Get ready for a beautiful story of grief, love and imagination with the forthcoming novel from authors of Girls with Bright Futures. In Ten Thousand Light Years from Okay by Tracy Dobmeier and Wendy Katzman, Thea hasn’t been able to write a word since the tragic passing of her husband Sam. His death reflected the events of her debut novel and she’s been creatively paralyzed by how real-life mirrored the tragedy. Now, four years later, as she’s raising her daughter and living in her in-law’s guest house, inspiration strikes. She tells the story of a lost astronaut who returns to his family and suddenly, it starts happening again. Reality begins to reflect her story and both Thea and her mother-in-law are questioning if grief has caused her to lose her grip or if something truly magical is taking place.

The new novel hits shelves November 4, 2025, but you don’t have to wait until then to take a quick peek inside this wonderful new story. Check out the first chapter in this exclusive excerpt of Ten Thousand Light Years from Okay.

Preorder the book now: Bookshop.org | Amazon | Barnes & Noble

Chapter 1

I ran my fingers across the L’s, the M’s, and then, tentatively, the N’s as the reassuring smell of paper and ink wafted over me. My book had to be here. Though I’d spent much of the last four years wishing I never even wrote it, lately I’d been plagued by the feeling that I could no longer think of myself as a writer. I just needed a little physical proof that I had once written a book, and it had lived in bookstores, and despite everything horrible that came after, I was still a writer.

The last time I was in a bookstore—before Sam died—my book had been on the shelf, cover facing outward, and it was glorious. But now, nothing. I felt my heart slowly sink as I expanded my search to nearby shelves and still came up empty. In my mind’s eye, I saw my only published novel vaporize into the ether, taking my core identity since childhood with it.

I stole a glance at Lucy in the kids’ reading corner. She was paging through her book, dutifully counting off all the roly-poly puppies with her index finger. As I sidled over to the sales counter, the distinctive scents and sights of a room stuffed with books made me nostalgic. Bookstores had always been my natural habitat, and I’d missed them during my self-imposed exile. I hadn’t realized how much until an hour ago, when I overheard some moms at pickup talking about this new West LA indie bookshop. Instantly, I knew I had to take a detour to check it out. The grocery store and dry cleaner could wait.

“Welcome to Coral Tree Books,” the clerk greeted me warmly. “Your daughter’s adorable. Love her princess dress.”

“Thanks,” I said with a smile. That she’d pegged me as Lucy’s mom was actually the bigger compliment, as I was still feeling stung by Lucy’s first day of preschool a few months ago. Like a total noob, I’d blown out and styled my thick, curly brown hair into smooth, beachy waves and splurged on a short, spaghetti-strap, pink floral sundress and sandals. It was only as I approached a circle of moms to introduce myself that it dawned on me they were all sporting the same uniform: expensive jeans, formfitting T-shirts, and messy buns. Maybe they wouldn’t notice, I’d thought hopefully. At least until one of them looked me up and down and exclaimed, Oh, what a cute dress. You wouldn’t happen to have extra nannying hours during the school day? I could really use some help with this one. She’d pointed to the little boy balanced on her hip. I’d expected to be on the younger side of the mom spectrum, of course, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I’d be the youngest mom there by several years or that my outfit choice would suggest I was from an entirely different generation. Now I snuck a peek in the window at my reflection, turning my body a few degrees to admire my new conforming look: flared jeans, tastefully frayed; a minimally seamed white T-shirt; and a black cross-body bag. Yes, it had taken me a beat, but it appeared I’d nailed it. I turned my attention back to the clerk. “I was looking for—”

“Let me guess. The Shakespeare-scented candles you saw on Instagram?” She grinned.

“Wait, did you say ‘Shakespeare-scented’?” I squinted at her. “That can’t smell great. Pretty sure they didn’t shower much in the early 1600s.”

Her brows furrowed as she consulted a binder. “Oops, it’s not the smell of Shakespeare—I mean, gross, right? It’s Eau du Shakespeare and Company. It says here it’s a famous bookstore in Paris?”

