June 2026
Awards, feelings, and film
Last week, someone on Threads said something that has been rattling around in my brain ever since. They pointed out that 40 likes on a post might not seem like much at first. Until you think about 40 people stopping you on the street to say they liked something you said. That would feel a bit overwhelming.
And if 40 is overwhelming, then the 1400 kudos on my fanfiction has me floored. 1400 people not only read what I wrote but also felt compelled to leave a digital thumbs-up. This shift has really made me appreciate all the people who have engaged with my work. Like you, beautiful subscribers here. Thank you so much for being here month after month. It really does mean a lot!
Below the Garden
Speaking of being perceived. Thank you to everyone who read, shared, or liked Chapter One of Below the Garden. It became my most-read post on this here humble Substack. And to everyone who left comments, thanks so much. I loved reading your thoughts and interacting with you. I kept going back and rereading them like a weirdo. It means more than I can properly express, so I’ll just say thank you and keep it moving before I get emotional.
Now, because you’ve been so good to me, I wanted to give you a little taste of what’s coming. Below is a sneak peek of Chapter Two. Consider it a thank you for sticking with me on this one. I can’t wait to hear what you think when the full chapter drops next month.
The forest was loud with birdsong, and the canopy filtered light into long emerald shafts that turned the undergrowth luminous. Kore stepped over a fallen branch and adjusted the cloth bundle at her hip. She tried to keep her mind on the path and task ahead, but her mother’s scrutiny last night kept pace with her.
When she returned home yesterday, Kore knew before she reached the doorway that Demeter would be waiting, rehearsing her explanation during the walk home. She eased through the door on quiet feet, expression neutral, and her breathing even. The choreography practiced over years of learning to cross a room without raising questions.
Demeter sat in the main room, hands folded in her lap, oil lamps still burning. She did not need to ask a question. It was already there, written in the set of her mouth and the steady, searching quality of her dark eyes. The lamplight caught the strong lines of her cheekbones and the warm, golden glow of her skin that looked like Kore’s.
“There you are, daughter.”
Demeter’s gaze traveled over her. Kore held still for the inspection with familiar patience.
“I’m sorry, Mother. A minotaur attacked the village. I stayed to help someone who was injured.”
“You shouldn’t concern yourself with such trivialities, Kore. I know you like to play around with your little plants. But that is work for a proper healer.
It was the one mercy of her mother’s indifference. Kore could bury the truth inside details Demeter would never care enough to question.
“Were the gardens damaged? The restoration along the road?”
“Your flowers are fine, Mother.” For now, until the winter frosts get them.
“But why were you alone in the forest?”
“The nymphs had already gone back.”
Demeter’s expression shifted, a tightening around her eyes that she reserved for those who had failed her. “They left you?”
“I told them to go.” The words came out fast. Kore heard the urgency in her own voice and steadied it. “The restoration was nearly finished, and I wanted to stay and check the root systems one more time. I sent them ahead.”
“I give them one responsibility. Keep my daughter safe while she does her work. And they can’t manage even that.”
Guilt pooled in the soft hollow at the base of Kore’s throat. She and the nymphs weren’t close, but she didn’t want them to face their mother’s anger. “Mother, it wasn’t their fault. I insisted. They didn’t want to leave, but I told them I’d be right behind them. I just wanted to get the planting right. I wanted it to be perfect. For you.”
Her mother’s expression rearranged itself, the hardness around her eyes softening, the tight line of her mouth easing into something closer to warmth.
“Well,” Demeter’s voice changed. The blade tucked back into its sheath. “Your dedication isn’t what I’m questioning. It’s their judgment.”
Demeter rose from her chair, crossing the room with measured grace. Her hands found Kore’s shoulders, thumbs pressed against the curves of muscle there, a gesture that looked tender but, to Kore, felt like being pinned.
“A goddess alone in the forest after dark. Look at what almost happened.” Her thumbs pressed slightly harder. “Or worse, you could have been taken, Kore. Carried off to who knows where.”
A flicker crossed Demeter’s face, quick and involuntary, her dark eyes narrowing. Her fingers tightened a fraction and tilted her head. “Something is different about you.”
