Book Cover: The Red Heads

An upcoming Forest Avenue Press book that I've been excited about is The Red Heads by Rachel King. The story follows the travels of a team of lady basketball players during the height of the Great Depression. And in fact the book is based on the real All-American Red Heads, the first professional female basketball team in the country, which toured from 1936 all the way through 1986. 

You can check out more about them here and when they were inducted into the Missouri Hall of Fame here.

Yes, the ladies were expected to have red hair or dye their hair red, and yes, folks expected them to be entertainers and beauties as well as athletes, but they played by men's rules and were athletes all the way. There's cultural tension to be explored in The Red Heads, but it's also a charming, personal story.

Every Forest Avenue author, when they're first signed with the press, is given an author questionnaire to fill out. In hers, prompted with a question as to whether she had any suggestions for the editors, designers, or salespeople, Rachel jotted a quick cover idea that publisher Laura Stanfill really liked and sent to me:

"My main idea right now: a map of the United States, with a small basketball on the map that bounces from the Portland area to Idaho to Colorado and on and on and on."

I liked this idea a lot—it felt simple and elegant and just the right approach—and I got right to work, building a map of the country on which to launch our bouncing ball. I kept it simple, just a shape of the country...

...and an outline for each state.

For my bouncing ball, I did some research. Was a basketball in the late 1930s the same as a basketball now? Those particular markings they have? I found not only some old photographs but a patent illustration from June 25, 1929. I pulled it all into Illustrator for good measure so I could work off of something real and historic for my simple Red Heads basketball.

Back in the day, they were leather and brown or tan rather than the bright orange rubber we see nowadays. The one thing that caught my eye, the one thing that might be an issue, is the stitching you see in the bottom of the above screenshot. I worried a little that if I needed to include that detail, it could potentially not read instantly as a basketball to modern readers, and may be one detail too many alongside my very simplified America and bouncing path. Then I found out that just before the time period in which the story takes place, the lace-up detail stopped being a thing. Being the nerd I am, I liked building my basketball off of a photograph of an actual vintage ball of the time.

For the lettering, I instantly wanted to use the tall angular serif that's often used for sports and colleges. As I poked around on the Internet looking at pictures of Depression-era sports jerseys and advertisements, I saw it a lot. It felt like an authentic choice to make. I found a font called, fittingly, Graduate that looked good, but for the look I wanted, and to fill the space of my layout the best, I needed it to be taller. 

You can stretch the words and make them taller, but then the lines aren't all of consistent thickness. So instead, I typed out and placed my title and author name and then turned the text into outlines, so that instead of being editable text, it was shapes. Then I could cut and elongate the letters.  

For colors, it felt fitting to use a background red for a book called The Red Heads as well as a blue-on-blue map for America. Keeping my red a darkened shade, and my blue bright, plus the eventual third color of my basketball, I figured would help evoke a feeling of old America, as opposed to an on-the-nose flag-waving modern America.

I wanted a little something more for my type treatment, so for the word The in the title, I looked at fonts that were of a vintage style to pair with my sports font. I turned that text, too, into outlines so that I could tinker with it.

And it worked well for a novel, with, again, some tinkering.

Finally my bouncing ball. I grabbed a map and plotted out the various spots in the country where Rachel was interested in the ball touching down.

Then I experimented until I found a trajectory for my path that both looked good and satisfied the rundown of landmarks Rachel wanted to highlight. 

Also doing a touch of color finessing along the way.

I liked that Rachel didn't want just a random bouncing ball but a path created from the true landmarks of the stories in her book.

We experimented with some texture and color options (trying for sepia or a a red/sepia combo)...

...but throughout the process, the story of this book cover (and for me each book cover has a story) was of naturalness. A lot of designs are a struggle. A puzzle to figure out. Not that I don't enjoy the work of it. The design for The Red Heads unspooled very naturally for me somehow. The layout, the fonts, the original colorway. It all felt almost instinctive. And in the end, after I'd moved one bouncy spot from southeast to southwest Missouri (which necessitated a shift in the final line of the basketball bounce), we had our final cover—well, with some empty space on top waiting for a blurb, which we'll add when the time comes.

The Red Heads comes out in June of 2027. More information on Rachel is here, and info on Forest Avenue Press is here. 