With a nod, I told her, “I’ve been there, actually.” In another lifetime. “I’ll pass on the candle, thanks. But there is one thing . . .” I tucked an unruly lock of hair behind my ear and twirled my diamond-stud earring. The pair had been a wedding gift from Sam, and I almost never took them out. “Would you happen to have a book in stock called The Long Way Home, by T. J. Newhouse?” Thea Jane Newhouse was my maiden name, before I married Sam and became Thea Packer.

The clerk poked around on the computer. “I’m sorry, but it looks like it was published a fairly long time ago. We like to keep our stock current. You know, celebrity book club picks, that sort of thing.”

“Thanks anyway.” I shouldn’t have been surprised. Four years was basically ancient history in the indie bookstore world. And yet I still felt a lump of disappointment in my throat as I stepped toward the kids’ corner. But, writer or not, I was a mom first, and Lucy’s development as a literary citizen was more important than licking my wounds. Though I knew bribery wasn’t an ideal parenting strategy, I’d promised her ice cream after we read two books together. I’d let her pick one, and I would pick the other.

“Oh gosh, wait a second!” the clerk called out. “I think I know the book you’re talking about. Isn’t that the one where the author’s husband got hit by a car and died the same way the main character’s husband died in her book? That poor woman. I thought the book was amazing. I wonder if she’ll ever write another one.”

There was no way I’d cop to being T. J. Newhouse now. Instead, I smiled politely and kept my answer as generic as possible. “I doubt it. Would you? That sounds traum—”

“My daddy got hit by a car, too!” Lucy shouted from her miniature club chair.

And . . . it’s time to go.

My cheeks burned as I closed in on Lucy, hoping to scoop her up and get out of there before this clerk put it together that she was now speaking to “that poor woman.” Anytime someone recognized me as the author T. J. Newhouse, it hurtled me back in time to when my mere presence would give rise to stealthy, pitying glances, suffocating whispers, and gossipy rumors. It was difficult enough missing Sam without also opening the door to those toxic memories. I pulled Lucy up from her chair and wrestled the board book from her hands. Before she could open her mouth to protest, I said, “Changed my mind. It’s hot. Time for ice cream.”

***

Hand in hand, Lucy and I tumbled out the door, and I leaned against the building’s exterior to catch my breath. It had been four years, and I still missed Sam with the same intensity, wishing every day that we’d been allowed the chance to be a family.

Sam learned he was going to be a father the day he died. At the time, he was a professional tennis player surging in the rankings, and I was a debut novelist. Together, we were young newlyweds, madly in love, and busy chasing our career dreams. I was petrified he’d be upset about my birth control fail. Always diligent about taking my pills, I’d stupidly assumed missing one wouldn’t matter. But to my immense relief, when I broke the news the day he arrived home for a training stint between tournaments, his enthusiasm for becoming a dad had seemed both immediate and unqualified.

Later that afternoon at our first ultrasound, we’d heard our baby’s heartbeat, and I thought Sam might pass out from excitement. We held hands the whole way home from the appointment, debating whether we wanted to know the sex. He did. I did not. One thing we agreed on was keeping the news to ourselves for a bit longer. He needed a little time to think about how best to tell his coach and parents, all three of whom were almost as invested in his tennis career as he was. As for me, I was in no hurry to pop our happy bubble. Exhausted, I’d gone straight to our bedroom in his parents’ guesthouse, where we lived when we weren’t on the road, to take a nap. Because of the ultrasound, Sam had postponed his usual weight training session in his parents’ home gym, and he never missed a workout. As in, really truly never missed one. He kissed me on the forehead, patted my belly, told me he loved me for maybe the fiftieth time that day, and then I heard the guesthouse’s front door close.

An hour later he was dead.

Instead of lifting weights, Sam had gone for a run and was struck by a car two miles from home. When he made that fateful decision, no one was with him—not his mom, Rebecca, or his dad, William, or Rosa, the family’s longtime housekeeper, who was like a second mom to Sam—so no living soul was ever able to shed light on the question that had tortured me for years: Specifically, why did he skip weight training in favor of a run?

