you seem pretty sad for a girl whose debut novel comes out today
notes on being perceived and the pain of putting yourself out there
When people ask me how I feel these days, my answer is never the same. But it’s always some version of, I feel fucking crazy like I left my brain in a pickle jar and forgot where I put it.1 I have not done the dishes in days (okay weeks, but I don’t want you guys to know how nasty I am!! I don’t have a dishwasher, alright! Or a working microwave). I accidentally left garlic shrimp takeout on my kitchen counter last night and my house is stuffy and putrid. I’ve been on my period for eleven days but can’t wear normal pads. I’m bracing to get botox in my vagina and I’m writing poetry about men again, which is a bad sign; I even submitted one to The Paris Review by pigeon mail and would like to publicly apologize to their poetry editor. I have been trembling inside for so long. I’ve been Googling my name thirty-five times a day. I want to be all-seeing, but that need blurs my vision.
I’m a muddy mess. I’m goddamn happy.2
My debut novel THEY ALL FALL IN LOVE AT THE END publishes today with Scribner (!!) and, if we’re being honest, it’s just another Tuesday. Of terrible news, of failing to do the dishes. For weeks, I felt calm but today I’m twitchy and anxious and disembodied. Still, I feel absurdly lucky to be given this chance. I’m so unwell and wildly ambitious that I’ll rawdog my way to rise to the fucking occasion. I’m mostly overwhelmed by the love I’m receiving. Is it really mine?
My mom has been reading a bit of my book every night. She hasn’t read any of it before. And every night, she’s been calling to tell me her favorite parts. This ritual has saved me from my worst self. Watching someone I love more than every atom in the galaxy delicately comb through the words of this weird thing I made. That she witnessed, for years, the making of.
I found it very, very funny. There are a lot of profound insights in the book that feel beyond the character’s years. Of course I’m very proud of you. I’ve been on this whole journey and it took forever and ever and ever. You didn’t want me to read it. But I’m glad I waited to, because it was like opening a present.
I’ve had to be braver than I’ve ever wanted to be for this process. I had to become someone else. I shoved my book into the hands of Maureen Corrigan and Ron Charles, quipping how strange it is to hand them this story I wrote mostly in my underwear. I made PREORDER MY NOVEL OR DIE! the wallpaper on my phone and accidentally flashed it at a bookseller from Lost City Books at a Halloween party who then asked me if I wanted to launch my novel at their bookstore. I said, yes, yes, yes, even though I was terrified no one would turn up.
I pushed for the kind of book cover that should be walking the runway at Paris Fashion Week. I said, Let there be hot-pink and then there was hot-pink and it was good. I said, Let there be electric green and then there was electric green and that was good, too. And then I said, Let there be lips and teeth and shapes and bodies. And then she was off to the catwalk.
Of course there are bad things. I’ve been bruised by some terribly mixed reviews. I don’t feel put-out, I’m digging my heels into the dirt of my decisions. I’ve grown tired of the term polarizing, but I’m staring it down with this book. I know I took a risky path: the nonmonogamy of it all. The infidelity of it all. The politics of it all. That Black girl who does what the fuck she wants. The screenplays sprinkled in, whiff of autofiction, novel within a novel. Oh, that ending.
A month before I sold the novel, I wrote this in a Substack post:
If our attempts at art prove wobbly, fine. Art is all about the risk (cough, the promise) of artistic failure. Nearly all novels fail in some way. Because novels are experiments in how to capture life, a thing that’s shifting while we’re shifting inside of it. That’s all we’re doing—taking a picture of a subject, at a particular angle, through a specific lens, narrow or wide, in a fleeting light. Like anything that exists within a frame, it has inherent limitations.
I’m ridiculously grateful to have reviews at all in the desert of book coverage. My experience has been an exceedingly charmed one. I would not for the life of me trade it. Even if sometimes I feel like...
I know what I’m meant to say about the book when someone asks. The script is memorized and I deliver it with gusto:
Cat St. Clair is ready for her messy love triangle era now that she’s in an open relationship. But she didn’t foresee a forbidden love triangle with the only two people who are off-limits: her boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend. Being a twenty-something writer who lives for plot, she falls for them anyway, with deliciously disastrous consequences, in this electric literary debut for fans of Xochitl Gonzalez, Coco Mellors, Lily King, and Raven Leilani.
But in a recent interview, I was asked a question about the book that tripped me up:
I tripped over this question because I wrote a novel that troubles expectations, upsets categories.
And thank God for the readers who Get It:
I want to thank so so many people: booksellers like Sabrina from East City, Rachel formerly at Riffraff in Rhode Island, Katie from Frenchtown, Ben and Jonny from Lost City, everyone at Old Town Books and Politics & Prose. My stellar team at Scribner and my wonderful agent. My friends on here like Kat and Nye and Rena and Katie, Lauren, Arfie, Jorge, my fellow debuts, there’s too many to thank. The Gays and the Black Girls have been pulling for this book. Ya’ll are gonna be the reason things happen for it. I love you, I love you, I love you.
Whether you’ve been with me for this ride or you’re just getting on it, I hope you’ll buy a book for yourself or a friend. I hope you’ll pass this along. I hope you’ll help me keep doing this because I cannot do it without you.
As hard as it’s been to be seen, I am happy to be here.
When you fly, you’re going to scrape a few treetops. You may fall. Oh, but the view is so much more beautiful up in the air.
A line from some of my bad poetry!!!
You putting yourself out there is an amazing thing. You’re encouraging strangers 🫶. I went to your book reading yesterday and girl you are so funny and talented. Can’t wait to see what the future has in store for you!!
Happy belated pubday! This was great and honest