Jen Larsen's Blog, page 5

the care and feeding of your author

LOOK EVERYONE IT IS MY BOOK

Perhaps you love an author. Physically. Or maybe just in your heart because love and friendship or maybe really truly intellectually because you have a real connection, man. Or maybe because you’re blood-contractually obligated to, in a familial way. Maybe you’ve never met but you admire from afar, which is also totes legit. (Katherine Dunn won’t you call me?)

However you love an author, in your pants or in your heart, it is important to express that love. Chocolates and cheese and Mars rovers are acceptable tokens of affection. But if you really, really want to be beloved, if you want your author to continue to be happy in this world and that whole writing career to take off, you’ll want to support their authoring gig.

It is a very easy thing to do, and I heard from a friend that it is hugely, incredibly appreciated and probably she will come over all misty EVERY SINGLE TIME because she is a sentimental sap at least that’s what I have heard.

How do I support my beloved author, you ask? Here are some excellent ways.

Buy the book(s). I know, right? But seriously, book sales are love. However you buy it, wherever you buy it, even if you don’t read it (though you should probably read it if only to make small but encouraging talk about it with your friend if they look at you all soft and vulnerable and eager-eyed), buy the book. I am told by Mz Wimmer that I should actually be encouraging you to buy three copies (minimum) and I have to admit, she is very smart so maybe you should listen to her! Also those are totally extra bonus points right there.

Tell your friends. Tell all of your friends! Here is a sample script: “Listen to me I want to tell you about a book you must read. You must go buy it now. You must go read it. READ IT OR I WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY okay not really, darling, don’t cry, I am so sorry, I would never hurt a single hair on your precious and beautiful family’s collective and individual heads. I am just excitable. But please consider reading it?”

Ask for it! Casually wander into libraries and bookstores and enquire as to whether your beloved author’s book is stocked, and if not, why? This is an outrage! I am writing a strongly worded letter that I will distribute to various media outlets! YOU WILL RUE THE DAY. Etc. Perhaps leave off that last part, instead swapping it out for something like, “would you consider ordering it? It’s a great book.”

Write reviews. Amazon rankings don’t mean much in the grand scheme of things, but what they CAN do is build buzz and interest. Write a review of your friend’s book—an honest one, obviously. Five stars are always appreciated, I mean obviously, but only give as many stars as you feel in your loins for the book. Be honest and thoughtful! Readers tend to read books that other readers have read first. It’s an ouroboros/lemming thing that I’m not entirely clear about, but I am told it is both important and true. I am nothing if not a provider of true facts.

Recommend the book to others on your blog and on various social medias. Yell about the book online! Link to its sales pages. Talk about how rad it is on facebook and twitter and that tumblr thing you kids are always going on about with your transistor radios and your Velcro cigarettes and the business. Write a blog post about it and then twitter about your blog post! Awesome all the way down!

Talking about a book online is one of the coolest ways to spread the word about your friend the author and it apparently is fairly effective (and always really appreciated). PLUS when your author friend gets her $4.75 royalty check, tacos are on her!

Tell the author she is the prettiest in the world. Your author is likely nervous about her book, and hoping people will like it, and worrying that people will hate it, and wondering if maybe she made a mistake, writing a book? Because this is a lot of anguish, this whole sitting around and thinking about people with their faces buried in your pages, helpless and unable to slap the book out of peoples’ hands. A kind word and maybe a big hunk of Easter candy goes a long way.

And that’s how to support your author, both emotionally and in her exciting and terrifying career as an author that she really hopes doesn’t crash and burn before it’s even barely lurched out of the gate.

wanting to be beyonce

“Fragile” is a good way to describe this feeling. “Fragile,” and “vulnerable” and “a little skittish,” because my book is in the world for real now. It is out there and physical and a thing to pick up and touch and look at, and people are reading it—some people, anyway. Which means they’re forming opinions, and I have no control over it. I have no control over what anyone thinks of my book, or of the narrator or of the author or anything at all.

But then, when have I ever had control over that? No one has control over that—Beyonce’s publicist can try to pull as many photos of her off the internet as she likes, but we have still all formed our opinions (which go something like, “Even the most utterly stunning human on earth sometimes makes funny faces! Well, that is comforting. Man, she’s gorgeous. Ugh. Shut up, Beyonce. No wait, let me kiss you on your perfect face.”).