For a moment, the air locked in Kore’s lungs. But no, her mother could not know what happened in the woods. “I’m just tired, Mother.”
“You are my greatest achievement. You are promised for great things. There are those who would wish to sully your virtue. I will not see that diminished by carelessness.”
The words settled into Kore’s stomach, uneasy and churning.
“I have worked too hard, and we are so close. Do I need to keep you in your room to ensure you act properly?”
Flashes of panic rolled through. Compliance was the fastest way to keep the walls from closing in again. Kore shook her head.
“Good, go wash up. And tomorrow, you stay with the nymphs. No more wandering alone.”
Hoyden and the Duke
I honestly can’t remember the last time I mentioned Hoyden and the Duke here in the newsletters. My main focus has been on Below the Garden. But it’s Hoyden and the Duke that started me on this path to rediscover my love of writing. And it would be bad form not to dance with the one who brought me. But I have recently joined a new writing group (Hello New England Romance Writers!) with the sole intention of having them hold me accountable for keeping up with David and Beatrice. And it’s worked. I have recently been deep into edits of Chapter 4. And by “deep in edits” I mean wrestling with pacing, trying to get my characters to sound like themselves, and doing all of that while keeping the humor intact. Making a chapter feel both properly paced and genuinely funny is the kind of challenge that will have you staring at the same paragraph for an embarrassing amount of time. The good news is my writing group responded really well to the latest update, which gave me the push I needed to keep going. Progress is progress, even when it’s slow and stubborn.
Heart Awards
Speaking of Hoyden and the Duke, I got some great news last month. I’ve been nominated for an OKRWG Heart Award in the Historical Romance category for the first three chapters of Hoyden and the Duke. For those unfamiliar, OKRWG is the Oklahoma Romance Writers Guild, and the Heart Award is their annual contest recognizing unpublished romance manuscripts. This was one of the few contests I entered this year before I shifted my focus to Below the Garden, so getting that nomination email was a genuine surprise.
I never quite know how to talk about these things. I feel this push and pull between wanting people to read my work and wanting to hide under a blanket at the thought of strangers evaluating it. But then I remember the teachings of my most sacred text, “Yes, it’s scary, but you are brave.”
I just submit work I’m proud of, and then I let it go. But I’m so glad to land a nomination alongside other talented writers. I’ll take that win.
I need to talk about The Drama. It has been living rent-free in my head for months.
On the surface, this is a movie about secrets and whether the people we love owe us sordid details of their lives. But the thing that keeps pulling me back is a thornier question: what does it mean to love someone fully as a flawed human being? And I mean fully. Not the version of them you’ve built in your head, not the version that makes you comfortable, but the real, complicated, sometimes terrifying whole person.
Spoilers ahead!!!
From the very first scene, Charlie is constructing a version of Emma. Their meet-cute is built on a lie, him pretending to have read her book, and there’s something telling about the fact that the foundation of their relationship is Charlie performing a version of himself to match the woman he’s already decided Emma is. He does this several times throughout the entire film. Her deafness is a cute quirk. Her quiet intensity is mysterious. She’s the girl reading alone in a café, and he’s the guy who gets to be with her. That’s the story he tells himself.
So when Emma’s confession shatters that image, Charlie doesn’t just lose trust in her. He loses trust in his own judgment. He decided to marry her. And now he has to sit with the fact that the Emma he fell in love with and the Emma who planned a school shooting at fifteen are the same person. That dissonance is what drives him for the rest of the film, not the confession itself.
Charlie doesn’t sit with that discomfort privately. He goes looking for someone, anyone, to tell him it’s okay to stay with Emma. He repackages Emma’s story for Mike and Rachel, softening the edges so they’ll give him permission to forgive her. He fumbles through a conversation with Rachel’s cousin Sam. He lays out a hypothetical for his coworker Misha that’s so transparent it’s painful to watch. Every single time, he’s outsourcing the most intimate decision of his life to people who aren’t in the relationship.
