So I’ve already announced this news over on social media, but just in case you missed it, I’m so thrilled to say it again: my Great Gatsby-inspired novella, In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts, has sold to Creature Publishing!

*does a ghostly Charleston dance all daylong*

Needless to say, I’m absolutely over the moon about this book! We pitched this one as Carol meets The Haunting of Hill House with, of course, plenty of Gatsby vibes. I came up with this concept over five years ago when I first heard The Great Gatsby would soon be entering the public domain, so it’s been so wonderful to finally see the story come to fruition.

In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts is at once a queer re-imagining as well as a sequel to the original novel, with the story told this time through the perspective of Pamela “Mel” Buchanan, Daisy and Tom’s oft-forgotten daughter. I always love retellings that reclaim a lost character from the original, and Daisy’s overlooked daughter seemed like such a perfect way to explore the legacy of family trauma and how secrets pass down through the generations. All with lots of ghosts haunting Gatsby’s abandoned mansion, of course.

As a side note, it was a little bittersweet this week, because I’ve been working on some edits for the book, and I had to do it while mourning the fabulous Robert Redford who most certainly played my favorite version of Jay Gatsby. If it wasn’t for the pink suit he wore in the 1974 adaptation, I’m not sure I’d be the person I am today. At fourteen years old, that pink suit changed my life, and it also immediately kickstarted my love for all things Gatsby.

So in honor of all the Gatsbys that came before, here’s a bit of a teaser for my own re-imagining of the classic story!

It’s 1955 in New York City, and Mel Buchanan is desperate to forget all about her dysfunctional family. By day, she works at a dry cleaners with her best friend Vera, and the two of them are making plans for the future–a future Mel hopes might include more than just friendship between her and Vera. But when her mother Daisy Buchanan is found dead in an abandoned West Egg mansion, Mel must confront the literal ghosts of the past as she unravels the mystery of what happened to her mother and why there’s an ethereal party hosted night after night that only she seems to be able to see. With the help of her mother’s best friend, Jordan Baker, Mel soon finds herself in over her head, drawn into the web of a phantom figure named Gatsby. As the past and the present collide, Mel must reckon with her family’s sordid history, including lies, illicit affairs, and even murder, before she becomes the latest partygoer to disappear into the night. Because this particular West Egg mansion has always been hungry, and it’s more than eager to devour Mel Buchanan whole.

In These Gilded, Ghostly Hearts will be out in Fall 2026 in paperback and ebook! That’s right: we’re just one year away from my Gatsby ghosts making their way into the world! So that means you’ll be hearing a lot more from me about this spectral novella in the coming months!

*Charleston dances off into the sunset*

Happy reading, and happy 100 years of The Great Gatsby!