"Thank You, Five"

Final printing is beautiful, incl. tour information – Just under 1 month ‘til curtain for THE UNBECOMING OF MARGARET WOLF.

Author copies are here, real, and beautiful:

“Some men are like land mines . . . Tread on the wrong part of his pride, and it all goes up in smoke.”

Two Shakespearean actors in an unconventional marriage get caught up in a renowned director’s scheme, which will bring them closer than ever or rip them apart for good.

Up-and-coming stage actress Margaret Shoard has just taken a bow as Lady Macbeth, the role she has always believed was destined for her. At home, she plays wife to her best friend, Wesley, even if she doesn’t hold his sole attention romantically. After a public breakdown threatens all she holds dear, Margaret’s doctor prescribes her uppers—just a little help to get through the days.

When Wesley is invited by eccentric director Vaughn Kline to join the cast for an inaugural Shakespeare performance in the New Mexico desert, Margaret decides to accompany him in hopes the time away will set her back to rights . . . but the world she finds in Vaughn’s company is filled with duplicity and betrayal. Margaret and Wesley, embroiled in an affair with a man who may not be all he seems, must find a way forward together before their story becomes the real tragedy.

H of H: I cannot rise. Too heavy with filth and sin. / TH: Give me your hand. / H of H: I’ll stain you. / TH: I’ll take it. — Anne Carson, H of H Playbook

Not to be crass, but it looks very good naked.

Some important thank-you’s that didn’t make it to acknowledgements:

Sara Wood, for the sexiest jacket design I could have hoped for;
Ali Cnockaert, for another set of interiors I want to frame & The Amazing Wiggle;

🫡💕💕💕

Preorder here, and set the mood:

Moodboard (shot) // Memeboard (chaser)

Tunes 🎶

Instead of another tangential attempt to pin down what exactly this one is about, I’ll simply share an excerpt I wrote for a press release soon after delivering final pages:

I had to write this book five times before it held any water. It used to be about opera singers and housewives and a very passive protagonist, which might still have made for an interesting story if that was anything close to what WOLF needed to be.

This is the one that taught me to quit pulling my punches. From the soil of a deep and isolated depression, I grew and tended Margot and Wesley; my Heracles and Theseus, two halves of the same whole—a secret third thing, thriving in the gray era.

A story can be an itch, a haven, a friend, a revelation, a nuisance, and many other things. THE UNBECOMING OF MARGARET WOLF feels like all of them at once, but its core has been the same from the beginning: two twice-shy people find their teeth and learn to bite back, refusing to be leashed.

It has been the proudest trial of my life so far to grapple with this story through the transsubstantive process of creating fiction—agonizing at worst, but truly intoxicating at best. Holding a finished binding is a victory. Come what may, my deepest rage has finally been made quiet.

I’m eager to wave goodbye to 2024, and I can’t wait to celebrate the Shoards in some of my favorite places. Join me if you can:

All my best,

- i

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