Basically, I want to be Beyonce. Basically, it is a feeling of deep unfairness that I am not Beyonce, and a sadness I will cradle in my arms and take to my grave. And as my flesh dissolves and my bones rattle down into dust I will still never be Beyonce, even after I merge with the Infinite, because Beyonce is even awesomer than the Infinite.

It’s complicated, these feelings. It’s complicated, writing a book. It’s rad, of course. I’m thrilled of course. I will always add those caveats and asides—I will always rush to assure you that I’m grateful for this opportunity and proud of this accomplishment and go me, because I’m worried about appearing ungrateful (because that’s just another vulnerability I expose, if you think I’m whining, if you want me to shut up about my diamond shoes being too tight.). I am glad and I am scared and there is so much I regret about it. About admitting my feelings. About being ridiculous. About being ridiculous and vulnerable about being ridiculous and vulnerable. Ridiculousness all the way down, really. Vicious cycle. You know.

I don’t deal well with ambiguity. This feels like limbo. I am holding my breath, and waiting. The book is out there and there’s this rushing sound in my ears as I sit and hope that people like it (me) and hope I didn’t make a mistake, and hope it’s not going to hurt when you say it’s not you, it’s me (knowing it will hurt more than I expect, because this is pure ego and pure id and pure, undiluted, fairly stupid, what-was-I-thinking vulnerability). Why did I do this?

And it’s a large question that burrows down deep and becomes, Why did I do anything? Why did I say that, do that, think that, text that, hope that, wonder if. Why can’t I just stop? Insidious. Very un-Beyonce like. She is not on a beach in Ibiza with Jay-Z fretting about dumb things she might have said. She doesn’t care. She is Beyonce, bitches.

I think it’s universal, this fear and trembling and hand-wringing. I think I am not special. I remember that, and I know it; and yet, this is harder than I expected it to be. It is thrilling and terrifying and it’s awful, because I am stupidly fragile, and I’m ridiculously vulnerable, and these are uncomfortable feelings that I am trying to purge. I am trying to tuck in all my loose parts and frayed edges and sparking nerves (as you can tell by this post here, clearly that is working super well) and I am trying to breathe in my nose and out my mouth (or is it supposed to be the other way around?). I am trying to tie up all the loose ends that leave me anxious and open and exposed. I am trying to confess and purge here. I am trying to be enough, enough and complete and whole and satisfied. I am trying not to eat a cake. I am trying not to lose my shit.

I will be fine—it’s late-night anxiety, it’s a long week, it’s feeling tired and feeling like a fool. It’s wanting to succeed. It’s wanting to not fail. It’s wanting to not hurt. It’s wanting to be Beyonce.

almost as big or as big or bigger than the next big thing

The lovely and talented Caroline Grant, one of the co-editors of the anthology THE CASSOULET SAVED OUR MARRIAGE: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat (which I contributed to, yay!) asked me to participate in the Next Big Thing, a blog meme for writers. I have never done a meme before! She persuaded me to participate by telling me that she had chosen me because I am almost as awesome as unicorns and donuts. I’m paraphrasing slightly.

What is the title of your book?

STRANGER HERE: How Weight Loss Surgery Transformed My Body and Messed with My Head

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Stranger Here is about the fantasy of weight loss, the difficulty of body image issues, and about trying to figure out who you are when you have nothing left to blame–you know, like being fat–for your unhappiness.

What genre does your book fall under?

The little note on the back says, “memoir” and “personal growth.”

Where did the idea come from for the book?

In 2007, just a few months after getting weight loss surgery, I was approached by an editor from Conde Nast. She had been reading the little blog about the surgery I had been keeping on a Blogger site. She told me my story was fascinating and my voice was compelling, and would I be their featured blogger on a new body/health/wellness website they were creating, called Elastic Waist?

I jumped at the chance, because who doesn’t want to say they write for Conde Nast? For about two years I wrote a blog about my weight loss experiences after weight loss surgery.

I’ve been writing fiction all my life, and never considered writing a memoir—I’m not old and wise enough to think that my life story is important. But in the process of writing that blog, I met and spoke with a huge number of people, some who couldn’t be considered fat in any sense of the word and some who would never consider weight loss surgery, but who all still found that my struggles with self-acceptance, re-learning who I was outside of my identity as a fat girl, were resonating with them. Self-acceptance wasn’t just the purview of overweight people—almost everyone fights with it, and almost everyone despairs of ever winning.

