For the past several months, Mechanics Monday has been about the craft of storytelling—character arcs, pacing, dialogue, point of view, and all the little decisions that turn an idea into a novel.
That isn’t changing.
But something else has.
A few weeks ago, I shared that my debut novel, Emergency Contacts, will be published in early winter 2027.
That’s freaking exciting. That said, it also changed what “mechanics” means to me. Because I’ve learned something surprising over the last few weeks. Typing “The End” wasn’t the end of learning how to tell a story.
It was the beginning of learning how to share one.
Every book sits on top of hundreds of invisible decisions. Some happen on the page. How does this chapter end? Whose point of view serves the story best? Should this scene exist at all?
But once a book finds a publisher, a whole new set of mechanics appears.
You’ve got to build a website. Find your visual identity. Learn social media as an author instead of simply a person (WAAAAY harder than it looks, folks). Write newsletters. Meet readers where they already are. Learn how to talk about your work without reducing it to a sales pitch. Hell, just learning to talk about my book without feeling like I was being egotistical has been a challenge.
None of those things happen inside the manuscript. But every one of them helps a story find the people who might need it.
The funny thing is, I’m discovering these mechanics aren’t separate from storytelling. They’re another form of it. Every Instagram post tells a story. Every newsletter tells a story. Every conversation with a reader tells a story.
But they’re also all invitations.
So Mechanics Monday is growing. We’ll still talk about writing craft. We’ll still geek out over structure, dialogue, and character arcs. But now we’ll also explore the mechanics of building an author career, finding readers, and sharing stories beyond the page.
Because the mechanics didn’t stop when I typed “The End.” They simply changed.
And I’m excited to figure them out with you.
What part of the publishing journey are you most curious about?