Rebecca had arrived home to an empty house after work at the same time Rosa returned from the grocery store, only minutes before the police knocked on the Packers’ front door to break the horrific news. William got home shortly after, entering his front door probably expecting the usual hugs and pleasing smells of dinner being prepared. Instead, he learned his only child was dead. Eventually, he and Rebecca somehow summoned the strength to traverse the stone path to the guesthouse. At first I thought I was being roused from a bizarre, pregnancy-induced anxiety dream. But eventually their words merged with the sound of Rosa’s anguished cries, which reached us all the way from the main house, and I’d known this was real. The love of my life was gone forever. All I could think was, How am I supposed to live without him?

Later, at the hospital, the doctors said Sam had died instantaneously. When I identified him in the morgue, I could only pray that had been so. The image of my beautiful husband’s battered body would be forever seared into my brain.

At the time, I thought things couldn’t get worse, until I fell headlong into a different kind of hell. Because, as the bookstore clerk had just correctly recalled, mere weeks before Sam died, I had published my debut novel—a novel in which the protagonist’s husband was killed by a car while out for a run.

There was never any question that the driver who killed Sam was a forty-five-year-old woman who’d suffered a massive seizure behind the wheel. But the salacious news of the rising tennis star’s death paralleling a plotline in his wife’s book sent conspiracy nutcases into an online frenzy. For several horrible weeks, it felt like everyone in the world had a theory. Only the most generous attributed Sam’s death to the worst luck on earth, with the rest blaming me in some form or fashion. While I knew the accusations were ludicrous, I couldn’t help wishing I had never tempted fate by putting to paper the words that seemed to anticipate Sam’s death. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have known better. After all, it wasn’t the first time something I’d written had come true. Obviously I hadn’t killed him, but what if my words somehow had?

“Mommy, you said we could get ice cream.” Lucy hung on my arm, attempting to peel me off the wall. “Can we go now?”

As I always did in these dark moments, I reminded myself to breathe and then gave thanks to the powers that be for this miracle child. She was my reason for existing, and my most powerful tie to Sam. I loved her more than words could say, and I was someone who used to be good with words. I wanted her to be enough, I wanted being her mom to be enough, but I couldn’t help feeling like I wasn’t whole. Sam was dead, and never coming back. Did I really have to bury my writing career, too?

I threw one last glance over my shoulder, and my gaze flitted across the vibrant window display. Suddenly, it was as though my insides were being rearranged by the mental snapshot before me. A snapshot of all those compelling stories begging to be devoured by the next lucky reader. For my entire life, all I’d ever wanted to do was write. To create. To tell stories that might mean something to the people who read them.

“Mommeeee, ice cream! You promised!” Lucy tugged on the neck of her baby-blue Cinderella dress.

A bone-deep yearning washed over me as awareness set in: I didn’t merely want to write again—I needed to write again.

There had to be a way to do it without dredging up the painful past for our family, or worse: potentially triggering another avalanche of unintended consequences. I’d been shaken to my core by the unsettling parallels between my book and Sam’s death, but I never intended to set aside my career forever. I always told myself it was an extended pause. Just until I could get my head around what happened. Until I could imagine writing another book without fear.

But if the definition of a writer was a person who writes, then the definition of a person who dreamed of writing but never did was . . . What? A dreamer? How would I look Lucy in the eye as she grew older and, with a straight face, tell her to shoot for the moon when all I could do was shoot myself in the foot?

In the light of day, it felt like a riddle I should be able to solve. I was still young. Time was on my side. I was a competent woman who’d learned to balance single motherhood and a job. I’d been shattered by trauma more than once and still managed to glue myself back together and carry on. There was no hurry. I could find a way. One step at a time. One day at a time.

Like a Disney movie that masterfully managed to meet its varied audience members where they were, I summoned my most affirming nod and declared, “All right. Let’s do this.”

“Yay for rainbow sprinkles!” Lucy excitedly reached for my hand, clearly operating on the preschool wavelength.

Yay for reclaiming my writing career, and hopefully my sense of self, I thought, operating on the adult wavelength. We set off down the street, our arms swinging. Though the messages we’d each internalized were different, the feeling created was the same: hope.