And here's an excerpt:

In the years I was growing up in Oregon City after the Great War, the death of my parents meant ignorance and caretaking, and little else. Not at first, anyway. It wasn’t until I left my hometown at age nineteen that I attained an awareness of myself and the world—that I set out on a kind of journey.

My parents died in a car crash in 1924, when I was six years old and my little sister, Carrie, was barely one. My aunt and uncle—my mom’s sister and her husband—took us in and raised us fine, but the Depression hit them hard, and by the mid-1930s they were renting out every bedroom except Carrie’s and mine. They themselves slept on a mattress in the walk-in pantry off the kitchen, and their two sons were off with the Civilian Conservation Corps. To pay them room and board, during my last year of high school, I found a job backstage at a burlesque show in Portland, an assignment I liked better than sitting in class.

To get to work, I walked into downtown Oregon City to the streetcar, which took me the fifteen miles into downtown Portland. At the theatre before the show, I darned costumes and did the dancers’ makeup. During the performance, I helped the women change during or between numbers and prompted them on and offstage at the correct times. Afterward, I washed costumes and cleaned the stage, usually finishing work around 2 a.m. I enjoyed the streetcar ride and the walk home on clear and cool nights, but on cold, wet nights I was exhausted by the time I got into bed.

In the winter of 1937, after a month of rain, I came down with a cough and fever and missed three days of work. My boss, George, said that if it happened again he’d fire me. Although talkative with many dancers, George spoke to me only to point out a spot I’d missed when mopping or to ask me to run an errand. He’d hired me on the recommendation of a high school classmate, a burlesque dancer named Julia, maybe thinking I was as raucous as she was. But I rarely made mistakes, and since such meticulous employees could be hard to find, I thought he’d probably keep me on, until one day, in the summer of 1937, after I’d worked there for a little over a year, when he asked me to become a dancer.

I was leaning against the red curtains, watching the women onstage. They wore purple sequined caps; their heads glittered as they twirled. George came up close to me and with two fingers followed a strand of loose hair hanging over my face. Repelled, I pulled my head away, then continued to gaze onstage. He told me that Natalie was pregnant, and that in three months, he’d need to hire another dancer. He asked whether I was interested.

I remembered when Natalie had missed her time, how I’d redone her makeup after she cried. I did not want to dance. I was not flexible or great with rhythm; I’d make a fool of myself. But if I turned George down, he might fire me. I told him that I’d let him know before Natalie left, then on my days off began to search for a new job, without luck, like most everyone else.

Book Cover: The Sea-Glass Shore

Back when I learned that Forest Avenue Press had acquired a novel about a selkie, I had a quick vision of designing a cover that would depict that mythical creature. But Julie Salmon Kelleher's The Sea-Glass Shore isn't a straight-up fantasy. It's a literary novel with a hint of otherworld. Sure, Rona is a selkie. But the book is really about family, about identity, about the longings we all have for the life we leave behind when we make big choices. 

Here's from the current description from the publisher:

When Jack, librarian and curator of legends, meets Rona, she puts aside her sealskin to live as his human wife. Jack knows all selkie stories end the same: the seal-woman always finds her stolen skin and leaves. But he hasn’t stolen Rona’s skin, and they both believe their relationship is different. He doesn’t need to be that guy. She doesn’t need to run. But as their children grow into troubled teens, Jack and Rona begin falling into roles they’ve sworn to put aside. 

Most selkie stories are about the beginning or the end, but this one is about the middle. How do you live with a family past of people disappearing into the sea? How do you avoid the same wrong act everyone has committed before you? And what is love—for a child, a spouse, a mortal world—in the face of history?

Every author who signs with Forest Avenue Press gets an Author Questionnaire to fill out, and one of the questions on the survey is, Would you like to make any suggestions or special requests about the book to the editors, designers, or salespeople? An idea that Julie suggested for this designer was to explore the visual theme of a small figure in a big landscape.

The landscape where the story takes place is coastal Washington, and Julie based Rona's cove on two specific spots:

Teddy Bear Cove

And Larrabee State Park

Julie shared a few examples of small-figure-in-big-landscape covers.

I particularly like this one, for Yangtze Choo's The Fox Wife.

