I’m on Substack Now!

Do I really need ANOTHER social media platform to keep track of? I suppose I do…

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Writing has become an extremely important aspect of my creative self. As a dance and theater kid all my life (and into my adult career), I thrive most when I can express myself in different ways. I’ve always enjoyed writing, but in the last ten years, I’ve been developing a bit of a niche for myself.

What is that niche? Call it midlife musings of a perimenopausal teacher, artist and flipper. Or something like that. I’m all about menopausal literacy, shining our light as an adult, and daring to live out loud. When I retire from teaching in two years, I refuse to go quietly into the night. With any luck, my second career as a non-fiction writer will start to blossom.

Enter the blogosphere

I’ve now been formally blogging for over five years. In July 2020, when we were in pandemic shutdown, I decided to purchase staceytirro.com and start organizing all my writings here. It has been a beautiful, fulfilling experience, being able to share out many of the thoughts swirling around my head.

I doubled down on the writing commitment when I self-published two books within six months of each other. How Do We Feel Right Now? in April 2021 and What Ronnie Sue Knew in September 2021. Both were in response to how I was feeling during instances of deep trauma, both in my community and personally. They are available on Amazon. Right now. Go buy a copy if you haven’t already.

After publishing those books, I continued writing here about teaching, family life and more recently about my adult gymnastics obsession, all while managing in perimenopause. Now, in 2025, I have a complete and edited manuscript for my new book, Geriatric Gymnastics: Flipping, Recovery and Defining Life on Your Terms. It’s an exciting time, for sure!

Enter Substack

Being that I love existing in the writing space, and I’m working on trying to get this next book published in a more traditional way, I figured it couldn’t hurt to step into the Stacking space. Like all my other social media stuff, it is part of building my platform as a writer.

As of this post, I have three Substack subscribers. One is my husband. (Thanks, Chris!) Two are my former students. I have a long way to go to collect a following, but at least it’s there. You’ve got to start somewhere!

That’s where you can help. If you’re a Stacker (is that what they’re called??), look me up @staceytirro and subscribe. It’s free and will stay that way for a while. I’m still figuring out just how useful it is.

Here's a preview of my next Substack post called Geriatric Gymnastics: From Edit to Query

Since July 1, I’ve been in “go mode” assembling my new book, Geriatric Gymnastics: Flipping, Recovery and Defining Life on Your Terms. It’s been inspiring, revelatory, and a snapshot of what I want to do in two years when I retire from teaching and start my second act career.

Since summer ended, the past month has been a whirlwind of activity.

The developmental edit

On September 2, I sent my then-completed draft to my developmental editor, Shaundale Rénā. We worked together on my last book, What Ronnie Sue Knew (available on Amazon) and I learned so much about technical writing and story flow from her.

On September 23, we had our Zoom conference call and then she enthusiastically returned the first round of edits to me. She also encouraged me to seek beta readers to get new eyes on the material for feedback. I put out a formal call on my website to assemble the GG beta reading team. More about that in a moment.

Over the next few days, I worked through the new edits, made the necessary adjustments, and sent my revisions back to Shaundale on September 28.

On October 1, Shaundale returned the final edit. Now, things were getting really real.

When I published my other books in 2021, I did it myself through KDP Amazon. I wanted to get it done quickly, and going the query-to-agent route would take too damn long. For Geriatric Gymnastics, I realized that it was a vehicle that needed a greater reach. I could really help people with this book. If Shaundale was screaming how much it helped her personally, and she’s edited countless books, maybe I needed to slow my roll and play the long game.

Once I finished the final edit, it was time to get serious. I needed to start researching literary agencies for representation, since the big publishers don’t want to hear from a new author without proper vetting.

You can read the rest of the article on my Substack page.

And if you haven’t subscribed to this blog, you can do so below!