Just last week, I typed the final words I’ve been working toward for years: The Pace of Nature is finished. The last round of edits is done, and the manuscript is now officially out in the world.

I’ve started submitting to agents. I’m giving the traditional route six months. I’m giving the traditional publishing route one more shot. I’ve worked hard for this, I’m a professional writer with a degree in writing, and it’s always been my dream to be traditionally published. To see my book on shelves. To hold it in my hands and know I earned my place there.

But I also want to be honest: if the traditional path doesn’t land where it needs to, I’m prepared to self-publish, and to do it with intention, not as a last resort.

That means I’m currently deep-diving into what it takes to publish a book independently the right way:

• Building a target audience
• Growing an email list
• Preparing a book launch strategy
• Researching book marketing and PR
• Identifying who I want to work with when it’s time for a campaign

If I self-publish, it will be professional, strategic, and fully backed by a marketing plan, not a “throw it online and hope” situation.

Who This Book Is For

The Pace of Nature will resonate with people who know what it means to survive something, and still be learning how to live afterward.

It will appeal to:

• Survivors of reform and boarding schools
• Individuals who have experienced trauma and are seeking a story of healing and resilience
• Mothers struggling to connect with their teens
• Teens who feel misunderstood or disconnected from their parents
• Parents raising children with disabilities
• Young people with learning challenges who need encouragement and representation
• Readers drawn to stories of emotional endurance, redemption, and self-discovery

Help Me Build This Community

As I move into this next phase, I’m starting to build my email list. This will be the main space where I share monthly updates, behind-the-scenes insights, early release news, and eventually, launch details.

If you’d like to follow along and be part of this from the beginning, send your email to:

BrittDiGiacomo@gmail.com

I’d love to have you along for the journey.

Below is the pitch I’m currently sending to agents and editors. If the story speaks to you, keep reading. There’s so much more coming. Thanks for the support!!

The Pace of Nature

At seven, Lilly thought the hardest thing she’d ever have to overcome was the accident and her brain injury. Little did she know that at sixteen she would face an even greater challenge: the daily humiliations, forced confessions, and psychological games at Forge Academy, a “therapeutic” boarding school that pulls parents into its system just as tightly as it controls their children.

At home, Lilly’s life spirals between shame and self-punishment. Haunted by her mother’s constant reminders of the accident, she lashes out at classmates, breaks things in anger, and ends up in the hospital after one of her worst episodes. Her body heals, but her self-worth doesn’t.

Lilly is desperate to change, to become someone her family could believe in again. But Forge thrives on punishment disguised as progress. Classes are canceled for group shaming. Students stand for hours in the Arena of Shame. Meals are withheld. Every breath is a test of obedience.

Burdened by the learning difficulties that have always made her feel behind, Lilly fights to stay afloat in a place designed to break her. Then she meets Meisha, a gifted pianist whose talent and quiet confidence awaken something in her, a reminder that beauty can exist even in captivity. Shauna, her sharp-witted roommate, becomes both a lifeline and a mirror, showing Lilly what strength looks like under constant control. And Nora, the rule follower who betrays her in the worst way, teaches her how fragile trust can be.

But just as Lilly begins to rebuild her sense of self, she’s forced to choose between protecting her progress and protecting a friend. What follows is a reckoning with loyalty and the quiet courage it takes to save yourself without abandoning the people who shaped you.

The Pace of Nature is a tense, emotionally charged story about resilience, first love, and the brutal systems that call themselves your savior. Inspired by true events from my life as a former student of Hyde School, a boarding school that claimed to help troubled teens but is now facing a lawsuit for emotional and physical abuse, this story was born from what I witnessed and survived.