THE GODS MUST BURN out SPRING 2026. (OR, HOW MY PANCAKE BOOK WAS THE BOOK THAT MADE MY DREAMS COME TRUE.)

Hi, hello—it’s been a while since we last talked!

Although, not as long as this journey has taken other people. I am so lucky and so grateful and so honored to say that I’M GOING TO BE A PUBLISHED AUTHOR!

THE GODS MUST BURN (Solaris) is coming to a bookstore near you SPRING 2026!

What an absolute dream come true. I cannot express in words (and what I’m best at is words) how it feels to share my book with the world. But! I’m going to try my best. Let’s talk about all the things—the painful and the beautiful, both.

THE WEIRDEST WAY TO START A BLOG ABOUT YOUR BOOK DEAL—BUT NOT AS WEIRD AS GOING TO DENNY’S AT 3 A.M. SOBER.

I used to be obsessed with pigs. Especially kitchen tools. Like, the really cute piggy stuff, like the spatula and the timer and the whisk. I loved that shit. I have since moved on to strawberries and cows, especially strawberry cows, but like, my roots are in pigs.

My mom bought me this really cute mini pig pancake pan. Omg, it was to die for. She used to make these tiny pig pancakes for me, distinctly for special occasions. Again, loved that shit.

Anyway, pancakes are my go-to breakfast food; a good fat stack with a compote, or fresh fruit, or chocolate chips. When I started making pancakes on my own though, I quickly figured out:

The first pancake you cook always turns out like shit. But after that shitty first pancake, the rest turn out beautifully. But you have to cook that first bad pancake, always.

Yeah, this is a book allegory.

THE BOOK, THE AGENT, & THE WARDROBE. EXCEPT THERE IS NO TURKISH DELIGHT, ONLY THE PAIN AND AGONY OF BEING PERCEIVED. 

I talked a little about how I quit writing, and then I didn’t quit writing, and then I got my agent. It’s a nice little blog that you can check out and see what my querying journey was like! But let’s talk about the book itself—and how I didn’t even want to query it.

Let’s set the scene. 2023, I’m querying my first book (The Book That Didn’t Make It Out) and I was, well, devastated. It wasn’t going to make it out of the trenches, and I knew that, but it was the best idea I’d ever had and the best thing I’d ever written and it was my heart book and I was devastated. How was I going to move on?

The only real idea I had in the tank was the vague plot of this eco-fantasy thing, and it wasn’t perfect by any means. The plot was weak. In fact, I was still writing notes like this:

(Yes, this is my personal Discord server that I use for everything under the sun. Yes, I’ve nicknamed myself slut. The server is called Slutville.)

But I needed something to bridge the gap. I knew I needed to start writing, and keep writing. If I was ever going to write something GREAT again, I needed to write SOMETHING. And this was all I had.

So, gosh darnit, I sat down and I wrote. And, y’know what, I wrote a bad book.

It was my pancake book! I knew I needed to get that first pancake out of the way so I could make other, greater, pancakes. I had learned all these really cool things while I wrote The Book That Didn’t Make It Out; I upped my craft, I became a better writer. I just needed to actually write something, get it out of the way, and get moving.

But it was, ultimately, my pancake book that caught the eye of my agent.

Anyway, blah blah Taylor, you talk about that in your HIGMA blog. So I’m not gonna talk about that, but if you read my HIGMA blog, you’ll know I didn’t even want to query TGMB—my hand was forced.

But my agent saw the vision I had for this book. They saw past the slow beginning, the very loose strings I had of themes, and decided that my prose was worth signing. It needed help. So, together, we built a spine into the book. Soldered the bones of the plot I had into a skeletal structure with worth and meaning. Gave it the body it deserved.

I worked endlessly (and very tearily) from April to June to finish two rounds of editing as quickly as I could. In the middle of revising, I had a complete spin-out breakdown over how different my manuscript looked—and whether I was ruining it or not.

