june 2025

Ever heard of June gloom? ← [Killer way to start, I know. But you did sign up for the Weather Report, Chance of Rain: 100%, remember? It can’t be sunshine and rainbows all the time (however, this month there will be many, many rainbows 🌈🌈🌈 but we’ll get to those later)].

Anyhow, June gloom. I’m not sure if it’s a universal thing or if it’s specific to coastal living, but here, nestled up to the cool edge of the Pacific, right as summer starts to elongate days and paint the sky a warmer shade of blue, the gloom rolls in. Thick swaths of fog and heavy clouds that swallow up the sun and turn the world a chilly gray-white. And sometimes, even though you know it isn’t so, it starts to feel as though time is coming to a halt…or maybe even rolling backwards?

The days were getting longer, the flowers were blooming, and I just swapped my raincoat for the shorts I keep on the high shelf in my closet. I was so ready to start wearing shorts again…

But it isn’t time yet. Summer in Seattle starts in July and any sunny days prior are but a cheeky peek at what’s to come. And so, in our raincoats and our long pants, we wait. One more month for the gloom to pass.

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I’ve been playing the waiting game for a long time. Forever, if I line up round after round from tip to tail. But that’s what we all do. We wait for summer. We wait for the perfect moment. We wait for approval. We wait, and wait, and wait. Because waiting, whether active or passive, is simply part of the human experience. And very rarely are the things we deem worth waiting for attainable over night.

Fortunately, and more often than not, we can do a lot while we wait: start the next project, embark upon the next adventure, bake banana bread (my personal go-to), or plan what’s to come once the wait is over.

But sometimes…

Sometimes, the wait is accompanied by a gloom. A gray-white that blocks out the sun and coaxes time to still or maybe, almost reel in reverse.

Not sure if I’ve mentioned this in past letters, or maybe you’ve seen me drop hints on the gram, but I was a gymnast for sixteen years before starting my writing journey. From age six to twenty-two (yes, leotards were a part of my college experience *sigh*). I flipped on balance beams, swung between chalky bars, trained until it hurt, crash landed, broke bones, tore tendons, and bounced back over, and over, and over again. As you might imagine, I became rather skilled at waiting.

New tricks take time to learn, body parts take time to heal, and like I said before, waiting doesn’t always mean stopping or moving backwards. You can learn multiple skills in the same window of time, and you can work on strength and flexibility while your broken femur heals (yup, happened).

But every now and again, there are these moments, these stop-everything-and-imagine-it-happening-every-which-way moments, where literally all you can do is wait.

Your hands hit the vault table, your body flies up into the air, and…you’ve done all that you can… The sprint down the runway is done, your feet punching down through the springboard is done, the days, the months, the years of practice-practice-practice are done. And so, you must wait. See if your set-up, your approach, your time, your tears, your repetitions, and your recoveries were enough to land you on your feet.

Gymnastics is chock-full of these moments. Will I make it on the team or watch as others compete in my place? Will my feet find the floor before my face? Will all the years of bending and breaking my body to create the best routine, the best shape, the best moment be enough for the judges to grant me a decent score? And they’re heavy, these moments, they mean everything…

Your work lives in that routine, your worth lives in that score. And while you wait, you can’t breathe, can’t move. Can't help but wonder.... Maybe…maybe you didn’t do so great. And maybe you were never really that good. And maybe, maybe…

You hit the ground; your score flashes red. The result—be it good or bad—is known. And the wait, the wait is finally over. You can carry on: practice again, train again, play again, or…move on to something new.

Somewhat ridiculously, I thought after all those years in the gym, after all those flips and routines, all those salutes and flashing scoreboards, that I’d somehow both mastered and graduated beyond that particular brand of waiting. But somehow…*sigh*…despite tossing my leotards in the bin and scrubbing my calloused hands clean of decades’ worth of chalk, I’ve chosen a discipline that puts those comparatively trivial micro-moments in the gym to shame.

I’ve been on submission (this means my book, Project SATC, is being pitched by my agent to editors) for about three and a half months now. And though, yes, I can do a myriad of other things while waiting to hear back, the gray-white gloom of not knowing has become the backdrop of my existence.

I can be knit-browed and hook-spined over my laptop working on my next book, and suddenly, when I lift my gaze from the screen to shake out my shoulders, it’s there, the gloom, the not knowing, the waiting… I can be making dinner, chatting away with my partner, and in the corners of my mind I’m dying to know if Agent Des has updated my submission spreadsheet with good news. I can be dressed up and at my favorite bar with my girlfriends, swinging my hips to Sofi Tukker, and mid-swish lose my breath, my rhythm—hear nothing, see nothing, wonder and wait.

It’s a peculiar feeling to know you’re as close as you’ve ever been to achieving your goal, seeing your dream come to life, and as equally close to watching it all crumble out from under you. The next yes, could be everything. The next no, could tear it all away.

And, yes, obviously, I’m being very dramatic, because much like routines in the gym, there will be more chances to show more books to more editors, but knowing that doesn’t make this gloom go away. Only time can shift the gloom, make it dissipate, or make it pack tighter to the earth.

So, how do we keep working on the new book while the last book’s on sub? How do we keep stirring the pot? Keep swishing our hips? What can we do in those moments where time stops, rolls back, and every version of reality plays out behind our eyes in a gray-white haze of ifs, buts, maybes, and please-please-please-I’d-do-anythings?