That was a revolutionary idea for me.

So I thought it was important to write a story about weight loss that wasn’t a traditional weight-loss memoir, the kind with a happy ending at goal weight and a fade to black. I wanted to talk about self-esteem and body image and life choices and the idea that the fairy tale of losing weight—that you will become perfect, that your life will become magically perfect when you are skinny and happy—is a lie. And that it’s okay to not be perfect, too.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript?

It took me more than a year after the site ended to work up the courage to write a proposal and find a pair of wonderful agents. When the book didn’t sell on proposal—editors were worried that the market was oversaturated with weight loss memoirs—I decided to sit down and actually write the book, to show editors that I could write this story and make it compelling, show that it was important and necessary.

That process took almost two years and it was excruciating—it is hard to be honest about your major flaws and faults, and I was writing about a lot of really dark thoughts and difficult times. I didn’t want to rehash the blog I wrote for two years—I was starting completely from scratch.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

The blog readers who told me my story was important to them.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

Cheryl Pientka of Grinberg Literary Management represents me, and the book is being published in March by Seal Press, an imprint of Perseus Books.

What other works would you compare this book to within your genre?

I admire and love Wendy McClure‘s I’M NOT THE NEW ME, Jennette Fulda‘s HALF-ASSED, Shauna Reid‘s AMAZING ADVENTURES OF DIET GIRL, Frances Kuffel‘s PASSING FOR THIN, and Valerie Frankel‘s THIN IS THE NEW HAPPY.

What actors would you choose to play the part of your characters in a movie rendition?

WELL Jennifer Lawrence could totally pull off my gravitas. And boobs. The love interests should be played by Gerard Butler and that guy who plays Khal Drogo. My friends could be played by Emma Watson, Natalie Portman, Emma Stone and Mila Kunis.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

It takes place in San Francisco; it’s got adventure and sex and sadness and happiness and friendship and comedy. I am told it is “compelling” and “arresting,” which sounds slightly dangerous to me.

Tag five writers who you think fit the phrase “The Next Big Thing.”

I think they’re already currently amazing things, but these are some of my favorite authors, new and previously published and going to be publishing something soon.

Joshua Mohr, whose amazing book FIGHT SONG is coming out soon!

Susan Steinberg, who recently published a gorgeous collection of stories, SPECTACLE.

Jan Richman, whose beautiful book is out now.

Brooke Warner, who can get you published–check out

KM Soehnlein, brilliant author of Robin and Ruby, The World of Normal Boys and You Can Say You Knew Me When. (And rumor has it that he’s working on a new novel now!)

confused and scared and trying really hard all the time

Rod’s in the kitchen humming and cooking something and I’m sitting in a pile of grumpiness and on the couch, decidedly not humming and wishing I could go to bed except that if I don’t eat something I will probably die of it.

It’s one of those days where my heart feels funny—kind of weightless and suspended and fluttery, in an uncomfortable way. When everything feels difficult and everything is too complex to tackle. No, I couldn’t take out the recycling. It was too far away and can’t you see I’m suffering here? Or not suffering. No, I’m not suffering. I’m just feeling non-specifically anxious and I want it to stop and it won’t and that’s just not cool. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m trying to be okay, and I don’t know how to do that either.

Today was actually a reasonable, just-fine day. I worked a truly epic amount, and even accomplished the things I set out to do. I might even make my big deadline tomorrow, and wouldn’t that be some kind of miracle on 34th street shit right there?

I want—I don’t know what I want. To make my deadlines. To not be worried about money right now. To not be worried about this puppy in the house, because puppies are made from teeth and fur and worry and dumb. I want the house to be clean, and the house to be fully decorated, and the house to not be so goddamn cold, which makes me think there is, or is going to be, some kind of terrifyingly expensive repair springing out of the darkness and scything its claws through my vulnerable underbelly. I want to not screw up this party I’m throwing on Saturday. I want people to show up. I’m afraid no one will show up. I want to stop being sore and run-down and tired because how long does it take to heal from an abdominoplasty, for the love of god?

