Celebrate with Me
BIG book news, newsletter changes, and podcast updates
It’s been quiet around here lately, partly because we’ve been enjoying family time on a trip to California for a wedding, and partly because I’ve been occupying that liminal space where something big is coming, but it’s too soon to say anything.
As of the Feast of Pope St. Paul VI (a fitting date), I can officially announce that my next two books will be coming to you from Ignatius Press!
I’ll share titles once they become official. For now, I can tell you that the next book to come out will be a motherhood devotional rooted in theology of the body, a way to pray through the deeply physical realities of this vocation. This is the project I hinted at in this note (This quotation made it into the proposal. I owe you, Helen Roy!):
The second, a Christian guide to biotech, rooted in the theological anthropology of the Church, will follow a year later. (As always, newsletter subscribers will be the first to know exact details once I receive them from the publisher.) Here’s a little teaser:
Both hinge on the quotation that is my most-liked note to date (click to read in full):
And this quotation from Pope Leo as quoted by Kelly Garrison:
Just a little taste to whet your literary appetite. Raise a glass with me.
Okay, that’s enough celebrating. Time to get to work.
I cannot overstate how excited I am to get to work on these projects, and I plan to keep you updated as they unfold. In the spirit of my last book, however, some thinning is in order.
Making space for these good fruits requires thinning out competing fruits; like my peach trees, my branches can only support so many at once. Brave New Us is already on summer hiatus and will remain so. In the last episode, I spoke about pivoting to a season of rootedness and invited you to join me in the garden via YouTube. I might still sneak in a garden tour or two, but with the advent of this book deal, that rootedness will take the form of words on the page instead.
This newsletter will also see some changes, shifts I am excited about making. First, the paywall will be removed. While my gratitude to those of you who support this work financially cannot be overstated, I have always felt uneasy about the idea of creating a barrier to these topics.
Paid subscriptions have been off as I’ve been mulling over how to proceed. Many of you have communicated that you subscribe to support the podcast and newsletter, and not necessarily for any of the current “benefits.” To that end, I will be switching back to a PBS model, ala The Pillar: this work is free for you to enjoy. If you believe it’s worth paying for, that option is available to you.
If you were just here for the paid benefits, now is the time to downgrade your subscription to “free.” No hard feelings! I’m just glad you’re here.
I am so excited to bring you these books. While that means scaling back here a bit, I am also excited to show up here in a new way. Here’s what you can expect:
Twice-monthly newsletters from me—one devotional, one bioethics update
Links to any outside articles I write and/or new interviews
Updates with speaking events announcements like when the next podcast season will drop and book progress check-ins
AMDG,
Samantha
Brave New Us
Still on hiatus but be on the lookout for a bonus episode on Magnifica Humanitas, coming soon!
Articles + Interviews
This conversation with Vanessa at EWTN’s Catholic Connection was so lively. We covered a broad range of topics—very on brand for this post!
I’ll be sending out a few posts on my visit to EWTN this summer, but for now, here are the links to the two episodes we taped on May 13, Feast of Our Lady of Fatima:
From the Author’s Desk
Devotional: 10,000 words drafted
Biotech: 8,000 words completed, approximately 47,000 more books to read for research
Congrats, Samantha!!
I love this and I had to laugh at the last line about how many books you need to read for research... I hear you!! Congrats.