We zero in on the version we want.

I know, it sounds sooooo hokey, but I think dissecting the haze, and peeling away the grays to find the shimmer of light that got you to play the game in the first place is the key to waiting. And as someone with a doomsday brain—lots of gray, lots of bad, lots of ugly—it can be incredibly hard not to feed into the gloom. And, despite my best efforts, I do it…often. I’ll stop writing, stop stirring, stop dancing, and let the darkness trickle in. It hurts, and I hate it, and it makes me want to give up and disappear.

But sometimes, I’m able to slim my focus to the one outcome I want and actually start to see it, feel it, know it. An editor says yes. A publishing house offers me a deal. And I get to hold my book in my hands, see my words, my worlds, on printed pages…

—If you’re a writer/artist of any sort, take a moment to sit with that feeling, with that knowing, let the picture of what could be glitter in your mind and send waves of electricity through your body—

Feel that? That’s it. Hold on to it, tack it to the inner wall of your skull, sketch it on paper, do whatever you gotta do. Because that’s your lifeline during the doom and gloom.

And, yes, it's odd as an “after the fact” approach, but if I’d written about visualizing my best gymnastics routine prior to performing, many of you would have thought, “yeah, that makes good sense.” And I can tell you from experience, visualizing prior to performing does make a difference: if you picture yourself crashing, you’re way more likely to crash; if you picture yourself nailing it, you’re way more likely to nail it.

But if manifesting (ew, I know, I hate that word too) can change the mind prior to performance enough to affect performance, then why can’t it change the mind post-performance?

Now, as a gal who doesn’t like the word “belief” (let alone what it implies), I’m not saying manifesting will change the outcome of an event in motion. As far as I’m aware, there’s nowhere near enough data on that topic to make any sound claims. BUT manifesting, however you may manifest—be it prayer, finger crossing, star gazing, or peeling back layers of the gloom—can affect the mind (studies make everything better), and isn’t that the whole point?

Not to rush the process, or magically manipulate the outcome, but to BE with the waiting. To work through it, create through it, dream through it, and keep moving forward in time?

I know, I too wish this chunk of text ended with a big green button that made all our wishes come true. Instead, I’m giving you my silly little way of rewiring the brain, of seeing through the gloom so it doesn’t weigh you down. And who knows? The wait could be over sooner than we think...

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📃Current WIP(s):🧬Project EG - stabby, sapphic sci-fi/dystopian

📈WIP status(es): I just received beta feedback for Project EG: Draft 3 from one of my critique partners, so I’m about to embark upon Draft 4! I’m hoping this will be my last chunky round of edits before handing it off to for a light pass from one to two more readers, then sending it to Agent Des. My goal is to have it to them by early Fall.

📚Current read(s): 🐺 Tell the Wolves I’m Home by Carol Rifka Brunt

✨ Other: 🥐 I’m just about done with French A1.2! I still feel like I can’t really speak French—every sentence is like pulling teeth—but I’m understanding a lot of what I read and most of what I hear, so, idk, not too shabby!! ⛺ I’ve got three really cool camping/backpacking trips planned for the summer! Super stoked about those! 🌈 And I’m SOOOO excited for Pride this year. I’ve known since forever that I’m bi (and honestly, think I’m more pan than bi), but only recently have I had the courage to claim it out loud. So I’m looking forward to being authentically me at Pride events this year.

📘: My Murder by Katie Williams — quirky, witty, dark, and a little unsettling as our AI-threatened reality creeps steadily toward William’s imagined future.

🎥: Bob Trevino Likes It starring Barbie Ferreira and John Leguizamo — Daughter-trauma cradled and reshaped by genuine love and kindness. I cried, basically the whole time, so…best of luck.

🎵: “Throw Some Ass” and “Goddess in Disguise” by Sofi Tukker — tbh I’ve just been vibing to the whole Bread album, but TSA and GID are *chefs kiss*.

📺: No Good Deed starring Ray Romano and Lisa Kudrow and Dead To Me starring Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini — I like my murder mysteries sassy, quirky, twisty, and heartfelt. Liz Feldman knocked it out of the park with both of these.

🐻: Pathfinders Writing Collective’s Bookish Bootcamp Challenge! — Jen Woodrum and I are hosting a 6-week “writing skills” and “wellness drills” challenge starting June 20th! If you’re a writer/artist/creator of any kind who wants to participate in a free challenge and hang with an awesome community of writers, check out Pathfinder's IG page.

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As always, thank you for reading! And thank you for continuing to support my all-over-the-place writing journey and, well, me as a human being. I'd be nowhere near as far along on my journey without folks like you who sign up for a goofy little newsletter, who watch my cringe reels, and remind me to breathe and trust the process when the process seems hellbent on driving me up the wall.

I hope your June isn’t gloomy, hah! And if it is, that you can hold tight to your desired outcome while caught in the gray. And there is one guaranteed bright light this month...

🌈HAPPY HAPPY HAPPY PRIDE!!!🌈 If you consider yourself part of the LGBTQIA+ community, celebrate! Shine! Sparkle! And take up space! And if you consider yourself an ally, celebrate! Shine! Sparkle! And support!! Go to more drag shows, support more queer authors, and share/post/pin/praise queer art online! Every teeny tiny bit counts!

Love you all tremendously! And HAPPY June 😉

XOXO,

Rain ☔ she/her