Meanwhile, Emma keeps offering him the simplest possible path forward. Start over. Reintroduce ourselves. Try again. She says this at the beginning of the film, and she says it at the end, and both times Charlie almost misses it because he’s too busy looking for answers everywhere except the person sitting right in front of him.
What wrecks me about the diner scene is that Charlie finally gets it. Not because someone gave him permission, but because he ran out of places to look. He made his own mess with Misha. He got beaten up at his own wedding. The people whose opinions he chased either judged him or failed him. And in that booth, battered and soaked, he’s not asking the world to forgive Emma anymore. He’s asking Emma to forgive him. Because he finally understands that the only validation that matters in a relationship is the one that happens between the two people in it. Just: do you choose me, knowing everything? Do I choose you?
That realization—that love isn’t about deserving or earning approval from the outside, but about two people deciding to see each other completely and stay anyway— has been rattling around in my brain since April.
I’d love to hear from you. Have you seen The Drama? And if so, do you think Charlie and Emma earned that diner scene, or did the film let them off too easily? Tell me in the comments; I want to fight about this lovingly.
Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune
If you’re familiar with the work of TJ Klune, you already know he has this almost unfair ability to take a character you want to throw out a window and, slowly and carefully, make you love them. Wallace Price is, to put it kindly, the worst. He’s selfish, dismissive, and so thoroughly unpleasant that when he dies in the opening pages, my first reaction was “good.” But Klune doesn’t let you stay comfortable in that judgment. Page by page, Wallace starts to soften. He listens when he used to talk over people. He stays when he used to leave. The romance between Wallace and Hugo is the warm center of the whole thing. It builds through presence, through showing up for each other in ways that feel earned. Wallace is sitting with Hugo through his panic attacks. Hugo gives Wallace the space to become someone worth loving. It’s tender without being saccharine, which is a line Klune walks better than almost anyone writing romantic fantasy right now. And the supporting cast deserves their own round of applause. The other spirits passing through the tea shop each bring their own grief and humor, and Klune gives every one of them enough dimension that you feel the weight of their stories even in brief appearances. This is a book about death that somehow manages to feel like a celebration of what it means to be alive, connected, and willing to change. A perfect read any time, but an especially lovely one to close out Pride Month.
i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) by CorvidCordelia
CorvidCordelia is one of my all-time favorite writers of Heated Rivalry fanfic. And this is one of my favorite AU (alternative universe) fics. It’s a Pride and Prejudice retelling with Shane and Ilya as writers in NYC.(I’ll let you figure out who is Darcy and who is Elizabeth 😜) CorvidCordelia’s writing is evocative and moving. From Hampton getaways, NYC writing gliterati events, and a pivotal upstate NY writing getaway. You really feel immersed in this world. And Shane and Ilya in this work feel so lived in and true to the Hollonov that I fell in love with in the Heated Rivalry universe. Yes, it’s fanfiction, but it’s a love letter to NYC, writers, and the art of writing. Okay, brb just convinced myself I need to re-read this.
Can you believe it? Heartstopper is ending (both the show and the comic, poor one out for the homies). The series-ending movie premieres July 17 on Netflix. Fun fact: when Heartstopper premiered in 2022, it became my special interest (à la Heated Rivalry) and consumed me. I devoured the comics and any piece of fan art I could get my hands on. I’m genuinely gonna miss Charlie and Nick. They have a beautiful love story that is a great example of young love to people of all ages.
Music
I have been listening to a steady rotation of you seem pretty sad for a girl in love by Olivia Rodrigo, Florescence by Maisie Peters, and Infinity Songs’ self-titled album. They all contain a mix of summer bops (stupid song, Hurricane, and My Regards), (Speaking of My Regards, I made a fan edit, my best one yet if you ask me!) melancholy love songs (You You You, Running Away, what’s wrong with me), and f**k you anthems (cigarette smoke, Old Fashioned, Stranger Danger). This is the soundtrack of my summer.
If you made it this far, you’re officially my favorite kind of person. If anything this month made you laugh or think, consider sharing it with a friend who also loves talking about all things romance. They’ll fit right in.
Happy June, and see you next month!
-Jackie T
Congrats on the nomination! Your style is so fun to read, and I can't wait for all of Chapter 2!