How to Get Your Second Book Ready for Publication by Author Leah Stecher and A Field Guide to Broken Promises

 Happy Monday Everyone! Today I’m excited to have Leah Stecher back to share about getting her second MG, A Field Guide to Broken Promises, ready for publication. Leah shared another guest post when her debut MG, The Things We Missed, was released in 2024. Her new book deals with some issues many middle graders must deal with, and I’m looking forward to reading it. 

Here's a blurb from the book’s jacket:

 

When Evie Steinberg’s family moves right before seventh grade, she promises her dad that she’ll make sure everything goes perfectly. Maybe if she keeps her promise, he’ll finally forgive her for accidentally ruining the biggest moment of his cryptozoology career last spring.​

Perfect means taking care of her little sister, fitting in at her new school, and never complaining or causing problems. Perfect definitely doesn’t mean being bullied by a girl who’s turning the whole school against her and failing math class. 

Evie needs to fix her life before anyone finds out she’s struggling. When she uses her cryptozoologist skills to figure out the real reason her bully decided to target her, Evie realizes that she holds the key to fixing everything. She just needs proof. But how far is Evie willing to go to reveal the truth?​

This tender and imaginative middle grade novel combines a fast plot and reluctant reader appeal with explorations of perfectionism, people-pleasing, and bullying. 

Now here’s Leah! 

My second middle grade novel—A FIELD GUIDE TO BROKEN PROMISES (Bloomsbury)—published last week, on May 6, 2025. You can pick up a copy today at a bookstore near you (and I hope you do!). This was almost exactly a year after my debut novel, THE THINGS WE MISS, published on May 7, 2024. In some ways, the experiences of getting each book ready for publication were very similar: they both went through the same developmental and production steps, the same series of cover sketches with the same artist, the same lengthy back and forths about titles. But in some key ways, publishing FIELD GUIDE was both logistically and emotionally a whole different ballgame. 

Logistically, I had a deadline before I even started drafting the book. Bloomsbury had purchased THE THINGS WE MISS in a two-book deal, with a then-unnamed second book to publish a year after my debut. I owed my editor a first draft of that second book in Fall 2023, before THE THINGS WE MISSED even came out. We sent FIELD GUIDE into copyedits in July 2024, so I essentially spent the months leading up to and right after the publication of my debut in revisions and line edits. Sometimes it felt like a nice distraction from the publishing comparison game, and from that empty feeling you get after pub date. But most of the time, it was really hard. 

Start to finish, writing A FIELD GUIDE TO BROKEN PROMISES took less time than THE THINGS WE MISS—which I labored over for years before submitting to editors—but boy did it somehow take a whole lot more energy. 

Here are a few things I learned: 

Your editor isn’t going to hate you. It was hard to send my editor a draft that I considered messy and unfinished. I asked for an extension on the first draft of FIELD GUIDE and delayed hitting send for as long as I could. The truth was, the last book my editor saw had been polished to a shine for submission, and I was afraid she would be shocked by the differences in quality between the two. I was convinced she would think “oh, I’ve been hoodwinked! This person can’t actually write at all.” And it turns out that I really, really care what my editor thinks of me. Hitting send was ultimately a terrifying act of faith in the collaborative editorial process. (Spoiler: it turned out fine.) 

First drafts will become final drafts, eventually. I spent a lot of time with my debut novel, THE THINGS WE MISS, during the months before and after publication… which was the same period of time when I was throwing clumsy, half-finished ideas at the wall to see what stuck for FIELD GUIDE. Interacting with both books at the same time made it extra tough to have grace for those messy early drafts—the gap between first draft and final book honestly felt insurmountable. I drafted and deleted several emails to my agent asking her what would happen if we pulled the book. Without a deadline and a contract holding my feet to the proverbial fire, I absolutely would have given up on FIELD GUIDE.

It's still amazing to me that A FIELD GUIDE TO BROKEN PROMISES somehow became a final, polished book. I can hold it in my hands as physical proof that messy first drafts will become final manuscripts, if you don’t give up on them. 

There is no perfect version of your story. My preferred drafting process is lengthy, involving many, many drafts and plenty of time away from the story to let things marinate and let the best ideas bubble to the top. Condensing that timeline to meet my deadlines was tough. I doubted my own voice constantly and doubted every choice I made, because I didn’t have the time to let those choices breath. I was constantly worried that I was making narrative mistakes and ruining my story.

But writing A FIELD GUIDE TO BROKEN PROMISES really reenforced for me that there is no platonic ideal of your book floating out there on the horizon, waiting for you to grab it. That is, there are no narrative mistakes. Any choice can be a good choice, if you commit to it. There are an infinite number of possible versions of this exact book and so many of those possible versions would have also been fantastic. I know this, because I explored several dozens of those alternative versions during my revisions! My main character in FIELD GUIDE, Evie, holds herself to extremely high standards, and has internalized the idea that anything less than perfect is a failure. In many ways, this was an idea I had to unlearn right alongside her. Mentally putting aside the idea that there is only one “perfect” version of any given story is what let me finally put down the pen.  

Of course, writing down these “lessons” as though I’ve internalized them is nonsense. I’m in the middle of another project and somehow FIELD GUIDE—the book that I thought was the messy evidence that I’m a terrible writer who will never accomplish anything every again—is now the finished book that I’m comparing my new messy first drafts too! 

There’s probably a lesson in that, too… 

LINKS:

Leahstecherbooks.com

IG: @l.stech 

AUTHOR BIO: Leah Stecher is the critically acclaimed author of The Things We Miss (Bloomsbury, May 2024) which was an ALSC Notable Children's Book and a 2024 Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year, and A Field Guide to Broken Promises (Bloomsbury, May 2025). She was born and raised in Southern California and currently lives in coastal Maine.  

Giveaway Details

Leah’s publisher is generously offering a hardback of A Field Guide to Broken Promises for a giveaway. To enter, all you need to do is be a follower of my blog (via the follower gadget, email, or bloglovin’ on the right sidebar) and leave a comment by May 24th. If I do not have your email (I can no longer get it from your Google Profile), you must leave it in the comments to enter the contest. Please be sure I have your email address.

If you mention this contest on Twitter, Facebook, or other social media sites and/or follow me on Twitter or follow Leah on her social media sites, mention this in the comments, and I'll give you an extra entry for each. You must be 13 years old or older to enter. This book giveaway is U.S. and Canada.

Marvelous Middle Grade Monday is hosted by Greg Pattridge. You can find the participating blogs on his blog.

Upcoming Interviews, Guest Posts, and Blog Hops

Wednesday, May 14th I have an agent spotlight interview with Analía Cabello and a query critique giveaway

Friday, May 16th I’m participating in the Moms Rock Giveaway Hop

Monday, May 19th I have a guest post by author Carol L. Pauer and a giveaway of her MG Rowley Peters and the Lumberjack Ghost

Wednesday, May 21st I have an agent spotlight interview with Isabel Lineberry and a query critique giveaway

Sunday, June 1st I’m participating in the Berry Good Giveaway Hop

Wednesday, June 4th I have an interview with author Aaron Starmer and a giveaway of his YA Night Swimming and my IWSG post

Monday, June 9th I have an interview with author Nancy McCabe and a giveaway of her MG Fires Burning Underground 

Wednesday, June 11th I have an agent spotlight interview with Mark O’Brien and a query critique giveaway

Monday, June 16th I’m participating in the Dad-o-Mite Giveaway Hop

Monday, June 23rd I have an interview with author Michael Spradlin and a giveaway of his MG Threat of the Spider

I hope to see you on Wednesday!