🎧 Press play above to listen as I read Chapter 4 to you!

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🌊 Previously in MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: Determined to win the Holy Crone's apprenticeship, Easla paddled her grandmother out to the atoll for the Offering, giving away the seat she'd promised Elly, who was left paddling their father. As the village took blue coral for prayer, the Cowrie Prime consumed far more than his share. The sea chose Relfy's baby, though Relfy had smudged her daughter with dirt and tucked something white into the basket. Then a rumble sounded beneath the water, the atoll sank, and the unholy waters rushed in…

The atoll is gone. Where the white ring of dead corals just stood, unholy waters now roll in over…nothing.

Pain flares behind my eyes, and a sting bites into my hands where they still grip my paddle. The gods wouldn’t take our atoll. We’re their chosen people.

I turn away, and the headache softens. Yes, we are the gods’ chosen people. Warmth seeps back through my chest and shoulders, loosening spaces I didn’t realize had clenched tight.

In front of me, the Holy Crone still stands in my canoe with her hands raised in prayer, palms up, fingers tipped toward the sea, like she’s waiting for the gods to finish answering.

That’s it. They must still be answering. I misunderstood what I just saw. I keep my eyes away from the horizon and search for more proof of what I believe.

The villagers float motionless in our circle of canoes. A Sand Dollar matron still wears the blissful smile the blue coral brings, the smile of someone glimpsing the gods’ promised afterlife. Proof. Everything is fine.

But wait, above that smile, her eyes bulge wide, fixed on the sight I won’t look at. And in her lap, her baby screams red-faced, yet the wails land muffled in my ears.

Then a voice pierces the dullness. “Look! The harvest has risen!”

I follow the matron’s pointed finger and lean over the side of my canoe, looking down instead of at what I saw but can’t explain. The atoll can’t be gone. The haze must be blocking it.

All around, canoes tip toward the water, the whole village leaning with me.

Beneath us, shadows appear, growing larger as they rise.

I grab onto the sight like a rope. This is the red algae the Ocean Law promises. Follow these rules and the red algae grows. I keep my eyes on the blue waters, not the murky red-brown slowly staining them darker. Here comes the harvest we’ve been expecting, enough to fill the Harvest Hut until next Offering. The thought wraps me back into the blue coral’s comfort, warm as the dock’s boards at high sun.

Somewhere nearby, a matron laughs. She must feel as silly as I do for doubting.

The first shadow breaks the surface in a flash of red, and my heart leaps. The red algae—no. Scales? Fins? It’s…a snapper, its mouth gaping open and shut, gulping at the air.

The matron’s laughter stumbles, then starts again, higher.

One fish. It means nothing. It must have swum up too fast, chasing the harvest. The red algae is still coming.

Another fish breaks the surface.

Then…hundreds. Parrotfish, grunts, minnows, all crowding up from below, gasping at the surface the way I gasp when I’ve stayed down too long.

One snapper tips onto its side. Its tail twitches, then stills, its white belly turned to the sky. Then another tips. And another. Dying.

The matron’s laugh breaks into a scream.

Whatever bliss the blue coral gave me scatters like sand in the wind. I’m left with sudden clarity. No atoll to hold back the unholy waters. No lagoon. No harvest of red algae.

A shooting pain rips through my head, and this time, nothing smooths it over. Break even one and the sea always knows. My heel throbs where the bark tore in.

More screams echo out. Paddles plunge into the water, and canoes lurch in every direction, knocking into each other.

Did we break the rules? But the gods said a girl was wanted!

No, the Holy Crone said a girl was wanted. Did she lie? Did the gods lie? These questions are sins, worse than any song my mother sang. But I can’t stop them.

The splashing paddles fling red spray of unholy waters into the air. It catches in my throat, and I cough, harder than the poisoned air has ever made me cough. Around me, coughs overpower the screaming. Pained faces turn toward my canoe.

Toward her.

I turn too, making eye contact with the woman who will fix this. “Holy Crone, w-what should we do?”

She stares at the reddening water like she doesn’t believe what she sees. “This…is the end,” she breathes, so low only I can hear. Then her knees fold, and she sinks into the bottom of our canoe.

The defeat on her face knocks the air from my lungs. Tomorrow, I planned to win the right to stand at her side. Now she lies curled at my feet like a frightened child?

I lean onto my knees—breath racing, mind whirling. My thoughts drag like a net through mud, the blue coral still fighting to show me glimpses of the gods-promised afterlife. But every dead fish I look at pulls my head a little clearer.

A tainted lagoon means no more fish. No snapper for my basket, no minnows for the younger girls’ nets. The mangroves drink from this water, and the palms, and the bamboo. They’ll die too, and the crabs that hide in their roots. Everything we eat comes from this lagoon. Without it, we’ll starve.

The gods wouldn’t abandon us over one failed Offering…would they? I close my eyes and rub my temples. My palms sting, then burn, rubbed raw from the climb down the palm tree with—

Elly.

Her name slams into me, and my heart thrashes like a fish on my spear. I have to keep her safe.

I grab my paddle and search the churning circle. There—our father’s canoe, a few lengths away. Elly huddles at its front, arms locked around her knees, while Dams fights to hold them steady in the choppy water. I dig in toward them.

There’s a shriek to my left.

I whip around.

The Oyster Prime’s paddling girl has swung their canoe hard toward the village, and the young son’s mother—still leaning out over the side, staring at the dying fish—tumbles in.

She flails in the unholy waters. “It burns!” she screams, her words pitching shrill. She claws at the canoe she fell from, hauling herself up with both arms.

The Oyster Prime yells, and his paddling girl does too, but the matron only struggles harder, her shrieks swallowing their warnings. Their canoe tips toward her. Inside, the little boy slides toward the low edge.

The Oyster Prime rips the paddle from his girl’s hands. I’ve never seen a prime hold one. He swings it high, clumsy, two-handed, and brings it down on the matron’s head.

A loud crack echoes across the lagoon.

The villagers stop shouting.

The matron stops moving.

The canoe levels, and the Oyster Prime drops the paddle then drags his son into his lap.

In between the matron’s lifeless legs, a school of minnows bobs to the surface, their tiny mouths gaping open.

“The unholy waters killed her,” a matron cries. “As the Ocean Law says!”

The crack of the paddle still rings in my ears. But the minnows—nothing struck the minnows. And they’re dead too.

“We’re all going to die!” a girl shouts.

“Get off the water!” a prime bellows.

“The fish traps!” someone cries. “Pull them before those fish die too!”

Every canoe turns and races for the village, entangling one another. Girls shout at girls to pull harder, primes shout at everyone, babies wail.

A canoe cuts across my path.

I backpaddle hard to keep from ramming it. Beyond it, Elly’s canoe drifts farther away.

In the bottom of our canoe, the Holy Crone stares at nothing.

I steer around and nearly crush Relfy’s basket, still bobbing in the churned water. I brace my paddle and stop beside it.

The sea chose her. No one takes back what the gods have chosen. But the gods just took back our atoll. Our promised harvest. Did they even choose this baby? Or did they refuse her, the way they refused the rest of us?

Through the shouts, a whistle rises—two notes. Easla. The same call that found me in the lagoon this morning. I know exactly where to look.

Three canoes away, Relfy lunges for her paddling girl’s paddle, her long black braid whipping over her shoulder. A Whelk matron drags her back by the shoulders and pins her to the bench, and their girl paddles hard for the village.

Relfy’s lips purse in another whistle, but the screams swallow it. She slams her hands together instead. Sharp claps crack across the water, again and again. Then she jabs a finger at me. At the basket beside me.

Her baby, rejected by the gods. I can read the emotion on her face like she speaks it out loud. Save my baby.

I look down. Inside the basket, a tiny cheek peeks out from the barkcloth, still smudged with dirt. That thought from before that I couldn’t reach—now I can. Relfy’s baby is never dirty. She put that smudge there on purpose. She never wanted her baby chosen.

The claps come faster.

We’re all going to die, and the gods have abandoned us. What does it matter if I take back an Offering the gods didn’t want? I lean over as far as I can and scoop up the basket, careful not to touch the deadly water it drips.

Across the water, Relfy’s clapping stops.

In bundled barkcloth, her baby coos. Wedged beside her is—

My breath catches, and I nearly drop the basket. My cowrie shell. I reach for it slowly, like it’s a fish that might spook. I lift it from the basket and stroke it with my thumb. Its weight in my palm is the same as when I gave it to Relfy last Offering, out on the lagoon. Its white, freckled with black spots in the same striking pattern that first caught my eye. A tiny hole marks where her string ran through it, the string she’s worn every sun since, hidden beneath her barkcloth.

She kept it. Even after I refused her scallop this morning, after I told her to rid herself of my cowrie. She gifted it to her daughter.

A new confidence settles in me, an anchor holding me tight. If the gods have abandoned us, then how I act no longer matters. I can spend these last suns with Relfy, be the carefree, happy person my mother always wanted me to be. I lift the cowrie shell to my lips.

A deep voice gasps. “It’s a sign.”

My father’s canoe bumps against mine. He leans across the gap, his shell-trimmed cape slipping off one shoulder, and snatches the cowrie from my fingers. Studies it. His eyes are glazed, his pupils swallowing their color, and blue still stains his fingers from the bowl of blue coral he wouldn’t give back. “A cowrie shell for the Cowrie Prime.” He grins, revealing blue-stained teeth. “The gods want me to lead.”

My stomach drops. The lagoon is dying, and my father is…smiling?

He chucks the shell over his shoulder. It cracks against Elly’s shin, and she flinches, but he doesn’t notice. Under his shifting weight, their canoe rocks, and behind him, Dams braces her paddle to steady them.

“Elly, come here now,” the Holy Crone says from my feet. Her voice is slow and quiet, more begging than demanding.

Elly stares at the strip of red water between our canoes. Her fingers whiten on the canoe’s edge, but she doesn’t let go.

“Come on, Elly,” I say, balancing the basket against my hip and holding out my free hand. “Just, s-step across.”

At my voice, the Cowrie Prime turns. He looks at me—no, through me. It’s like he doesn’t recognize any of us. His eyes drop to the basket on my hip, where Relfy’s baby rests inside. “The Offering must be given,” he recites in a prayer-like intonation.

Doesn’t he remember? I clutch the basket to my chest. “No, Cowrie Prime, the gods already rejected—”

Before I can blink, my father snatches the basket from my hands and hurls it into the unholy waters. Then he grabs Elly’s paddle from her lap and raises it overhead, aimed at the basket. To sink it. To drown Relfy’s baby.

I grip my canoe’s edge with one hand and stretch across the gap with the other, reaching for it.

But his swing throws his weight sideways, and his canoe lurches. My fingers are a hand-span from the paddle when I see Elly sliding across her bench, toward the unholy waters.

What can we say about those choices made between breaths? Do we choose to blink? To inhale, to think? I want to say I’m stronger than my body, but my body moved, and my body made its choice.

My hand lands on the edge of their canoe instead. I find myself stretched across the gap, shaking hard and barely breathing, holding their canoe level so Elly doesn’t fall in. Dams grips Elly by the back of her dress.

Above me, the paddle comes down with a heavy slap.

Then my father lifts it, water streaming from its tip. “The gods have accepted our Offering.”

I go limp, my muscles catching before I collapse into the water below. Like Relfy’s baby just did.

In my head, Relfy claps. Louder, louder. For one breath? Ten? Gods, it’s all I can hear. I stare at a shaking Elly, at the cowrie shell in her canoe’s bottom, anywhere but where Relfy’s basket once was. Don’t look.

But I do. Because I need to know.

Tiny bubbles float to the surface. So small, so delicate. Popping then disappearing like the little baby they came fro—

“Paddle,” the Cowrie Prime orders Dams. He points toward the village, and their canoe slips out from beneath me.

The Holy Crone’s sharp fingernails dig into my shoulder, yanking me back before I fall in.

I sink onto my bench and stare at the flat, tainted water. No more bubbles. I need to tell Relfy what happened. Need to tell her I tried. Our final suns…together. That bubble of hope bursts, too.

The Holy Crone drops my paddle onto my knees. “Take us to the atoll.”

I stare at her. The atoll? It sank. I watched it sink. There’s nothing out there but dead fish and deadly waters.

“No!” Elly’s cry pierces my heart. She reaches for me, leaning like she might jump out and swim, but she looks at the red water and shrinks back. “Don’t leave me, Lug,” she calls across the growing distance.

I look back at Elly, no reassurances coming to my lips. I can’t even smile. I turn to the Holy Crone, and it hurts to speak, but I force out words. “Sh-shouldn’t we return to the village?”

She grabs my shoulders, forcing me to look at her. Within folds of saggy skin, beneath the black cross inked across her forehead, her yellowing eyes bore into mine. The woman curled at my feet is gone. This is the Holy Crone once more. “Only the gods can save us now,” she says.

The gods. Upon the atoll, they gave the first Holy Crone our laws. If they’ll speak to anyone, it will be to her, out there.

Behind her, the unholy waters keep rushing in, pushing us back toward the village. Back toward Elly.

“The sea slug stays with her jellyfish,” Elly shouts from behind. “You said so.”

I turn. Elly stands at the end of her canoe, so small in front of our father’s broad back, strands of her blonde hair whipping loose around her face. Her tiny hands are balled into fists, and her shoulders heave with sobs I can hear across the water. She looks like she did at the top of the palm tree, staring at the atoll where we left Mother.

Up there, I promised I’d never leave her. I promised to turn my canoe to face the village, so she’d never have to look at the atoll again. Then she begged me to sing, and I recited the Ocean Law at her instead. I gave her seat in my canoe to the Holy Crone.

Dams’s strokes carry them farther into the haze, but Elly still reaches for me.

The village. That’s where I need to be, but what help can I offer? Relfy waits for a baby I couldn’t save. I have no food to give, nowhere left to hunt it. In the village, we’ll all die. Unless the gods save us, the way the Holy Crone says.

And she’s told me where to go.

I’ve never refused the Holy Crone. No one does. Obeying is how I’ve kept Elly and me alive since last Offering.

I turn my canoe away from the village.

“Don’t go.” Elly’s pleading now, her shouts growing hoarse. “Please don’t go.”

Ahead of me, the Holy Crone’s silhouette lines up with the haze-scattered reflection of sunset, and my resolve strengthens. This is the right choice. I dig deep and paddle a long stroke. I can’t save us, but the Holy Crone will. She’ll convince the gods to love us once again.

“You promised!” Elly calls.

“Faster,” the Holy Crone hisses.

My raw palms tear open further. Skin sloughs off onto the handle, but I paddle again and again, focusing on the pain instead of my crying sister. With each stroke, her cries fade more into the wind.

Soon, a whining crunch scrapes the bottom of our canoe.

I jerk and peer over the side. Beneath the murk, pale coral reaches up, close enough for me to touch with my paddle. The atoll? But I watched it sink.

Coral crumbles. It breaks apart piece by piece. It doesn’t drop all at once and wait beneath the surface.

I paddle in place against the inflowing current. Blood slicks my grip, forcing me to hold tighter. The throbbing makes me gasp. “Do it now. Pray.” Here, where the gods first spoke to her. Let her ask them to fix this, then let us go home.

The Holy Crone stays seated, like she’s waiting.

A wave slaps our canoe, and red spray spatters the wood near my foot. I flinch away. We can’t stay here. Why won’t she pray?

I stand up and hold out my hand to help her up. “Please, Holy Crone. Before the waters—”

With sudden steadiness, she rises on her own. Then she takes my hand. For a breath, we stand face to face, my hand in hers.

Then she yanks my arm, pulling me off balance, and drives both palms into my shoulder.

My hip slams into the canoe’s side, and I tip out over the unholy waters. The waters that killed that matron. That choked every fish in our lagoon. The waters where sinners burn.

I grab for the Holy Crone, but she leans out of reach and only watches as I fall. Giving me to the sea.

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📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter Three of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: You can watch the video or read the written version below.

It’s time for Chapter 3’s director’s cut. Ready to dive in?

Every draft, rearranged

While planning what to talk about for this scene, I went back to my very first draft. I hadn’t looked at it in years. I thought I remembered it. I did not.

The beats have stayed surprisingly similar, but everything has been rearranged.

There was always this village. There was always going to be a ceremony of the girls and an offering of the boys. But I rewrote it every which way. I have scenes where she’s given to a Prime. Scenes where she’s trying to stop the offering of her own baby brother. Scenes where her mother is still around and gets banished on the page.

At the very beginning, watching everything happen? Or later, after the banishment, after the relationship with Relfy has already been destroyed, so that everything lost is something she’s looking back on?

There’s no one right way. Think about telling a story at the dinner table. Do you go A to Z, or do you jump in and fill in as you go? We all know the person who gives every unnecessary detail. “It was Fri—Well, actually it was a Thursday. And it was…Was it raining?” And you’re like, “Come on, get to it!!”

So when do you add details, and when do you skip them? I told you I’d release these chapters as-is, exactly as they were already written. But for this chapter, and every chapter I’ve released so far, I’ve actually been adding more. Hee-hee, why not?

“Be weird. Go for it.”

My first agent wanted me to cut, cut, cut, cut. She wanted the book fast & snappy, because it was YA.

When she first read it, she gave me an R&R (a revise and resubmit). I rewrote the book, resubmitted it, and she signed me. Then she said we needed one more rewrite, and after that, a polish. But for that rewrite, she said, “Be weird. Go for it.”

Because that original version? It is so YA. She’s playing with her friends in the canoe. They’re fishing, gathering for a feast, wondering which boys they’ll be paired with, teasing each other. Very much girl drama.

This latest version?

A friend read it recently. I’d always called it YA, and both of my agents repped it as YA. And he said, “Caroline, this is not YA. This is a really heavy book. This is dark. You hit some pretty heavy topics pretty quick.”

That’s when I realized all my beta readers have been women in their 30s and 40s. Young adults have never actually read this book. And comparing the first draft to now, it’s like…  Caroline must have been going through a dark time because 2019 Caroline to now just got progressively more intense with this book.

My kind of longing

Which reminds me. One time my agent said, “This is good. There’s a lot of violence, a lot of intensity. What if you added a little more romance?” I don’t really like writing on-page romance. It’s just my preference. So she said, “You don’t have to do romance, but what if you added a little more longing?”

I’m like, “longing?!” By then I’d had so many rejections and done so many rewrites. I wasn’t feeling romantic. I was feeling violent.

So I told my critique group, “My agent wants more longing. Let me get back to you.” I rewrote the first few chapters and sent them over. One of them messaged me: “Caroline, are you okay?”

“Yeah, feel great. Why?”

I was really pleased with that spear stabbing. There was a squelch, a great sound for a spear stabbing. But alas, I un-stabbed that person, because they wanted more longing.

And that’s part of how this character Relfy came to be.

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🎧 Press play above to listen as I read Chapter 3 to you!

🛑 First time here? Start at the beginning: Chapter One

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🌊 Previously in MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: Easla saved Elly from a deadly fall, but answered her sister’s cries for their mother with Ocean Law instead of comfort. Then the boy the village prayed for was born a girl. The Holy Crone, Easla’s grandmother, declared that the gods would accept a girl instead, meaning any baby girl born since last Offering could be chosen, even Relfy’s daughter. But for one breath, Easla saw fear on the Holy Crone’s face…

No one speaks. The only sounds are the splash of our strokes and the crying of baby girls. Every canoe in the village follows in my wake, our stilt-huts shrinking behind us into the mangroves and the haze.

At the docks, the villagers cheered as they piled into the canoes. I joined in, loud enough to be heard, but I couldn’t stop picturing the Holy Crone’s face from the Gathering Place, that one breath of fear flashing across it. Then we entered the lagoon, and voices faded into whispered prayer, and I no longer had to pretend.

