anita kelly

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Happy release day, WILDFLOWERS

For Pride, have some sad gay farmers

anita kelly 🏳️‍🌈

Jun 02, 2026

In most writing advice, you are advised of a few things before starting a book. Be able to pitch it in one sentence. Know your characters’ goals and personal wounds. Have not only a general idea of the plot, but know what your story is about.

I have, generally, not always been good at any of this, but in particular, I think knowing what each book is about is something I don’t fully understand until the book is finished. Even then, I often don’t fully understand a book’s heart until I’ve had some time away from its immediate creation. After edits, after other folks have started reading it, after I’ve been able to sit back and reflect a bit.

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my own wildflower field* (*patch of my front yard)

So on its release day, at this moment, this is why I think I wrote Among the Wildflowers.

• I wanted to write about the bravery of choosing what’s best for you, what makes you truly happiest, even if that comes with huge consequences/breaks your heart at the same time.
• I just wanted to write a farm book!! Writing about our ecological systems and about our food is what I am pretty much always wanting to write about. And it’s cool to just do what you want!
• My overarching goal with this series is exploring the expansiveness of love, fighting back against the narrative that we are only afforded one great love, one happily ever after in our lifetimes. I want to explore the messy area between monogamy and polyamory because I feel there is so much messiness and so much love that fits between those two, that doesn’t always have perfect labels.
  • In particular for this story: There are so many evil exes in romance, which I’ve thought about a lot and have many queer thoughts about. But what if your ex was great, actually? What if your lives just didn’t fit anymore but everything you went through together is still really important? What if you could find new love while still honoring all the love you’ve already been blessed with? That’s what this book is about, and even if not everyone agrees with the mess I’ve made lol, I really believe in the future of Emerson, Luca, Jayden, Daisy, and everyone and everything else that might ever become part of their world.
• Related to the first bullet point, but also slightly different: all my work lately also revolves around art and the toll it takes, both fiscal and mental, and the strength needed to keep trying anyway. Luca’s a writer; Emerson’s a farmer, but their pursuit of their art is the same: the struggle of knowing that it’s everything they are, while the world does everything it can to try to beat it out of them.
• When I sign books, I try to think of one small phrase from that book that seems to capture the essence of that specific story, that I can scribble down in addition to my signature when the mood strikes. There were probably several I could’ve chosen for this one, but I ended up landing on some of the messages from a speech Luca’s mom gives him when he’s having a wee lil’ dark moment of the soul (or, in his own words, a peak emo moment). I am very cognizant that these messages (which I won’t ruin the surprise of here) veer a little messages-you-might-see-screenprinted-on-pillows-at-Home-Goods. Meaning, part of me wants to cringe about it but I am deciding to stand by it anyway, because Luca’s mom is smart! Is it possible that, as I stumble into my mid-forties, I am simply gravitating more toward messages of gratitude that one might see screen-printed on pillows? Maybe!
• Most romances are most compelling when the main characters are markedly different from each other: different, but complementary. It’s what makes the tension and the romance so sweet. I normally strive for this as well—writing markedly different people coming together is also just fun. But in Wildflowers, I admit that Emerson and Luca are pretty similar to each other in a lot of ways. Because sometimes that’s what you need, too. They are both pretty lonely, a bit sad. They are both extremely hard workers and extremely kind. I think they came out this way because I always envisioned this being a generally soft book, but especially in our current cultural landscape, where cruelty is the point, where individualism is seen as the golden goal no matter what the cost to society’s well-being—I just really needed to spend time with two good people being good to each other. I included so many of my previous characters, I made Luca’s family big and loving, I made Greyfin Bay a safe haven because I needed to spend time in community. A few early reviewers have mentioned this book feeling hopeful, and while hopeful wasn’t necessarily a specific word on my mind while I was drafting (even if it’s likely always subconsciously there, being that hopeful is an inherent quality of romance), only when I saw that word in reviews did I realize it meant a lot to me.

If you get to read it, I hope it provides a few hours of being a soft, hopeful place to land for you, too.

Housekeeping

Okay, some less philosophical things!

• If you pre-ordered a signed paperback from me, they should be in the mail this week—or next week at the very latest. (I was hoping to get them all in the mail last week, but there have been countless delays in shipping/the books actually getting to me; alas, self-publishing is always a wild goose chase.) Once my fine local postal employees take your copy from my hands, I’ll send you a confirmation email with the tracking number.
  • If you receive your order and something is awry: it arrives damaged; I forgot to include the map and sticker; I wrote the wrong name or spelled your name wrong (THE WORST) (these are all things I constantly fear), please please let me know!
  • Feel free to still order one, if you’d like—I’ll keep this order form up for a week or so and then transition to using my Etsy, where you can order signed editions of any of my self-published works.
• If you’re a bookstore owner hoping to order paperbacks (thank you!!), it should become available soon on Ingram; I just cannot guarantee when. I’m so sorry. You can also order directly from me, if you’d like.
• It should also, hopefully, be available to request for purchase from your local library. If you need this info for your request, the print ISBN is 978-1-737229858.
• There is currently no audiobook, but you will be the first to hear if that changes! crosses fingers
• If you happened to read an early copy and enjoyed it (or whenever you read it, if you enjoy it!), the greatest gift to me would be if you could leave a review somewhere! I appreciate your time and care so much.
• If you got an early copy and didn’t get a chance to read it, no worries whatsoever. As often happens, though, I did make some changes after more feedback—nothing that changes the story overall, just some things that make it stronger—so I’d love if you’re able to read the updated, published version instead whenever you get to it!