I want to stop being scared all the time and worried all the time and tired all the time and sure everything is going to go wrong all the time. I want to have enough sense of self preservation to not admit that in public, but there is something—not helpful. Not satisfying. Not soothing. Something about saying it that changes it, just the tiniest bit. That drags it out of the darkness so that I can look at it straight on, see the flaws and the cracks and the reasons to disbelieve and the reasons to laugh, shake it off, knock it all away.

perspective

For the longest time one of the crowning achievements of my life was that I had won the Nimrod International Journal’s Katherine Anne Porter Prize for Short Fiction. I didn’t talk about it much, because it is hard to say all those words in a row in the correct order without stammering or sounding like you are making new things up that the world has never before seen. But they liked my story, and gave me a certificate and a trip to Tulsa to read it in front of a room full of people (where an old man stood up and yelled at me for not reading loudly enough, securing for all time my genuine fondness for and comfort with public speaking) and I got some money and I got to meet and hang out with the amazing Delia Sherman and Ellen Kushner and that was pretty much a highlight of my life and the whole thing was really pretty nice.

So I’ve carried that around as a Good Thing inside me, and with it came the idea that I had written a good story and I could rest on my laurels. I could sleep on my laurels like the dead, because it was so totally awesome a story, because why else with the badly named award and the visit to Tulsa, right? I am a writer, and I might even be some kind of unrecognized genius! And it was cool if I didn’t work to get recognized, because that was plenty of recognition for me! Also I’m lazy. Really regrettably so.

You will not be surprised, at this point of the story, to learn that I found this award-winning short piece (languishing among my drafts in a folder I had even forgotten existed since it’s been a really remarkable amount of time that I’ve even tried to write a short story), and I read it with great excitement, waiting for the secret self-admiration to come washing over me, and I realized that it is kind of lame.

Oh, sad trombone.

My first inclination was to collapse in embarrassed despair and wail about my whole life being a lie, as you do. And that was an impulse that stuck with me for quite awhile. But perspective is a beautiful thing, and it gives you perspective on perspective—on the possibility of change over time, and the chance for growth, and the probability, even, that this story was good then and maybe I’m a different writer now. Maybe even a better writer. Certainly an older writer. Definitely a writer who feels like she understands things more clearly, even when she will always feel like she’s fighting forward through the muck of inevitable brainfog to express as crystally-clear and full of clarity the things she knows are true. Even when she knows she will always fall short.

happy birthday to Rod

This is a blanket fort made from a very expensive couch.

Yesterday was the birthday of my oldest friend in the world. That’s right, I don’t know anyone older. He was here when the sun sparked into life, and he greeted the dinosaurs as they hauled themselves out of the swamps and lay heaving on the sun-baked mud of the shores of the primordial sea. He welcomed the development of civilization with great enthusiasm, because with the advent of advanced and advancing culture, he knew, comic books and bad television shows wouldn’t be far behind.

He cried a single crystalline tear when Twinkies were invented, and inside the creamy sugar filling of every single spongy cake there was a little piece of his heart, because the first Twinkie factory was one of his horcruxes. (When he witnessed the demise of Hostess and everything it meant to the world, he felt the first shifting of the sands of mortality beneath his weird-smelling feet.)

When video games were invented, he knew he was witnessing a singular transformation in the brain development of human kind, but he wasn’t there to see it because he was too busy sucking at Duck Hunt and Mario Bros. Later he would go on to suck at Metroid, Contra, most fighting games, and a wide selection of first-person shooters, but he kept on playing on, because that is the kind of fortitude he possesses. Fortitude or laziness—only his biographers will be able to make that final call for us, the ones left behind when he finally expires of extreme age and various heart-related issues that can occur when you replace the blood that pumps through your veins with Twinkie insides and refuse to engage in physical activity because it is hard and your cartoons are on.

When his roommate is out of town, he builds blanket forts, and no matter where his roommate is he never wipes down the kitchen counters or sweeps the floors. He spends a lot of time “relaxing” because life is very difficult and I think we can all agree that relaxing is a strange but possibly legitimate full-time hobby to have, even when it drives every one around him slightly mad.

Rod will be remembered but not fondly for his sophisticated whining-based alarm system that made attackers not know if they wanted to punch him in the face or escape immediately, and I think that will be his legacy when he finally passes from this mortal plane as he is likely to do soon because of his advanced age and his inability to regulate the setting off of his personal alarm system that many major governments are considering adapting for their super-secret, incredibly deadly military programs.

