New Newsletter! Intro post!

Hello! Welcome! Thanks for signing up!

I’ve decided to relaunch my newsletter, and I’m giving you all an introduction and a preview of what it will look like and what my plans for it are.

Brief intro: I write romance novels under the name Kate McMurray and may soon have new stuff under a new pen name, so I’m keeping the title here vague to give me room to maneuver into that space, too. But if you want updates from me, here’s where to get them.

This is basically my monthly check-in, so once a month I’ll let you know what I’m working on and what I’m reading and what new things are available for your reading pleasure. I might boost something from my backlist or give you a recommendation for what to read. But I want this space to be less formal than my newsletter intended for writers, and not just a “hey, I wrote a new thing.” So it might be structured, it might be free-form, we’ll see!

So here’s what I’m currently up to:

Reading

Currently on my nightstand: Casey McQuiston’s new novel The Pairing, which is really hitting the spot after watching the Paris Olympics made me long for a European vacation. There is much loving description of wine and pastry, and now I’m pricing food and wine tours for 2026. Also The King’s Assassin, a nonfiction book about George Villiers, the favorite of King James I of England. (This book was the basis for the Starz show Mary & George. More on that below.) The book is interesting, but some of the political intrigue is a leeeetle tedious.

I recently finished We Could Be Heroes by Phillip Ellis, a rom com about a closeted actor starring in a not!Marvel superhero movie who meets a handsome bookseller/drag queen while filming in the UK. It was very cute.

Watching

This is the summer I watch sexy costume dramas, I guess. I of course devoured the third season of Bridgerton as soon each half hit Netflix. I think this season has been my favorite so far. (I adore Nicola Coughlin. Please put her in more things, Hollywood.) There’s a lot going on—maybe one too many subplots this season—but it’s fun and pretty to look at, which is most of what I want out of a TV show.

Then I watched the aforementioned Mary & George, a drama about George Villiers (played by the suddenly ubiquitous Nicholas Gallitzine) and his mother Mary (Julianne Moore). Mary does a lot of chess paying behind the scenes to put George in the path of King James so that she can exploit their relationship to gain power. There is much court intrigue and several liberties taken with actual history (Mary plays a less pivotal role in the book, for one thing) but Moore’s performance is very good, and the show is extremely sexy. The title of the book on which the show is based may also be a clue that Villiers and James do not get a happy ending, so be warned that this is not a romance. That’s on Starz.

And finally, I watched My Lady Jane on Amazon Prime, and I love everything about this show, top to bottom. It’s funny, it’s sexy, there are shifters and alternate history and court intrigue and beautiful costumes. Just a really fun show overall, highly recommended. (I just heard they aren’t doing a Season 2, and I am devastated. The good news is that the first season tells a mostly complete story, so it’s still totally worth it.)

To keep this party going, I think The Decameron is next in the queue.

Publishing

It’s been a minute since I put out a new novel, but you may have missed these:

I wrote a short story called “Lavender Love,” set during the Lavender Scare in the early 1960s. It was originally written for a Loving Day anthology that was published last year, but now you can download it as a standalone from your favorite ebook store. Two men who met during World War II but then lost touch reconnect many years after the war and fall back in love, but if anyone finds out, they could both lose their jobs. If you watched and enjoyed Fellow Travelers, this may be up your alley.

I wrote a novella called Love 101, in which a man who has never dated before gets lessons for how to date from his more experienced best friend, and then feelings ensue. That is now also available from your favorite ebook store.

I will be attending the Coastal Magic convention in Florida in February, and I have joined a group promo with a bunch of other attending authors, at which you can find all kinds of goodies. For that, I wrote a short story called “Blast form the Future,” which is a little friends-to-lovers romance short with time-travel shenanigans. You can download that for FREE.

Related to those last two, I am thinking about putting together a print anthology of my “summer in the city” shorts/novellas, which includes those and also Save the Date. So if print books are your jam, look for that early next year.

Writing

I don’t have pub dates for any of this, so this is kind of a dirty tease, but here’s what I’m currently writing:

I’m finishing up a draft on a very angsty book about two actors who fall in love while filming a movie. (I’ve been on a Hollywood kick after taking a film class last year. This particular novel is contemporary, but I’ve got a ton of ideas for books set in Golden Age Hollywood. I’ve got part of a draft written on a story set in the early 1950s about the cast of a splashy movie musical. Think Singin’ in the Rain, but behind the scenes.)

During the COVID lockdowns, I wrote an old-school, Judith McNaught-style bodice ripper about a duke with amnesia and the woman who nurses him back to health. I’m trying to find a publisher for it now, so fingers crossed!

I’ve got a ton of other stuff in the works, too, but more on that in the future!

Other Random Stuff

Although I do like a sexy costume drama, my favorite genre of TV is the sitcom. I especially love a sitcom about a group of friends, but for me, tone is the most important thing. (I don’t love The Office, I think it’s too mean spirited, but I love and regularly rewatch Parks & Rec and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. And I love Friends, obviously. It’s my comfort TV show; I rewatch when I’m sad or anxious. It’s like a TV security blanket.) Anyway, How I Met Your Mother, another show I love, recently came back to Netflix, and people in my social media feeds are discovering it. It’s a remarkably uneven show. So I’m putting together a viewer’s guide for it, telling you which episodes are must watch and which can (and should) be skipped. (Spoiler: Skip the entire finale, which I have chosen to forget ever happened. Ted meets Tracy, The End.)

That will go up on my Medium account, where I periodically review TV stuff (mostly I recap Hallmark movies there, if that’s your jam).