Welcome to another one of my newsletters! There will probably be more of them as usual now as we get closer to publishing day! Woo, consistency!

The Stars Want Blood

Less than thirty fucking days to go. I am so fucking nervous. I am terrified. All in all, I think my publishing journey has been going good, all things considering. Harper Hawthorne (the talented author of Of Blood and Aether, Harbingers Book One, available on Kindle Unlimited now!) has been holding my hand through the entire journey, guiding me through it. (All of my friends have my undying gratitude for the help and support, but Harper is getting a special shout out for the many instructions and guides she’s given me!) Things haven’t been perfect, of course, but it’s gone a lot smoother than I would have ever expected. So, for as petrified as I am, I’m excited!

Book Details

RELEASE DATE June 19th, 2024 (eBook, paperback)
GENRES Adult romantasy, dark romantasy, new adult, LGBTQIA+
LENGTH 166k words (she THICCC)
PRE-ORDER (eBook only) https://www.amzn.com/B0CTGNLZVS/
PRE-ORDER (signed paperbacks) https://etsy.me/3wG6woU
GOODREADS https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/206116326

The Hands Of Fate Are Really Fucking Weird

The year is 2012. I’ve just finished a summer of conducting research at Roswell Park—as part of their very prestigious summer internship program—on Overcoming Myeloid Cell-Mediated Immunosuppression in Epithelial Ovarian Cancer. I’m standing in a conference room next to the professionally formatted and printed poster I’ve made as doctors and researchers and friends and family come by to ask my questions on it. I don’t know it then, but later I’ll win an award for that presentation and my research overall. My parents finally make it over to me. They smile and cheer me on as I nervously give a little speech on my research. They have absolutely no idea what I’m saying and are looking at my like I’m speaking in tongues, but they’re excited for me.

My parents take a terrible, blurry picture of me and my poster. When my dad eventually makes it home, he uploads it to Facebook with a caption that says: My beautiful brillant daughter with her poster presentation for Roswell. It racks up likes quickly. An old friend of his comments on it saying that my dad must be so proud of me. My dad responds saying: Very proud she's going to medical school after her senior yearshe graduates from her internship tommorow but her mentor wants her to stay thru the end of the month and she is

I am not going to medical school after my senior year. I’m going to a local university for biomedical sciences/pre-med after my senior year and would then go to medical school. But my dad doesn’t understand how college works and he was excited. The sentiment’s there. I’d been accepted to my dream school: Ohio State University, and my fun “Hey! I got accepted!” bragging rights school: Dartmouth. I would be attending a university local to me instead of either, however, because it made more sense financially. It’s a good school and it’s cheap as far as secondary studies go.

So, that’s what I did. I later graduated from high school and fell right into things in college. I loved being in college. In high school, I never had any school spirit. I hated it. I didn’t attend events—save for my junior prom at the nagging of my friends and boyfriend—and didn’t partake in any clubs. I wanted the Hell out of there. I was mature and ready to be an adult already. So, I loved college. I joined clubs. I went to football games. I went to parties. I got drunk and fucked—

That’s not important.

What is important is that for all the things, there were also a lot of things that I didn’t do. Like, study, for instance. Why should I? I’m crazy smart. I breezed through high school. Was college supposed to be hard?

College is very hard. I wasn’t even half way ready for it. Looking back on it, I’d have probably done okay if I’d try harder. But I didn’t. I failed almost every class my first semester. And my second semester didn’t prove to be any easier. Calculus (my beloved) and Western Civilizations were the only courses that I did well in. I bombed everything else. And then, as I have a tendency to do, I went crazy.

I am profoundly mentally ill, something that I discovered right after that research internship. My relationship of three years fell apart. I no longer had the high that came with doing something cool like the internship. My parents, predicting my fall, got me into the first available appointment with a therapist and psychiatrist. The psychiatrist and I spent a full hour together and she determined that I was depressed. (Author’s Note: It was so much more than that, but I will never blame her for that diagnosis. At the time, it made complete sense!) She handed me a prescription for Celexa and promised to see me the following month.

When you have bipolar disorder and take antidepressants, you can be launched into something called mania. And boy, was I launched into it!

I spent an entire four weeks of my senior year in grippy socks pacing the halls of a psychiatric ward, scream singing various songs off of Eminem’s album Encore. I’m screaming at nurses to get the fucking FBI-implanted chip out of my arm. I’m showering in my clothes and grippy socks to maximize efficiency. The hospital didn’t do shit for me aside from raise my Celexa dosage and make me more manic. Eventually, my outpatient psychiatrist talked them into releasing me. She traded me Seroquel for Celexa.

But, like, it wasn’t serious. And sometimes I took my medications.

I’m lying. It was wildly serious. Eighteen year old Morgan was learning that the hard way (the way that I usually need to learn things LMAO.) I ended up back in the psychiatric ward. I dropped out of college.

I tried college a few more times after that. I went to a local community college, extremely briefly, to study laboratory sciences. Then I went to a different community college to study civil engineering. Then I went to a different local college to study mathematics and then switched to computer sciences.

