On 23 December 2025, my life changed completely.

I woke up at around 5 a.m. that morning, fingers shaking as I typed my book title into Google to see if it was real.

If it had really been on TV.

Two weeks earlier, I’d been contacted by someone from NBC, asking me to mail them a copy of my Christmas romcom, The Holiday Grump. I thought it was a scam, but since they were only asking for one copy of the book, I sent it anyway.

As a big fan of 30 Rock and Tina Fey, I could at least tell everyone I’d mailed my book to 30 Rockefeller Plaza.

Watching from New Zealand

I was home in New Zealand, which meant the TODAY Show morning segment aired around 3 a.m. our time, on Christmas Eve.

The TV feature was very much real, and far more prominent than I’d even dared to hope for. It was curated by John Searles, an author I’d never heard of, who is a recurring guest at NBC (to this day, I don’t know how he found my book!).

So there I was, cooking Finnish Christmas casseroles (we make weird stuff for Christmas) and watching my sales spike on Amazon. It felt absolutely unreal.

But the truly unreal part was still coming.

The Press Release My Husband Sent

While I was quite happy to stuff my face with gingerbread and watch the sales numbers climb, my husband saw an opportunity. He sent press releases.

One of those went to the biggest newspaper in my old home country, Finland.

On Boxing Day (26 Dec), they called me for an interview. I had a lovely chat with the reporter about my indie author journey and Hideaway Harbor, the multi-author collaboration my Christmas book was part of.

I didn’t expect much, but the story came out online the next day and was printed on a full page of that Sunday’s paper.

My face was huge!

I was excited and a little mortified that it was a casual mobile phone pic, taken just outside our front door.

Getting an Agent

A couple of days after the newspaper feature, one of the largest publishers in Finland contacted me, wanting to talk about translation rights. I told them I didn’t have an agent and was happy to meet.

But before that meeting, Ahlbäck Literary Agency contacted me.

At that point, I didn’t even know Finland had literary agencies, let alone impressive ones.

I’d been living in New Zealand for twenty years, happily writing and publishing my indie romcom books for seven of those years. I knew Finland didn’t really have indie authors, so I’d never even thought about translating my books into my native language.

Incidentally, on our last visit, I ran a giveaway, asking Finnish readers if they read romance in English, and the answer was not only “yes”, it was “exclusively”. Many claimed that reading spicy books in their native language was too cringey. I’ve since learned this isn’t the case with all readers, and might also be changing.

With my husband pretty much holding my hand, we took a call with the agents.

And yes, I mean agents in plural.

Since I accepted their offer of representation, I’ve been dealing with four agents who handle different territories, as well as film & TV rights. It’s a dizzying new world.

A Perfectly Timed Change

The timing was perfect.

I was in the process of selling a book that was part of another multi-author collaboration to HarperCollins, as well as some audio rights, and handing those negotiations over to the agency was a huge load off.

Before signing on the dotted line with the agents, I carved out a little freedom in my contract to make sure I still had the option of publishing indie books, which is something I want to do.

I love indie publishing. It’s where I started, where I learned, and where I found readers. I didn’t want to close that door completely, even as new doors were opening.

Accidentally Pitching My First Series

During a call with the agents, I mentioned that I was planning another series called Sisu Lakes, set in an old American mill town with Finnish roots.

They immediately asked me to send a synopsis for each of the three books.

Having never written one, I said “sure” and got to work.

It was easier than I’d expected, maybe because I got to plan the stories as I wrote and I’d already done a lot of thinking. I’m very much a pantser, not a planner, but synopsis-level planning is thankfully so broad and vague that it doesn’t steal my joy of “discovery writing” as I go.

Looking back, it seems crazy that I wrote the synopses in less than a week.

The digital ink was barely dry on our contract when the agents came back with my first book deal.

My First Book Deal

When I told my agents I’d been approached by the Finnish publisher, they urged me to take a call with them, but leave the negotiations to them.

