Okay, y’all. Let’s cry. Cinderella Is Dead comes out tomorrow and I‘m looking back over my publishing journey. Whew. Look, I wrote this book for my younger self who just desperately wanted to see Black girls in ball gowns being the heroes of our own stories. 1/

I queried about 70 agents over the course of a few months and was feeling maybe I’d been wrong about people wanting a story like this as much as I did. Enter @jamievankirk who was as hyped for this story as I was. 2/

We worked so hard polishing this story, making it as good as it could possibly be. We went out on sub and it just didn’t seem to land. We paused, did another round of edits and I was so nervous to go back out on sub. Then I saw this tweet from @whimsicallyours 3/

A few days later, we went back on sub with Cinderella and I tweeted this. 4/

By mid 2018, I was thinking about moving on from Cinderella and trying something else. Enter @MKCastellani who told me that she believed in this story toohttps://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😭" title="Laut schreiendes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Laut schreiendes Gesicht"> 5/

After cover reveals and revisions, pass pages and lots of phone calls to my agent that we’re basically me just saying “I’m trash!“ we are a few hours from publication. This story about queer Black girls is about to be in the world. 6/

What is this life? This journey? My goodness. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😭" title="Laut schreiendes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Laut schreiendes Gesicht">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😭" title="Laut schreiendes Gesicht" aria-label="Emoji: Laut schreiendes Gesicht">

I just want to thank everybody who believed in me and this story and who supported me along the way. Look at where we are yall! Whew. https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💜" title="Violettes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Violettes Herz">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💜" title="Violettes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Violettes Herz">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💜" title="Violettes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Violettes Herz">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💜" title="Violettes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Violettes Herz">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💜" title="Violettes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Violettes Herz">https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="💜" title="Violettes Herz" aria-label="Emoji: Violettes Herz">

*sorry for the typos yall https://abs.twimg.com/emoji/v2/... draggable="false" alt="😂" title="Gesicht mit Freudentränen" aria-label="Emoji: Gesicht mit Freudentränen">*