The Holy Crone sits on the bench in front of me, so close I could reach out and touch her gray braid.

Once per harvest, we make this crossing—a reversal of our ancestors’ journey. From the atoll, the first Holy Crone swam across the lagoon and found our village waiting at its center. So from the village, we paddle back, out to the atoll to pay our respects.

As we go, we’re meant to focus on the gods and our gratitude.

I try. I thank them for the harvest of red algae that will soon rise, and I beg them to carry me through tomorrow’s apprenticeship race the way they carried the first Holy Crone.

But every stroke tears at my palms, rubbed raw from climbing down the palm tree with Elly on my back, and the sting scatters my prayers. My mind wanders to more dangerous thoughts.

What will happen with this Offering? The Ocean Law demands a boy, and we have no boys to give. The gods told the Holy Crone at the Gathering Place that this will be a celebration of girls, and I believe them, I do. Who wouldn’t believe the gods?

But the Holy Crone isn’t behaving as she should. We’re meant to keep our hearts with the gods and our eyes on the atoll. Her moves are subtle, but her braid betrays her. Its gray strands—frizzing like an old, worn rope—sway out of sync with our canoe’s rhythm, hinting at small turns of her head.

She must be peering into the lagoon, looking down and around like she’s…waiting for something? Is she still afraid?

No, this is what the gods want. They told her so. I should hold no doubt in my heart. The gods save the pious, and we’re about to please the sea.

My paddle catches, and I double-stroke to maintain my speed at the front of our procession, where the Holy Crone is expected to be.

Her apprentice should be the one paddling her, the only matron who takes up a paddle, as the first Holy Crone once did. But she has none, not yet. At the docks, while girls dragged out the extra canoes, and matrons handed down their babies, and primes waited for their girls, I ran straight to her and asked for the honor.

Two others my age reached her a breath behind me. The Holy Crone didn’t look at any of us. She just stepped into my canoe and settled onto my empty second bench, where Relfy once sat.

Now it holds the Holy Crone. I drive my next stroke deep, and our canoe surges forward. I’ll show her what kind of apprentice I’ll be. Attentive. Precise. I’ll hold our place at the front. I’ll stop us at the right distance from the atoll. I’ll keep the chant without missing a word. And tonight, I won’t wince when I am inked with my given-to mark.

Tomorrow, on the one sun besides the Offering that a matron may enter the water, I’ll win the race to claim the title of the Holy Crone’s apprentice, and this seat will be mine for good.

I can already feel the difference. When I untied my canoe, matrons watched, but for once their eyes slid past me, settling on the Holy Crone, not searching me for sins.

And when I guided us out through the mangrove tunnel, the whole village followed. I wasn’t shunned. I led.

This is what piety earns. Isn’t it?

The Ocean Law makes it sound simple, a clean white atoll separating the Sinners from the Chosen People. They died, and we lived. Because we were good, and they were not.

But since last Offering, I’ve had this nagging thought, a tiny splinter stuck inside me. The Sinners poisoned the gods’ air and sea, so the gods drowned them. But Relfy’s kiss didn’t poison the air. My mother’s laughter didn’t poison the sea.

And I sinned as much as either of them. I kissed Relfy. I listened to my mother’s songs, let her unbraid my hair, answered to the name Lug. Yet I wasn’t touched. So which side of the atoll am I on?

My canoe drifts off course, and I adjust it back, heading in the opposite direction of the setting sun. We can’t see the atoll yet, not with the haze. But like the gods, it’s always there, protecting us from sin. Surrounding our lagoon in a perfect circle and protecting us from the unholy waters beyond.

My thoughts may wander impiously for the gods to hear, but it’s my actions that matter. I distanced myself from Relfy. I held strong against Elly’s sinful demands. This is how I show my dedication to the gods. And tomorrow, I’ll show it in the water.

I pull another stroke, and the atoll appears—a low wall of dead, sun-bleached coral breaking the surface, curving toward me in both directions.

I haven’t come this close since we left my mother here. Every sun, alone in my canoe, I could have broken the law and come looking. No one would have known. But I never did. I know she’s gone. Still, I search its length for her shape. Nothing.

Beyond it, red-gray waves batter the white ring, clawing to get into our calm blue lagoon. Only the gods’ grace keeps it standing.

The unholy waters’ stench rolls toward us in a blast of rotten fish and decaying seaweed.

My nose itches, and my eyes water. I think this is the right distance. I plunge my paddle in and hold it against the water, whirling our canoe to a stop.

The Holy Crone doesn’t turn around, but she doesn’t correct me, either.

The others dip their paddles, canoe after canoe halting where I decided we should. I straighten on my bench, squaring my shoulders the way the Holy Crone does.

The villagers fan out from my mark. Matrons uncover bowls of powdered blue coral, the gods’ gift for prayer, and pass them hand to hand across the gaps between canoes.

The bowls go first to the primes, who lounge on their benches, capes spread wide despite the heat. Rows of shells along the hems glint in the low sun.

Nearest me, my father the Cowrie Prime waits for a matron to stretch across the gap with his bowl. His hand rests on his belly, and the string of cowries at his throat rises and falls with his labored breath, as Elly and Dams paddle to keep him in place.

Primes take first in everything. When the red algae rises, we’ll haul it into the Harvest Hut and the primes will measure it out each moon: how much for each hut, which matrons eat well and which go thin. By tonight’s feast, I’ll know which of them will determine my shares for the rest of my suns.

It’s easy to see whose hut eats best. In the Oyster Prime’s canoe sits the youngest son in the village, already two harvests old, wrapped in barkcloth and propped in his mother’s lap. Her plump hand never leaves his shoulder. Her cheeks are round as a pufferfish.

When the bowl reaches them, the Oyster Prime takes his share, and then his son’s mother takes hers, before any other matron can reach.

The two girls who also approached the Holy Crone at the docks bring their canoe in beside the Whelk Prime’s and stop without a splash, a perfect display of strong arms and controlled strokes. They know as well as I do that he measures his matrons’ shares evenly.

Whoever he chooses of us, I’ll have no say in it. But tomorrow, these two will race me for the apprenticeship, and they’re the ones to beat. The older matrons haven’t swum since they were given. These girls have spent every sun on the water, same as me.

I roll my shoulders and stretch my fingers. The sea salt will find every split in my palms, the raw spot where the tree bark tore into my heel, but I’ll swim through it. I have to.

I keep scanning the circle, finding Relfy before I can stop myself. She sits between two Whelk matrons who keep their backs half-turned to her and cradles her baby girl. When the bowl comes to her, she takes her fingertip’s worth last.

A smudge marks the baby’s cheek, which is unusual. With no matron friends, Relfy often sits alone by the Gathering Place’s freshwater spring, washing her baby over and over. Relfy’s baby is never dirty.

The sea could choose any of tonight’s baby girls, and there is no greater honor the gods can give a matron. I should want it for Relfy. But that baby is the only one who sits with her at the spring. If the sea takes her, Relfy will sit there alone, and I can’t go to her.

The closest bowl is nearly to us. In front of me, the Holy Crone draws a long breath and lets it out slowly, the way I do before a deep dive. Her fingers tighten on the edge of the canoe, and her head turns, peering into the water again.

A splash draws my attention. Elly’s paddle has slipped into the water, and she fumbles after it, her eyes never leaving the atoll, grief etched across her face. Behind her, our father doesn’t stir.

Dams braces her own paddle to hold them steady and stretches past him to fish Elly’s out, her face tipped to the open water like she’s drinking it in.

I promised Elly a seat in my canoe, facing the village, so she wouldn’t have to look at the atoll. Then I saw the Holy Crone at the docks and ran to her instead. It was the right choice. The apprenticeship will keep us both safe.

Elly’s eyes catch mine, and she turns away.

That earlier frustration floats free from where I buried it. I flex and unflex my aching hands. I saved Elly’s life. Every choice I make is for her. But because I didn’t sing, didn’t sin, didn’t act as our mother would—

A bowl is pressed into my hands. The powdered blue coral, held by the Holy Crone. I didn’t see her eat her serving, but her jaw moves, and with a sigh, her gaze softens.

Forget Elly’s tantrums. I’d like the bliss of the promised afterlife, too. I lick a finger and press it into the bowl, my gaze drifting back to my little sister’s canoe. She holds out a bowl of blue coral to our father. He scoops a double handful and licks his palm clean, then dips again before she can pull the bowl away.

That’s a sin, but no one tells a prime to stop.

I tap the correct amount—a fingertip’s—to my tongue.

It dissolves, and my muscles relax. My thoughts do too. The sting in my palms fades, then the throb in my heel, until I can’t remember why they ever hurt.

Schooling fish shimmer beneath us, their silver sparkles catching the sunlight—a gods-gifted glimpse into the blessed afterlife.

In neighboring canoes, villagers join me in the experience. Elly’s grieving scowl becomes a smile. Relfy grins at her dirt-smudged baby, and one of the Whelk matrons who turned her back before rests a hand on Relfy’s shoulder. My father sways on his bench, eyes glassy, lips moving as if he hears something the rest of us can’t.

My jaw unclenches. I can’t think why I could’ve possibly been worried.

The Holy Crone stands and holds her hands out in prayer, palms up, fingers tipped downward. “When we come to the water…”

In every canoe, villagers rise. Our waves ripple inward, awakening the water’s still surface. I join the call-and-response, my heart quickening, my smile widening. This is how we show the gods our love. “The Offering begins.”

The Holy Crone looks around the circle, her yellowing eyes staring into our souls. “We stand together…”

“To wash away sins.” With my words, I can feel my burdens lighten. I was wrong to doubt earlier. I have no doubts. I may think impious thoughts, but with prayer, the gods forgive me.

“Those who are pious…”

“Will offer their son—” The words roll from every canoe at once, the way they have every Offering of my life. Our voices catch together. Earlier, saying son with no son to give would’ve struck like a spear. Now we look at each other and laugh at the slip, a shared moment of ease. “Will offer their daughter,” we finish together. This is a special celebration. We don’t need a son.

Out of the corner of my eye, Relfy kisses her baby girl’s forehead, brushing the tiny born-to Whelk mark there. She settles the baby into a basket. There’s something else inside. Something white.

“To give to the sea…” The Holy Crone nudges me.

I look away from Relfy as she pushes the basket out onto the water. “And the sea will choose one.”

Other baskets float toward Relfy’s. The other baby girls. The Offerings.

“Follow these rules…” The Holy Crone leans forward, tilting our canoe. Studying the beautiful lagoon.

“And the red algae grows.” I balance her weight, soaking up the sun’s heat. My cheeks ache from smiling. I can already taste the red algae’s salty, bitter flavor. Soon, it will rise.

“Break even one…”

“And the sea always knows.” Our voices fade as the baskets drift in the flat lagoon. As we wait for the Holy Crone to hear the gods’ choice, and for the sea to show it to the rest of us.

Relfy’s baby gurgles in her basket.

The Holy Crone repositions her feet, and our canoe wobbles.

Nearby, the basket with Relfy’s baby dips in the tiny wave.

With a satisfied gasp, the Holy Crone thrusts a gnarled finger. “The gods have accepted our Offering of a girl.”

Heads nod in the surrounding canoes. Of course the gods did. They told the Holy Crone they would. Paddles stretch out, retrieving the unchosen babies.

The basket with Relfy’s baby is left floating in the lagoon.

Wood groans. I look down. My knuckles have gone white around the handle of my paddle, and blood smears the wood beneath my palms. Mine. I don’t feel it. I don’t remember how they were hurt. I’m smiling—this is good, this is what the gods want—but my hands won’t loosen.

Water trickles into her baby’s basket, and Relfy watches on with a smile. Something nags at me, an itch I can’t reach, but the blue coral makes me giddy, and a laugh bubbles out of me. Soon, the harvest will rise. The red algae the gods promise. We’ll haul it in until our canoes ride low, enough to fill the Harvest Hut until next Offering.

We watch the water, waiting.

There’s a faint rumbling, a sound I’ve never heard before, so quiet I might be imagining it. Steady but muffled, like it’s deep underwater. Through the hazy bliss of the blue coral, the sound sharpens in my ears—cracking and snapping, the sound of a child stomping coral.

The hairs on my arms rise.

Ripples chase across the water, coming from the direction of the atoll.

I’m staring, we’re all staring, but what we see can’t be real. Our gods-given atoll sinks into the sea, the whole white ring dropping at once, as far as the haze lets me see. Coral shears and splinters, chunks spinning off into the foam.

Then, like a great flood of blood, the unholy waters rush in.

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📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter 2 of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: You can watch the video or read the transcript below. Same content, and don’t worry, I brought pictures!

🔒 The video is only for In the Cave members, but I saved you the first half of the transcript below!

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Hello there. Are you excited for the Director’s Cut for Chapter Two? I am.

And don’t worry, I brought my notes.

A scene I wrote in a day

What’s funny about Chapter Two is this draft was from 2023, I had an agent at the time, and I remember this so specifically because I had a speaking event coming up. It was going to be the very first event that I was invited to read my chapter at, and I had my chapter locked. It was going to be Chapter One.

And then my agent wanted a chapter showing the relationship with the little sister. Because I believe originally I had Easla going straight to the offering.

There wasn’t that palm tree moment.

And I wrote this scene in a day. Because I knew the world so well, I was like, “Okay, my agent wants to see the little sister. She wants to see the world. Let’s look what happens.” She comes off the dock. Oh, there’s little girls. She comes off here. Oh, this happens. And it was so easy to have her just explore the village.

But it’s funny, because I have scenes that I’ve revised and revised, and then I have scenes like this where I just — one and done. I wrote this scene, and then I went and read it at this speaking event the next week. Usually I’ve revised my scenes and polished them, and I was just like, “I’m going to read this brand new scene instead.”

And so I really remember that, because I think it’s interesting: some scenes need so much work and changing, and this scene just came out and stayed as-is.

All the intonations and a sore throat

Another funny thing is my mom and one of my sisters were in town. They weren’t there for the event. They were there a week before, and I made them listen to me reread my chapter over and over again. Not for the content, but to practice how I would speak.

Bless their hearts. Thank you for family. I think I reread the same sentence with five different intonations, and they sat there on the couch and nodded and were so supportive.

And then I lost my voice, because I was trying to sound a certain way. I am not a voice actor, but I was clearly straining my throat, and then I had a sore throat from practicing trying to sound cool.

So now this is my voice. I’ve learned I’m just going to speak with my voice.

But I almost sounded really cool until I hurt my throat.

Multiple courses on lobsters for one line

There’s a sentence right in the opening that talks about her grabbing her sister’s hand like she’s grabbing for a lobster in the rocks.

And again, it’s just one line, but I need you to know that I went lobstering.

And it’s so cool how these experiences can then come into one single line. For some people maybe that doesn’t mean much. But when you’re lobstering, they move so quickly away that when you see one, you just have to go for it. If you reach for it tentatively, it’s going to scoot away.

So you have to just — gah — and grab it. And it’s kind of scary in the moment, and then it squeaks at you and makes this clicking sound. But you just have to commit.

I did a lobstering course here in San Diego at this local reserve, and it was so much fun, and I’m catching all of them. But you can’t keep them, because it’s a protected reserve. And I think the lobsters knew that. They were really chill. So I’m grabbing all these lobsters. I’m feeling so confident.

And then David and I have our anniversary coming up, and I’m like, “For our anniversary, let’s go lobstering,” as one does.

And we book a guide. He takes us to an area where we can actually keep the lobster, and we bring a cooler. I’m ready. And I think we barely saw any lobsters, and when we did, they all swam away, because they’re not safe there.

And so we got zero lobsters.

So I think I need to go back to the reserve.

There you go. Multiple courses on lobsters for one line. You just gotta grab them.

The fraying rope of her nerves

Something I really had fun with in this book is thinking about her frame of view, her reference for describing things. She has no technology. She wouldn’t use the same words we would. So when she’s frustrated — like this line, “the fraying rope of her nerves” — it was fun to filter everything through her world.

You’ll see as she talks, everything is anchored by water, and ocean, and the tasks she does. And it’s really fun to play with that later, when we go underwater, and these people would use completely different words than her.

So, just geeking out a little on words.

You cannot cut the braid

There’s this line about “the braid is the seaweed,” and that came to me as I was creating this religion. There’s so many fun things to pull from, but I used to study in Mainland China, and around Lunar New Year, there is this superstition that when you’re eating noodles, you shouldn’t cut them, because the noodle represents longevity and long life. And if you cut it, especially around Lunar New Year, that’s really bad luck.

And so on this island, they have this annual harvest of seaweed. They worship the gods. And they wear their hair in this long braid to represent the seaweed, and you cannot cut the braid.

And it’s funny to think about these little belief systems, and how they come from real things. That there may be similar beliefs across different countries, whether it’s religious or superstitious.

Zhúzi, Joot

Joot is based on a real drink: actual fermented bamboo sap. They drink it in East and Southern Africa, and it’s called ulanzi.

And I called it joot. I didn’t realize how much I pulled from Chinese, but in Chinese, bamboo is zhúzi (竹子).

So I just — zhúzi, jute. joot.

The Holy Crone’s face

I’ll talk more about the Holy Crone in a future chapter. But in terms of that description of her face: you’ll notice she’s described as being really old, with folds of skin and sun damage. And then she’s also mentioned as being 40-something cycles old, 40-something harvests old.

Which — you’re like, “Wait, she’s only 40? She’s young 40s and she looks like that?”

Upgrade to In the Cave to keep reading:

• Why the Holy Crone looks like that — the real photo that inspired her face

• The mangrove throne — the real chair I sat in, and why Easla gets weird about chairs later

• The character name one reader didn’t get — you tell me if it’s obvious

• My 2019 notebook, including population math, a remote island I forgot I researched, and a page that just says “Incest!! To fix.”

• The one piece of writing advice I’d give anyone starting a first draft

• The love interest I forgot I’d named Fletcher — and a surprise guest appearance

Plus the full video.

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🎧 Press play above to listen as I read Chapter 2 to you!

🛑 First time here? Start at the beginning:

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🌊 Previously in MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA: Easla chose the safety of the Ocean Law over her forbidden connection with Relfy—the same strict laws that cost Relfy her tongue and their mother her life.

Now, as the village prepares for the annual Offering to the sea gods, a matron’s scream echoes through the coconut grove, sending Easla’s sister, Elly, slipping from the top of the palm tree...

It happens in less than a breath. The matron’s shout from below, Elly’s hand sliding out beneath mine from the top of the palm tree. My hunting instincts take control, and I snatch at my little sister’s fingers like they’re a lobster in the rocks. But they’re not a lobster’s spiny shell. They’re sweaty, slick. They slip through my grip, and I scream.

So does she. But. . . she’s no longer falling. Her other hand clings to a frond near the coconut she was reaching for. She dangles in the open air.

Oh, thank the seas. “Don’t let go,” I gasp out. “I’m coming.” I hug the tree and shift around its girth, closing the distance between my sister and me. Get to her. Now. My feet fumble for each foothold as I move sideways, my climber taut between my ankles.

The tree’s ridges snag my dress.

I untangle and sneak a glance down. The walkway is a thin brown thread below. A fall from here would be deadly.

The frond in Elly’s fist groans.

She shrieks and kicks against the tree, swinging from her one arm and making the frond bend lower.

“Stop moving!” I shout, though I know Elly is past rational thought. She won’t be climbing down on her own. No, I’ll have to carry both of us. Somehow.

Elly’s climber spins in a circle around her ankle.

I watch it, mind racing. The climber I borrowed from Dams can hold me. But Elly’s weight too? It’ll pull us both backward off this tree. Unless…

On the next kick, Elly’s climber flies off her foot.

It arcs through the air and I catch it, then I shimmy lower until I’m pinned between Elly’s dangling body and the tree. This will work. It has to. I bite the knot of her climber between my teeth and worry it loose. “Keep holding,” I puff out in small bursts.