For The Sea-Glass Shore, there were a few angles we could take with this concept. It could be Rona alone in the big landscape, or the family of four together, or the landscape could even be an underseascape, and the figure a seal.

I started looking at pictures online of families standing on the shore. I had an image in my head of the four figures—Rona, her husband Jack, and their two kids—maybe in silhouette, their backs to the viewer. They'd be close together, enjoying the waterside in a huddle, but mother Rona would be stepped off just a little from the others. Still close, still touching, maybe with a hand on one other's shoulder or back, but turned away, looking out into the bay. Togetherness with a tension of longing for something else.

But in my image search, I wasn't finding quite the positions I wanted. When I tried to superimpose my imaginary family on the photos I'd collected of Larrabee State Park and Teddy Bear Cove, they weren't meshing well from a layout perspective. At the same time I gave the seal-in-the-sea idea a try. It was one of Julie's thoughts, and I liked it. I built a half-above-half-below-water scene with a seal and waves of bull kelp. A big sky for the title. It was turning out... OK. As a flat illustration it was too simple, too... friendly. The seascape needed more details. I already thought that whatever layout I landed on, I'd take the flat art and turn it into something more dimensional with shading and nuance, but as I played around with this concept, I found I was losing interest.

I did up a sample or two.

That above-the-waterline landscape, by the way, is from a video of Larrabee State Park that was in a link Julie sent us. I watched that video, starting and stopping, taking screenshots when I liked the angle. Which, I'll admit, is a lot of dedication to theme for a few shapes of land that could be in any part of the sea.

I should pause and say something about color, here. Back before the concepting even began, publisher Laura Stanfill and I talked about having the colorway for this cover be sea-glass colors. In fact, when she and I were in Spokane, Washington, for the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association trade show last fall, we happened past a window displaying big wind chimes in sea-glass colors, and she said, there! Those are the colors for Julie's cover! 

They were a good choice conceptually, but they also were colors that worked beautifully with Julie's author photo (which I'll keep to myself for now in case she decides to use something else when the time comes). Those blues and greens with hints of white and a salmony orange. I kept that array in mind throughout the whole concepting process for The Sea-Glass Shore. But those same colors were part of why the seal-under-the-sea design wasn't working for me. Not the colors alone, but the way they worked within the whole. The brightness of the colors, the prominence in the layout of the seal (seals are so cute), the fluffy clouds and sun, it all made the design too buoyant to me.

And I could adjust the colors, tone down the mood, add details and dimension to the seascape, take the illustration from flat to dimensional with texture and shading—there was lots I could do to turn it from a simple, scrappy design to something better—but I was also aware that my seascape could be anywhere. Sure I could research the specific aquatic flora and fauna (can you call fish fauna?) of that area of Washington, but to the untrained eye, it's just going to look like a scene under the sea. 

At the same time as I pondered these things, I kept coming back to the idea of Rona by herself in the big landscape. And specifically a suggestion I'd been given about using an early scene in the book of a young Rona sitting on a rock in the cove, just out of the water, contemplating the wonder and danger of being in the above-sphere. Here's a tiny piece:

Don’t fall in love.

She’s heard those words each time she’s come ashore. To her they’re part of this world of cloud and stone, an echo of alarm. She sinks her hand deep, deep down into the fur skin she holds folded in her lap. The fur is dense and silk and the color of every beautiful colorless thing in the world. Water. Starlight. Phosphorescence. The mist on those evergreen hills.

And the other thing that I kept coming back to is this photograph of Teddy Bear Cove.

That rock down at the end, dipping into the water, not the tiny one at the very end, but the one just before it. Wouldn't that be the perfect spot for Rona to perch all alone in her big new world?

So I pivoted. And started building that cove. Starting with lines.

Then filling in with solid color. Not necessarily the shades I'd be using in the end, but just a starting color scheme as I created my solid shapes.

Sketching Rona out the same way.

I made a thick band of water using wavy strips of different shades of green. Here's a screenshot showing it in Illustrator, when I'd pulled those strips all together into one layer and laid that over the top of the 6" x 9" area that would eventually be not only Rona's cove but her cover. On the right you can see some color variations I was playing with and then the many layers in the file.