So let’s raise a glass to Rod, our old and lumpy friend who tries very hard except not really, who is beloved to those who have a lot of patience, whose head is enormous and whose heart is too.

Happy birthday, dude. Don’t die in my basement.

introversion

Four nights in a row of social activity and I am broken. I mean, I’m happy, and I love my beautiful and talented friends who have excellent personalities and are delightful. My life is, in general, an awesome thing filled with awesome and topped with awesomesauce.

But this morning I am also a tiny little shell-shocked smudge on the couch, sort of staring at things on internet without really processing them and getting vaguely annoyed by articles that are slide shows that shouldn’t be slideshows you have to keep CLICKING through because they should JUST BE ARTICLES.

I’m so tired. Everything is sore in my everywhere. And that includes my delicate spirit and my sensitive soul, which is regarding the idea of going out again tonight with just the tiniest bit of dread. Every time I doubt that I’m actually really and truly an introvert because I can turn on the bright halogen spotlights and be Personality Plus! (or Minus, depending on your feelings about my personality) at a social event, when I come home and curl up tight in a tiny little ball and cover my head with a pillow and two dogs and shake for awhile in a dark room, I am reminded that maybe I do have a little introvert in me.

And then I am utterly useless the next day. There is so, so, so much I have to do, and somewhere deep inside me I am panicking in a high-pitched keen, but I am inescapably an inert lump, a pudding, a sugar-glazed zombie who is very cross with the person who turned up the gravity because it’s getting really hard to get out of bed and walk around in here, buddy. And I can’t make myself stand up and take a shower or put on pants and if I could crawl from the bed to the couch (or better yet, summon some manly young meaty thing to carry me gently and tuck me in and press a warm soft kiss on my forehead and caress my cheek and whisper, “you are so lovely” and then quietly, politely back out of the darkened room and leave me the fuck alone while I nap and a Doctor Who I’ve seen a thousand times plays in the background) I would.

Four days of makeup and dresses and shoes with heels higher than anyone with my (lack of) grace should not be attempting to wear in public and trying to be charming and staying upright and talking and being talked to. It’s like I’m trying to kill myself. At least I will leave behind a nicely-made-up corpse in good shoes. Bury me in my silk kimono in a plot way out in the back and behind a tree or under a rock or in a basement or shoot me out into space where they’ll never find me. And take a short but meaningful vow of silence in my memory.

Crombomb and the Lunatic

I’m typing this achingly slowly, just my right hand, because there is a little dog on my lap with his nose wedged into the crook of my left elbow. Every once in awhile he sighs his happy sigh and nuzzles his face in. He has a large vocabulary of sighs, most of them tragic, and so the happy sigh I am particularly susceptible to, and the little nuzzle just about destroys me. But if you’re a friend of mine on Facebook, you are already fully aware of how crazy I am about my little Crombomb, and how thoroughly I have embraced being That Crazy Dog Person.

He is a pain in the butt but he is also My Little Shining Piece of Light Broken Off the Sun and etc. and yes, the fastest way to my heart is to tell me how ridiculously adorable my little dog is and how awesome his ears are and how smart he is and how he should be elected President of All Dogs in the Universe and get a small crown. If you like my dog, I like you. I have always been suspicious of people who don’t smile at dogs; if you don’t smile at my dog, I know you are the reason evil exists.

My roommate has always wanted a dog. When he moved in, he said, “Can I get a dog too?” and I said “Ha ha ha, you shut up and just pay your rent, clown nozzle.” But for some reason I caved. Okay, for a Crom reason. I hate leaving Crom alone in the house when I’m gone for hours. And I guess I could let Rod fulfill his dream or whatever. So we hit up an adoption event, “just to look.” And we came home with a Lunatic.

She was originally named Courtney, which is a lovely name I’m sure but the wrong name entirely, and I’m not sure I can trust the people at the shelter any more, with that kind of willy-nilly bad judgment going on. I saw Rod’s face light up when he saw her—she looks like a lab mix, with the long nose and floppy ears, and he’s always wanted a lab mix. A dog-looking dog, if you know what I mean. My heart screamed FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE NO, because I’ve lived with labs. I know labs. Labs—they are the coked-up meth heads of the dog world.