“I want Mama,” Elly cries. Her feet kick my back. “Where’s Mama!”

I whip Elly’s untied climber around the tree and grab its opposite end with my other hand. Fumbling with motions I can’t see, I wrap it around that wrist and hold tight. My hands are full, but now I’m cinched to the tree. “When I say so, drop onto me.” I wedge my toes into the palm tree’s cracks and squeeze with my knees, bracing for her weight, praying this will work. “Let go, Elly!”

Her knees knock my shoulder blades. She doesn’t let go. “I’m not Elly! I don’t want to be Elly!”

My palms slide on the climber, slick with sweat. I readjust my grip. “I said let—”

The frond snaps.

Her sudden weight slams onto my back. My bare feet slide down the trunk, and something sharp drives into my heel. I bite back a cry and yank on the climber in my hands, curling my fingers tighter than they ever gripped the blue coral’s pestle. We jerk to a stop.

Elly goes still for a breath, then she sags against my back and sobs, big heaves that shake my body as much as hers. Her fingers latch onto my neck like a starfish gripping coral. “I’m the moon jelly. I’m Oonj. Like Mama called me.”

My heart thumps in my fingertips. They cramp from being bent so tight. I loosen the climber and we drop a hand-span, my stomach jumping into my throat. My heel throbs around whatever’s buried in it. I brake the climber. Hands, focus only on my hands.

Elly whimpers in my ear. “Sing to me, Lug.” She squirms on my back, throwing our balance to the side.

My foot slips, and I shove into a notch to stop our fall. Pain lances up from my injured heel.

I gasp. My vision blurs. Gods, I need her calm. Sing? I know which song of our mother’s she wants. How could I forget it? Elly the Jelly. Oonj is my moon. I close my eyes and pretend I’m back on the overgrown dock, letting the words rise in my throat. I’ll sing, just in the tiniest whisper.

Shouts rise up from the walkway below. Not the rhythmic waves of birthing cries that I’d heard at the Cowrie Hut. These are sharp, frightened. A single word carries with the wind—boy. Something’s wrong.

I swallow the song whole and hush Elly with what little breath I still have. Maybe the matrons won’t hear, over the shouts and the distance. But maybe they will. Always listening, always waiting. To prove their own piety by catching others in sin. One misstep will send us tumbling. That thought shakes me worse than Elly’s quivering sobs, making my decision for me.

“We may only raise our voices in praise of the gods, Elly.” I emphasize her name as I stare at the palm tree’s splintering cracks. Rigid. Unbending.

She hiccups another cry. It turns into a cough, hacking out the poisoned air. “No, call me Oon—”

“The gods did not give us names so we may change them.” My hands are lobster claws. All they do is open and close. Release and brake. The air thickens as we descend, grit scraping the back of my throat with every gasp. I won’t let them hear her sins. Gods or matrons.

“Stop that, Lug. You’re being—”

“The braid is the seaweed. By wearing the braid, we welcome the harvest.” With each controlled fall, I recite more of the Ocean Law, drowning out her requests.

Elly’s nails dig into my neck. “I hate you,” she whispers.

Her words sting worse than salt in the eyes, but I make them wash over me like water. When she’s older, she’ll understand. This is how I keep her safe. This is how I show my love.

On the next drop, Dams’s blue eyes rush into view. We made it. I release the climber and collapse onto solid wood. My fingers throb as they uncurl. I finally take a look at my heel—a shard of bark as long as my finger buries deep there, already dark with blood.

I grit my teeth and pull it free in one motion, then press my sweaty palm hard against it until the bleeding slows.

Dams helps Elly off my back without meeting my eyes. She must’ve heard. All of it. Enough sins for both of us to answer for, if anyone else heard too.

My heart still pounds in my ears. I look up and down the walkway twice, searching for a flash of red-dyed barkcloth, listening for a matron’s light tread, the clacking of shells, Elly’s name hissed in accusation. Nothing. Only shouts further down the walkway, not here in the coconut grove. Whatever it is, it can’t be good, but it’s not about us.

I let my shoulders drop. “Thank you, Dams.” Then I touch my sister’s arm. “Enough.”

Elly jerks away. “I’d rather be dead with Mama.”

The fraying rope of my nerves unravels to a single thread. I want to be the kind and patient person our mother was. But our mother’s careless actions led to her death. I will not lose my sister, even if my choices make her hate me. “Elly Born-to Cowrie, you need to—”

Dams clears her throat. She picks up the green coconut I harvested. “We should go—”

A conch shell bellows through the trees, its deep pitch announcing the Offering.

I don’t wait for Dams to finish. I grab my sister by the elbow and pull her down the walkway, responding to the conch’s call for both of us.

* * *

Elly and I are swept into the rushing tide of matrons and girls, across walkways stretching over water, past bamboo forests rising from the sea—each step bringing us closer to the Gathering Place and the Holy Crone’s call. The baby boy must’ve been born. But why were there screams? I shush Elly’s protests and lean closer to the nearest matrons.

Their whispers prickle the air, hanging thicker than the humidity. “Never has this happened,” an Oyster matron says, stroking the same spot on her skirts again and again.

The matron beside her clasps her hands in prayer. “May the gods forgive our failing.”

Their panicked looks answer my question. The boy must’ve come out dead, just like all the other ones.

That realization makes my heart pump faster. The gods demand a baby boy for their annual Offering. It’s what the Ocean Law requires for our gods-blessed harvest, what we’ve done since my grandmother’s mother first came to the village. And the harvest has always followed. But we have no newborn boys to offer.

Were the birthing matrons not pious enough? Will the harvest of seaweed still rise? I stumble after the matrons, my fingers digging into Elly’s arm.

“Ow!” She yanks out of my grip and runs ahead.

I’m about to chase after her, but she’s already swallowed in the crowd. We’ve arrived.

At the large deck’s center, the Holy Crone sits in a high-backed chair of gnarled mangrove roots. Behind her, our gods-gifted freshwater spring flows, rising up from the sea.

The crowd thins as the villagers spread into a wide arc around the Holy Crone’s chair. The primes and the few rare sons take the ends, close enough to touch the Holy Crone’s skirt. Matrons fill in beside them, leaving us girls at the arc’s open center, in the clearest path of the Holy Crone’s watchful eyes.

Stay calm. Show your faith. Trust in the Holy Crone to guide us. I align myself with the other girls of sixteen harvests, spacing myself so I’m farthest from last harvest’s youngest matrons. From Relfy, her daughter asleep at her chest. I know exactly how many bodies stand between Relfy and me. I always know.

The Holy Crone holds the pink-and-white conch in her lap, where it disappears into her skirt’s folds. Her eyes, buried similarly within the folds of forty-eight harvests of pale and sagging sun-mottled skin, skim the gathering crowd. Watching. Waiting. “Bring forth the newborn.”

As we wait in heavy silence, my eyes wander to the primes gathered at the Holy Crone’s sides. The Whelk Prime stands nearest to her—soft-bellied with smooth, unscarred skin the warm red-brown of mangrove bark. A string of whelk shells hangs heavy at his throat, one for every girl he’s been given.

He’s said to be the kindest of the primes. That would be nice. And if he picks me, I would sleep in the same hut as Relfy. I could—no. It’s not worth imagining. And it’s not my choice, anyways.

The arc shifts, and the new mother steps through the line of girls, half-carried between two Cowrie matrons. Her steps are unsteady, the hem of her skirt still dark and wet. She won’t lift her eyes from the deck’s warped boards as she presents the swaddle of barkcloth. The baby that was supposed to save us.

Why is this happening? Why are all the boys—

The bundle squirms and coos. Alive.

A collective intake of air sweeps the Gathering Place. I lean forward, along with every other villager, seeking a better look. But no, upon the baby’s tiny forehead, an even tinier born-to Cowrie mark has been inked.

Across from me, my father the Cowrie Prime huffs. “A girl?!”

The words are a condemnation. With them, I’m whisked back to last Offering. The same words, the same tone, whispered by everyone around me. “A girl?” But they weren’t speaking of a baby then. They were speaking of me.

It was darker then, the sun already set. In the glow of the torches, the remains of the Offering feast lay scattered, half-eaten and forgotten. Instead, the villagers curved in their arc around Relfy and me.

My body still hummed with giddiness from the fermented bamboo sap Relfy and I had drunk. It was risky what we’d done. Foolish. But the bubbly joot had numbed our common sense, and when I’d been sent to the Joot Hut to fetch more of it for the celebrating matrons, Relfy had followed.

A dark hut, alone, just the two of us. It was only for a moment.

The first Holy Crone—the one who had discovered our village forty-eight harvests ago— sat in the mangrove chair then, my Grandma Almti still hovering at her side as her apprentice. “A girl?! And they were kissing?” The Holy Crone looked like she’d swallowed a fish bone.

“A girl!” the matron who’d discovered us spat out the words. “A girl and a matron.” She shook her cup of joot like a spear. “I saw with my own eyes. Sinful touches in the darkness.”

The joot still tickled my nose, but I no longer wanted to giggle. I wanted to run. Every muscle in me tensed, but I was a fish in a net.

The Holy Crone leaned back in her chair and tapped her ear, listening for the gods’ counsel. She waved a hand for silence then nodded. “We shall drown them in the freshwater spring. Both of them.”

Some matrons hissed. Others gasped, but those turned to hisses, too.

My head was too joot-muddled to do anything but gape. This was it. My life’s end.

Someone pushed past me. My mother. She fell to her knees before the mangrove chair, her hair in a well-oiled braid, her body in well-practiced prayer position. “Please, Holy Crone, they’re just girls.” She seemed perfectly pious, but like wood catching fire, a new energy blazed through the crowd.

“Bah! Par Given-to Cowrie is a sinner too,” a matron called out. “I’ve seen how loose her braid becomes.”

“She whispers then smiles, nothing good behind that,” another matron shouted. “She’s a heathen protecting heathens.”

The crowd became a frenzy, sharks smelling blood. Accusations and judgments whirled louder, until the Holy Crone raised her hand. “At sunrise, we will have three drowning—”

Grandma Almti gripped the Holy Crone’s arm, stopping her before she could finish, and bent close to whisper in her ear. She spoke too low for me to hear, but her face held that same focused frustration it always did. Except, for one breath, it slipped—and I saw fear.

With my life’s last breaths now countable, I stared at my grandmother with the deepest intensity, praying she would somehow save me.

But for a woman named for the palm trees soaring above our village, Grandma Almti always kept herself low, cowering and bending. There was no way she could stop this.

The Holy Crone nodded, and Grandma Almti tiptoed forward, past my mother on the ground, looking between Relfy and me. “Who tempted whom?” she asked, her hands twisting in circles.

Sinful memories flooded my mind. The answer was both of us. Again and again. The first hand-hold was Relfy. The first kiss was me. But those truths wouldn’t help us. Only one response would, and it evaporated off my tongue like joot left out in the sun.

“I did,” Relfy said. Her hand hovered at her throat, clutching my hidden shell beneath her new red-dyed barkcloth. She glanced at me, and in my mind, I heard the words she’d said to me earlier that sun, out on the lagoon in our canoe. I am Relfy Given-to Cowrie. “Easla was pushing me away when we were found.”

Matrons clicked their tongues. They swung their braids in disapproval.

Grandma Almti scuttled back and hunched by the Holy Crone’s ear, whispering more.

I said nothing. Did nothing.

The Holy Crone stood. “My apprentice has suggested new forms of punishment. Why deprive the village of a matron and a future matron? Easla Born-to Cowrie is innocent, so she has no sin to be punished for. The temptress, Relfy Given-to Whelk, however, brought shame upon her prime and tainted a blessed evening, so she shall lose her tongue.”

Relfy’s hand flew to her mouth, muffling her gasp. Her knees buckled, but she refused to fall.

I wanted to reach for her, but my body didn’t move. I was spared. Grandma Almti saved my life. And Relfy…she took the blame.

The Holy Crone flicked a hand toward my mother, still knelt below the mangrove chair. “And Par Given-to Cowrie will no longer be drowned at the Gathering Place’s spring.”

I found Elly’s face in the crowd, my mind spinning as I tried to keep up. I nodded to show her everything was fine. As fine as it could be. Elly’s own mouth was already shaping into a smile, revealing her gapped front teeth.

“No,” the Holy Crone continued, and with the weight of her pause, my attention snapped back to her. “Par Given-to Cowrie shall be banished to the atoll, where she can die slowly with her sins.”

Elly’s scream tore through the air.

A matron’s hand clamped down, cutting it short, and then all I could hear, apart from the ringing in my ears, were grunts of satisfaction from everyone around me.

B-banishment? I stared at Grandma Almti, waiting for her to stop my mother’s punishment, like she had stopped mine. But Grandma Almti cowered by the first Holy Crone’s side and said nothing more.

The conch blows again, and it’s no longer the first Holy Crone seated upon the mangrove chair. It’s Grandma Almti, back straight and shoulders flat, a shark’s teeth necklace gleaming at her throat. Not the hunched apprentice she was only one harvest ago. Not my grandmother anymore. She’s the Holy Crone now, and she holds the newborn girl. “Silence.”

The crowd goes quiet. Only the flowing of the freshwater spring can be heard.

The Holy Crone closes her eyes, her mouth pinched in thought, then she gasps, eyes flying open. “I have heard the gods.” She taps her ear. “This is not a failing. It is a celebration. This harvest will be”—the Holy Crone holds the newborn high—“the Offering of a girl!”

The matrons cheer. Some drop to their knees and weep.

The tiny newborn girl squirms in the air, her born-to mark still wet on her forehead, and I realize—this means any girl born since last Offering might be chosen. This one. Or Relfy’s daughter.

The Holy Crone rises. “Come. We must row to the atoll.”

Villagers push past, humming with excitement.

I should too, but I stand fixed. It’s not my place to question what the gods tell the Holy Crone—only she can hear their counsel. But for one breath, before the Holy Crone turns to follow the others, her face reveals a different expression. The same fleeting one I glimpsed last Offering, when she whispered in the first Holy Crone’s ear. Then, she was trying to fix a problem.

Now, is she trying to fix another? My grandmother says this will be a celebration, says she’s heard the gods, but the look I saw on her face?

It was fear.

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MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA

The version of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA living on this page is the story that got me two literary agents (the ones behind Ender’s Game and The Hunger Games!). Outside of them and a handful of beta readers, no one has ever read it.

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I studied Computer Science & Economics at Harvard, worked in Hong Kong finance, and ran operations at LinkedIn before quitting to write fiction. Every time I’ve achieved something big, it wasn’t by taking the “proper” steps—it was by skipping permission and going straight at the thing. This 10-week sprint is me doing it again.

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🌊 Chapter One of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA went out last Saturday. Read it (or listen to the audio version 🔊) now if you haven’t yet!

📹 This is the Director’s Cut for Chapter 1: the research, the rabbit holes, the drawings I hadn’t looked at since 2019, and all the stuff that shows up (even if just one line) in the book. You can watch the video or read the transcript below. Same content, and don’t worry, I brought pictures!

Hi, this is our very first Director’s Cut.

Are you excited? I am. I even brought notes.

Before we dive into the behind the scenes of the first chapter of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, I’d like to say: sharing a chapter for free to everyone I know on my newsletter is way scarier than when I was planning on self-publishing this book. It feels so much more intimate, because I know exactly who’s on this list, who could see this chapter. And it’s free, which means anyone can read it. Which is a great thing, but also scary.

As you read this first chapter, remember that I wrote this book in four acts and I got feedback from a very trusted reader saying they think it should be a series, not one book. So I’m going to split it into four books — which means as you read, give feedback, give comments, tell me what you’re liking, what you want more of, where you’re bored, where you’re confused. That’s going to help me as I revise into this new version.

I’m going to give you some fun nuggets throughout the scene. And if any of them really interest you, let me know and I can do a deep dive on these topics.

“Maybe you should write the book first”

I came up with this book in 2019 — and I actually hadn’t come up with the book yet.

I told a really good friend that I was going to quit my job to write a book. I was coming up to the end of this massive three-year change management project at LinkedIn. It was naturally ending, and I said, “I’m going to leave and write a book.”

And my dear friend said, “Maybe you should write the book first.”

So this was October. Did some Googling, and I found out there was this November National Novel Writing Month. All it meant — it’s a group competition, very friendly, where you write a book.

I didn’t have an idea for a book.

Feeding a 200-pound bass and wondering what to write about

I was volunteering at the San Francisco Aquarium as a scuba diver. I was a dive volunteer in the shark tank. I would feed the sharks, feed the bat rays, feed this massive bass — gosh, she was like 200 pounds. It was amazing. I loved it. I would have paid to do it.

I’m a good businesswoman, so I did it for free.

And it was October, so it was very cold. I’m wearing a seven millimeter wetsuit, hood, gloves. It’s freezing, and I’m in this perfectly clear water with guaranteed fish sighting. And I’m floating in there and I’m thinking, “What am I going to write my book about?”

The competition people suggested: write about what you love. Well, I grew up in Florida. I love the ocean. I can name so many fish.

So as I’m floating there, feeding this massive bass, I decide I want to write about the ocean. I want to write about climate change. I want to write about the beauty of the ocean.

But then I’m like, okay, well, if I want to write about climate change — that’s not a beautiful ocean. That’s an ugly ocean.

And you don’t want to scare people without giving them the hope.

So as I’m floating there, I get this idea for two worlds. This climate devastated world, and this beautiful, pristine ocean world. Manufactured a little bit, like the aquarium I’m in.

The movie that convinced me I was being watched

As a side note, I will say: growing up, I — I’m not going to say loved — was traumatized by The Truman Show.

I watched it as a kid, and for years after I was convinced I was in The Truman Show. And my poor parents. I would go into the bathroom and talk to myself and be like, “Ha ha. I know you’re watching me. Ha. There you are!” I would look at pillows, I would look in the mirror, and I would always perform as though someone was watching me. Because of this dang movie, The Truman Show.

So let’s combine these worlds — this ruined world, this beautiful ocean world, and a little bit of Truman Show. And that’s what became my book.

The folder I hadn’t opened since 2019

I pulled out this folder that I haven’t looked at since probably 2019, 2020. I’m going to show you some drawings.

I am not an artiste. But you can see this is my beautiful village — houses on stilts, canoes, and a free diver.

Two minutes of holding my breath in Tulum

I actually took free diving classes for this book. I went down to Tulum, Mexico with my boo thing — and was it a vacation, or was it torture?

She basically would put us in the pool and put her hand over our head. And as your body runs out of oxygen, you get this thing called the urge to breathe. It’s mentioned in the chapter — where your body actually spasms. If you’re not used to it, you panic and you try to breathe. But free divers can actually push through that spasm. You can have that urge to breathe two or three times, maybe more, and still hold your breath. And it really is because your body’s not used to the high CO2 concentration as you’re using your oxygen.

So David is face down in the pool. I’m face down in the pool. We’re both spasming.

And that was a beautiful vacation.

I actually held my breath for two minutes, and then we went into the cenotes, and I dove down to 60 feet on the first day. Y’all, anything is possible. Professional free divers can go way deeper for way longer. It is so cool.

As you read the chapter, you’ll hear these mentions of the urge to breathe. It’s that spasming, the mental tricks of how you distract yourself. And then even when you come up, there’s a very specific recovery breath process so that you don’t pass out. As you come to the surface, you’re always supposed to grab onto something, because you can get these shallow water blackouts right when you come up and your lungs expand.

There’s so much I could talk about here. It’s funny, because this research I did only shows up as like a sentence or two in the book.

But I know all the knowledge.

I am the iceberg, y’all.

Also, it was a business expense and it was very fun.

