The Story Behind ‘Treadmill’
Alright, if you’ve taken even one glance at my Instagram over the past few months, you know something is going on. The whole thing is drenched in pink, and not just because it’s my favorite color (which it is). I’m releasing the first book I’ve released since 2022, and my first-ever suspense novel, Treadmill. I am both incredibly excited and incredibly nervous about this book going out into the world, and it’s probably on my mind a bit more today because this morning, my ARC readers got their copies!
Treadmill had the most nonlinear trajectory of any book I’ve published thus far. I began writing it in late 2019, as a junior in college, after reading an article online about an influencer who had scammed a bunch of people. The idea took form and snowballed from there, until I had decided that scamming people wasn’t enough—my main characters were going to murder someone. Without giving too much away (because I want you to read the book), Treadmill gave me the opportunity to explore deeply imperfect characters who were oftentimes difficult to root for, and gave me the challenge of bringing them back to a point where the reader might just sympathize with them.
In 2021, Treadmill was shortlisted for a Watty Award, but didn’t end up winning. Its sequel won a Watty Award in 2022, which I was over the moon about, but it also meant that the sequel had to remain exclusive to Wattpad for a year. This delayed my goal of beginning to query the series to agents, and I began seriously editing Treadmill.
I tried querying Treadmill in 2023, and when I say “tried querying,” I mean that I sent out maybe 20 emails to agents before realizing that starting law school was going to make this entire thing a lot more difficult. So, I started law school in the fall of 2023, and my writing fell to the wayside. I had my edited version of Treadmill, which I decided I was going to self-publish, and in early 2024, I ordered my first proof copy of the book.
And then the proof copy sat there, half read, for almost a year.
I told myself that if I could find the right time, I would publish Treadmill. I thought that it could maybe happen over the summer, when I wasn’t actively in school, but then summer 2024 became the hardest few months of my life when my grandfather fell suddenly very ill, and I spent two months driving between my apartment and my hometown to visit him in the hospital. He passed away on the second day of my second year of law school, and it took every ounce of strength that I had to even get up and go to class, let alone to write or edit anything of my own. I trudged through that semester in a sort of haze, only doing what I had to do to pass my classes and be a functioning human being. It was a kind of grief I hadn’t experienced before, and being in the competitive, demanding environment of law school only extended the grieving process; I likely still haven’t fully processed it.
But writing had always been something that brought me comfort, and I decided that I needed to stop waiting for the perfect time to start writing again, because there was never going to be a perfect time. I decided to pick a date to publish Treadmill and just go for it, full force. I finished going through the proof copy, my boyfriend and I both went through the second proof copy so that I had another set of eyes to catch things I didn’t see, and I announced the book’s release on Instagram…which meant I couldn’t take it back.
I don’t know what happened, but the entire process since announcing Treadmill has been so positive and overwhelming. I had 95 people sign up to be ARC readers, when I had been hoping for maybe 2. I saw people sharing my posts about the book to their own stories, and sharing their excitement over being selected as an ARC reader. My friends and family have been incredibly supportive, and even my sister—who will be the first to tell you that she does not read, ever—told me how invested she was in this book. Almost 1,000 people have entered the Goodreads giveaway for the ebook, and after less than 24 hours of being sent, over 75% of my ARC readers have downloaded the book. It releases in just over three weeks, and I can’t remember ever being so excited about one of my books coming out.
So, from its beginning as an idea from a magazine article in 2019, to now being the most-anticipated of my releases since Dear Sydney in 2017, Treadmill continues its journey as both my favorite and my least predictable book, and I can’t wait to see what happens next!
