truth is I want to publish at least one romance novel a year for the rest of my life.

To this end, I have been writing a novel. (“Revolutionary”, as Meryl Streep would say in The Devil Wears Prada.)

Art Lovers is nearly done and I’d like it to be the first in a series of romances. I have ideas for even more books than that.

What’s the connection between novel- and Substack-writing?

Romance writers these days don’t just write manuscripts. You form relationships with readers. With other writers too.

In the romance writing world, readers and fellow-writers are really very surprisingly supportive of each other. The online and in-person environment is, in fact, genuinely loving.

When I started writing on Substack, I did so wearing a romance writers hat. I chose a pink background for my stories, and I chose writing categories that might be interesting to other romance readers and writers.

I’ve decided to lean in even harder.

From now on, I’ll be writing even more about things that I hope will feed into my books.

For instance, I’m going to have a new category called Places I’ve Been. The stories will be different to the travel stories I’ve written in the past two years. I might have visited the place years ago. I’m going to write about places that might become settings.

I’m going to write more about things that people do over here – jobs and hobbies and activities – that might be the jobs or hobbies or passions of a character.

I want to start getting to know the people of America better than the tourist attractions.

I also want to write about women authors – instead of reviews of individual books – and I want to write about American women who have broken the mould, smashed the glass ceiling and generally blown folks out of the water.

I’ll continue to not write about politics. It’s tempting … but no (As Julia Roberts says in Notting Hill).

It’s always a bit of embarrassing, posting.

But the comments make it worth it.

Also, I’m convinced it’s a good thing – diary-writing is how authors used to record experiences, and it aided their fiction writing.

On the topic of aids to fiction writing, I’m going to start posting a Substack every second week, instead of every week.

Completion is always better than perfection. I’d love to complete more romance novels, and quicker too.

It thrills me to bits to think of anyone enjoying what I write.

Thank you so much for your encouragement these past 24 months.

See you in two weeks.