Luckily, my agent is kickass and when I reached out, they were able to help me get back on track. They told me, emphatically, that I was not ruining my book. I was actually making it better.

It’s terrifying to be perceived, I know. And I almost didn’t reach out to my agent in fear that I would seem like I didn’t know what I was doing.

But it was the encouragement I needed to finish my revisions. And by June, we were ready.

Well, the book was ready. I was not.

THE PURE EXCITEMENT OF GOING ON SUB. EXCEPT IT’S NOT. IT’S ACTUALLY PURE TERROR AND I DREADED IT. 

I’m not here to make a horror story out of submission. There’s plenty of that on the internet and you can find it on your own. But what I do want to talk about is how sub affected me, what I did wrong, and how I made it through in one (semi) piece. But not really, if we’re telling truths.

When I shot my final draft off to my agent, I expected they’d take a few days to review it, and then we’d take a few days to talk about submission, and then we’d plan a day for it to go out.

(Btw, not that I needed to talk about submission. I had all the info, and my agent has a lovely client portal which I’ve read about twenty times. I just wanted to delay the inevitable.)

But the morning after I’d sent the draft, my agent emailed to say: Hey! Let’s fire this baby off! and sent a full list of the editors in my first round.

Shook isn’t the right word to describe how I took that email. I very nervously typed back: Uh, sure?

In one singular day, my book was shipped off, and I was on submission.

Fucking terrifying.

Here’s where I went completely and TOTALLY wrong with the submission process. My agent has every client fill out a form telling them how we want sub communications—mainly for passes. You can get an email, you can get 0 communication, or you can, gulp, get a Google doc that they’ll update with each pass.

And me, being so cool and so calm and so pretty, decided yeah, I’ll go with the Google doc. I’m completely and utterly fine with a Google doc. I’ll just take a peek every Friday and see what’s up.

I was not fine. I checked that document every day. Multiple times a day, on some particularly hard days. I was NOT okay.

Guys, if you have the option to get sub communications like once a month, please go that route. I’m begging you.

Submission is very different from querying. Some people say it’s easier because you have an agent who is there to help you and support you and cheer you on. Some say it’s harder, because you’re so close to the end, you can taste it.

For me, querying was something I could detach from. Every query I sent, I marked it as a rejection in my head. I wasn’t attached to this book—I didn’t care if it died. It was my pancake book!

Querying, I had control. And on submission, I had no control at all. Everything was in my agent’s hands, passed on to editors I didn’t even know. There was nothing I could do—all I had was this horrifying Google doc of my passes, and all I could do was open it, and close it, and open it again, waiting to hear back.

The lack of control really hit me when, at the six week mark, I got another email from my agent. It was time for round 2.

THE PANIC ATTACK THAT I DIDN’T REALIZE WAS A PANIC ATTACK, WHERE I THOUGHT I WAS DYING DURING A VALORANT MATCH.

Oh, boy. Skip this section if you don’t want to hear about panic attacks—or, alternatively, skip this section if you’re my agent. Just head down to the next part, it’s more fun. Promise.

By six weeks, I’d gotten six passes. Yeah, you read that right. SIX FUCKING PASSES.

That’s not really normal on submission, or so I’ve heard. Submission is slow for most people, and getting six passes in the first six weeks had me on my hands and knees begging to be put down like a dog, ngl.

I mean, you go out to 15 editors in the first round, and you’re down to 9 editors by week six, you tell me how you’d feel. (Don’t, actually. I was not handling submission very well. I harken back to the whole “do not give yourself the ability to check a Google doc every day to see if you have passes.”)

So when I got the email that we’d be going on round 2 soon, I freaked out. Like, oh my god. I’ve gotten so many passes that my agent wants to go on round 2 already because I’m failing. My book is dying.

My book is going to die on submission.

Cue the panic attack—kinda.

It was hours after I had given the okay to go on round 2 (handled very well via email, mind you) that I started feeling it. I was playing a video game called Valorant with my friends when, all of a sudden, I couldn’t breathe.

