No hate like Christian love...

What a big week it was for announcements in the Karis-verse! If you’re on Instagram, you might have seen them all, posted in a mad flurry. The short gist of it all?

I’m launching a podcast soon with some friends! The podcast is called The Write Way of Life and is a craft-focused author interview series. We’re dropping episode one of season one in the next few weeks, so go ahead and follow us on instagram and get notified when we go live!

Next up is THE POETRY BOOK! That’s right — I’m self-publishing a collection of poetry. And not just any collection of poetry — I’ve gathered 43 poems that I wrote my senior year of high school and have paired each of them with a short present-day reflection. It’s called JUVENILIA: POEMS OF A TWELFTH GRADE YEAR, and you can see the cover in the Instagram post below!

I’m planning a whole newsletter for next week that’s just about why I’m embarking on this particular self-pub project, but in the meantime, if you like the look of it and want to, you can pre-order it from Amazon1.

The final piece of news was really exciting and nerve-wracking, which is that Round Table Mentor announced our mentees for the year! I was SO nervous about this because oh-my-god-what-if-my-mentee-hates-me, but! We did it! And I’m so sincerely stoked to spend the rest of this year revising and working on submission packages and trying to get my mentee in the best possible querying shape!

From the heart 💗

Shall we talk about religious freedom & hate?

Okay, here’s the thing: I’m queer2. And I’m proud. And I’m no longer religious, though I do believe there is space in pretty much every world religion for queerness to coexist with faith. I just have other issues with specifically evangelical faith and organized institutional religion as a whole…

But that’s not the point of today’s newsletter.

The point of today’s newsletter is that I’m hurting. A lot of queer folks in America are hurting right now — especially our trans siblings, whom the government is literally trying to legislate out of existence, never mind that you can’t legislate a human out of being such — and one of the reasons I, specifically, am hurting, is because of religious attempts to ban books about queer people.

The Supreme Court has decided to hear a case brought by a group of Maryland parents about LGBTQ+ books. You can read more about the case, because I’m not here to share news but to share my heart.

And my heart is aching.

The parents in the case are saying that their religious freedom depends upon them being able to opt their kids out of learning that queer people exist. They’re saying that the public existence of queerness is an affront not just to their sensibilities but to their actual freedoms.

I wonder if they realize how hateful that is. I wonder if they realize how devastating that is to hear as someone who was once a Christian and is queer. I wonder if they realize that in their efforts to protect their children from what they conceive of as sin, they are ignoring the second-most important command to love their neighbors as themselves.

Listen, I can’t make anyone accept and celebrate queerness the way I wish they would. I can’t make anyone undo years of conditioning to hate difference and to view queer people as an anomaly at best. That would be infringing upon their freedom, because unfortunately the freedom to choose means the freedom to be a hater.

But. But I think we as a nation should be able to insist that just because you don’t like someone doesn’t mean you get to cancel them from existing around you.

Hell, I don’t like a lot of people and worldviews, but I’m not going to go to the Supreme Court to beg that they not ever be in my presence. That would be ridiculous!

So is this case.

It hurts that the community who raised me to practice love for others is turning into such a hateful community that would reject me if they saw who I truly am. It really, truly hurts3.

And it spurs me to action. They’ve been around for a while so you probably know them, but if you’re an author or bookish professional, I’d urge you to sing up for Authors Against Book Bans. If you’re in community with people who are pushing book bans, I’d urge you to speak to them, one on one if possible, and point out the harm they are doing. If you’re in a community that is facing bans, you can reach out to your librarians and educators to see what you can do. This is a fight and it’s one where the hateful side is really well-organized, but you know what?

Love wins, my dudes.

From the camera roll 📸

Just a girl at a rooftop bar at sunset.

From the page ✍️

Working on two projects simultaneously

This may be putting the cart before the horse a bit, because I technically haven’t started my simultaneous drafting & revising of two different projects, BUT I’ve got the plan scheduled on Pacemaker and I’m committed to doing it!

I’m expecting notes from my beta readers on REVENGE, my adult sapphic romance, any day now, but in the meantime as I waited for notes, I got really antsy. My fingers itched to write, and my brain was whirring. So I gave into the brain raccoons and started (re)drafting this latest version of HEX, my YA witchy romance.

Those of you who’ve been around for a while may remember that I burned out on HEX, hard, last year around June. I tried to work on it again in November, and found that the spark just…wasn’t there. So even though I had just finished a comprehensive outline and had it approved by my agent, I put the project aside…indefinitely.

I am so pleased and delighted that the passion has returned! I am excited about this book again! Over the past week, I’ve drafted nearly 4,000 words on a new opening to the refreshed version of the book, and…I’m having so much fun with it!

In fall of 2023 when I worked on this book for my creative thesis, I found it to be the spark of joy that buoyed me while I was deeply depressed.

This week, it was the spark of joy that has buoyed me during the darkness of this new regime in the US. I’ve found myself diving into the manuscript when despair threatens to take over, and it’s been a needed boon.

It’s also developing to be a book about the power and necessity of community, something that is definitely thanks to my realization over the past few years, and especially the past few months, that the only way any of us will survive this Trump administration is by leaning in, hard, to community. So I love that part of this book.

All that said, I refuse to put REVENGE on hold again. I am ready to dive into revisions as soon as I get notes and make a game plan.

What’s a girl to do but work on the two projects at the same time?

The plan is to revise one chapter of REVENGE and draft 608 words of HEX every day except for Sunday. That has me finishing REVENGE in just under six weeks and gives me until the end of May to finish HEX.

The numbers make sense to me. I can usually draft 600-1,000 words in a 30-minute sprint, and a chapter’s revision will take me one to two 30-minute sprints, depending on how much work it takes. This means if I spend an hour and a half day on my writing projects, I’ll meet my goals.

I have Sundays off; I don’t start work on REVENGE until Feb. 10; and my daily word goal for HEX is a little lower than my usual 30-minute output; all of these facts mean that I’m also giving myself some wiggle room to miss a day or two here and there. I’m already about a day ahead on HEX, and I just started work on Tuesday!

Truthfully, I am so excited to be working on these two projects. There’s my rage project and my hope project, both of which are about sapphics falling for each other and finding the beauty in their queerness and in each other. They are so important to me, and I desperately hope that someday, they’ll be on shelves for everyone else to find rage, hope, love, and community through their pages.

From the shelf 📚

It’s a Love/Skate Relationship4, by Carli J. Corson

I was so excited to review this book for Booklist, because what’s not to love about a sapphic hate-to-love romance featuring a hotheaded hockey player and an ice-queen figure skater? Absolutely impeccable!

The book has a satisfying emotional journey for Charlie, the protagonist and single POV. I loved that Charlie had a strong relationship with her family and friends, both relationships that served to ground her and occasionally call her out when she was acting like a fool (in love).

This YA sporty romance is just so delightful. I read the end of it at like midnight one night when I couldn’t sleep, and I have such a strong memory of being alone in the dark and the quiet racing through the finale of the book, desperate for the two girls to end up together.

It’s a Love/Skate Relationship published on Jan. 28, 2025, so you can order it now and be reading it SO SOON! Follow this Bookshop affiliate link to get your own copy ;)

Alla prossima 👋

That’s today’s newsletter, folks!

I hope you have a great day, a great week ahead, and that you pre-order my book of poetry. Lol, JK, you don’t have to do that last part 😂

— Karis xoxo