The tiny fish I killed, and the sunburn I earned

I also did spearfishing courses. I did one in San Diego where it’s a Hawaiian sling — it’s basically a stick, but you have a rubber at the end so you could make it bounce a little. It’s not like a big spear gun.

So I did that. I think I killed, like, one fish, that was this big. Hurt my ego a little bit.

Then I went down to Mexico with a spear gun, and I loved it. It was so good. David and I went for a half day, and we’re wearing these half wetsuits. And I loved it so much that at half day, I said, “Can we keep going?” So we paid, and we did the full day.

And at the end of the day — well, first, we had a ton of yummy fish, and we went to the marina, and they cook it up for you at the restaurant, so it was so good.

But we were also so sunburned. Because you’re floating on your stomach in the water looking for fish, and when you see them, you dive down. You’re freediving. It’s exhausting. It’s a sport, because you’re not scuba diving as you do it. So you’re diving down, you’re trying to find the fish, you’re trying to shoot them — but when you’re on the top, the sun was just cooking my legs.

I’ve never had a calf sunburn except for that time, and it was a red line.

The sun clock nobody cared about but me

This one is one of my research rabbit hole failures. Aw, poor me.

It’s in pencil, so it’s going to be hard to see. But I mapped out a sundial. Because how are these people going to tell time in this primitive society with no technology? So I researched sundials and how I would build one, and I looked up the latitude and longitude of my island.

You can see — 6:00 AM, summer solstice, equinox. Because it changes during the year. They’re very complicated.

So I had, like, a whole two paragraphs explaining this clock.

And no one cared as much as I did.

But if I’m ever stranded on an island, I will — no. I don’t remember this, actually. This was years ago.

So I ended up cutting the sun clock, because it was really complicated, and no one really cared enough that my sun clock would change during the wet season and the dry season and the winter solstice. And how do I even use the words for that?

Instead, I found another primitive time-telling technique where you use your hand relative to the sun — how many fingers from the horizon, and how many hands, was a way of telling time.

So in the first chapter, there’s someone who brings their hand up to see how long it’s been, and they’ll mention fingers and hands. That’s a time-telling technique. You can see relative to earlier how much the sun has moved.

A village on stilts, and the UN project it came from

Like I said, I’m building this above-water, no-technology village. It’s really not an island. It’s just stilt houses and walkways, because there’s no land left.

Here’s my atoll. That’s the coral atoll. Here’s my village of grids and walkways and canoes and huts.

But the coolest part is that I researched and found this United Nations project proposing mangrove villages that looked very similar, and they had suggestions for how to build these coastal villages and use mangroves to protect from erosion.

I grew up in Tampa, Florida. We went to Southwest Florida a lot, and there’s all these mangrove islands. So finding this village mock-up of these mangrove islands was exactly what I wanted.

And so that is what this is based off of — basically an island of walkways protected by mangroves.

The crabs my dad knocked onto my head

In that first chapter — again, it’s only a line — but she canoes through this mangrove tunnel.

Where I grew up, there were these mangrove tunnels, and we would go canoe through them, and they’d be covered with these tiny little brown mangrove crabs. And we’d scream, because if you touched them they’d all fall down on your head. So of course my dad would hit the paddle and make them all fall down on our head.

I originally had that in the scene, and now all you get is a mangrove tunnel and some crabs later.

But I just need you to know that that is from real life. Crabs falling on my head.

Everything that grows on this island

This is another point where I researched too hard, because I decided I needed to know every single possible material available on the island in order for them to be self-sustaining.

So at one point, I defined their entire ecosystem.

• Mulberry for tea, wine, barkcloth, berries, baskets. I haven’t looked at this in years.

• Bamboo — you can make canteens, spears, cups, chopsticks, fish traps, rope.

• Mangroves — boundary protection, you use it around your plantings, roof, rope. I can’t read a lot of my writing, actually.

• Palm — coconuts, the oil, the husk, the leaves.

I basically made sure that I knew everything that grew on this island so that they could build all of the things they needed to build. Which involved YouTube videos where I learned how to make rope out of coconut husk, because I was like, “If I’m going to mention rope, I need to make sure they can make rope.”

Again, it’s not on the page. But I need you to know that I can — well, I can’t, actually. I’ve never tried it physically. But I know it’s possible to build rope out of coconut husk. It’s just like this, right? Easy.

What were other YouTube videos I watched? Okay. I watched one for a conch call. Brr. I watched it like six times on repeat so I could describe what a conch sounded like. So David comes home and I’m just blasting brr, brr, this conch call over and over again.

And of course, again, it doesn’t even make it in the book. I just tell you there’s a conch call.

But brr. So cool.

And then I also learned how to climb a palm tree. Again, theoretically — I haven’t tried it myself. But I actually watched videos of people using these climbers, these strips of fabric between their feet to keep them tight, and then just hopping up a tree. Just going up it.

So I feel like I can climb a palm tree. Like, if someone needs a coconut and gives me a climber, I will try. But I can describe it in detail thanks to YouTube.

Y’all — everything you want is on YouTube. People do a lot of things and record it! ( As evidenced by me, here)

Named after a sea slug

Another fun one I want to mention, and I love this, because it shows how important little comments that people will say can change a whole story.

Originally, my main character was named Eugenie, after this marine biologist who — I think — queen of the sharks. Gosh, I’m forgetting my own research. And Relfy was named So Yun, because she’s named after a Korean astronaut.

I’m telling David about this, multiple drafts in, and he says: “How would your island with no history and context of race and countries — how would they know to name her the Korean word So Yun?”

And I’m like, “Well, shit. They wouldn’t.” They would have a completely different naming convention.

And that’s how I came up with naming them after fish. So Easla is named after a sea slug. Relfy is named after a squirrelfish. Dams is damselfish.

I was like, “There’s finally a use of me being able to name every fish ever!”

It was so fun. But how cool is that — that someone flagging this “wait a minute, that doesn’t make sense in your world” helped me pivot to something that really deepens the world and shows you how ocean-focused they are.

He didn’t come up with that idea. But he flagged that it was off, and then I came up with that.

The Mandarin Chinese word I couldn’t stop thinking about

Another fun one, on the social hierarchy side, is given to.

I have studied Mandarin Chinese since eighth grade, and I forget which year this would’ve been, but I learned the word — shoot, I was going to look up the tones before this, but I didn’t — I learned the word jià gěi.

Jià gěi means to be married, but it’s specific to a woman. So if a man and a woman are married together, it’s jiéhūn le. They got married. But if a woman marries a man, she is jià gěi the man. She is given to. Gěi means to give. So jià gěi — she’s given in marriage to this man. But when they’re married, it’s jiéhūn le.

And I remember being really thrown off by that.

Look, this isn’t against Chinese. Most languages have some type of gender nuance here. But I was like: “Why do I have to be given in marriage? Why can’t I be married? Why does the man get a different word than me? I don’t like my word.”

And that really stuck with me.

So as I created this island and the hierarchies, and accounted for different factors that you’ll learn about as you read the book — well, if this is happening to the island, how would it affect these dynamics?

And part of it became this dynamic that the women are given to the men. That phrase is just my direct translation from Chinese, that they are given to in marriage. They are jià gěi le.

But again — words mean a lot. So if you’re going to give them to, how does that affect everything else in society?

May It, May We

That’s just a quick top of my head. As I read through the chapter, I wrote notes on fun things I wanted to show you. That is most of them.

The one I would end with is that the title of this book actually changed.

The original title was MAY IT PLEASE THE SEA — it referring to the sacrifice. They’re trying to please the sea with the annual sacrifice.

And as I wrote the story and realized the themes of this girl — which is not a spoiler, because you can tell it in the first chapter — she is so committed to pleasing others and following the rules and blending in.

So it’s not it. It’s actually we. May WE please the sea.

Who are we when we’re not trying to please society, and the gods, and whoever holds the power?

That creepy prayer, I’ve had since draft one. I think on the first page I sat down and was like, “I’m going to write a creepy prayer.”

And now it has evolved to:

That was your director’s cut for Chapter One of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA. I hope you liked it.

If any of this interested you, obviously I have a lot more knowledge on these topics — so let me know what you want me to dig more into.

🌊❤️, Caroline

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When the conch calls me back to the village, it calls me to the Offering. First will be the newborn boy the villagers all pray for, to be drowned for the gods. Then the girls who’ve turned sixteen harvests, to be given to the primes to breed as matrons. That includes me. After tonight, this water will no longer be mine.

My lungs contract, attempting an inhale, but I clamp my lips and count the seafloor’s corals until the discomfort passes—the same way I’ve learned to swallow every feeling the gods don’t allow.

My old hunting partner, Relfy, used happy thoughts as her breath-holding trick, but thinking of happy thoughts makes me think of her, and thinking of her leads only to unhappy thoughts, of the silence that was carved into her. So counting corals it is.

I swoop once more through the school of fish, then I kick upward until I burst out of the water. Grabbing the side of my canoe, I release my held breath and suck in an inhale. Though I’m prepared for the poisoned air, its harshness still cramps my lungs.

I break into coughs. My salt-stung eyes beg for a rest, but up here, I might hear the conch’s call. I’m not ready yet. I never will be. I prepare another breath-hold, pursing my lips and bringing air into my belly, then chest—

A canoe cuts through the gray haze, its paddler wearing the red-dyed barkcloth of matronhood.

I deflate like a pufferfish. A matron? But they aren’t allowed in the lagoon.

The paddler takes form. A long braid of squid-ink black, a strong body of soft curves, and those wide, expressive eyes always seeking mine. Relfy.

My chest tightens like I’m still holding my breath. We aren’t allowed to be alone together. Not since last Offering. Not since we—no, she. . . I fix my gaze on her tattooed forehead, avoiding her full lips and the injury they hide inside. I hang from my boat, as limp as my dead fish, and make no effort to close the distance. Perhaps she seeks a different girl.

But Relfy glides closer, her face scrunched in a closed-lip smile that reaches nowhere near as high as it once did. I watched that smile fade over the past twelve moons as Relfy sat alone on the docks, ignored by her fellow matrons. Avoided by me. That was easy enough to accomplish. We girls spend our suns on the water; matrons cannot leave the village.

Yet, she’s found me.

Relfy whistles, and though her tongueless mouth can no longer speak, the memory of her sing-song voice dances in my head like wind rustling the palms. Easla. Calling for me.

The dull pain I’ve buried deep lurches awake, a spear to my heart. I want to swim to her, be near her. I’m sorry. I should shout it. Instead, I shake my head, and my tangled braid snakes through the water. “You shouldn’t be here.” It comes out sharper than I intended.

Relfy rummages at her feet. From a sling wrapped around her chest, a scruff of black hair peeks out. The baby girl I’ve only seen from a distance, no older than three moons.

I don’t even know her name—which creature Relfy chose for her. Something quick, like Relfy’s squirrelfish? Or colorful, like the sea slug I was named for? I want to ask.

But that’s how I know I can’t. Wanting is how all of this started.

Relfy sits upright. She’s holding out. . . a scallop shell.

My hand slips from the canoe, and I sputter out a mouthful of saltwater as I glance around. Within our pocket of haze, the lagoon is empty. We’re finally alone. I swim to Relfy and place my hand on hers, the scallop shell cupped between us. Hiding it? Accepting it?

Only last Offering, our hands were reversed. I held a black-spotted cowrie shell, and Relfy’s hand rested atop mine. As we huddled together in our shared canoe, still dripping saltwater from harvesting urchins, I lowered my voice in a mockery of a prime’s, repeating the same words the man who chose her that night would use. The relationship she was meant to be in, the one the gods allowed. “I, Easla Born-to Cowrie, take you, Relfy Born-to Scallop.”

I offered the cowrie shell lightly, smiling like it was a joke. Even then, the Ocean Law called louder than a conch in my mind. Man is the Atoll. Woman is the Lagoon. Two Atolls can bring no life. Two Lagoons will not survive. We weren’t breaking the gods’ rules. Not truly. But still, my hand retreated.

Relfy scooped up the shell, her eye contact strong. “I am Relfy, Given-to Cowrie.” Then she pressed her face to mine and we laughed against each other’s lips. Laughed because there was nothing else to say. Laughed because with our eyes closed, harvested urchins poking into our feet, we could pretend this was real. As we lingered there, afraid to pull apart, to end what we had, our laughter faded and our kisses tasted of salt.

Relfy’s hand shifts beneath mine, and it’s no longer last Offering. I’m no longer hopeful. Her voice lingers in my ears, confident and caring, but it’s a voice I’ll never hear again. Because of me. Because of us. Something that cannot be.

Blinking back the sting in my eyes, I pick up her scallop shell. A hole has been carved through it. I peek at Relfy’s neck, where a thin string still hangs. Only I know what’s tucked beneath her barkcloth. My cowrie shell, hidden but there. She wants me to do the same.

Relfy leans forward and traces my tattooed forehead: the wave-like curves of my born-to cowrie shell, the straight bar of womanhood inked after I first bled, and below, the bare skin where no given-to shell has yet been carved. Her fingertip presses into that empty space, and we both know what will fill it tonight—a prime’s shell. Never hers.

I should tell her what she wants to hear. A few words to show her we’re still us, that we can make this work.

But we can’t. Not if we want to survive. Relfy has already lost her tongue. In trying to stop that, my mother lost her life. How much more are we willing to lose? I dig a fingernail into my thumb, where crescent-shaped scars cluster. The sharp sting brings me back to reality. Alive with pain is better than dead with none.

I drop her scallop shell into the lagoon.

Relfy chokes out a sound, but I don’t look up. The water is so perfectly clear, I can see her shell drift toward the sand, spinning and soaring like I was only breaths ago. Burying itself away from watching eyes, watchful gods. I take a deep inhale, my lungs pinching from more than the air’s grit. “No more, Relfy,” I whisper, like I don’t want even her to hear.

Relfy’s eyes are as dim as those of the snapper I killed. But this way, she’s alive. We’re both alive. I glance at my basket of fish, at the empty second bench it sits below. We do what we must to survive. I nod at her necklace. “You should remove that.” Then I roll into my boat, refusing to look again at the matron who risked a forbidden canoe ride to visit. The friend who risks more by wearing my shell, the friend who saved me with her sacrifice. Someone much more than a friend.

Relfy whistles. The way it rises sounds hopeful—an unanswered question—but it fades behind me as I paddle. Toward the village that smothers me, the matrons who watch me, this lie I live. And away from the lagoon I love and those trembling lips I desperately want to kiss again. I know who holds the power over my life, and it’s not me. Not yet.

Soon, I’m winding my canoe through a tunnel in the mangroves, ducking to avoid low-hanging limbs. The laughter of other girls itches my ears before I’ve even reached the tunnel’s end. My arms ache from paddling fast enough to put distance between Relfy and me, but I dig another stroke and pull into view of the village.

The docks bustle with action. Younger girls haul up nets and shake out minnows. Older girls huddle in pairs in canoes, rinsing bloody scales from their arms. Some of them will be given to the primes alongside me tonight. If they’re saddened by this, they don’t show it. Not to me.

I glide through their half-circle. They nod in greeting, but their eyes catch on my empty second bench and, as always, those smiles fade.

After Relfy returned to the docks as a matron last Offering, that night’s celebration marred by what was done to her, no girl has asked to take her place as my hunting partner. They fear they might catch Relfy’s sin, her punishment, her ruin.

Good. Let them keep their distance. I was coward enough to stay silent while Relfy took the blame, and for twelve moons since, I’ve said nothing, done nothing. Like I’ll continue to do. Alone is what I deserve.

I drift to a stop, grabbing my rope and throwing two half-hitches around the nearest piling. Then I haul up my fish.

From behind their nets, the younger girls gasp. In their boats, the older ones go quiet. My snappers far outweigh theirs.

As the whispers start again, low and sharp, I glance back at the mangroves. I don’t know how Relfy plans to slip back unseen with a stolen canoe, but when she does, I need to be elsewhere. I hop onto the dock.

In front of me, two girls hunch over their mortars, grinding more blue coral than any prayer calls for.

One glances up, and when her eyes catch mine, they drop just as fast. “The matrons keep asking for more,” she says into her mortar, a bead of sweat rolling off her nose.

So the pregnant matron’s birthing has already begun, which means this coral’s bound straight for the Cowrie hut, and its crowd of matrons. The perfect witnesses to see I’m nowhere near Relfy when she returns.

I crouch beside the girl. “I’ll finish this. Can you descale those?”

She goes still—wary, the way they all are around me. Then she works her fingers loose from the pestle, flexing them one by one. I’ve spent enough suns at a mortar to know that ache. However she’s been taught to feel about me, it’s no match for the chance to stop grinding. She passes me the pestle, careful not to let her fingers brush mine, and turns to my fish.

I take the stone mortar and rise, grinding the coral fragments as I leave the girls behind and wind through the maze of docks that forms our home in the lagoon. The blue coral releases a heavy stench as I crush it, a misleading contrast to the bliss and courage the powder brings once it melts on the tongue. I turn a corner into the Gathering Place.

Ahead, the Cowrie Hut rises on stilts from the sea, its thatched roof strung with the black-spotted shells that give its name.

Matrons huddle in the doorway, same as when I left at sunrise. Then, they whispered their predictions, talking over one another in their fight to be heard.

“She’s craved fish soup,” a Whelk matron said as she shooed my little sister and me out of the hut. “Definitely a boy.”

“And her belly hangs low,” a Sand Dollar matron said, barreling in with swaths of barkcloth, forcing me to press my sister against the wall so we wouldn’t be knocked over. “A boy, I know it, praise the gods.”

They raised their voices louder, nodding so hard their shells clacked, as they all claimed the same outcome. A boy. The only boy that would be birthed for this Offering, since all the others had come out dead. The boy we would offer to the gods before we girls of sixteen harvests offered ourselves to the primes.

Now, those same matrons from this morning wait with closed mouths and tapping feet. The pregnant Cowrie matron must be close.

As I approach, I avert my gaze to the powdered coral in my hands, displaying my piety as clearly as I can. Girls are not allowed to watch a birthing—not until we’ve experienced one ourselves.

The Sand Dollar matron snatches the mortar. “Thank the seas. He’s nearly here.” She passes it back, and it moves from matron to matron, disappearing into the hut.

The blue coral is forbidden outside of prayers, where its euphoric bliss gives us a glimpse of the gods’ promised afterlife. Only birthing matrons are allowed more.

Inside, she cries out, and the matrons wail in response. The unified sound is a crashing wave, frightening and powerful—women telling a woman, we hear you, we feel your pain.

The cries crescendo, but I keep my mouth shut, as I should, forcing a faint smile to my lips. The unease in my stomach intensifies. This will be me. This is what the gods want.

The matrons drop into silence.

My foot takes a step, and it’s in the wrong direction. Away. I dig my fingernail into my thumb. No, let them see me here, not with Relfy. Helping. Good. “May I bring—”

“Where’s the coconut water?” A Scallop matron pushes out and glares at the Sand Dollar matron. “The Holy Crone has asked twice.”

I drop my gaze so it can’t look like I’m peering inside. The Holy Crone’s in there. The woman who used to be my Grandma Almti, before her new position made her something more. I imagine she’s squatted by the birthing matron’s side, delivering orders she knows will be obeyed, her face set in that permanent frustrated focus that warps the black cross inked down and across her forehead, blocking out her old marks. As Holy Crone, she’s no longer born-to or given-to. She executes the gods’ will. She never worries of survival. She decides it.

The Sand Dollar matron scowls and cranes her neck, holding a flat hand sideways to the sun. “I asked the girl two fingers ago.” Her hand folds into a pointed finger and swings toward the coconut grove. “And she’s still there!”

Atop the tallest palm, a small figure perches among the fronds.

The Scallop matron tsks—slow, drawn-out clicks of the tongue—and shakes her head, her well-oiled braid rolling on her large chest. “A pious girl would’ve had it back by now.” Her narrowing eyes slide to me. “Should we be concerned for Elly’s piety?”

