It’s been a long time coming, but Wanderlust is officially out in the United States today!
I started writing Wanderlust in early 2019. I was fresh off a trip to Iceland that I could not get out of my head and, from April to May of that year, I wrote the first draft. It was a disaster (as one of my notes to myself from that time says best: “First third and final third: aces; middle third: fucking travesty”), but it was done.
That first draft bears very little resemblance to the book that’s hitting shelves today. It was a little over a hundred thousand words, but I’ve probably written hundreds of thousands more as I drafted and drafted and drafted. By the time I got into Pitch Wars, I was on my 9th draft. The version of Wanderlust you’ll receive is the 10th.
This book is the product of years of hard work. Of early mornings, over-caffeination, brainstorming, frantic free-writes that make little sense, rambling conversations with friends as I tried to sort out these characters. I’m grateful to every single person who read an early draft, gave me feedback, let me talk their ear off about these fictional people that feel so very real to me. You helped me make this book. I can never thank you enough for that.
It has been an absolute dream working with the team at Putnam Books (especially my brilliant editor, Gaby Mongelli) and I can’t wait to do it all over again with Book 2 (news about that coming soon 👀)
I’m so excited for you to read it… I hope you like it and I cannot wait to share all the exciting events we’re running to promote Wanderlust over the next few months.
x Elle
P.S. I shared some more background detail about Wanderlust in my newsletter today, so if you’d like to receive my monthly letters, you can sign up here x