Want to read the first chapter?

I meant to copy and paste the first chapter into this newsletter in celebration of release day, but then I rambled about all the above first, so now there’s probably not enough room left in my word limit.

But if you want to read the first chapter before you buy, feel free to read it here !

Okay, that’s enough from me for now! Reminder that if you’re in the Portland area and want to hear me talk about Among the Wildflowers and Greyfin Bay in general (the first event I’ve ever done for the series!), I’ll be chatting about it with Alison Cochrun at Grand Gesture Books next Wednesday, June 10th. You can RSVP here.

Thanks so much for all your support,

xo

anita

Let your heart be your guide

Pre-order goods for AMONG THE WILDFLOWERS

If you pre-order a physical copy, these goodies will come with your copy automatically. I will also have them available at my in-person launch for the book at Grand Gesture Books with Alison Cochrun on June 10th. ( Click this link to RSVP and/or order a copy through them!) If you’ve pre-ordered an ebook, or requested purchase from your local library, or really anything else (I won’t be requiring evidence for any of this) and want the swag, fill out this form. This last option will be an until-I-run-out situation, but hopefully I’ll have stuff leftover and can send to as many folks as possible.

First up: a Short King Farms sticker!

The logo is designed by bestie & graphic designer Manda Bednarik, and the stickers are printed by local Portland sticker kings, Sticker Ninja. I always love being able to support other local businesses when I do these things, and Sticker Ninja’s quality and customer service is the best. They always send a few little extra treats with their shipments, one of which this time was a sparkly sticker proclaiming queer joy is a revolution, a central tenet of Heartwaves(and I mean, all my work?) so it felt especially Right!

Next: postcard with a map of Short King Farms!
Click to look more close-up, if you’d like!
I had a really clear vision in my head while writing this book of what Short King Farms looked like, and since almost the entirety of this book takes place on the farm, by the end of drafting I knew I should probably include a map for readers to refer to.

Of course, it doesn’t actually matter if how I picture the farm matches how readers picture it—it’s beautiful, in my opinion, when these things differ—but also, I have always really wanted a map. A grayscale version of it will be included in the final version of the book, but this full-color one will only be available via the pre-order postcard.

Not everything is perfectly to scale in this map—I picture the walk from Sally’s Barn to the wildflower field, for instance, taking a good ten-to-fifteen minutes at least, with a lot more forest between the two. But we wouldn’t have been able to express that without squeezing the actual farming beds—which again, take up more space in my head than is expressed here. Just as I picture the animals’ pastures also being quite large, but there wasn’t room for that on the map while still including the hill to the orchard. Anyway, you get it, BUT—for what we are able to fit in a postcard/single picture, this is approximately where everything is located! And it was so, so fun seeing it all drawn out by Nina Tysovska, who was so kind and accommodating with all my tiny tweaks and requests.

I was also proud of myself for including the name of the actual book on the back of the postcard, something I failed to do for the Greyfin Bay postcard I made for Heartwaves. Which in my head made sense at the time—I wanted it to look like a real postcard someone would send to a loved one, not just some marketing gimmick—but have since had several signing events with this postcard out on my table. And when I’ve watched strangers who know nothing about me or my books pick this postcard up and stare at it blankly, it has occurred to me that I am not that good at marketing. (But I’m learning! Maybe!)

While I’m here, here are five things I’ve enjoyed recently:

• I didn’t know 2026 would be my year of Gay Tennis Romance, but I am so very down for it. So far I have loved both The Open Era by Edward Schmit (coming in June) and In Your Court by Kit Haley (coming in May), and I’m just as equally looking forward to reading Thirty Love by Tom Vellner r (just out!).
• I also can’t stop thinking about how much I loved The Shots You Take by Rachel Reid. This book is everything I want (to both read and write), and finding a book like that in the wild/outside of my own head is the most comforting thing in the world.
• I recently read Fredrik Bachman’s newest, My Friend, and while I’ve read a couple others of his ( My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry: I liked it!; Anxious People: didn’t love it), wow wow wow did I love this one. Again, it’s kind of made for me: all about art and sadness (sad gay people in particular) and youth and love, so yeah, I ate it up.
• I have also been making my way through Avon Gale’s Scoring Chances series and having a wonderful time. Last year I read historical romance almost exclusively to save my sanity; you can see what this year’s theme so far has been. I do not apologize. Actually, I do for how fuckin’ white these bullet points are; I’ll do better next time; but I don’t apologize for gay sports and/or sad gay people.
• I’m also currently enjoying a draft of Alicia Thompson’s 2027 project which I can’t tell you anything about since she hasn’t yet but sometimes I like to brag.

Okay love you all, sorry to every other country in the world about the United States,

anita

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