And then I dropped out of college for good. And please note, despite the many different things studied, I never got a single degree out of it. I switched schools and/or programs before I could.

Now, I was twenty-five. I had no college degree. I was working as an administrative assistant. Every single day, my dreams of being a neuropsychiatrist and finding a cure for phantom pain that doesn’t require something as cumbersome as a mirror box is getting further and further out of reach for me.

Maybe, just maybe, I’d never become a doctor. Or an engineer. Or a mathematician. That was the hardest pill I’ve ever had to swallow. It made me feel like absolute shit.

In a panic about what I was going to do with my life, I started applying for all sorts of random jobs and was trying to come up with the money to go to welding school. And then, the heat in my car stopped working. Listen, I grew up poor. I can survive without cab heat. I’ll be fine (logic that I still use to this day LMAO.) The problem is that I live in Buffalo, New York. Maybe I’m okay cold, but my car isn’t. With no way to defog the windshield, I kind of needed to get this fixed ASAP. But that was three hundred dollars. I was flat broke. I could never swing that.

I did some internet research. I probably needed a blower motor, whatever the fuck that was. Those cost ninety dollars without the mechanic labor. That was still more than I had, but it was certainly more reasonable. Could I replace the blower motor? Probably not—I didn’t even know how to check my fluids or change a tire. My chances were slim. But with two hundred and ten dollars on the line, I had to try. I watched tons and tons and tons of videos online, and then I called my dad. He watched on, stressed, as I laid awkwardly on the passenger’s side floor of my car and removed the first kick panel. Then I unscrewed the blower motor. I removed the resistor and swapped it onto the new motor I had purchased and then installed it. I reinstalled the kick panel. With my fingers crossed, I started my car and turned on the heat.

Hot air blew out of the fucking vents.

Was it an impressive repair? No, not at all. The entire thing took a total of six minutes and required no power tools. Just lying really uncomfortably and using a regular screwdriver that I’d dug out of the junk drawer in my kitchen. Looking back on it, it’s actually funny that I was so proud. Now, I wouldn’t think twice about doing a repair like that.

But fuck was I proud. I had fixed my own car. Suddenly, I understood why people like working with their hands, why they liked blue-collared work. Sure, other type of work is cool, but there’s just something magical about fixing and/or creating things.

That’s it! I’ll be a mechanic. This is a perfectly reasonable thing for somebody with science/medical/administrative experience to do. And then, the guy I was dating at the time—a truck driver—told me if I was going to do that, I should look into diesel mechanics specifically. They make way more money than auto mechanics.

So, I started applying at every shop around me.

To my surprise, virtually nobody responded. And why would they? It made zero fucking sense to hire me and I was insane to think that anybody might. To my surprise, however, one of the dealers did reach out. I went in for the interview and the service department manager seemed confused as he asked me why I was applying. I explained that though I was as green as they came, I was a quick study and a hard worker. He tells me that they’re looking for a service writer and that might be a better fit for me and hey, at least it’ll get my foot in the door. So, I took the job.

Now, five and a half years later, I’m the RO closer/warranty administrator/yes man of that dealer’s service department. There isn't much that I don’t do. And now I know that this is my career. At least, something in this industry is. I make a comfortable living, I’m good at what I do, and in general I love the environment. I do—despite my very regular bitching—like this industry a lot.

I also just graduated college. Two years ago, I started attending an online program to get my Bachelor’s in Humanities. This was solely just for me and my own pleasure. I’d already found my forever career.

The year is 2024. I have a Bachelor's degree and my first novel is being published in a month.

It’s funny how things work out.

My failure in college and in becoming a doctor had always ached like a rotted tooth. It was embarrassing. I’d failed. Of course, my family always supported me. We weren’t a prestigious family. My mom and one of my sisters both have an Associate’s degree. Both of my sisters and my dad had dropped out of high school. None of us had ever accomplished anything great, so it wasn’t a big deal that I hadn’t either. So long as I could be halfway comfortable and was happy, my family was happy for me. But I wasn’t. It’s not because I want or need more—I do. I inherently want to be wealthy. I hate the simple life, but that's not the particular problem here. It’s that I couldn’t get it. What does that say about me? Of course, it’s fine when this happens to other people! I’ll never judge! College isn’t for everybody and I would never look down on anybody else for not getting a degree. But it’s different with me! I have to be better. It’s different for me.

Today I realized something monumental enough that I was on the phone with my therapist the moment he returned my call request: I’m not different and it doesn’t matter and I deserve the same grace and allowance that I’ll give to anybody else. Who gives a shit if I’m not a doctor or an engineer? Who cares if I don’t have a fancy title after my name? Who cares if I’m not rich and living in a four thousand square foot colonial in Clarence?

Sure, there are things in my life that I’d like to change and improve. But there’s nothing wrong with where I am now.

I ended up exactly where I needed to be.

All right, folks, that’s all! Rambling over. I will leave you with some artwork that the ridiculously talented Mawce Hanlin drew of Ezra and Hazel, the MCs of The Stars Want Blood!!!!!!!