I was having heart palpitations. Throwing up. I thought I was dying. I didn’t know what to do.

So I went to bed and cried because my book was dying on sub and now I was dying, too.

The next day, my friend told me very lovingly that I’d had a panic attack. I told her there was no way—I’d had plenty of panic attacks before, and they all happened instantly. It couldn’t be a panic attack. But she called it a delayed panic attack. And lo and behold, there is such a thing.

I did some soul-searching after that. Some people journal, some people meditate, but I like to walk around my house or do my skincare and voice memo myself talking. So, I sat and I talked with myself for a while.

One of the big reasons I signed with my agent was because they described themselves as aggressive. We were going to nudge, and we weren’t going to wait on editors who didn’t reply. I signed with them for this reason!

Why was I panicking about it now? Of course we were going to go on round 2 when six editors had passed. This was the reason I signed them—I was seeing it in action.

It just fucking hurt. It felt like my book was truly dying already. I had overreacted because, well, it was my first time on sub. (And I have really bad anxiety let’s be fr.)

But I swallowed that feeling. I let myself float in the uncontrollable waters that are submission, and I let myself be carried away.

I trusted my agent to get me out of this—one way or another. I prepared the funerary rites, stacked myself up with pass rewards, and told myself: it’s alright if this book dies. It’s my pancake book.

Less than a month after my panic attack, my agent emailed me the weirdest thing.

I had editor interest at Solaris. And they needed my schedule to set up a call.

THE ELATION AND ANXIETY OF THE EDITOR CALL, PLUS THE NIGHTMARES THAT PLAGUED ME. 

I told my agent that I was lowkey freaking out, but I was HIGHKEY freaking out. Horribly so. I asked my Discord submission group (the best people ever) how to handle an editor call. What questions to ask. What to really even do with myself! I’d never, ever made it this far—never thought I would!

I was very lucky to have that group, along with my agent’s client portal of info, to help me along. (And I have a great list of questions to ask if you need it! Email me, DM me, hit me up!) I kept myself busy getting prepared for this call because if I stopped to think about it, I was scared of what my brain would think up.

The anxiety had me in a chokehold. But if I thought this was the worst it was going to get, I was sorely mistaken.

The first thing I realized when I had my call with my supremely awesome editor, Amy Borsuk at Solaris, was that I was overdressed. And the second thing I realized was, oh my god, someone loved my book.

My agent saw the vision when they signed me. But this editor loved it—the bones and the flesh of it; no longer just a vision, but a real thing.

The call went perfectly. I was ecstatic. Amy was everything I wanted in an editor—she understood it. She saw the darkness in it, the rawness I wrote, and didn’t want to shy away from it. One thing I told her was that I don’t write trauma pretty like media always tries to make it. I write it ugly.

And she said she wanted to embrace that.

YIPPEE!

We would hear back in two weeks if they would make an offer. Two very long weeks. So my agent got to nudging—editors, we had interest, so read the darn book.

Dude, I was not prepared for the amount of rejections that poured in. It was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I felt ill for two weeks straight.

Because we didn’t even have an offer yet. The editor had to take it to acquisitions, which is a stage where most books on submission fail. If an editor can’t get their team on board with the book, then no offer gets made.

I got like seven passes in those two weeks. It brought my total pass count to over fifteen—and after that, I only had about eight editors left to hear from. Eight editors left in the tank.

If I didn’t get an offer from Solaris, the book was done. Two and a half months and it would be dead.

Now, this isn’t really true, lol. I’m sure we could’ve drummed up another round of submission to go on, or something, but once again it was out of my control. The unpredictable waters of submission were starting to drown me.

After the first week, I started having nightmares. Emails from my agent that said the book was dead. Emails saying I needed to have my next book ready for sub. (The book I was not writing because it was so hard to write during submission, holy crap. That’s a blog for another day.)