Seas, it’s my sister they speak of. My throat thickens. I clear it, and it turns into a cough—the dry, scraping kind the poisoned air leaves in all of us. “I-I’ll see to it.”

Before they can respond, I run toward the grove, my feet slapping the sun-warped boards harder than they need to. Of course Elly’s being difficult. She has been since our mother’s banishment. I know this is how she grieves, but a small part of me prays she would take care of herself, so I don’t have to carry the burden for both of us.

Reaching the palm trees, I slow, burying the frustration. Numbing my own grief so I can attend to hers.

Elly’s foraging partner Dams leans against the tallest palm, swinging a loop of barkcloth around one finger. She straightens when she sees me. “She won’t come down. Hasn’t dropped me a single coconut either.”

I don’t blame Dams for the edge in her voice. Last Offering was their tenth harvest, which meant they earned their first canoe. But the lagoon is where we last saw our mother, so Elly refuses to leave the docks.

The Holy Crone allowed it. A safety concern, she called it. A girl who panics on the water is a danger to herself and others. So Dams is trapped here too.

Except once this boy is born, we’ll paddle out for the Offering to the gods, and everyone must attend, including Dams. And Elly. I wipe my hands on my dress, leaving streaks of fish scales. “Give me the climber.”

Dams hesitates, her gaze flicking up to where Elly must be, then back to me. She chews her lip—afraid, I realize.

“They’re not going to banish her for a coconut.” I keep my voice level, if just to comfort myself. Not for a coconut. Right?

Dams hands me the climber—a strip of barkcloth knotted into a loop. “Gods willing,” she murmurs, and I think she means it.

I tug the knot, expecting slack, but it doesn’t budge. “You tied this well.”

“Yes, I—” She scratches her neck and drops her voice. “Earlier, I could hear Elly. . .” She glances down the walkway toward the huts. “I haven’t told anyone. But you know I’m supposed to.”

Singing. She doesn’t need to say it out loud. Elly’s done it before. A sin.

How does a song hurt anyone, my mother’s voice whispers in my head, but I shove it down where it belongs. Thoughts like that are what got her banished. To hear a sin and say nothing is to share in its evil. If a matron catches Elly singing while we stand here, Dams and I are as guilty as she is. I suck in a breath and release it slowly.

Tonight I’ll be given to a prime. That I can’t stop. But tomorrow, I have a chance to make this better.

The old Holy Crone died after last harvest, and Grandma Almti rose to take her place—which means, for the first time in thirty harvests, the Holy Crone needs an apprentice.

Tomorrow, all of the matrons will race for that honor, out in the lagoon where the first Holy Crone proved herself. I’ve trained every sun, alone, swimming laps around the village until my arms gave out.

Win, and I’ll stand at the Holy Crone’s side. Maybe it won’t be enough to keep my sister safe, maybe nothing is. But piety is the only thing I have, so I’ll give more of it than anyone else: be perfect, be useful, be worth keeping. It’s not much of a plan, but it’s the only one I’ve got.

Tomorrow. If Elly doesn’t get us in trouble before then.

I slip the climber’s loops around my ankles. The matrons were already asking after that coconut. It won’t be long before one comes complaining. If she finds Elly up there refusing to work, if she hears Elly singing, the plan is done. And so are we.

I grip the tree and jump onto its rough bark, splaying my knees to the sides. I haven’t climbed since I received my canoe, but I haven’t forgotten the motions. Bend, hop, pull with one hand, grip with the other. I sync my breath to the movements, exhaling as I leap, inhaling as I steady and prepare to go again. I don’t look up or down, only at the trunk’s ridges and cracks.

I’m out of breath and huffing when I see toes curling around the trunk from the other side. Elly’s. I close the remaining distance with small hops, careful not to crush her hands beneath mine. At the top of the palm tree, I bring myself eye-to-eye with my little sister.

Her blonde hair whips around in the wind. She stares past me into the lagoon, tears streaking down her dirty cheeks. In her squatted position among the coconuts, Elly holds perfectly still, so unlike the moon jellyfish our mother named her for. The baby who never stopped bouncing and squirming. Now, Elly grips the palm tree with fingers as white as sand.

I look over my shoulder to where she stares. The stretch of mangrove trees that grows over a dock. Our mother liked to take us there on our rest-suns. Canoes couldn’t approach it, and we could spot villagers before they walked in.

Mother would sit in the shade, leaning against a piling and weaving a basket, and she would sing. It was forbidden, what she did. We may only raise our voices in praise of the gods. That’s what the Ocean Law said, and this wasn’t prayer. But her voice was too beautiful to silence, so I would sit at her side and repair nets, practice knots on my climber, whatever I could to keep my hands busy, until I blinked and it was sunset, and my hands had forgotten their task.

On cooler suns, she’d even untie her braid. Shake out her hair and rub her sore scalp. Another small sin. Always in private.

The first occurrence, I dropped my climber and gasped. “The braid is the seaweed. By wearing the braid, we welcome the harvest.” I recited the words always told to me, the Ocean Law flowing from my tongue as smoothly as water spilled from the Gathering Place’s freshwater spring.

Mother fanned her sun-lightened hair over her shoulders, leaned over, and tapped my nose. “Why do we have the Ocean Law, my little Lug?”

Another sin. Calling me by a different variation of my sea slug. The gods did not give us names so we may change them. But I didn’t know how to disagree with my mother, other than reciting rules. I wasn’t much older than Elly then, or Oonj as Mother would call her there. Old enough to want to be older, but young enough to not know what that meant. “To. . . to protect us.”

Mother’s mouth crooked into something that wasn’t a smile. “To control us.”

I wasn’t sure I agreed. But Elly rushed past, chasing a crab down the dock, and pounced, hands cupped. The crab skittered on as Elly shook her tiny fist. “Once I have my canoe, I’ll catch every crab.”

Then Mother laughed, a full-bodied chuckle that claimed space, demanded attention. A laugh I never heard from any other matron. I didn’t disagree again because I wanted to be as happy as her, so I listened to her songs, let her unbraid my hair too. Responded when she called me Lug instead of Easla. And Elly as Oonj. Only there. Only with her. Maybe it wasn’t the gods who were strict, but the villagers.

I was wrong. Those peaceful rest-suns misled us into believing our hidden behaviors would go unpunished. But all sinners pay for their sins. Relfy, my mother, and through their losses, me. None of us can escape the gods.

I look away from the overgrown dock. Beyond it, the lagoon glitters bright blue. Up here, the haze thins enough, I can see the red-gray waves of the unholy waters, held back by the stark white ring of sun-bleached corals encircling our lagoon. The atoll. The place the Holy Crone abandoned our mother. Abandoned her own daughter. The place we’ll be returning to soon.

I lean into Elly’s view, blocking the atoll. “You won’t have to look at it. I’ll turn the canoe to face the village—”

“I’m not going. I won’t.”

I reach for more Ocean Law to recite, words I’m not sure I believe, but I say them anyway. Because we all do. “The Ocean Law says everyone must attend.”

“I don’t care about the Ocean Law.”

The same defiance our mother had. I squeeze the tree tighter with one hand and release the other, rest it over Elly’s. Like mine, it’s scarred from climbing for coconuts. “Then care about me.” Her arms tremble. Her muscles are fatiguing. “We need to get you down.”

She’s staring at the atoll again, her eyes unfocused. Reliving last Offering. “What if you leave me too?”

“I’ll never leave you.”

Her green eyes cut to mine. “Promise?”

I twist a bright-green coconut until it snaps free. Give the matrons what they want. Avoid attention. “No one will banish us.” I whistle twice and wait for Dams’s responding whistle below. Then I drop the coconut. “The sea slug stays with her jellyfish.”

Elly’s lips purse into a tiny pucker. “How do you know the Holy Crone’s apprenticeship will keep us safe?”

The question lingers in the air, resisting even the breeze. I don’t know, I can only hope. But I can’t say that to Elly. I bring my hand back to hers and rub my thumb across it in a small circle, creating the shape of our shared cowrie. “Because the gods save the pious.”

Elly nods like she understands. “May we please the sea.” She blinks back her tears and reaches for a coconut.

Below, a matron screams.

Elly flinches, and then she falls.

Index | Next Chapter »

🎥 Next Up: The Chapter 1 Director’s Cut

Check out the behind-the-scenes video for Chapter One to hear how I came up with this story while feeding sharks in the San Francisco aquarium as a dive volunteer, and the spearfishing and freediving classes I took as research:

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🌊 Enjoying MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA?

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Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline. I write dystopian fiction set in a flooded world — and this is where I show my work.

Ok, here’s the big news:

I’m self-publishing my dystopian novel, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA.

It’s the book I quit my job for. The one that got me two literary agents. The one (almost) none of you have ever read. Want the pitch?

That’s the pitch, and now here’s the twist. I’m not self-publishing it, yet! At least, not in the way you think. Becauseeeeee, I realized recently this isn’t meant to be one book. It’s actually four. (More on that below!)

So before I dig into this book to revise and expand it, I’m doing something very new for me:

I’m inviting you into the revision cave

and letting you read Act One (what will become the “first book”), starting next Saturday.

So that’s the TLDR. Now, let me tell you how I got here, because boy oh boy, it sure took a while!

The Win that Turned Icky

Last year, I finished writing my second book, MOONSHOT, and sent my pitch out to literary agents (having previously parted ways with my two agents for book one). Eight literary agents requested to read the full manuscript.

Do you know how rare that is?! Agents typically request the full manuscript for 1-2% of the pitches they receive. That’s a harder acceptance rate than Harvard!

. . . Have I told you recently that I went to Harvard?

So there I was, refreshing my email, waiting to hear back from these eight big-name agents who were actively reading my book, and instead of feeling excited, all I felt was. . . dread.

That was the first clue

I’ve been hosting a monthly meetup for fiction authors in San Diego for the past four years, so I’ve heard all about what happens behind the scenes in traditional publishing: the delayed edits followed by rushed deadlines, the soulmate editor who leaves mid-deal, the promised marketing budget that never materializes, the lack of control, data, and transparency (things I LOVE).

So I’m sitting there with my eight pending full requests, thinking, “Do I even want this?”

And this was a very confusing thought to think! Because that has always been my goal! A goal big enough that I quit my job at LinkedIn to pursue it.

The Compliment That Made Me Feel Like a Fraud

Last August at a Harvard friend’s wedding, as we were all settling into our seats for dinner, I scurried across the empty dance floor for a last-minute drink, and an old classmate stopped me right there, in the center of the room, to tell me how amazing it was that I was writing my books. That I was brave.

Y’all, this guy had co-founded a start-up that had just received a ton of funding.

And he said he was proud of me?

All I felt in that moment was shame.

I went back to my table and thought, “this is exactly why I can’t self-publish.” Because right now, this guy is impressed by me. By my literary agent. But if I told him I was thinking to publish it myself, he wouldn’t be any more.

Seeing my face, David asked what was wrong, and when I told him, he said, “Wait, did that guy even mention publishing?”

No, he did not. He said he was proud of me for writing books.

I was the one who decided that a book I published myself would be one I’d have to apologize for.

The Pivots 💃🏼

I’ll spare you the full spiraling of the following months. The short version:

• I decided 1) to self-publish and

• 2) I would self-publish my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, first.

I booked a book cover designer, shared the story with some trusted readers, and then one of those readers (an author whose books I love) told me:

Instead of being frustrated that there was more revision to be done, that I quit LinkedIn six years ago, and I still don’t have a book out in the world (my favorite negative self-talk), all I could think was, “dag nabbit, he’s right.”

I had beta readers from earlier rounds tell me over and over that they wanted more, more, more, all while my literary agent at the time was telling me to cut, cut, cut.

The reasoning? Attention spans are short. You’re competing with TikTok. Get to it faster.

Does this mean I’m about to disappear again?

That’s what I did all these prior times. Countless revisions, two agents, dozens of beta readers. Six years of work — all behind the closed door of my revision cave.

I’m not doing that again.

I’m rebuilding this book into a series over the next few months, and I’d rather not do it alone. The version of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA that exists right now is the manuscript that won over two top-tier literary agencies, the ones behind The Hunger Games and Ender’s Game — and nobody outside of them and my beta readers has ever read it.

Which brings me to the terrifying part: I’m giving it to you.

Confession: I’m Scared

The thought of self-publishing this book was already scary, but the thought of sharing these chapters with this list of friends is even scarier.

I don’t know if anyone wants to read my book. I don’t know if I’ll open my email after this and find that only four people joined me in the cave, and three of them are related to me.

(The irony being that I currently have exactly three paid subscribers: my mother, my grandmother, and my college roommate’s mother.)

Hi, ladies. 👋

But there’s an excitement here that I haven’t felt in a long time. I’ve spent the past few years waiting for someone with more authority than me to say yes.

Which is strange, because that has never once been how anything in my life has worked.

• When I wanted to work in China after college, I was told to get a job in New York finance first, then transfer over. “That’s how it’s done.” Instead I flew to Hong Kong over winter break, set up interviews with alumni, arranged a summer internship, and landed a full-time job there straight out of school.

• When my dad died and I wanted to move back to the US and into tech, I was told to go to business school to help with the pivot. I started writing the “Why Business School?” essay and thought, “this is silly, why don’t I at least try first?” I moved to San Francisco with no job, interviewed, and LinkedIn hired me.

• When I wanted to write a book, I was told to keep the job and do it on the side. I did — for the first draft. Then I was hooked, so I quit, gave myself one year, and I got literary representation for the first novel I’d ever written!

Then I got an agent, and I stopped following my own advice. Which led to years of waiting for permission, for approval, for something outside my control.

The Truth?

In addition to wanting to get my book out into the world, I want to find out whether I can build an income stream from writing. One that doesn’t require me to bill hours building someone else’s business. This is an experiment, and instead of waiting for things to be perfect, I’m doing it live. (GULP!)

Whether you want to read for free or dive all the way into the deep end, here is how you can join the experiment:

🌊 As a free subscriber, you get:

📖 The First Half of Act 1 (Chapters 1–5)

Get the opening story arc delivered straight to your inbox every Saturday morning.

🎧 Chapter 1 Audio

Press play on your morning walk, commute, or while doing dishes to hear me read the opening chapter.

🎥 The Chapter 1 Director’s Cut Video

The first one’s free, and it’s the best introduction to how my brain works. I pull out the research notes I haven’t opened in six years, show you my terrible village drawings, and explain how a shark tank in the San Francisco aquarium, a sunburn in Mexico, and a Mandarin word helped shape this book.

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🔦 Ready to Go Deeper? (Inside The Cave)

If you join me in The Cave ($9/month or $90/year), you unlock the complete experience — this is built for readers who want the full story, ocean-obsessed nerds who love research rabbit holes, and doers who want co-working accountability.

📖 The Complete Act 1 Story (Chapters 1–10)

Don’t get stopped halfway through the arc. Get weekly access to every chapter drop, including the Act 1 finale where the story takes a massive, irreversible turn, o0o.

🎧 The Complete Author-Read Audiobook

Turn Saturdays into hands-free story time with my author-narrated audio for all 10 chapters.

🎥 10 Exclusive Director’s Cut Videos

For every chapter, sit down with me for a candid video where I pull out my research folders to show you the “iceberg” beneath the page—from UN mangrove village designs, freediving courses where I held my breath for two minutes, primitive horizon timekeeping, and naming characters after sea slugs.

⚡Live Deep Work Co-Working Sessions

Need accountability to make real progress on your own big project? Sit down and body-double alongside me live twice a week during our 9-week sprint:

• Tuesdays: 4:00–5:00pm PT / 7:00–8:00pm ET

• Thursdays: 9:00–10:00am PT / 12:00–1:00pm ET

💬 Subscriber Chat & AMAs

Hang out in our private chat, plus two dedicated Ask Me Anything threads during the sprint — worldbuilding details, productivity setups, life behind the scenes, whatever you’re curious about! I’ll answer in text and voice notes.

$9/month or $90/year

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🐠 Want to Become a Big Fish? ($250 / year)

For supporters who want to sponsor the independent creation of this multi-book universe, get direct 1-on-1 access, and back this experiment.

🔦 Full Access to Everything In The Cave

All 10 chapters, the complete audio edition, all 10 Video Director’s Cuts, private chat, AMAs, and weekly co-working sessions.

🧠 A 1-on-1 Strategy Session with Me (60 Mins)

A private Zoom call to untangle whatever you’re working on. We can map out your career strategy, optimize your Notion / work systems, or brainstorm your book, business, or social media. (Keep it for yourself or gift it to a colleague, family member, or friend!)

💌 A Piece of Snail Mail

A handwritten thank-you note delivered directly to your physical mailbox expressing my gratitude for supporting this experiment.

$250/year

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Regardless of which tier you go with, or if you want to follow along for free, I’ll see you next Saturday, September 19th for Chapter One. Woo!!

🌟 Oh my, a BONUS! 🌟

Join In the Cave this week and get an early sneak-peek of the book cover of MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA in your welcome email — before it’s shown anywhere else! Here’s a teensy preview to whet your appetite:

🌊❤️, Caroline

P.S. [ADDED LATER] You might have noticed that I said I would send this out on Saturday — and if you didn’t notice, that’s perfectly okay — and it’s actually Sunday morning.

Well, I was all prepared and hyped and ready to send on Saturday, but then I showed a friend my book cover and they didn’t like it, (they actually hated it), and then they said people don’t read serialized fiction. And I felt very demoralized and delusional and “why bother?” and I didn’t send this email.

Then, this morning, I woke up and I decided, “you know what, I’d rather take action and learn through doing, even if it flops” and I opened up my Substack to send this email. . . and I noticed something new in my dashboard. (Actually took me a few clicks because I’m not yet that familiar with the dashboard).

Turns out, an author friend from the monthly Writers Group I hosted yesterday had found this and signed up as an annual paid subscriber without telling me (which, keep in mind, I hadn’t even sent out this announcement yet!) and now I’m sitting at my desk at 9am, tearing up over $90. 🥲

What I’m feeling right now that I wanted to share is:

1. do it scared. Even when people seem like they “have it all together”, we don’t. As evidenced by me, even at the last minute, waffling and hesitating and missing my own delivery date.

2. support and encourage your friends. and I don’t mean that in a manipulative, bottom-of-this-email-about-me way, I mean it because I wasn’t expecting that, this morning, to see that from her. It was a kind gesture anyway, but it was a really extra special gesture this morning. Just the little reminder I needed to keep going. So, whoever that friend may be for you, pop in every once in awhile. It can mean a lot more than you think it does.

Okay, I’m sending this email now ♥

P.P.S. If you know a reader who loves the ocean and dystopian sci-fi, or a doer looking for a deep-work focus container, forward this their way!

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About the Author:

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline, the author behind The Deep Dive. When I’m not writing, you can find me gardening my veggies and fruit trees, training my German Shepherd to talk with buttons, or working on my pull-ups.

💬 Feel free to like or comment on this post so more Substack users can find it!

More from The Deep Dive:

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline. I write dystopian fiction set in a flooded world — and this is where I show my work.

I stopped this swimmer from being swept out to sea without ever touching him. How?

🌊

I was a rescue kayaker for the Escape from Alcatraz triathlon in San Francisco in 2019. The rules were, if the swimmer touched your kayak, they were disqualified.

Seems reasonable enough, since it is a race, except there was a very strong outgoing current, and I was assigned an outlier position in between the race course and the Golden Gate Bridge, which leads to the open sea.

This poor guy who drifted into my Zone of Supervision was clearly not a very strong open water swimmer. (Otherwise, why was he all the way out here with me, and not on the race course?)

The Alcatraz swim is a VERY technical 1.5 mile swim. It’s 50-58F, which leads to disorienting cold water shock upon entry, then you’re dealing with intense currents that require intentional navigation, and choppy waves impede your visual sighting.

