How It Happened: 5 Years of Writing Even After Everything

The backstory of how Even After Everything came to be

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Today we’re walking through the origin story and timeline of Even After Everything, which has been *checks watch* five years in the making. I do not claim to work fast! As with all creative works, this process had its twists and turns in the topography—including that time I pitched my proposal, and received exactly zero offers. Not even editors in the industry get it the first time. Telling that story today and more!

P.S. Get your copy 25% off at Barnes & Noble today 9/4-9/6 using promo code PREORDER25

December 2019

Five years ago, I started writing the first notes that would become the origin of this book. I had no intention of writing a book then. I was writing wholly for myself. At the time, my husband Zach and I had been married for nearly a decade, and it had been a happy decade of chosen childlessness. The book tells more of the story, but when we got pregnant as soon as we started trying, which was shocking/exciting/terrifying/the works. I warmed to the wonder of this pregnancy during Advent, and then experienced miscarriage on the winter solstice, the darkest night of the year. It was Advent’s week of joy. I was reeling in the juxtaposition. I wrote to reckon. I wrote as a lifeline.

Spring 2020

In March, the global pandemic was declared. In April, Easter week, two pink lines revealed themselves on the pregnancy test. I felt the vulnerability of joy again. Two sets of entirely different cells begin multiplying—one toward death and untold tragedy; one toward life, or so we hoped. I kept writing into these paradoxes. I was both filled with hope, and afraid to trust my hope. 

December 2020

Fast-forward to winter, and our daughter Quinn was born. Her birthday was the peak of Covid cases and deaths in our city at the time. She was born one year nearly to the day of our winter solstice loss. 

January 2021

I remember the exact moment this book announced itself.