Big Bisexual Book Reveal!
It’s time for some BIG BISEXUAL BOOK NEWS…and to reveal the secret I’ve been anxiously awaiting permission to share for way too long. I am absolutely overjoyed to announce THRILL OF THE CHASE, my F/F adventure romance, will be coming to bookstores near you (!!!!!!!) summer of 2025 with Entangled Publishing.
This is how I pitched THRILL OF THE CHASE when I was querying literary agents: When feuding rivals Eve and Harper are forced together on a hunt for buried treasure, they’ll face hidden dangers, unearth scandalous secrets…and discover a love worth fighting for. Also, if you loved the romantic comedy “The Lost City” but we’re also like “what if it was two hot women instead of one? And they were chaotic bisexuals who can’t figure out if they want to argue with each other or kiss each other on the mouth?” …that’s it, that’s the book!
I have been (secretly) dreaming of and working on this story (in one way or another) for almost four years. And it’s filled with everything I ever wanted: feuding rivals who have to reluctantly learn to trust each other, queer longing in the desert, snarky-enemies-banter, scandalous family secrets, twisty mysteries, a mad dash through New Mexico, ghost towns, forced proximity, also Eve has tattooed fingers and a cocky half-grin and Harper shoves pens into her messy bun and rocks a bold red lipstick (my dream girls!).
Some short and sweet details:
THRILL OF THE CHASE is my first-ever traditionally published book (not indie) which means it will be available in bookstores (!!!) and in ebook (wide distribution, not in KU) and probably in audio too and also at your local library. It will have a longer preorder, which I’ll share as soon as it’s live. All prices, release dates, sales, etc. will be set by Entangled (not set by me, which is how it works with my TWSS friends currently ).
I signed a two-book contract with Entangled, which means as soon as I'm done all the edits on TOTC, I'll start work on the second book immediately after (tentatively scheduled for 2026, but it'll be awhile until I've got final details on that).
Those are the next two releases I've got planned, so while I love publishing indie with TWSS and hope to continue, contractually I'll be with Entangled for a bit and on a slightly different schedule. If you just recently found this newsletter via FREE FALL (hiya!!!) and are like “we have to wait another year for a Kathryn Nolan book????”, don’t worry ‘cause I’ve got a big, juicy backlist in KU you can enjoy. (click here)
Wait…you wrote a book IN SECRET?
Yesssss, I sure did! Four summers ago I was watching a parade of fireflies, lingering in the tall grass on the side of the road, when Harper and Eve strode into my brain. Their love story has changed dramatically since then, as I poked and prodded at various drafts in my spare time from the fall of 2020 through April of 2023 (including not one, but two massive editing overhauls that were messy, stressful, exhausting and then ultimately euphoric!).
Through it all, my dream remained the same, as bright and hopeful as those fireflies: to write a swoony queer romance with two bisexual heroines (bi4bi!). To write an action-adventure romance that felt like the wind in your hair when driving with the windows rolled down and the music cranked all the way up.
To write a love story that tasted like freedom. THRILL OF THE CHASE is that story, and I’m so unbelievably proud of it.
This is a picture I snapped of myself hysterically and happily crying on January 27th of this year…notably, the day I signed with the amazing Flavia Viotti of Bookcase Literary as my literary agent! This is known as the ‘querying process’, when you send a finished manuscript and query letter (which kinda looks like a longer, fancier blurb) off to literary agents, seeking their representation and hoping they’ll take a chance on you. It feels like riding in a roller-coaster for approximately six months until…forever???? A roller-coaster that’s both too fast, teeth-grindingly-slow, full of nonstop rejection and refreshing your email inbox every .5 seconds, every hour, of every day, also for forever. It’s one hell of a mind-game, that’s for sure! A mind game that sounds like “hey Kathryn, did you know your book is terrible because YOU are terrible and every rejection is confirming you’re terrible????”
It’s silly now, but I’m not ashamed to say that it’s easy to read every rejection from an agent as that exact message. I sure did. (even though it’s important to note here that is not what they’re saying, it’s never, ever personal and almost never about your skill or value. You are amazing!) Being an author is scary, vulnerable, and involves putting yourself out there in truly terrifying ways. In some ways, publishing since 2017 had prepared me for this specific kind of joy/heartbreak…but it was still really rough for me for most of 2023. Especially since I was dealing with my new chronic vestibular migraine diagnosis, so I was super dizzy, fighting insomnia and full of brain fog and anxiety.
Every helpful how-to article or writer friend in the biz will tell you that having a community truly gets you through, whether that’s other writer friends, family, folks online, your pets, mother nature, cool hobbies…I had the most amazing friends (and sweet Rob) who knew I was Really Going Through It™️ and listened so patiently when I needed to vent, or be sad, or be really hopeful and excited, or feel unsure of myself. The only way out is through, and the only way through is by leaning on each other for help and support. ❤️
A few readers have asked me why I pursued an agent and a book deal when I’m already publishing indie with TWSS (a great question). This is all personal preference really, and how you’d like to build your career. I have loved indie publishing and working with TWSS is truly such a joy and a privilege. But having a literary agent can help open a few extra doors for you that can be hard without, like movie deals or selling foreign rights, or pitching your stories to big publishing houses. As a queer romance author, I wanted to expand my career as much as possible. At the very least, I felt this tug in my heart that said it was the right time to take the leap and I’m so glad that I listened to it.
That being said, keeping Harper and Eve as a “special side project” was very hard. For the first year, I would manage little 250-word bursts here or there, squeeze in 1,000 words on a random weekend maybe. Then I scrapped the idea, since it wasn’t working. Re-plotted it, took a whole month off from writing for TWSS to draft this new idea…which somehow ended up even worse?? 😂 I really wanted to trash the whole thing and give up after that…until December 2022, when Faith and I tore it down to it’s very bones and I started over from scratch. I finished the draft in April 2023, went through some copy-edits and polishing, and then it was finally ready for querying.
But if you were wondering what my Secret Project™️ was last year…and why I only released a tiny novella at the end of 2023, this is why. 😉
Overall, I sent out 50+ queries from May - December last year, signing with Flavia in January. From there, your agent takes your manuscript “out on sub” (that’s the lingo the cool kids use) which is just as terrifying, since now you get to have big publishing houses reject your book 😂Sub stories vary widely. I read one where it took an author two+ years to find an agent…only to have their book sell 48 hours after going on submission. For some, it takes more than a year to sell. And then, many times, your manuscript just never sells at all — a truly heartbreaking experience.
Entangled Publishing expressed interest in THRILL OF THE CHASE at the end of February, this year, after just one month on sub. I’ll never forget refreshing my inbox for the fourteenth time that hour and seeing Flavia’s email with the subject line “News!” <—- everything changed after that. ❤️
I can’t wait for this next year and all the exciting changes it’s going to bring. Thank you for sticking by me and sticking with me, thank you for cheering me on, thank you for showing up in our romance community as your beautifully authentic selves. I’m so grateful to each and every one of you.