When I was a senior in high school, my AP English teacher asked us to write the top twenty things we’d learned at that point. I’ve repeated that activity on my birthday for the last twenty years. This year, I thought I’d share a few items from my list of things I’ve learned at 38 along with recent and not so recent reads that take me back to the lesson.

Parenting is one part research, one part intuition and one part luck, all of it sprinkled with anxiety and why-is-this-sticky?
Hello Lovelies by ​Hayley DeRoche
When a former political communications strategist and currently a stay-at-home mom wins an all-expenses paid cruise vacation with her idol, a superstar mommy blogger, she can’t wait to connect with other moms IRL, but the cruise is not the Instagram-worthy getaway Ruthie had in mind.

I was very excited to find How To Fail At Flirting on the list of anticipated romance novels for 2020 in Oprah Magazine. Thank you to McKenzie Jean-Philippe and the Oprah Magazine team for adding my book to this list of phenomenal authors. Click the image below to access the article or click here.

​This weekend, I finished writing acknowledgements which, I have to tell you, feels a lot like giving an Oscar acceptance speech, except that I was wearing sweatpants and Chris Evans was nowhere to be found when I tripped walking up my own stairs.

Still, it’s humbling to thank everyone who supported you during the conception, gestation, and birth of your book baby. Too graphic? Are you trying to decide what the placenta is in this metaphor? Let it go, it’s not that serious (but the life-sustaining placenta for this book would be Diet Coke and Baked Cheetos). There’s a challenge to make the acknowledgements fit the tone of the book—for me, that meant a little touching, a little funny, and a little bit deeper than you thought it would go.

There are a few people I didn’t get to thank, so if you’ll indulge me…

• Thank you to the guy who hit on my friends and I at a bar while we were on vacation. I don’t know your name, but you inspired the hero in How to Fail at Flirting.
• Thank you to the first beta reader who told me no one would read a book about a woman of color professor. Without your jackassery, I wouldn’t have rewritten what is now chapter 1 in a flurry of rage.
• Thank you to our postal carrier who delivered Amazon box after Amazon box of things I could have easily gone to the store to buy. Momming + a demanding full-time job + writing is made just a little easier by having toilet paper and dog food delivered.
• A big shout-out out to teachers at my son’s daycare. They deserve kudos for many, many reasons, but here I thank them for loving my child when I dropped him off, even when I was off work for the day so that I could write.
• Thank you to the Twitterverse. I came to the party late, but Romancelandia on Twitter is a delightful, supportive, funny, and welcoming place to be.
• Finally, thank you to caffeine. Without you I would sleep more and do less. This book came to be because of your constant presence in my life.

​That was a preview, so I hope you’ll make it to the end of HOW TO FAIL AT FLIRTING to read the final cut of the speech. It's not out yet, so I’ll just be here, waiting for Chris Evans to show up.