I would wake up in the middle of the night, at 4 a.m., and check my email. It was horrible. I was so scared I wasn’t going to make it out with my book alive.

On the Friday that marked two weeks, I spun out completely.

(Shoutout to the love of my life Olivia, who is the greatest treasure I ever received from the hellsite that is Twitter.)

All I could tell myself was that, if this book died, it was going to be okay. It was my pancake book. The first one is always the worst, and the next ones—they would be enough to get me a book deal.

THE MIRROR. (BRIEF PAUSE.) 

The Sunday night before I knew we would hear back from Solaris, I was brushing my hair, washing my face, putting on moisturizer. My nightly routine, my self-care rituals. I was staring at myself in the mirror, really looking at myself.

And I told myself, “You won’t get an offer.”

Not because I wasn’t good enough. Not because the book wasn’t good enough. But because a book deal would be life changing—it would be a dream come true—and I wasn’t ready for it.

I wasn’t ready for my life to change in the way that getting this offer would change it. So, I knew, I wasn’t going to get it.

But I was okay with it. I really was. My next book was going to be The One. I swallowed that and went to sleep.

On Monday, ten minutes before a work meeting, my agent called me.

I asked them to call me only if we got an offer.

THE BIG F***ING DEAL. 

“Hi Taylor, this is Allegra Martschenko—”

Cue obnoxious fucking sobbing.

This was the most unprofessional I’d ever been with my agent. Probably.

WE GOT THE FUCKING OFFER.

And, honestly bestie? This is kind of where the story ends right now. We got the offer from Amy Borsuk at Solaris, who is extremely wonderful, and now I’ve got a book coming out in 2026. Holy shit, I’ve got a book coming out in 2026.

This was the only dream I’ve had since I was a kid. It was such an unattainable dream—so unattainable that I wasn’t even really working toward it. I was writing because I loved writing. Not because I wanted to be an author. I just hoped the author thing would happen along the way.

And it did. Wow. Wow!

Later, my agent sibling Rosália (a wonderful person and author whose book is coming out this year!), when I was telling her about the pancake allegory, she said: “I’ve never had my first pancake turn out horrible.”

Well, y’know what?

Mine didn’t either, I guess.

THE GODS MUST BURN — SPRING 2026. 

At the end of it all, if you keep moving forward, there’s no way you won’t reach your dreams.

I kept pushing, and I kept doing what I loved, and I keep moving forward—regardless of what’s behind me.

Thank you so much for tuning in and reading this long, long blog about my journey through the publishing pipeline. I have so much more to share, so please make sure to subscribe to my email newsletter (if you aren’t already coming from the newsletter, hehe, the perks and the woes of using this platform.)

But before you go, let me leave you with a song.

If you follow me on socials (or just simply know me), you know I’m a huge Mitski fan. One of my favorite songs is Geyser, a song that Mitski wrote to convey how much she loves music, but it never feels like music loves her back.

I’ve listened to it for so long because I’ve felt similarly. The depth of my love for writing can never be matched.

But right now, with my debut coming out next year, I feel like writing loves me back.

Until next time!

Do all things with love,

Taylor 💖

THE TIMELINE! THE STATS! WHAT YOU CAME HERE LOOKING FOR AND I BAITED YOU INTO READING ALL THE INSPIRATIONAL STUFF! (OR YOU SKIPPED IT LMAO.)

June 2021, I came up with an idea.

June 2023, two years later, I started drafting.

(Note: this did NAWT happen lol. I definitely did not finish by the end of August!)

September 17th, 2023, I finished the first draft of THE GODS MUST BURN.

End of January 2024, I started querying.

April 2024, I signed with Allegra Martschenko (the best) at BookEnds! (Formerly Ladderbird.)

Between April and June 2024, I revised and edited my book for submission!

And June 18th, 2024, I actually went on submission. Terrifying.

And on September 9th, my agent called me: Solaris offered.

Here are my end stats!