So, back to our poor guy, who is meant to be going left, but keeps swimming right (remember the current?). I can’t touch him, so I am constantly rearranging my kayak into his line of sight and banging my oar, but swimming is NOISY, and he’s buried in waves, so for over an hour, we do the following:

• he swims and nearly collides into my kayak, which is blocking him from being swept out to sea

• he is confused, he angles left, facing shore, and swims a few strokes

• the current pushes him back toward me

• repeat

He is not happy. And now he’s tired, and embarrassed, and he’s still not accounting for the current. Finally, he gets to shore. . . a mile down from the transition area, so now he has to RUN a mile, in his WETSUIT, to join back with the race, where he will have to then do a hilly 18 mile bike ride, then an 8 mile run.

Poor dude. The look on his face when he neared the shore and realized how far off-course he had gotten?

I’ve felt like that recently.

When I quit LinkedIn in 2020, I gave myself one year to write. At the end of that year, I was hooked. I knew I could never go back to corporate. But, I needed some way to make money.

I ended up working part-time with an old college professor for his new startup. I helped him launch their 2nd facility in 2021, and now, we are launching their 27th!

The thing is. . . there’s no upward mobility there, and that’s been fine because I haven’t wanted that! I’ve stayed in this job because it’s been a stable source of income, working with someone I enjoy, on a cause I feel good about (dental surgery for low-income and special needs children) AND it supports my pursuit of writing.

It was all working out perfectly. I had just revised my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, for my agent, we were about to go to publishers. But then my agent dropped me.

And that’s when I started drifting. . .

First, I stayed focused. In Fall 2024, I found a second agent for MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, but their legal contract was problematic so I walked away, and I was so burnt out on that book, that I focused on writing my second book idea, MOONSHOT, instead.

Then, I sent MOONSHOT to agents in Fall 2025, and I was so tired, that I stopped writing anything new. I waited.

You see, I didn’t want to write more until I knew what would come of these two stories I’d already written. I knew that another story meant committing to at least another full year of focus and energy. And did I want to put myself through that again, when I already had two books, with no success?

So I waited for agents. And in the meantime, I took on more consulting clients. More work.

And then one day, I looked up and saw the shore, and how far away I was for the race I had signed up for.

The Job I Escaped, Rebuilt

I hadn’t written in months.

Sure, I was working from home, and I controlled my work, and my schedule was flexible. . . but it was one day, when a client of mine was offering to refer me to other people, that I realized. . .

I don’t want more clients!

And like poor ol’ swimmer guy, I popped up confused, so far from where I was originally intending to go, and feeling like I was fighting against the current just to get back to where I was.

What Will I Actually Regret?

Recently, I heard someone say, “when you’re on your deathbed, what will you regret most?”

I closed my laptop, put away my phone, and went into my hot tub, with just me and my brain thoughts and Fletcher (because he’s always there).

I made myself sit in silence and really think, beyond the should’s and the could’s and the pressure of more clients, more money, what will I actually regret on my deathbed?

I immediately thought, “well it won’t be, ‘darn I should’ve signed another client.’”

That’s when I knew. . . I had drifted.

And as I stared up at the full moon, the next thought that came to me was, so strongly: MY BOOK.

It was so obvious and yet, so random. I hadn’t thought about my books in MONTHS. My silly books that had taken so long and given me so much heartbreak.

When I told David, he asked, “Is the act of writing enough? The fact that you wrote two books? Could you put them in a drawer and be happy?”

I think I actually stepped back in disgust.

For me, it’s not the proof of “could I do it?” It’s the joy and connection of sharing it. I had glimmers of that with my beta readers and it was so special, so energizing.

But I’ve lost it since.

Angling Back Toward Shore

I had already planned my client work, and my future client work, and I easily saw a path there for how to bring in more money.

But that’s not what I’ll regret.

So, I’m proud to say, I’ve stopped taking on any new clients.

My even bigger Big Move?

I ended work with my second largest client, one who was taking up a significant amount of time. (No, don’t worry, not my old college professor and the dental surgical facilities for low-income youth, that’s still my part-time).

I am freeing up time for writing. I am angling left to get back to shore.

Next Saturday, September 12th, I’m going to share my ~ Big Announcement ~ with you. I don’t think you’ll guess exactly what it is. . . because it’s evolved.

P.S. Do you feel like you’ve drifted off-course from whatever you’re working towards?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

🌊❤️,

Caroline

About the Author:

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline, the author behind The Deep Dive. When I’m not writing, you can find me gardening my veggies and fruit trees, training my German Shepherd to talk with buttons, and training to do pull-ups. (I’m almost there!)

🌊You can also find me on Instagram.

💬 Feel free to like or comment on this newsletter so more Substack users can find it!

More from The Deep Dive:

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline. I write dystopian fiction set in a flooded world — and this is where I show my work.

I stopped writing to you because I was embarrassed. What fixed it was a spoon.

🌊

I have a set of nice silver cutlery that my mother gifted me long ago. It claims a full drawer in my kitchen, taking up space, but I never use it. Because it’s FANCY. I should only use it for special occasions.

So, I never use it.

Until one day, I hadn’t run my dishwasher, I needed a spoon, I was out of spoons, and lo and behold—I used a fancy spoon.

It was not a special day. It was just me and a single-serve Greek yogurt. Coconut flavored, and I added blueberries. Which, honestly, to me, is quite fancy.

And that’s when I realized. . . How silly to wait.

I am the fancy!

My Other Silver Drawer

And in my bout of realizing realizations, I realized I have a much bigger “silver drawer”.

You.

Here.

My Substack newsletter.

Something Sensitive

I am going to tell you something sensitive now. Please be kind.

Remember back when I had signed with my first literary agent for my first novel (a YA dystopian sci-fi), with the agency that represented the Hunger Games, and I did a year of revisions with her, and then we were finalllllly about to pitch the book to publishers?

I was so close. So full of hope and determination and grit. I would do anything that might possibly help me.

Well, publishing is a business, and a bigger platform can get you a bigger book deal.

So, every night, after finishing my freelance consulting work for the day and after chipping away at this “final” revision (lol, I thought so many revisions were the “final” one), I sat at my computer and reached out to friends one-on-one, asking them to subscribe to this newsletter to help support me in my mission of impressing publishers with my newsletter subscriber stats (wow, such a “big platform”!) as my dear agent and I prepared to pitch them my book in a few months.

That might be why you are here. Because I asked you directly.

Thank you.

Thank you for supporting me. Each subscription felt like a digitally shouted, “you go girl, you got this!” It truly meant a lot. Nearly 400 of you said yes!

And I’m sorry I overpromised. It’s definitely been more than “a few months”….

But that’s where the Fear of the Fancy Silverware kicked in.

I had worked so hard to attain this NUMBER. (That’s you, sorry. I’m referring to you as a number. . . And don’t get me wrong, it was so lovely to check in on your latest life updates and reconnect and learn what you’d been up to), but oh, how that number became scary.

Because, as I was riding this high of “I’m doing it!! It’s actually happening! Sweet, sweet victory shall finally be mine!” . . .

And Then She Dropped Me

That’s when my agent dropped me.

All of a sudden, I no longer was “about to pitch my book to publishers,” the exact thing I had promised you when I asked you to support me here.

Now, I was a liar. And embarrassed. An embarrassed liar.

I had worked so hard, every night, chip-chipping away, to accumulate “this number” that I didn’t want to lose.

So I froze. I left the fancy silverware untouched in the drawer.

I stopped sending newsletters.

Eat Your Best Food First

On the very first day of freshman year, one of my new college roommates returned from a pre-orientation camping trip, all stinky, and shared with me a lesson they had taught her there: “Eat your best food first, because then you’ll always be eating your best.”

Maybe that’s an obvious one, but I’m not gonna lie, it took me a few minutes to process the meaning. Eat the yummiest thing now, and then out of whatever food you have left, you’ll have a new favorite. Now eat your new yummiest. And repeat. Yumminess all the way down. How joyful!

The Epic Twist

That memory popped up for me back when I was revising MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA to send out to literary agents.

I had this EPIC twist planned, and I was going to have it be the opening to the sequel. Oh sure, the first book was going to end in a great way, but not the epic twist. I only have one epic twist, I have to save it. Space it out. Don’t eat the best food yet.

But then as I was getting my hundreds of rejections, and pasting them on the wall, I thought, “gosh darn it, why am I holding back? I may never get to write the sequel if they don’t like the first book!”

So I pulled that epic twist into the end of book 1, right where it belonged. I pulled out my tastiest treat, and I ate it with the fanciest of silverware. It’s a great ending, and. . .

Well, my agent still dropped me.

(Despite my numerous references to that incident in this singular newsletter, I truly am over it.)

The point is—I’m here to tell you:

I'm Pulling Out the Fancy Silver

I’ll be writing here more. Weekly. Sometimes an essay like this one, sometimes some nerdy research behind my books.

Because at the end of the day, I like writing, and in the last year, I’ve lost that.

In high school, I wrote in a journal while traveling through China, then I moved it to a blog called the traveling bird. I even blogged throughout college.

I have always found joy and catharsis through writing, so why did I leave it stuffed away in a drawer?

When it comes to publishing and book updates, I haven’t had any special occasions, but you know what?

I feel like eating a yummy Greek yogurt on a sunny San Diego day, writing here, to people I love, who care enough to support me with my dream of writing dystopian fiction. . . so yeah, that seems like a great occasion to me!

You Are Not a Number

My “number” might go down. And that’s okay. Because, you, dear friend, are not a number.

At some point, I heard the phrase “1,000 true fans” and I fixated on the wrong part. The 1,000. Not the true fans.

If you’re not excited to be here and I roped you into an awkward pity-subscribe, be free! Be gone! You are released from your obligation. You might not even think there was an obligation. Perhaps this was all in my head.

But I feel freer. I hope you do too.

One More Tasty Treat (since we’re eating those first now)

I’ve been working on something. It’s about my books, it involves a decision I’ve been ruminating and perseverating on for most of this year, and it starts in three weeks.

I’ll tell you all about it on Saturday, September 12th. Eeks!!

🌊❤️,

Caroline

P.S. do you have something special you’ve been saving for a future special day? Why not enjoy it today?

Hit reply and tell me. I read every one.

In case you missed the last three years:

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline Davis, a YA sci-fi author represented by the agency behind The Hunger Games and currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to pitch to publishers.

Represented by the agency behind Ender’s Game and currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to pitch to publishers.

Not currently represented by anyone, but I finished my 2nd book! This newsletter shares my latest author updates & creative process musings.

Who am I?

It’s a running joke in my family, dating back to that time in college where I semi‑accidentally dyed my very blonde hair…black. (And not my eyebrows.) It was a tragic era for my appearance and yet, at the time, I shockingly did not care.

I’d gone to the hair salon, finally embracing that I no longer was a Florida girl basking in the sun, but a college student in Boston—ok ok, fine, it was Cambridge! I went to Harvard!!

Whew, sorry, don’t know what came over me there.

Anyways, I asked the discounted assistant-to-the-regional-hairstylist (because that’s all I could afford) to “please match my roots”, which I will always claim are dirty blonde, but one might describe as light-brown, and well, some time later, I looked into the mirror and…I had black hair. Dark black hair.

With no money left to fix it, and my hair now too badly fried to do more to it even if I could, I said “thank you” in my best people-pleasing tone and scuttled back to my dorm room, where I then scared the shit out of my roommates because they thought a stranger had broken in.

The best (or worst?) part of this was…I just accepted it. Unplanned black hair, light brown eyebrows, and oh yeah, this was during the recruitment process for Harvard’s final clubs (which are like sororities or secret societies). Not the best timing.

Almost every club cut me. I assume because they were like, “Who’s that random chick with black hair?” (But it also could have been because they didn’t like me. Whatever.)

For the one club that didn’t cut me, it was because an upperclassman I worked with was kind enough to inform everyone of my new black hair.

Thus, I successfully joined the Isis (which was named for the Egyptian goddess of fertility, just so you know) and I got some really great sweatshirts and hoodies that boldly proclaimed ISIS all over them. Sadly, we had to rebrand shortly after, for obvious reasons, and those clothes had to go.

***

The “Who am I?” family joke was born because I truly looked like I was going through an identity crisis.

I wasn’t then.

But I kind of am now…minus the eyebrow mismatch.

Who am I? I studied Mandarin Chinese from age 13, took upper-level Business Chinese in college as a freshman, moved to Hong Kong after graduation, where I emailed about real estate investments in Chinese. Now I speak more Spanish than Chinese. (Duolingo on Day 641!!)

Who am I? In Hong Kong, I studied and passed all three levels of the CFA exams (That stands for Chartered Financial Analyst, and it’s one of the hardest finance designations you can get). Then I left the finance industry, which means over 900 hours of studying and I can’t even force you to call me “Caroline Davis, CFA.” (But I would respond.)

Who am I? At LinkedIn in San Francisco, I won a cross-functional MVP award for my 3-year massive change management project in operations and analytics. Then I quit to write a book.

Who am I? I wrote that book, heck I wrote two books, both in the dystopian sci-fi genre, and I got literary representation from the agency that repped The Hunger Games. Then again with the agency that repped Ender’s Game. Those are both keystone books in my genre! Yet there’s a voice that whispers, “it’s been six years since you left the corporate world…and you still don’t have a book published.”

Who am I? I invested in building an Instagram presence for my future author platform. One reel went big, grew my following by 15,000 people, and even landed me an interview with NPR’s All Things Considered.

But then I stopped.

Was I an influencer? Of what? My dog? My garden? My still-not-publicly-available book? Why was I on here and what was I doing it for anymore??

I didn’t know. So I paused.

Who am I? Even on my entrepreneurial side (aka how I make money, which we all know isn’t coming from book sales), I don’t talk about it, but I have clients who pay me for fractional Chief of Staff and COO work. How cool is that?

Except, because everyone I’ve worked with has come to me versus me selling my services to them, I’ve never truly felt like an entrepreneur.

Yes, I make money that’s not through a full-time employer, but I don’t have a long, fancy sales page with a big blinking “Book a Call with Me” button, so…

Who am I?

Growing up, I always heard my dad talk about “all the pieces of the pie”— the idea of attending to all the aspects of a well-balanced life.

If I was stressing out over an exam, he’d say, “Don’t forget to work out! Work out your brain, work out your body.”

If I was feeling guilty about not studying Chinese so I could go to a party (which was with Isis, but you know which one), he’d remind me, “Social breaks are important too. All the pieces of the pie.”

So…what if, instead of agonizing over this, I applied that life motto now? What if, instead of trying to pick one version of myself, I embraced all my different pie pieces?

Because the truth is: I am multi‑passionate. I am someone who builds many things at once—creatively, professionally, personally….slowly.

Maybe I don’t need to be the Writer, or the COO, or the Influencer.

Maybe the answer to “Who am I?” isn’t a title at all.

Maybe I’m the person intentionally building a life made of many pieces.

I’ve been sitting on this draft for months now, simmering with my pieces, and finally, I feel ready to release this into the world. I have things I’ve put into action, and I can’t wait to bring you along for this next stage in my journey.

Sneak-peek into the first of The New Things:

In the past six years since I left LinkedIn, all of my clients have come to me—a surgical facility group, an interior design studio, an author on book tour, a real estate agency, a dog trainer.

Different industries, different problems, same thing every time: someone smart and capable who needed help getting clear and getting moving.

It always ends the same way. At the close of our meeting, they exhale and say some version of: “Whew. I feel so much better.”

That moment’s my favorite part :)

So here’s my new part: I’m finally doing this entrepreneur thing on purpose.

For the first time ever, I’ll be opening up coaching. And instead of waiting for people to find me, I’m inviting them in.

Inviting YOU in!

It’ll be built around exactly what I’ve been doing for these founders for years: helping you get clear on what you want, and actually making it happen.

So if you’ve ever wanted my brain on your goals, your stuck points, your “I have too much going on and I don’t know where to start”—just reply to this email. I’d love to tell you more.

***

And if you’re not looking for coaching, fear not!

This newsletter is not becoming a sales pitch. I’ll still show up here the same way I always have—with my stories and deep-dives and the occasional identity crisis.

Coaching is just one of my new pieces of the pie. If it’s not for you, no worries at all—in this world of shortening content and shortening attention spans, how amazing that you choose to share your precious time with me.

Like I said, there’s more excitement to come!!

But don’t worry…it won’t involve dying my hair black again. 😉

🌊❤️,

Caroline

Since starting this journey,

+843 people have joined my newsletter

+204 virtual teas have been sent to me on Ko-Fi, yummy! Thank you, friend! 🍵

Send Me a Tea

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline Davis, a YA sci-fi author represented by the agency behind The Hunger Games and currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to pitch to publishers.

Represented by the agency behind Ender’s Game and currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to pitch to publishers.

Not currently represented by anyone, but my mom still thinks I’m awesome. This newsletter shares my latest author updates & creative process musings.

🚨First off, big announcement! 🚨

I’ve finished my 2nd book MOONSHOT. If you’re interested in beta reading, please respond! First 10 responses will get the elusive, only-offered-once-before Beta Reading slot. Ooh aah.

Yeah wait, what’s MOONSHOT?

It’s the book I’ve been writing since I shelved MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA. (We’ll get to that later). 🫤

*Clears throat to begin the pitch she gave to 10 agents last weekend*

MOONSHOT is a young adult dystopian novel about a deep-sea oil rig welder on a floating company town in the Pacific who hacks her way into the Lottery to win a chance for a better life on the moon, only to discover it’s a televised competition to the death…and her estranged childhood crush is also a competitor.

Bum Bum bummm. If that sounds up your alley and you want to read the finished manuscript and give me feedback, let me know!

🎵and now back to our regularly scheduled content. 🎵

Psh, well that’s a joke. This newsletter is far from regular. I haven’t emailed you since last summer, and I had to remember how to use this platform. Surprise, surprise, I found an unsent draft from last November. Soo…instead of writing more, I’m going to share that draft with you:

From PAST CAROLINE of Nov. 2024 with *edits* from PRESENT CAROLINE:

I’m looking out over mountains as I write this (*accurate at time of writing*), my back sore from sitting on this cross-country flight, my eyes dry from binge-reading Shift (the sequel to Wool/the tv series Silo) on my phone’s tiny Kindle app screen, and I’m deep in the throes of a book hangover.

How devastating and beautiful and tragic that I read this book across two flights and a layover, 7 hours in total, when it took the author far far longer to create it. Such is the way of creation vs. consumption.

I’m returning home from YALLfest, the Young Adult Literature Lovers festival in Charleston, South Carolina that I’ve gone to the past four years.

Every year, I leave YALLfest energized: to write more, to write faster, to write better and to more accolades. It’s a dangerous energy, like consuming one too many drinks or whizzing down a steep hill on my tri bike.

I’m more of a slow and steady energy, not the frenetic type. I like to joke that if only I did cocaine like Stephen King, maybe I would writer faster, but for now, that’s still a joke. Which is why I’m not allowed to do cocaine.

It’s been a slow year (*2024*), one where I haven’t shared my updates because things kept changing. You might be thinking, uh, doesn’t that mean it’s been a fast year? Well, the turbulence light is on, (remember? I’m on an airplane?), so sit back down for a second and let me tell you why I kept not sharing….

🌊 Last December (*2023*), I told you how excited I was for my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to finally get pitched to publishers.

… but then my agent decided she didn’t want to try to sell it. She wanted to shelve it and focus on something new.

🚀 I sat with that disappointment and channeled my energy into my second book, MOONSHOT (another YA dystopian sci-fi), still working with my agent. In March (*2024*), I prepared to tell you how I was making peace with shelving MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA and how I was finding excitement to complete this other book to sell instead. I sent my agent MOONSHOT’s detailed outline and first chapter….