Once I had my cove with land and sea and sky, I added Rona on her perch. And I stole my seal from the earlier design and experimented with where that might go. I wasn't sure whether Laura and Julie would want a seal in the scene or not, so I experimented with a few layouts with and without the seal, with and without a line of trees, tried some different type treatments.

I was still being a little too literal with our idea of using all sea-glass colors in the design. The salmon in particular—there was something in the back of my mind that said it wasn't quite working, but I felt like I needed a warm color to offset the blues and greens, so even though white was standing out better for the title and author name, I kept trying shades of salmon. 

No, not because of the author's name. Or was there something subconscious going on?

When I sent my first samples to Laura, she zeroed in on the color too. She liked the design and its various iterations but said the bright blue of the sky and the salmon of the lettering made the cover look more tropical than Pacific Northwest. She said, "I wonder about making the sky more gray, or the clouds more rainclouds, to earn the salmon colored font. Like, if that was gray or gray-blue background, the salmon wouldn't conjure Florida or whatever."

And I swear my brain went, I could make the sky gray? Like somehow I'd decided I couldn't. That the sea had to be green and the sky blue. What does it say about me that I kept myself confined in this sea-glass box? Laura and I talked about layout and lettering and details, and for the next pass, I stretched my colors, trying a gray sky, a gray-blue, even another shade of green. Straight gray looked strange, but I liked the gray-blue.

Did that gray-blue earn the salmon-colored font? Did sticking with greens in subtle variations create a nicer effect?

I sent a handful more samples to Laura... 

...and she sent some on to Julie, including one or two of the seal-under-the-sea design. Happily, Julie really liked the Rona-on-the-rock concept, and she chose her favorite of the samples.

Our discussion during the refining process sealed the deal (alright, I did not mean that pun but I'm keeping it) on doing away with the salmon. It was still reading as tropical. Julie said the clouds in the Salish Sea tend to be more layered than puffy, so I went back in to update those. She also said that Rona is race-neutral and the figure on the cover is very white, so we tried some different skin tones. 

She was glad that Rona on her rock didn't mimic the famous image of The Little Mermaid, something she'd worried about when suggesting that scene for cover imagery, but "there’s still the potential for it to read as 'girl and her animal friend,'" so I tinkered with the seal in the water. That seal was a holdover from my earlier design, one that Laura had even said looked like it was smiling. I had selected the photo of that particular seal in my early image search because of the position of the body and the clarity of the picture, which would make it easier to reproduce, but yes, it's a particularly cute and friendly seal. I liked what Julie had to say when we asked her for her thoughts on adjusting the seal:

"I think part of the issue is the sparkle in the eye. I'll paste a link below with a good opening photograph where the eyes look almost vacant and fathomless—more alien, more depths of the sea. You don't know what they're thinking."

More alien, more depths of the sea.

And, "Seals really are plump but they're also just big and sprawling, and from some angles their heads are almost elongated. If you scroll down past the tearing-up meat photos at the link (how's that for not-cute? 😄), there are a couple of photos of longer heads above the water."

The link was really helpful—and actually, one of the things I had wanted to tinker with, which I hadn't gotten around to yet, was the angle of the seal's head. I had wanted to position my seal as I had in the layout because of the way it interacted with the placement of the author's name, but in simply plopping my original seal into that position, I ended up with its head angled in a way that looked kind of like it was looking at Rona... but not really. 

So I drew out and then filled in a new seal head... 

...that I could drop into my design with the updated clouds and skin tone.

They liked my changes and now it was time to transform the flat art into something dimensional. We also removed the stand-in blurb and gave it a stand-in tagline. 

Shading

Texture and detail

Can you see any of that? Sheesh, this old blog. Let's zoom in a bit.

And here comes our final. When blurbs are decided on, we'll move that tagline to the back and put a blurb up top, filling that space better. And I may tinker a bit with the finer detail before we go to press. But I've enjoyed spending this time in Rona's cove.

The Sea-Glass Shore will be out this fall. More information is on the Forest Avenue Press site here. More on Julie Salmon Kelleher is here. And here is a taste of the novel:

“Memory’s odd. There’s a lot of research on it. I could—I could find you a book, if you like. Do you want—”

“Thank you. But I wouldn’t know where to put it.” A book. Jack could find her a book. They stand at the edge of the sea, and you could chase the sun across that open space your whole life long and never catch it. No wonder she can’t remember so much space—more than anyone can ever hold, and in the face of all of that? He would give her a book.