“We aim to get an auction going,” they told me.

At the time, I didn’t even know what that meant, and didn’t think much about it.

I had a couple of meetings with the publisher and loved our casual chats. They were interested in indie publishing and asked a lot of questions. Along the way, I learned a lot more about how book publishing works in my old home country.

I should add that I had all these conversations in Finnish, even though I write in English, which felt simultaneously relaxing, familiar, and strange.

When the first publishing offer arrived from the agency, I just about fell off my chair.

There had indeed been an auction between three Finnish publishing houses. The winning offer was an 8-book deal worth more than my very modest annual earnings as a designer.

It was from Gummerus, the publisher who translates some of my favourite romance authors, like Abby Jimenez and Lucy Score. The company was founded in the town where I was born. My dad had once done proofreading for them.

I’d never seen a publisher’s marketing plan before, so I was blown away by the long document they sent me. I’ve since learned these are often “inspirational” and plans can shift, but I’m still hopeful my books will be discovered by Finnish readers later this year.

I still can’t believe any of this is real.

The English Publisher I Didn’t Have Yet

When I met the Finnish publisher online for the first time, they told me they wouldn’t decide the publishing order of my books, the 4 existing and 4 upcoming ones they’d bought.

They would follow the lead of my English publisher.

Except I didn’t have one, yet.

For an indie author who’s used to doing everything herself, working with an agent can be quite a strange experience. Most of the time, you have no idea what’s going on or who they’re talking to. Once there’s an offer on the table, you get an email.

After the Finnish book deal, I did my best to stop thinking about that and focus on the one thing I could control: writing the first of those commissioned Sisu Lakes books.

I was maybe halfway through the book when the agent came back with a pre-empt offer from Atlantic Books.

My books are set in New Zealand and the US. I’d never expected to land a UK-based publisher, but the agent thought they were the perfect fit.

The best thing about it was that they’re part of the Australian/NZ publisher Allen & Unwin, so I could see my books in bookstores in MY corner of the world.

Can’t wait!

Writing Retreats, Deadlines, and Rearranging Life

I tried to find a pic of us celebrating this deal, or any others, but the sad truth is that we were absolutely buried in work, trying to rearrange our design business so that I’d have enough time to write and meet my deadlines.

I consider it a celebration, though, that I’ve managed to do FIVE short writing retreats.

These have mostly been two-night trips to neighbouring towns, but I’ve really enjoyed the more immersive way of writing. Every time I go away, my productivity gets a massive boost and I go from producing 1500–2000 words a day to about 5k–7k a day.

But my agents were not done.

They’d turned their focus to translation rights.

The Translation Deals

As I kept writing the fall-themed romcoms I’d sold to Atlantic Books and Gummerus, my agents kept working on the translation rights.

The emails usually dropped late at night, just before we were going to bed.

Translation deals are not big money, but they are so exciting!

I grew up in Finland, in a family of language nerds. I’m the only one, the black sheep, who doesn’t hold multiple master’s degrees in European languages. I only ever wanted to learn English, and that I did, living and working in New Zealand for twenty years.

So far, my little Christmas romcom, The Holiday Grump, where it all started, is going to be available in seven different languages.

A Quiet Season After a Wild One

The last few months have been a quiet season in my author journey, with a lot of writing and editing, and very little publicity or extroverted activity of any kind.

I’ve loved it.

But I’m also excited for what’s coming.

For seven years, I wrote and published my indie books in relative obscurity. I was the smallest fish in every collaboration and generally made so little with my writing that it was mostly an expensive hobby.

I loved connecting with readers and other authors, though. I loved writing the books. I loved designing so many book covers. I loved learning as I went.

I don’t know exactly what the future holds, but I’m grateful and excited to be where I am now.

Still learning.

Still writing.

Still slightly amazed that any of this happened because an author I didn’t know picked my book and decided to show it to the world.