Coming soon · Book 2 in The First Year series

The Year After the Year

a weekly companion for the second year — when the world thinks you are done

Releasing in paperback this summer.
Book 2 in The First Year series.

The year nobody writes about

The first year had checkpoints. The phone calls came. People remembered the date. There were books for this year, and most of them said roughly the same thing, and that was a comfort even when it wasn't enough.

The second year doesn't have checkpoints. The phone calls have stopped. The people who were holding the line have lowered it without telling you. The first-year books are over now, and the books for the people who have "moved on" don't fit either, because you haven't.

This book is for that year — and for the third, and the fourth, and however many it takes. Twelve months of pages, weekly cadence, undated. Start the week you start. Skip what feels wrong for the season. Come back when the season turns.

The shape of the second year

12 monthly sections, Month Thirteen through Month Twenty-Four — one for each month of the second year
5 honest weekly prompts per section, plus a monthly reflection at the end of each
A weekly anchor at the bottom of every page: one small thing this week that no one would have noticed but you
A short coda — What Year Three Begins With — for the first weeks after the book is over
A short list of books that don't lie about the long part
Generous lined writing space on every page
Undated, so the book waits for you and not the other way around

From the book

"You do not have to start at Month Thirteen. You may have picked this up at Month Sixteen, or Month Twenty-Two, or some place in the third year that does not have a number on it anymore. Find the section that names what you are inside, and start there."

— from the front of the book

In the meantime

Read seven small letters first.

A free email companion across one week — the voice The First Year carries, written to the people who aren't ready to journal yet, or who would rather be written to than write back. Then quiet. No firehose, no upsells. If you are inside the second year already, the seven letters still meet you.

Reply to any letter and it reaches a real person — me. Unsubscribe anytime; the link is in every email. I will write to you again when The Year After the Year is in paperback.

Thank you for writing in.

The first letter should land in your inbox within a few minutes. If it doesn't, check your spam folder and mark it "not spam" so the rest find their way to you. The next six arrive once a day for the following week, then they stop. I'll write again when Book 2 is out.

— Margaret