Imagine seeing the world that way: sorting everything you know onto pages and shelves. Ridiculous. Except that Rona has fingers, hands. And what are they for, if not to gather and sort out everything there is to know?

Like Jack would gather it. Like Jack would teach her.

It’s obvious.

He won’t keep her from falling. Jack is as lost as she. Wherever he stands he will always see those trains he hasn’t taken: all those things he can’t understand but will reach for all the same. That’s why he’s what she needs. If you’re going to fall, you want to be with someone who understands falling.

Someone who will know how you should be caught.

“It’s a pretty bay,” she says.

He looks to the water and shrugs, his shoulders a frame, a holding place against the sky. “I could have done worse than end up here,” he says.

Don’t fall in love. But she is falling in love, has fallen, can’t even remember when it was she fell. There was a shore. An edge to the sea. A line that marked the difference between one thing and the next and she has crossed it recklessly, and she is reckless still. It doesn’t matter if she is afraid. “It’s pretty here,” she says. “But the cove where I first met you is prettier.”

He moves his eyes to hers and she can feel the air come swiftly in his giving and taking it. The space between them shifts. Everything shifts on the shore: Once, this whole marina was underwater. Every moment slips away and another takes its place, and she knows already she’ll never grasp as much as she desires. Everything changes. But Jack looks at her like she is the place where all of it begins.

He says, “All right.”

a moment in the life of my book: edit

My mug of morning tea is too hot to drink as I sit at my computer in my writing room, reading aloud through the piece I'm going to be reading next Friday night at BOLD Coffee and Books for the third event for Who Killed One the Gun?. I'm reading out loud to practice, to get the words of this excerpt comfortable in my mouth, because my mouth is a twelve-year-old ice skater who needs years of practice before she could ever possibly stick that double lutz. But I'm also doing a tiny bit of editing as I go. There are a couple passages in here that the audience won't understand if they haven't been reading the pages that come before.

I pause at a joke that's the last in a running gag that runs through several scenes. Nope, no one will get it. It's got to go. Fingers on the keys, I make the change and continue with my reading. 

If I admit it, it feels kind of delicious to read this out loud again. Like I did throughout the writing and editing process of this book. Even making that tiny change takes me back to the way it felt when I got to tinker and play with these words. These words come clumsy out of my mouth as I read, but in my head the skater glides and twirls. 

Steam curls from my mug of tea. I recite.

The preacher sweeps his eyes round his quarters like he’s making sure One the Gun is properly taking it all in. The lids are low on the preacher’s eyes, somber, his neck bobbing below the surface of the cross of his shoulders. Gun scans the bookcase, the small chest at the foot of the cot, the religious-looking clay figures decorating the short mantel above the fireplace.

Ooh! This might be funny. What if, later in the book, when One the Gun goes to search the preacher's home looking for the gun, he opens a bureau and he finds—

Wait. 

Wait, the book's out in the world, remember? You can't edit the book any more.

Oh yeah. 

OK. 

Back to reading.

______________________________________________

(By the way, the event is at BOLD Coffee and Books, Friday, January 23, 7 PM. I'll be joined by Erin Hall, author of Dear Sylvia, Love Jane. More info is here and here.)

a year in the life of a book

2025 was a hard year in so many ways for so many of us. It feels maybe gratuitous and self-important to want to fill a blog post with reminiscences about my book—but it also feels important for me personally to celebrate this big thing in my life, and to be able to hold this collection of moments and milestones.

And so I give you—or maybe I mostly give me—a year in the life of Who Killed One the Gun?.

It really did fill the year, even though the book didn't actually come out until October. Only four days into 2025 was when we did the cover reveal. It wasn't what would turn out to be the final cover; that came down the line when I'd gotten blurbs and had taken some time, with the help of my fine-artist husband Stephen O'Donnell, to refine the art. But my publisher and I were suddenly up against the deadline to get galleys printed (a first set of advance reader copies to send to potential buyers and reviewers), and so we pressed go.

Those galleys arrived in late January... 

...and we started sending them out, including to some folks who had agreed to read and maybe blurb the book. 

