A piece of news that I'm excited about, personally and professionally: I'll be spending the next year writing a book on beauty, to be published by Simon & Schuster in 2015. Writing a book has been a longtime goal of mine, and writing this book—a comprehensive "where are we now?" survey of women (and men!) and beauty culture today, and the ways we use appearance to navigate the world—is a challenge I'm eager to take on.

If you're reading this blog, you have my gratitude. Without the comments, feedback, and idea exchanges that have come my way through The Beheld, I wouldn't have had the faith that there was an audience for a book. Because readers have been so gracious in sharing their own stories with me—in comments, e-mails, and various social media outlets—I've learned so much about one of the major juxtapositions of appearance: Our experience of it is both individual and collective. Thank you, thank you. And speaking of thank-yous: Without my fantastic agent, Brandi Bowles of Foundry Media, this wouldn't have happened. And without my editor-to-be, Molly Lindley, seeing promise in this project, I wouldn't be nearly as excited about it as I am.

What this means for The Beheld: I'm not yet sure. I'll be keeping it going, that much I know, but I'm not sure about frequency or format. Some of the ideas in the book will connect with what I write about here, but most of it will be totally new material, which means that my energy will need to be directed toward book-writing. But I know I'll have plenty to say that won't be book-related, and lucky me, I have a space to say it in! So the next couple of months, you may see me playing around in this space to figure out what works to keep the blog a place of joy for me (and hopefully you too) while making progress on the book.

And soon enough, I'll be using this space to solicit readers' thoughts about specific book-related topics, so stay tuned!