…and my agent dropped me.

I told you that part. Kind of. I said “we split”. The truth is: she dropped me. Why? I’ll elaborate another time. The point is—>

📚 I was left with a book my ex-agent didn’t want to pitch to publishers and another book I hadn’t even finished writing. So I had to find a mindset shift. Just after convincing myself that MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA wasn’t good enough, I had to find my belief in it again. That took time.

…but I did. After avoiding my book out of fear of how bad it must be, I sat down and read it. And I loved it! (again!). And I got back on the proverbial horse and I pitched that book to new agents through the summer (*yes, we’re still in 2024*), again and again.

🖊️ And I got a new agent!

I hadn’t told you that part either. It happened in August (* still 2024*). And it ended in August. A relationship not much shorter than my first boyfriend in 7th grade, who dumped me in the hallway while I was wearing a turkey costume for the middle school play and I had just started my period for the very first time and was walking out of the bathroom with a tampon hidden up my wing: a “woman”, a turkey, and newly single.

That’s basically how I felt this (*past*) August, minus all those very specific details. But a jumble of unexpected good and bad mixed together.

The agent was great, but alas, the agency and the decision maker behind her were not.

So I walked away.

I had author friends tell me to stay. “It’s better than nothing.” And just like my 7th grade breakup, which I honestly have not thought about in 20 years, so I too am intrigued with where this is going…. Ah yes, I’m comparing my red-flag agent to the relationship fear of “but what if I never find anyone else?”

That sentiment probably aligns better with my more life-impacting break-up in my late-20s, but it’s far more fun to talk about the one involving me in a turkey costume.

So here I am, flying back from a book festival for the fourth time, with some lower back pain to remind me I’m aging. Last year (*2023*), I had a powerhouse agency that represents The Hunger Games representing me, the end of revisions for MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA were in sight, and I was absolutely positively boiling over with hope and optimism for a book deal in 2024.

That’s not what 2024 entailed. I’ve had two agents this year, and I’m back to zero. See now how it’s both fast and slow? A hop-skip forward and a stumble-fumble back.

But that forward-back direction depends on the axis used.

[I was going to draw a really creative Chart here, except I can’t be bothered]

Yes, objectively, I’m further away from a book deal. But that’s only one metric to measure. What else has changed?

This YALLfest, I didn’t have imposter syndrome. I didn’t go hide in the bathroom or have a internal moment of overwhelming crushing doubts. I had the most energizing, revitalizing visit with old friends and new friends.

So let’s put that on an axis.

[Again, pretend I have a cool Chart here. Wow. Oh, it’s so insightful. There’s no chart. just go with it.]

I was brave enough to walk away from the thing I’ve wanted and talked about with you for the past—oh my—four years, because it didn’t feel right to me.

How amazing is that!

That’s not nothing. That’s growth and progress. Maybe not in the external self-validating goal-accomplishing way that I’d really prefer.

[See the Chart. Be the Chart. Are you inspired? Good. Me too.]

Where does that leave me? I took a pause on MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA. I’m focusing on MOONSHOT again. It’s 40% drafted (*remember, this is Past Me*) and I’m going to channel that book festival energy into finally get this book done.

But not right now. I have 20 minutes left in this flight, and I need to stare out the window and bask in this book hangover from SILO/WOOL. My books are taking me years to write, but maybe someday, someone will binge-read them on a plane ride.

Slow and steady my friend,

Caroline

WHEW. ok, lets hop back to Present Caroline.

Honestly, I don’t have much to add. Past Caroline-on-a-plane, just like some snakes, really gave you the full run-down there. 2025 has been drafting Moonshot, revising Moonshot, and next week, I’ll be sharing Moonshot for the first time with some beta readers. Woohoo!

P.S. Remember that I said I pitched 10 literary agents recently? (Even though I wasn’t done with revisions, teehee, look at me, finally being a rule breaker). Well, all 10 of them requested to see my book!

So once I’ve had some beta readers read Moonshot to make sure this crazy plot I’ve cooked up actually works, well then, it’s off the races once again!

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?? [looks for an emoji with an twitchy eyeball, and can’t find one and moves on]

What else have I been up to (2024 version)? I…

• moderated a friend’s book launch (funny, because I’m still not a published author)

• harvested my first onions, garlic, and strawberries from the garden

• cried at a wedding during the father-daughter dance

• completed a 60-mile bike race (and got an impressive thigh and upper arm tan)

• sliced my thumb on a veggie chopper and learned many others have done the same

• planted banana trees, a fig tree, a peach tree, a cherry tree

• built a fence

• spent a lot of Author Energy on pitching, and finally, slowly, wrote the first ten chapters of my next book → and now that book is DONE!

Books I Wouldn’t Shut Up About in 2024 when I drafted this email, and honestly I still think about:

Wool and Shift by Hugh Howey:

Wool is great. Shift is greater. Granted, I’m even more fascinated than usual with the end of the world and doomsday and bad choices and anti-heroes. To be clear, my cozy comfort TV show is Naked & Afraid. I think that conveys my tastes.

Buy "Wool"

Buy "Shift"

On the 🌟Instagram🌟:

I went viral for a reel in September 2024 that got me 9.3 million views, 15,000 followers, an NPR feature on All Things Considered, and the lesson learned that people can be really mean online, even about the most innocent story of a stranger helping me unload gravel and how it reminded me of my dead dad. Sheesh people.

🔗 Watch the Reel

Since starting this journey,

+848 people have joined my newsletter
+203 virtual teas have been sent to me on Ko-Fi, yummy! Thanks friends! 🍵

Send Me a Tea

Thank you for being a part of this journey with me!

🌊❤️,

Caroline

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline Davis, a YA sci-fi author represented by the agency behind Hunger Games. I’m currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to pitch to publishers. This newsletter shares my latest author updates & creative process musings.

I’ve been in my Big Loosa slump.

If you don’t speak Caroline, a “big loosa” is a loser, but with an -ah at the end, which makes it sound slightly endearing even though you’re still being mean to yourself.

So far, 2024 has been my year of the Big Loosa. I haven’t shared updates because I was told that no one wants to hear bad news. No one wants to read a bemoaning of woes. But publishing woes did occur.

This newsletter doesn’t mean I now have good news. I don’t. But I’m not here to bemoan woes. I’m here to tell a tale.

But, let’s rip off the band-aid first, shall we?

Whew, that felt good to say. I mean, no, the situation itself was disappointing for both of us. But in Publishing, there’s the Empty Restaurant Syndrome. The packed restaurant must be delicious, the empty restaurant must be downright awful. So if I’ve separated with my agent, then I must be a difficult diva, an unwanted mistake.

Hence, no one talks about the ugly. We don’t want to be the empty restaurant that others don’t want to enter.

Which means, for the last few months, I’ve been looking for a new agent. Silently.

The best comparison I can use for how I’ve been feeling is: Chutes n’ Ladders.

I wrote a book, revised it for a year, pitched it to agents, got a revision request, rewrote the book over another year, signed with an agent, revised the book more with her for six months, then revised for another six months, and then, that 100th Square Win was starting to feel real.

We were going to send it to publishers. It was going to sell. It most definitely was going to sell. I mean, my beta readers had loved it! I started allowing myself to envision what that meant—would I, after four years of writing and revising, finally make money off of this story?

And then I hit that chute—that really long one in the middle of the board—that took me back to the beginning.

But if you look at the board, that chute doesn’t take you to the beginning. It takes you to Square 24. Yes, I’m back looking for an agent, but I have a better book, I’m a stronger writer, I’m more confident in what I need and want in my business partners.

I had forgotten that.

Until I went to my college 10-year reunion.

I’m bopping around, talking to friends, when a classmate comes up to me and says, “I’m so inspired by you!”

My response was, “Really? Why?”

But it kept happening. People kept telling me they found my journey inspiring. And I’ve been so focused on the squares ahead, that all I could think was,

“But I no longer have an agent”,

“But I still don’t have a book deal.”

This reunion, and those classmates, reminded me—I’m not at the beginning.

May We Please the Sea (yes, my first book, still that same book I’ve been talking about) is currently out with nine agents who are reading it. That means I could end up with nine offers.

Or none.

But that’s more interest from potential agents than I ever had before!

So, for now, I have no news. Only a change in perspective:

We spend so much time looking ahead and feeling bad about what we have yet to accomplish, that it’s easy to forget how far we’ve come.

Maybe I’ll be back with news of a new agent, or maybe I’ll be zero for nine.

Either way, I’m working on my next book.

And maybe, just maybe, despite the lack of exciting announcements from me, you’ll find this inspiring.

What else have I been up to? I…

• moderated a friend’s book launch

• harvested my first onions, garlic, and strawberries from the garden

• cried at a wedding during the father daughter dance

• completed a 60-mile bike race (and got an impressive thigh and upper arm tan)

• sliced my thumb on a veggie chopper and learned many others have done the same

• planted banana trees, a fig tree, a peach tree, a cherry tree

• built a fence

• spent a lot of Author Energy on pitching, and finally, slowly, wrote the first ten chapters of my next book

Books I Won’t Shut Up About Recently:

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker:

I’ve been hosting a monthly authors group at my house for over a year now, and this book is what inspired it / helped me create the structure for the day-long event. I know it works because my guests keep coming back!

Favorite take-away: Be a benevolent dictator. Provide structure.

Buy "The Art of Gathering"

The Art of Mingling by Jeanne Martinet:

This book isn’t as mind-blowing as The Art of Gathering was for me, but it was a good refresher and confidence boost before going into a series of networking events.

My favorite take-away: how to escape a long-winded talker (but I can’t tell you in case I use it on you, mwahah)

Buy "The Art of Mingling"

On the 🌟Instagram🌟:

Since starting this journey,

   +818 people have joined my newsletter
   +181 virtual teas have been sent to me on Ko-Fi, yum!

Send Me a Tea

Thank you for being a part!

🌊❤️,

Caroline

Yoo-hoo! I’m Caroline Davis, a YA sci-fi author represented by the agency behind Hunger Games. I’m currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to pitch to publishers. This newsletter shares my latest author updates & creative process musings.

Last year, I was all hustle and bustle. 🏃🏼‍♀️ This year, I’m a green-yellow grapefruit.🍋

What do I mean by that?

Last year in February, I received a Revise & Resubmit from my to-be agent. (An R&R means “if you revise your book, you can resubmit it to me and I’ll look at it again”). I started the mega-rewrite in March, but in July, I had doubts. This rewrite wasn’t guaranteed to get me an offer from the agent. I was 5 months in and only halfway done. Was I wasting my time? Would this rewrite (and this story) go nowhere?

I was obsessing on this “will I, won’t I?”, and it wasn’t healthy. So I decided I need another commitment to distract my mind and refocus my fixation. What did I decide to do?

A Half Ironman.

Yeah….I am not an athlete. I’m 5’3. When I run, my thighs chafe. Everything chafes. When I did a bike fitting, the man told me, “you’re all torso and no legs.” Cool.

This goal didn’t really make sense, but the race day was my birthday, December 4th, so it caught my eye. I figured…it’s only July. That’s 5 months from now. I can finish my book then do this race. That’ll be my birthday gift to myself. (I’m a terrible gift-giver, clearly.)

In hindsight, I didn’t know a half-marathon was as long as it is, and I’m surprised I wanted more commitments when I was already feeling overwhelmed, but as the saying goes, “if you want something done, ask a busy person.” It was the kick in the butt I needed.

I submitted my full story rewrite to the agent on November 30th, 9 months after receiving her edits, and then raced a Half Ironman 4 days later.

That race took me 7 hours, 32 minutes, and 59 seconds (no, I’m not rounding up, you aren’t taking that 1 second from me)….but I did it! I needed that stubborn, barreling-forward energy. I needed to channel that “I’ll show them!” energy and grind.

🏃🏼‍♀️🏃🏼‍♀️🏃🏼‍♀️

This year, I needed a different energy. I received an offer from that agent the first week of January 2023 (yay!), with the caveat that she wanted another rewrite (boo…). Yes, you heard me. More rewriting. It was the first time I cried during the publishing process (even after 86 rejections). I think it was because I thought I’d crossed the finish line, but my finish line had moved.

I said yes, we signed, and I rewrote my story…again. It took me January through mid-July. (almost 7 months). I thought I was done. I thought it was perfect. (I know, I know, this is a character flaw of mine). It was not.

She wanted another revision. No tears this time, but I did stomp around for a week, bemoaning the world’s lack of appreciation for my brilliant art, and then I sent her back an email asking for help. (I don’t like to ask for help. I expect myself to be perfect at everything.) But I was stuck and didn’t know where to go with her edit suggestions. She waved her magical agent wand and helped me get excited for the revision I needed to do.

I did it. From mid-September through last Friday, Dec 1st. Now, I’m “done”. For now. But the finish line keeps moving, the race doesn’t end.

🍋🍋🍋

During this year of revisions, I dug into a different energy—slowing down, spreading my roots, tapping into a deep, steady confidence. Of who I am, of what I want, of what my story is and isn’t. Filtering through feedback and knowing, yes this is for me, or no, this is not.

As I revised, I looked out onto my garden. We planted citrus trees this spring, and the trees came laden with fruits. Ruby red grapefruits, oranges, and tangelos—all green at the time. I thought we’d have citrus within weeks! But the fruits stayed green, then green, then green. I stopped waiting for the harvest. I just enjoyed my trees. Their bright green leaves, the hummingbirds zipping around them. What they were, instead of what they could be.

That is what publishing has taught me this year. To slow down, enjoy the process. I’d love a juicy harvest at the end of it all, but for now, I’m a green grapefruit. Hanging on the tree, slowly turning yellow. I’m not sure when I’ll ripen. Tomorrow? In three months? More?

Maybe my agent and I will pitch this book to publishers in January, like I’ve been expecting*. Maybe it’ll go to auction and it’ll be a whirlwind of glorious hubbub as publishers fight to buy my book, dollar bills flying in the air. Or maybe my rewritten-and-rewritten-and-revised-again manuscript will sit in their inboxes unread as they tackle their own lives’ stresses and celebrations.

I can’t control when they read it, other than breaking into their houses and hacking into their email to set my pitch as their background screen. (My confidence says I can do this, the fact that I get scared by my own partner in our house says otherwise).

So that’s what this year’s energy has been. Not rushing toward a finish line, but enjoying the process of creating. Of reminding myself that I do this because I enjoy it. And not just for a shiny gold star at the end of it all. (Though I do love a gold star).

This year, I didn’t race a Half Ironman. But I did build a fence, a firepit, a retaining wall. I planted more garden beds. I laid some concrete. I built things. Not just a book. And all of it was satisfying.

I’m not sure what energy next year will bring, but I hope, whatever form it comes in, it’ll motivate me to keep pursuing this dream, and other dreams too. I’ll let you know if/when I have exciting news, but until then, I’ll be ripening.🍋

*When I first signed with my agent this January, I was convinced we would have a book deal from publishers by end of year. This year. HA.

I had some beta readers read this latest version of my book. Were you feeling like you needed a waterfall chart in your life? Because here it is:

49 people expressed interest in beta-reading my book. 12 of them never clicked the link. LOL, no judgment to you, my non-link-clickers. I too have volunteered to read a friend’s book and still haven’t opened it. We have good intentions!!

Anyhoo, of those 37 people whose eyeballs did glimpse my words, 14 of them didn’t finish the book. Whether that was taste or time, they didn’t finish. But 23 readers did. They read my whole book! (On a pretty bad betareading software, too).

Are we just itching for a percentage, now? Me too.

Of the subset of 23 finishers and 14 non-finishers, I had a 62% completion rate! (She stands there, arms raised, shouting this into the void, slowly realizing she has no idea what a “good” completion rate is.)

*Shrugs* As someone who’s become horrendous at finishing books, I think 2 out of 3 interested people finishing mine is…a gold star for me!

I went to Yallfest (Young Adult Literature Lovers festival) for the 3rd time this November. Set in Charleston, South Carolina, it’s a gathering of authors, future authors, and young adult book lovers. An author friend gave me a VIP badge to sit in the auditorium’s front row with the published authors, and interestingly, it triggered some serious imposter syndrome!

Because I had this badge, I felt this obligation to take advantage of it. To go sit in the front, alone, and hope some published authors would talk to me. But I’m not published. I don’t have a book deal. I’m not supposed to be up here. Everyone can see I’m sitting by myself. It awoke a feeling in me I hadn’t felt in a long time.

In my first job out of college, which was private equity in Hong Kong, my boss took me to a conference. I had only been working for him for maybe two weeks, so I had no idea how to talk about….well, anything. I was thrown into a room of old men in suits, who assumed I, as a young woman, was a salesperson and not in finance. They exited conversations with me as fast as I could start them. At a certain point, I went into the bathroom and hid in a stall.

At Yallfest, I didn’t go hide in a stall. (Though I did consider that strategy ). I stayed seated in the VIP area, and reminded myself, no one is paying attention to me. If I make even one new author connection, this will be worth it.

And I did. And it was.

Whether you’re ripening slow or hiding in a stall, I’ve been there. We probably all have. 🌊❤️,

Caroline

On the 🌟Instagram🌟:

Hello! I’m Caroline Davis, a YA sci-fi author represented by the literary agency behind Hunger Games. I’m currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to pitch to publishers this Fall. This newsletter shares my latest author updates & creative process musings.

I’ve been eagerly waiting to announce my next big milestone of “I’m pitching my book to publishers!!”, but….

(For those of you who have been here awhile, you might already suspect what I’m about to say)

Yep. More revising.

My agent got back to me yesterday on the 4-month rewrite I submitted in July—the book needs another round. (As a reminder: I also did a 9-month Revise & Resubmit before that rewrite, so it’s been a lot of revision).

I’m not angry. Or sad. If the book isn’t ready, it isn’t ready. 🤷🏼‍♀️ I’d rather spend the time on it now than later, when I’m on deadline and under pressure. But still, there’s that simmering feeling of doubt. “Can I not pull this off?”

I have to remind myself that I’m new to this. This was a career switch. I was the Intern, then the Analyst, and now I’m the Senior Associate chomping at the bit for a chance to manage a team and (whew, sorry I reverted to my LinkedIn corporate days there for a sec). Anyways, my writing journey is slow. And I have to be okay with that.

I’m driven by external validation. Let’s be honest, most of us are. Our society, our schooling—grades and awards and performance reviews—they instill that in us. A need to perform. To please. To achieve.

The slowness of my author journey has forced me to embrace a deeper patience. To look at my timeline for success on a scaled-out level….years, not months…and to find satisfaction in that day-to-day.

I’m working on reframing my mindset towards my Author Career from that corporate hustle-bustle must-hit-these-goals-by-these-dates fixation to more like my gardening approach: TLC, chipping away over time, and hopefully a little rain. One day, there will be a harvest. But for now, more planting and weeding await me. (🥲 except it’s a revision)

You are amazing. Wow. Thank you for being here. As I was gearing up to pitch to publishers (🥲 yes, not yet, I know. One more revision), I knew I needed to grow my newsletter. Publishers want to commoditize my art by plugging my stats into an Excel model to determine my profitability see that authors have an engaged community, so I decided to sell myself out to capitalism be vulnerable and ask for help.

And y’all delivered!

Starting Aug 16th, I gave myself the goal to ask 6 friends every weekday to join my newsletter. It felt SO cringy. So…shameless. How dare I interrupt your life to inconvenience you with such an ask! But I reminded myself that I love helping others, I love when I can do something to boost someone else. So I took that tiny kernel of goodness and I pressed send. Over and over. And no one told me I suck. In fact, people were…gasp..SO NICE!