They said, “She’s ten months old!” and I ran away and hid. But she was chill. She was so sweet and so friendly. She was so deeply, deeply invested in loving us with all the love she had in her heart. She seemed to really like Crommy, and Crom seemed indifferent in a positive sort of way. So Rod went and filled out the adoption papers and we were calling her Bella for awhile, but then Rod realized that people would find out he was a Twilight fan so we cast around for other ideas.

“Luna!” he screamed up the stairs later that night.

“What?” I screamed back, because we are classy.

“Her name is Luna!” he shouted. And I agreed that it was.

She is ridiculously smart. We taught her how to go through the dog door by holding out a treat to come get. Five minutes later she was jumping back and forth through the door, because clearly that was the path to ALL THE TREATS. (Crom, in the meantime, hates the dog door because it gets in his face and he is a precious princess who doesn’t approve of being touched.)

She is hilarious, eager to please, happy, snuggly, sweet, and a bundle of manic energy that makes me want to lock myself in the bathroom after a few hours of it. She and Crom spend most of their time stealing toys from one another and taking turns playing Chase Me, Chase Me. This morning they spent an hour wrestling on and around me and I threw them out of the house—by which I mean paid nice people to take them hiking for three hours because white people problems. They ran in circles for three hours and I got lots of work done. They came home and jumped on the couch and started wrestling in my lap. It is way less fun than you imagine.

Now they’re both snoring, Luna with her face tucked into the crook of my knee and her arm around her stuffed animal, Crommy with his nose in my elbow, and I am as exhausted as they finally are and I think we are all pretty happy.

shinysparklytwinklehappyshimmerspangleglitter time

The outside of my house is now so brightly lit that you can see it from space. It’s never-stopping, never-slowing-down raining and cold and filled with sorrow out in the world, but I still keep padding out in my bare feet to look at the wreath on the door and the garlands on the railings and how the roof line is so charmingly outlined in white lights and the little Japanese maple is all wrapped up tight so that it will become a tree of light when the sun goes down.

It is the loveliest thing I have ever seen. It is temporary. We’ve just got a month to enjoy—maybe two, since I tend to feel that most of January is kind of a December hangover, and you don’t change out of your clothes from the night before when you pass out on the couch, right? And it was money well-spent because I’d be typing this with a broken back in a hospital bed if I had tried to put the lights up myself, and I’d be discharged and come home to a pile of ash and melted electronics that was all the electrical fire had left behind.

Also I’m lazy. Let’s not forget that.

My mom used to light up the porch of the house in Pennsylvania. I think my grandmother had a wreath on the brownstone, maybe a string of lights around the door when they moved to the split-level ranch house in New Jersey. And I’ve never dated anyone who had big lit-up displays, or whose family had them. Sometimes I dated guys who didn’t even like to decorate the insides of their houses. No, that would be all the guys I’ve ever dated. Do you see the hardship I’ve struggled through, all these terrible, light-less years?

Because I have this craving for, this bone-shuddering, belly-trembling, knees-knocking susceptibility to things that are shiny, are bright, are sparkling and flashing and twinkly. I am a depressed person trying hard to stay in the light and etc. I am a raven with slightly less mental facility.

Sparkles—they’re therapy. They make me so happy. SO HAPPY. Every day should be sparkly. All the things should be sparkly. It is ironically a sadness for me, that I am not actually sparkly. Spray adhesive and a Martha Stewart craft kit would be a dangerous combination for me and anyone in my immediate vicinity.

And you know how the holiday season—the Christmas season, really, because the Christmas behemoth has grown so ridiculously, obnoxiously enormous it has swallowed all the other holidays and blotted out the sun (note: and that’s why we look forward to the solstice: Science!)—is shinysparklytwinklehappyshimmerspangleglitter time. It is my favorite. It is the greatest of all the obnoxious, belligerent, wide-shouldered and shouting Christian holidays that become the cultural default because America sucks. It’s obnoxious, but it is also undeniably so pretty. It is so bright, and it pushes back the darkness and that is the gift I am grateful for.

This year feels darker than usual. This year—this year I am going to continue to say happy holidays instead of Merry Christmas and celebrate Saturnalia and the solstice and the Yule instead and I’m going to decorate like a nutter and I’m going be the shiniest of them all.