Also during the first part of the year, I was going through copy-edits and strategy sessions with Laura Stanfill, my most excellent publisher.

In April our ARCs (advance reader copies) arrived. More books to send out to potential buyers and reviewers. I read the whole thing for the first time on the page, not the screen, to look for errors. Our copy-editor Gina Walter did proofing. 

In June we did an early reviewer giveaway through Library Thing. I was excited that of all the books in the giveaway, my cover made it onto their promo graphic.

It was also time for final updates to the book, and getting ready to go to press. In July we went to print with a finally fine-tuned story, a slightly updated cover, and blurbs from some wonderful writers / readers / reviewers:

Kurt Baumeister, Michelle Carroll, David Ciminello, Mo Daviau, Brian Stephen Ellis, Bradley K. Rosen, Mark Russell, Kevin Sampsell, Liz Scott, Tegan Tigani, and Lidia Yuknavitch. Also coming in just in time to be included, we got a very nice review by Ho Lin in Foreword Reviews.

In August, we did an advance reader giveaway through Book Funnel. And I got a lovely review in Kirkus, calling my book a “highly original metafictional pastiche” and saying, “the teasing title of Little’s first novel only hints at the layers of playful self-referentiality bubbling beneath its hardboiled surface."

From this point, things started moving quickly. August 20: books arrived at the publisher. Real books. My books.

August 25: celebratory writing retreat all to myself at Moss Rock Retreat.

August 27: A blurb arrived from Robin Sloan, the author of Moonbound and Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore. An amazing thing. He called my book "the most surprising book of the year." 

August 31: Laura brought books to my house for an unboxing.

September 7: I got a copy of Foreword Reviews in the mail and in there was my review in print. 

September 10: Got an email from a writer freelancing for the Chicago Review of Books, saying she loved my book and wanted to do an interview.

September 12–14: Sisters Festival of Books in Sisters, Oregon. A wonderful time where I roadtripped with my publisher, stayed in a cute, old roadside motor lodge, went to workshops and readings, and sat on a panel with authors Kristina McMorris, Maxim Loskutoff, and Jon Raymond.

Most significant for me, I got to read from my book in public for the first time. Because my publisher Laura was on stage with me at the time and no one in the audience was a friend, we didn't get any pictures, but later I happened upon a story on Instagram, and suddenly, there was an image of the moment.

September 19: A book-themed present! This is from my writer friend Nancy Townsley. A book cozy beautifully made and all dressed in biscuits, which is in reference to a running gag in my novel using the line "like honey on a hot biscuit."  

Late September, Who Killed One the Gun? was included in Powell's Books' “Cozy Staff Favorites” list on their “Cozy Fall Reads” page online.

September 26: An Instagram post of Staff Picks from Annie Bloom's Books in Portland included my book. Staff-picked by writer and bookseller Mo Daviau. An honor—but also this meant that, even though we hadn't yet reached the official pub date, books were starting to actually reach bookstore shelves. To be out in the world.

September 27–28: The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association trade show in Spokane, Washington. Another roadtrip with Laura, this time also with Mo, who was celebrating the publication of her gorgeous novel Epic and Lovely. We checked out Spokane, spent time on the sales floor, signed lots of books. I spoke at the "Authors on the Map" breakfast and signed more books. 

October 2: A lovely and cleverly written piece by Bob Hicks in Oregon ArtsWatch.

October 7: Official pub day. And a bit of a whirlwind. Locus Magazine included the book on their list of New Releases in Sci-fi, Horror, and Fantasy, and I was excited that, of all the books on the list, my cover made their promo graphic.

The novel also went up on Powell's Picks of the Month.

And that night was the book launch.

5:30 PM. Pre-event party with some best friends.

7 PM. Book launch at Powell's City of Books.

Lovely big crowd and I read to the accompaniment of sound effects performed by expert foley artist David Ian.

And sat in discussion with one of my absolute favorite writers of all time, Margaret Malone.

Had burgers afterward with a few close friends (burgers figure in the book) and then came home late to find the flowers my family in California had sent me.

October 7 was also the day that US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem came to town and stood on the roof of the ICE building looking for fodder for Trump’s lies about "war zone" Portland and encountered basically only a man in a chicken suit. Anderson Cooper did a piece for CNN, to try to help dispel the misinformation, and I was surprised to find that my name, on the Powell's marquee, ended up in the broadcast.

