Hello and welcome to my TED Talk author newsletter! I’m Kristen Sommers, hobby collector, coffee enthusiast, and most importantly, author. My debut novel is coming out this fall, and I am absolutely stoked for you to read it. (Also very anxious, but we’re choosing to ignore that part for now.) It’s a cozy Christmas romance set in a fictional small town, about a baker who falls in love with her best friend. (Full blurb coming soon!)
I’ve poured my heart and soul into this, along with hundreds of gallons of coffee, and I hope you’ll love it as much as I do. Until its release date, follow along here for some writing advice, life ramblings, and other miscellaneous authorly flotsam, and, if you’re so inclined, opt in to my monthly writing exercises designed to stretch some writing muscles you might not regularly use and improve your craft.
A little bit about me:
I write and edit full time in a corporate gig, and write novels (as well as the odd poem, essay, and song) on nights and weekends.
I collect hobbies like some people collect their children’s macaroni-and-glitter art: recklessly, gratuitously, fondly, and filled with an abiding knowledge that I don’t really need any more but I’m going to keep collecting anyway. While I find new hobbies and interests monthly (conservative estimate), the ones on my regular rotation are baking, crocheting, hobbit-style hiking, and making unhinged judgment calls on truly random things just to see who laughs.
I despise social media, and you won’t really find me on there. I have an Instagram account to prove to the general public that I am, in fact, a real person, but I have no plans to hop on trends or try to trick the algorithm into marketing my book, and I have no plans to expand to platforms beyond that. More power to the people who do that—it’s just not for me. So truly, follow along here if you want all the book news and occasional unhinged takes.
I loathe generative AI and you won’t find it coming anywhere near my writing or any promotional assets I use. I don’t use it to brainstorm, I don’t use it to write, I don’t use it to edit, I don’t use it for art, I don’t use it to market. I don’t use it period. I have real people and a brain for that. And unlike social media, I have zero respect for anyone who uses it and calls the output “art” instead of “content slop.”
On a much happier note, while my first book is a romance novel, I write across genres and don’t plan on sticking with romance forever. (Though, like any good writer, I have more ideas for books than I have the time or inclination to write, including several sequels to the book coming out this fall.)
Unfortunately, I do not write quickly. I will publish more books; I can’t guarantee that they’ll be yearly, or even on a regular schedule. I’ll be honest—writing isn’t my top priority. It’s not even top three. But it does matter to me, and if you follow along here, you’ll always know when the next book is coming out.
There are a few things you’ll pretty much always find in my books: humor, hope, healthy relationships, adults who know how to communicate, and hopefully, stories and characters you’ll love and want to come back to again and again.
If any of that piques your interest, subscribe to this newsletter, follow me on Instagram, and give my novel a whirl when it comes out.
Stay excellent,
Kristen Sommers
XOXO
Kristen Sommers 