It's my 50th Birthday Year

What's in store for us, you ask?

Well hello there!

It’s been a while since I’ve talked to you directly here, and I was missing you so here I am with updates.

Update 1: I’m hitting pause on Authors Over 40, at least for now. They will always be in the archive, but in January I posted my last two, for my agency sister Elizabeth Langston and my good friend Joe Moldover. I’ve learned so much from my fellow (ahem) older writer-friends doing this series, and I hope they’ve been a source of inspiration for you as well – it is never too late for your creative project! Whether it’s a novel, photography, or music, just pick a place to start. Then START.

Update 2: On a related note, since 2025 is my 50^th birthday year (July 8, people – get ready!), I’ve been trying to figure out something 50-related as a theme for this year’s newsletter. I’ve decided to let whimsy lead me – and below, after all this preamble, you’ll find my first offering: 50 Books That Made Me A Writer.

Update 3: I totally redid my living room and workspace and wow does it feel amazing. I’ve been in my condo for almost 7 years now, and I was just getting SICK of everything in that room, but I couldn’t afford all new everything, so I started thinking about how to rearrange the room and use some of the dead space – and voila! In case you missed the Before and After Instagram reel, here it is plus I’ve pasted a few before and after pictures below. I’ve always been jealous of writers whose Zoom backgrounds include shelves of their books, the spines soothingly arranged across the shelf… And now I have such a shelf, and a quite nice desk to write at – all courtesy of Ikea, FB Marketplace, and a very good friend with interior design sense who moved things I already owned around in very creative ways. Plus, I washed all the covers on the couch, and it really is like a new couch now. Note to self: Sometimes everything you need really is right in front of you.

Update 4: I got comments on my 2026 novel SUMMER OF LOVE from my editor, and I’m hard at work on the revision. I can’t wait to share this one with you all – it’s my California novel, something I’ve been dying to say since I moved away more than half my life ago. Do I want to move back? You better believe it (but I have a daughter to get through high school in MA first). And yes, all of my friends and family out in LA are safe; thanks for asking. But those fires have been heartbreakers.

That’s it for now – I’ll be seeing you for more 50 year old fun in 2025.

Warmly,

Kerri

50 Books That Made Me a Writer* (in no particular order!)

On Writing by Steven King

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Elements of Style by Strunk and White

Eats, Shoots and Leaves by Lynne Truss

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Babylon Revisited and Other Stories by F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri

Spending by Mary Gordon

A Moveable Feast by Ernest Hemingway

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

Shakespeare and Company by Sylvia Beach

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Little Women by Louisa May Alcott

Sweet Valley High (many of them!) by Francine Pascal

Beauty by Robin McKinley

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt

Ellen Conford’s short stories

Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follet

The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

Three Junes by Julia Glass

Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf

Nora Roberts novels, misc.

A Drink Before the War by Denis Lehane

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

Headlong by Michael Frayn

Flaubert’s Parrot by Julian Barnes

Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Feilding

Human Croquet by Kate Atkinson

Possession by A.S. Byatt

Still Life by A.S. Byatt

The Virgin in the Garden by A.S. Byatt

Beloved by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

Slouching Toward Bethlehem by Joan Didion

The Big Money by John Dos Passos

The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford

Kissing in Manhattan by David Schickler

The Crossover by Kwame Alexander

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh

Comfort Me With Apples by Ruth Reichl

The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing

*It’s too many to annotate reasons, but look for a few highlights on Instagram in the coming weeks.