So, that was kind of surreal.

October 8: My friend Shannon posted this lovely video from my book launch night.

October 10: My interview in The Chicago Review of Books! They called my novel a "wonderful new metafictional detective noir," and for a while, if you clicked onto their homepage, you saw this:

October 11: Lovely, in-depth review by Hannah Kate of Hannah's Bookshelf for NMFM 106.6 in North Manchester, England. (Link is the entire episode, and her review starts at about the 29 minute mark). 

That evening, Stephen and I took a trip down to Powell's to sign books for the store.

And to visit some places where it was on display, including New + Recommended Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Horror in the Gold Room.

And the Read the Pacific Northwest end cap in the Blue Room.

October 14. Publisher Laura Stanfill wrote a wonderful essay on her Substack about the political moment that happened on my book launch day—but also the personal moment of that night.

And a photo of me, my husband, and the two hosts of my book launch, Kevin Sampsell and Mark Savage, (all longtime booksellers) made Shelf Awareness, the booksellers' trade magazine. 

October 15. Reviewer Amelia Beamer did a delightful preview video of my book for Locus Magazine. I love her reels so much that it was kind of a bucket-list thing to have her do one about my book.

October 17: I had an essay about my book in the "Research Notes" column of Necessary Fiction.

And on the same day, I had a short interview up on Shelf Awareness with loads of my own book and author recommendations, as well as a short rant on why I hate The Red Pony by John Steinbeck.

October 23: A really fun interview with Ken Jones on KBOO Radio's Jonesy. Both Ken and I are big old-time radio fans and since that's a big theme in my novel, we had a great time sharing favorite OTR detective quotes and talking about books and writing.

November 1: Broadway Books made the cleverest social post to advertise their upcoming events that were chosen as "Cover to Cover" events for the Portland Book Festival, one of which was my second Who Killed One the Gun? reading. Look! A bookseller got on the floor and posed as my hero One the Gun to recreate the cover of my novel, with books scattered all around. 

Come on! Amazing.

November 5: Event at Broadway Books in Portland. I was in conversation with Laura Stanfill, and we talked about working together on the book, about writing and personal growth and joy. As a little surprise, when I read at the podium, my husband Stephen popped up in the audience to voice one of the characters, Four the Door, and he was hilarious.

Plus themed cupcakes with number sprinkles.

Also on November 5: Got a really nice in-depth review in Discover Our Coast Magazine.

November 8: Portland Book Festival. I spent the morning at the Forest Avenue Press table selling and signing books and talking with festival-goers.

Also in November, Laura, always an innovator when it comes to promoting Forest Avenue Press books, hooked One the Gun up with Partners in Crime, which does giveaways and outreach that garners reviews and other promo hits for mystery and thriller fiction. Through that, the book got some nice reviews like this and this. Podcaster Teresa Trent read the opening of my book—with her own noir-y twist—on her podcast Books to the Ceiling. And I was invited to share a tiny essay about my novel via Bookworm86, and to be interviewed by Catreader18, both on Instagram.

December 13: Sweet to see my book in Mo Daviau's book stack for her official 2025 Annie Bloom's Staff Favorites portrait. I like that she's also cheekily holding up her own novel Epic and Lovely—which, to be honest, would have been my number one pick for Powell's if we still did our beloved year-end round-up Staff Top Fives.

December 18: Brian S. Ellis, poetry editor for Pool Party, included my book in their Top 15 Books of 2025 list—a really cool list full of unique indie press books, my favorite kind of books.

December 21: Friend Steve Arndt sent me this picture of a clever shelf-talker for my book. Look how they decorated the O in One with blood.

December 23: Another lovely book present! Local artist Shu-Ju Wang made a Christmas ornament each for Stephen and me, crafted to look like our books. Beautifully created inside and out—with significant references from both of our books. Again and again throughout this bookish year, I've been reminded how very many creative and supportive people we know.

Whew! If you've made it this far, I applaud you. And I thank you. Like I thank everyone who made this very one-the-gun year special.

2025 was many things. But with all of it, it was, for me the year of my book, and for that, and for everyone involved in any way, I'm so grateful.