This is the Stats section, so I have to give you the stats:

❓ Friends Asked: 180

✅ Friends who subscribed: 144

🌟 Success Rate: 80%

I don’t share this to reduce you to a number (but, aren’t we all, she asks in her somber cynical tone), but to show you the power of leveraging your community! To show you that asking works! Don’t be afraid to tell your friends what you need from them. They might overwhelm you with their enthusiasm and support 💕

But seriously, ya’ll’s responses were so lovely, I screen-shotted them to look back on on those more frustrating days (like this week 🥲). Thank you for supporting me.

Between my day job and my author career, my writing and my obligated self-marketing, it’s easy for me to feel overwhelmed. Like I’m not doing enough. I need to do the job stuffs, and write the author newsletter, and post on the social medias, and oh don’t forget that book you’ve rewritten three times. Do that some more. And also, start your next one. And why aren’t you on TikTok??

When my brain gets into that frenzy, I ask myself,

“what, if I accomplish it, will destress me the most?”

I know, it’s not rocket science. But the tweak here is I’m not telling myself, YOU HAVE TO DO THIS. I’m not saying, this is #1 on my to-do list and if you don’t do it, you suck. I’m identifying the source of my anxiety, and I’m cheering myself on to tackle it.

Because sometimes the thing causing the most stress isn’t that hard to do. And getting it done will be less stressful than thinking about it all day.

So try that framing. See if it helps. 💕 It’s helped me.

🌊❤️,

Caroline

P.S. I hope to have more exciting updates for you next month, but who knows. Until next time, I’ll be revising.

On the 🌟Instagram🌟:

Hello! I’m Caroline Davis, a YA sci-fi author represented by the agency behind Hunger Games. I’m currently preparing my first book, MAY WE PLEASE THE SEA, to sell to publishers this fall. This newsletter shares my latest author updates & creative process musings.

I pressed a button. Just a tap of the same mousepad I tap every day, but with that touch, I sent my rewritten manuscript to my agent. The third major rewrite of this novel, and also, the fourth time I’ve taken a big breath and hit send to her:

• The first time was in Dec 2021, when I sent her my first chapter after pitching her at a virtual conference

• The second time was 2 hours later, after she read the first chapter and loved it, and asked me to send her the full manuscript

• Fast-forward a year later to November 2022, I sent her a revised manuscript, 9 months after she requested a substantial Revise & Resubmit (also called an R&R)

• Seven months after that, in July 2023, is when I sent her this re-revised manuscript, which was 4.5 months after she signed me as a client

Four times I’ve sent something to her, and each time, it’s been a wave of excitement, relief, and unknown. Will she like it?

Of course she’ll like it. It’s the best work I’ve ever done!!!

But…I’ll probably definitely have to revise it again.

The irony in being a writer is you must simultaneously think your work is the most glorious thing ever (otherwise why spend so much time on it?) while also knowing that it will never be perfect. It can always be better. In fact, some people will downright hate it.

And there will always be more rewrites.

As a wise man once said, “if I had more time, I would’ve written a shorter letter.” Over these rewrites, I cut my story length significantly and yet, it is fuller and stronger than before. My first draft I sent to agents was 103k. When I rewrote the story as an R&R for Alli, I cut it to 82k. In this rewrite, I pulled out plot lines and cut characters, and ended up at 75k. Which is interesting because I also added POVs and pre-chapter snippets, so it felt like net-net, I was adding!

I’ve learned the mistakes of not planning out my story thoroughly enough in advance, especially for the complex plot twists and world-building of sci-fi. For this draft, I spent just as much time planning out what I was going to write (68 hours of planning) as I did doing the actual initial drafting, which was 60 hours. So actually, more planning than drafting!

For me, all the work came in revision: 137 hours! Finessing and tweaking what I’d already planned.

That’s 265 hours spent on just this one rewrite! And this still isn’t the final product.

Next steps:

My agent will review it, hopefully think it’s perfect (ha), and then we will submit it to publishers this fall. Hopefully they love it, too.

Lots of hope. 🤞

(and a healthy dose of cynicism)

There’s been this shark shadow lurking in the depths of my mind. This thought I swim away from. The whisper of…“what if this book doesn’t sell?”

The thought triggers a narrative: oh that poor Caroline, spent over three years trying to become a published writer, and she FAILED.

The more evil cousin of the F words.

The thought leads to another thought, as thoughts tend to do:

If I don’t sell, does that mean … this was a waste of time?

I almost fell down that downward spiral, and then I thought, “hold up. Why is THIS a failure? There are so many things in life we do and move on from, and we never consider those ‘a waste.’ So why this?”

I studied and passed all three levels of the CFA exam, and then left the finance industry. Now, no one can even call me Caroline Davis, CFA. (Sigh) Was that a waste? Money, time, lack of social life. Maybe.

I threw myself full-on into my 3-year project at LinkedIn, even winning the cross-functional MVP award in front of my entire department in Las Vegas. Now, I don’t even know where that award is. Or what to do with it. A paperweight? I could… carry it around my neck? Since I’m no longer working in tech, the award means very little.

Was that a waste?

Maybe you’re nodding- yes, they were. Maybe you’re shaking your head-no, they weren’t. But I’m not arguing for or against the wastes in my life. I’m pointing out thats it’s all about perception. How we choose to view and perceive a narrative. The villain is the good guy in their own story, no? We can tell a story from many angles. It’s up to us.

Maybe this book won’t sell. Maybe everyone will whisper, poor Caroline, what a waste.

But they probably won’t. I am not the protagonist in your life to consume that much brain space. I am a mere side character, with my own goals and dreams. Waste or not, isn’t this what life is about? The process of living it?

Wasted Time or Living Life?

I change strategies depending on where I’m at in a book, but for these final weeks of sick-and-tired-of-this, I relied on:

1. public spaces

2. body doubling

I found an author friend on a similar deadline and we dragged ourselves to a Starbucks for two weeks straight, every day, for 3-6 hour stints. I would crank out my non-author job from 7am-1pm and feel too burnout to write, but I’d haul myself to that Starbucks, and together, we wrote. The temptations of home were too great. And the accountability of my writing buddy got me there.

I’d like to write to you more frequently, with the goal of 1x per month. (No promises though, seeing as my previous cadence has been once per year). What type of content would you like to see from me? Do you like this “format” (it’s new) of a writing update, some musings (which I’m full of), and a productivity tip?

I came up with this as I sit on a 1.5 hr flight to Sacramento for a wedding, so I won’t be insulted if you want something different than this. Airplanes make me pensive. (And cry during movies)

Let me know!

🌊❤️,

Caroline

On the 🌟Instagram🌟:

This story is 4 months overdue, which is funny because as I was suffering through the finding-a-literary agent hustle, I always looked forward to the “How I got my Agent” post I would one day write. I clung to that dream to keep me pushing forward, rejection after rejection after reject…ok, you get the point.

And then, I got the agent. And another round of revisions. So I buried myself into revising, and let that milestone fade into the background.

But here I am, a bit weary and worn, a bit more jaded and cynical, but I am declaring my slightly-aged milestone and documenting it for the world!!

I HAVE A LITERARY AGENT!

No, that does not mean my book is on shelves for you to buy. But I promise, this is still exciting! An agent represents me for my writing career—for my future books and movie deals and international rights. But for now, I still have not made any money off this book. Please refer to my diagram:

Once I finish this revision (don’t ask me which draft this is), my agent and I will send the manuscript to publishers, and then, maybe then, will I see a dollar bill.

Until then, let’s procrastinate from revising with some story-telling:

Rejections

I started sending this manuscript out to literary agents in Fall 2021, and I’m not going to sugarcoat it…I got a lot of rejections.

Pitching at an online conference

It was after 34 rejections that I decided I needed to try something new, so I signed up for an online conference where you can pitch to agents. I practiced with IG semi-strangers on Zoom the week before, and that Saturday, I woke up at 7am to pitch my little heart out. Ten 15-minute sessions, sprinkled annoyingly from 8am to 1pm.

In between pitch sessions, I blasted “I am Woman” on loud and struck power pose lunges around my office.

Here is where we introduce a key character— Agent Alli. Now, Alli was one of the ten agents I had booked for the Saturday pitch sessions, but she had to last-minute reschedule her pitches to Monday. (Take note of this).

I pitch Alli on Monday. Alli, unlike the other agents, plays Bad Cop. She seems uninterested, she’s not giving much back. She asks if I’m working on anything else, and I pitch my 2nd book idea: Moonshot. (Mind you, I’ve learned by now how important THE PITCH is, so for this new idea, I crafted the pitch before I wrote the book). So it was a good pitch.

Lo and behold, Alli loves this other idea. She’s like, “wow I want to read that!”

I’m like, “uh Agent Alli, that book isn’t written yet, don’t get distracted, back over here, yoo-hoo, let’s talk about the book I did write.”

And Agent Alli, in true Bad Cop fashion, is like, “hm, fine, sure, I’ll give it a look.”

~~

Jump ahead a day. I’ve polished my pages and my pitch letter and I’m ready to send. In total, 9 out of 10 agents liked my pitch enough to request pages. (That sounds like a toothpaste ad, doesn't it? Like…what happened to the 10th dentist?)

I send out the pitch to the agents on my list from the Saturday pitches, and….I FORGET ALLI! She wasn’t on the Saturday sticky-note. Because she rescheduled to Monday. Remember that key piece of information??

Later that day, I’m like, “oh sherpas, I forgot Agent Alli!” And then dear reader, I’ll be honest. I pause. I think to myself, “should I even bother sending to her? She wasn’t that excited.”

(If you can’t tell yet, Agent Alli is who I sign with.)

Well, I send to Agent Alli.

SEVENTEEN MINUTES LATER, Agent Alli responds.

Needless to say, I turn on “I am Woman” and do more lunging power poses, across the whole house this time. Then, I send Alli a super chill business-profesh email with only 2 exclamation points and attach my full manuscript.

Revise & Resubmit

Yeah….we wish this story was over, don’t we?

Agent Alli starts following Caroline (that’s me in 3rd person, but I need to disassociate) on Instagram. Caroline freaks out and starts stalking Agent Alli in a perfectly-legal but a little bit creepy way, where she tries to figure out how far Agent Alli is into her book by the stories she’s posting about birds on a lake. (That must mean chapter 12…right?!)

December fades into January. Caroline is no fool. She prepares for the worst. Because she is a Stage-5 Clinger, she was checking when Alli watched her Stories. Alli has stopped watching her stories.

Caroline knows rejection is coming.

On February 7th, 2022, an email arrives. *Ding*

Caroline opens it, preparing for tears.

But it’s not a rejection. It’s a….Revise and Resubmit? Caroline doesn’t cry. Because she’s too busy nodding and agreeing with the numerous paragraphs of feedback detailing what could be better.

She aggressively googles R&Rs, going into Page 20 of Google. (Although, now Google does endless scroll, but you get the point).

She hems and haws and wants to go work on Moonshot, but she decides that she MUST see this through and she WILL do this rewrite, even though there’s no guarantee of an agent offer at the end. But she’s tired and jaded.

Ok, switch back to 1st person POV….

I REWROTE THE ENTIRE DANG BOOK.

From March to November. 9 months. Basically, a book baby.

566 hours of writing. Yes, I tracked it in a spreadsheet.

On November 30th, I send Agent Alli the revised manuscript. Again, only two exclamations in the email. Go me.

*Ding* Alli responds immediately.

More Rejections

Since I’m waiting, I send out my amazingly-revised manuscript to a few of the agents who had rejected me in the past who will regret missing out on this super fantastic revised story, andd…….

They reject me again. Lol. Cry. Lol.

The Offer

Agent Alli is called Agent Alli for a reason. Because I talked about her and her feedback for NINE MONTHS as I revised. To myself, to anyone who would listen.

My family knew Agent Alli. She was Agent Alli. But was she MY Agent Alli?

On December 14th, I receive an email *ding* Pukes in mouth.

It’s not a rejection. She’s still reading. I google the meaning of “I’m very hopeful here” and call 5 people to analyze the wording. Then I send a super chill response. Again, limited to 2 exclamation points.

On December 24th, Alli sends another email *ding*. It’s not an offer, but it’s not a rejection. It’s…

MORE REVISIONS!

This time, I do cry. I go into the garden, which is just weeds because I haven’t taken care of it, and I pretend to fix my always-broken sprinklers but really I’m just crying, and David comes out and takes away the pipe cutter that I’m crying onto and making it rust, and asks, “why are you sad?”

And I say, “because I have to rewrite my book again.”

“But you knew you would have to revise it again, and you will, with a publisher.”

And I say, and I genuinely meant this, “Yes, but I wanted it to be perfect and I wanted Alli to love it and I wanted her to want to change nothing and send it to publishers immediately.”

And David hugs me and says, “you knew that wasn’t going to happen.”

And I sniffle and say, “Yes, I know.”

🌊

Stats

Queries: 98

Rejections: 86 (88% negative response)

Full manuscript requests: 12 (12% positive response)

R&Rs*: 3

Offers: 1 (1% success rate)

Timeframe: 3 years, 2 months

**I accepted Alli’s offer before the other 2 R&R agents had time to read. They couldn’t commit to the 2-week notice I gave them, and I was ok with not waiting for them because..AGENT ALLI!

Timeline

11/01/2019 - Wrote the 1st draft in November National Novel Writing Month

Draft 1: 30 days (didn’t log hours)

04/16/2020- Left my job at LinkedIn, started revising

draft 2: 351 hours

Draft 3/4: 538 hours

Draft 5/6: 287 hours

07/08/2021 - Sent first queries to agents. Rejections.

12/14/2021- After hitting 34 rejections, decided to pitch my book at an online conference

02/07/2022- Agent Alli asks for Revise & Resubmit (R&R)

~revise for 9 months~

Draft 7: 566 hours

01/03/2023- Offer of representation

01/26/2023- Signed the contract!

In Conclusion…

Well, that got a little melancholy there. But that’s why I’ve been postponing this story. Because, yes, it is a “success story”, but it’s also the summary of a lot of writing and rewriting and rejection. 1,742 logged hours, to be exact.

But let’s end with some happy thoughts…

Agent Alli is at Stimola Literary, which is the agency that represented Hunger Games. And guess what, my books are Dyssstoppiaaaan. The genre is back, baby!

Basically, Suzanne Collins and I are BFF. This is almost as exciting as when I asked Amy Tan to pass the green beans. But that’s a story for another day. ;)

Thanks for reading,

Caroline

P.S. the best way to help me right now is to share this newsletter with your friends and force them to subscribe! Publishers will look at my “Author Platform” when considering a deal ($).

Slow & Steady. Revise & Resubmit.

You haven’t heard from me in a while. Ten months to be exact. And that’s because I kept waiting for good news. Not COVID, not rejections, I wanted to tell you I'd signed with an agent. So I waited, and waited, and here we are.

I still don’t have an agent, but I’ve made some exciting progress. And I think it’s okay to celebrate that, too.

In this newsletter:

🌊 Revise & Resubmit

🌊 Wait, You Have a Second Book?

Revise & Resubmit

Last fall, I sent my pitch and first chapter for May It Please the Sea to many, many agents. (the newsletter link details the early stages of my querying process).

Caroline Fowler Davis

Six drafts later, I finished my book!

September 2021 I've finished my book. 1.5 years. 6 drafts. 3 alpha readers. 3 critique partners. 45 beta readers. By now, I'm sick of reading my own words. But that's when they say it's time to put it out into the world! In this newsletter: The dreaded querying process…

Read more

5 years ago · Caroline Fowler Davis

I got 7 requests to see the manuscript (big deal!! Agents typically request the full manuscript for ~1% of the pitches they receive) and I bit off all my fingernails as I waited for the possibility of an offer.

I didn’t get one. Instead, I got 3 R&Rs. “Revise and Resubmit”. Not an offer, but not a rejection. As the name suggests, it means the agent likes your work enough to take the time to suggest feedback (Revise) and would consider it again once it’s been fixed (Resubmit), but they don't like it enough to take it on as-is. It needs too much work. Especially in today’s overworked and understaffed publishing industry, R&Rs are a good filtering mechanism. Can you handle feedback? Can you tackle a meaty revision?

I thought I’d be sad as I read my first R&R email in mid-February, realizing it wasn’t an offer. But the agent's feedback was so spot-on, I was nodding along and mumbling “dangit, she’s right.” In that moment, I knew I wouldn't get an offer from any of those other agents still reading. It wasn’t pessimism, it was fact. My book wasn’t good enough yet. But her feedback inspired me.

"I don’t take the time to write notes when I’m not head-over-heels for the writing and see potential, so I hope you’ll be motivated and excited by these thoughts and not too overwhelmed." - Agent X

I forwarded the email to all my family members so we could dissect every word, then sat in a chair and stared at the wall and accepted the truth. To do this right, I have to rewrite this entire book. Yikes. Couple that with the fact that an R&R does not guarantee an offer...I could go through the whole process and still end up with a rejected manuscript!

But when I followed up with the agent to clarify that she actually truly meant it when she said she wanted me to cut 25,000 words (nearly 25% of my manuscript!!), she said.....

"If I see that there is more structure, heart, clarity on these notes, I can easily take you on and we can do a final revision before submission if it needs it."

Decision made. Goodbye, shiny new book idea I had started outlining. Hello, story I'm sick of. We meet again.
 

Here's a quick look into my Writing Life since then:
 

In March & April, I re-outlined the new shorter plot. This consisted of scribbling on paper, flipping through craft books, and What-If-ing up a storm.

In May, I wrote and re-wrote my Act 1. The world and plot twists stayed mostly the same, but everything changed just enough that I decided to write this new draft from scratch. (And change it to present tense, too!)

In June, I speed-drafted the entire manuscript based on my detailed outline. I got COVID during that time, but somehow still finished. (The writing might be terrible, but it's on the page).

Now, I'm revising! I'm ~35% done with revising. Once I'm happy with my latest batch of chapters (and I don't like to share my work until I've revised it multiple times), I send them to my Critique Partners. We have Zoom feedback sessions, and based on their feedback, I revise again (and again). Rinse and repeat until the full manuscript is done. Then, I'll send the whole thing to beta readers, so they can read in one-go. Wait a few weeks, bite off my nails, which will have just regrown, and based on reader feedback, I'll...get ready for it...revise again (and again). After banging my head against a wall a few more times, I'll send it to agents! 

I use Asana's calendar feature to color-code my writing-specific deadlines (revise, upload, marketing, meetings) and estimate a deadline

I aim to submit by end of September. Maybe this R&R will go nowhere, and maybe I'll be embarrassed I shared this news with y'all, only to tell you later, "after all of that, it didn't work out." But this is what I'm up to. And even if this book doesn't get picked up, I'm becoming a stronger writer through the process.

Wait, You have a 2nd Book?

Outlined but not drafted. I started Moonshot while I was querying May It Please the Sea, so it's sitting there waiting for me to return to. I mentioned it at a virtual conference while pitching my other book, and agents were excited by it! Here's the pitch:

MOONSHOT
YA Sci-Fi
SQUID GAME meets DON'T LOOK UP (the movie)

In a climate-devastated Florida, a deepsea oil rig welder hacks her way into the Lottery to win a spot on the Moon, only to discover it's a competition with deadly consequences

I created the pitch for Moonshot before writing it, so it's snappier than May It Please the Sea's. (Learn from my mistakes-- pitch is everything!)

MAY IT PLEASE THE SEA
YA Sci-Fi
WATER WORLD meets RED RISING

When her island floods, a talented spearfisher seeks the sea gods to save her people, only to discover an undersea station of scientists who demand she must win a hunting competition and defeat their enemy in order to earn their help

The beginnings of a third book are marinating in the back of my mind, but for now I must retreat into my revising cave! Just kidding, it's Saturday, so we are going to organize the garage. Very exciting stuff.

🌊 Enjoy your summer, and let me know what you've been up to!  🌊