At the craft store, I loaded up all the sparkly silver things into my cart. All of them. There are none left and you can’t have any of mine, sorry. In the living room last night my roommate and I spent hours and hours cutting paper snowflakes out of candy foil wrappers (it worked less well than you’d really honestly think it ought to, stupid foil wrappers). We wrapped everything in the house in lights and silver garland and feather boas (the dogs were too fast). This morning a local company came and made my house the pretty-shiny-brightest on the block and all of this, it twangs all the strings in my frantically beating tiny little raven heart. The light reaches all the dark corners of my heart. This display, it hits all the notes on my happiness kazoo.

The indoor tree should get here any day now—the big crazy sparkly silver and white one. Ornaments are starting to arrive in the mail. I’m starting to gift-shop, which always ignites so-warm sparks of real pleasure. And everything is bright and lovely, beautiful and a little crazy and exactly what I needed this year, every part of it.

fanciness!

One of the best parts of having written a book (and having written is always A CLEAR SKY FULL OF STARS times better than having to write, or actually writing) is all the exciting behind-the-scenes stuff that makes you feel FANCY.

Because really, I have always thought authors were fancy. They have fancy books that used to be just a pile of paper with a rubber band around it. But fancily, that pile of rubber-banded paper gets fancy! With fancy pages that have been fancily designed by fancy people. And authors are fancy because people read their books! They are fancy because they do interviews. They are fancy because—well, they’re fancy and that is science.

It feels very, very strange to feel fancy. I am still self-conscious about it. Who am I, to feel fancy about being an author? Who am I to think that I’m fancy enough to be an author in the first place? I type things in emails like, “my editor just sent my the final pass proofs!” or “my publicist says that I should run naked around the neighborhood with jingle bells on each buttock” and I feel like an asshole, and it’s always an effort not to backspace that shit. Because I want to share what’s going on with my life, and these are real things, and they are fancy! I can’t even tell you how long it took before I stopped deleting the email signature I added to promote my book before I sent an email, thereby entirely eradicating the entire point of having an email signature.

And secretly, obviously, I’ve been enjoying being fancy. I was totally overwhelmed the first time I ever saw my cover (as reproduced above), which I could not believe had I completely lucked out in getting, because it’s really so beautiful, and it really captures the whole spirit of the book I think (“fanciness”). I am still a little wowwy wow wow every time I see it and I might keep a copy of the image on my phone. Oh man, I should totally make it my desktop!

And then there was the first time I looked at copyedits, which were difficult and hurt my heart because Goddamnit, don’t you judge my habit of stacking thirty nine evolving and competing metaphors all on top of each other! Okay, probably you should judge that. Okay, probably you made my book better, Copyeditor. Fine. And that was thrilling. Because look at my words all being taken seriously, that is adorable! And FANCY.

Then the page proofs, where you see the font they chose and the design of the inside pages and marvel at how enormous margins suddenly make your book look exactly like a book and there’s a picture of you at the back smiling all author-like (and, dare I say it—of course I do! FANCY AS FUCK). And it’s like a Frosting Giant took you into their frosting arms and whispered into your ear, “Eat me, darling. Eat me all up.” It is exactly that exciting. And slightly terrifying. It really, really is.

I’ve been reliably informed that the proofs are clean and sparkling and shining and all finished and galleys have gone out to Major Media Outlets and now is the time when marketing kicks into high gear and I’m writing sentences in my emails like, “My publicist just got in touch about the marketing campaign! PLEASE SAVE ME WHAT WAS I THINKING?” Events are being planned (people of SLC and San Francisco, where should events be thrown?). Events! My book will be the center of an event. My book IS an event! My stomach is full of joyful terror!

Most terrifying is that things called “outreach” and “pitching” and “connecting” are happening.

And I am trying really hard to ignore the major embarrassment and discomfort associated with “reaching out” to “contacts” to say “please pay attention to me and my book. HELLO! HELLO! HELLO! OVER HERE! I AM FANCY.” I have a to-do list, and a list of people I love in my pants. You should be getting an embarrassed, bashful email soon. Because that’s totally endearing.

So that’s what I’ll be doing for all December and January, I suppose. I don’t think I actually hold a real live physical book in my hand until February, when it releases live and untethered into the world, and I am not allowed to slap it out of people’s hands and run away crying. I know I’ll be alternating between fear and happiness and vague embarrassment and more happiness and major bashfulness and a lot of silliness. And extra super-duper fanciness.