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five good things

1. The creepy feverish romance of STATION ELEVEN, which I devoured in one sitting, and the creepy British bleakness of THE GIRL ON THE TRAIN, which improved my commute all week long. I’m not done with that one yet though! So don’t blab.

2. All the smart, rad, funny, fabulous ladies I met at YALLWEST last weekend. Hey Robin Benway, Kass Morgan, Elissa Sussman: that means you. And you too, girls whose names I didn’t get but who came up after the bad boys panel to chat with me about Hanson. You are women after my own heart.

3. The Original Broadway Cast Recording of The Bridges of Madison County. Because I do what I want. No really this song is great though. One of these days I’m going to blog about being a theater kid, and also possibly about how I like when guys wear slouchy hats and sing songs in big voices, ahem.

4. Am headed to New York this weekend for a combination of work stuff and not-work stuff–a show with my dad and a double date with my sister and meeting my new not-quite-niece for the first time, plus a SUPER AWESOME EVENT on Tuesday at Books of Wonder with Susane Colasanti and Maria Dahvana Headley (who I also met at YALLWEST and who is the most fabulous glamorous human I’ve ever encountered). Which brings me to big number five, actually, which is…

5. Holy Moses, 99 DAYS comes out next week. Whaaaaat.

Happy weekend, sweethearts. See you on the other side.

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across the water

At the hotel in Santa Monica they hand me a glass of sparkling wine at check-in and I scrub off the plane in the fancy marble shower, peer out the window at the pool. I text my sister, my husband: here I am.

California is Francesca Lia Block beautiful, but emphatically not for me. The sprawl of it makes me uneasy. I have an irrational fear of palm trees at night. Everyone in Los Angeles looks like a parody of a person from Los Angeles. I’ve forgotten my sunglasses, which is a shame.

I go to the cocktail party; I go out for drinks. Back in the fall I decided I was going to be pickier about what I agreed to do and then actually do those things, to have the full author experience, and I’m surprised that it’s an experience I actually kind of like a lot: I meet writers I admire and humans I want to be friends with, who I hope I’ll run into again. People introduce themselves to me and I introduce myself to people and it occurs to me that I do in fact belong here, that there is in fact nothing in my teeth.

Still: when Jennie comes and picks me up I dive into her car like something out of an action movie. Go, I instruct. On Saturday night we bring tacos back to the hotel room and watch a Katherine Heigl movie as the smell of somebody else’s weed drifts down the hall. “It’s like college,” Jennie says, laughing. We spill salsa on the crisp white sheets.

Talking about my books in public is the scariest part of writing them; the night before my panels I dream of a literal car wreck, jolting awake in the dark. But one of them goes fine and one of them goes better than fine and as some of the tension drains out of my neck I realize I’m getting better at this, that it’s turning into something I know how to do.

I tweet. I order room service. I look for famous people, but find none. I like how green it is here. I imagine I can feel the Vitamin D.

On Sunday Jennie takes my headshots, me leaning against a concrete wall and making weird faces, my hands fluttering in front of me like plastic grocery bags. “I feel like an asshole,” I tell her, shifting my weight, glancing at a perfect woman biking by with a literal armful of farmer’s market tulips, but Jennie is unruffled.

“Relax,” she tells me, shaking her head and checking the camera screen, west coast sun glinting off the gold in her hair. “You’re doing great.”

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five good things

1. It took a week and a half for me to buy real groceries for the new house which is incidentally exactly how long it took me to stop feeling like a squatter there. Never underestimate the power of a fridge full of cheese.

2. One of my best girls had a baby this week. I have a lot of feelings about this (shocker) and my plan is to talk about them here next week, but in the meantime: welcome welcome welcome to the family, BLV. We are all so glad you’re here.

3. I was overstimmed so I downloaded a post-apocalyptic romance novel where all the men cage fight and everyone is covered in tattoos and it’s all very scandalous and great.

4. Kerry’s fabulous, genius tumblr A Year of Romcoms, aka 152 insights into my soul.

5. As you’re reading this, I’m on my way to LA for YALLWEST, where I’m going to sit on some panels and sign some books and geek out at all the amazing authors just walking around in the wild like it’s no big deal, and also hopefully shove a million tacos into my face. California friends: come hang out.

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on mistakes

99 DAYS comes out two weeks from today, which feels insane to me. I think because I sat with HOW TO LOVE for so many years before it was published, the idea of this book coming out already makes me feel kind of like you’re seeing me in my underwear.

All my writing kind of makes me feel that way, truthfully. But you know what I mean.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Molly, my main character. Molly makes a lot of really bad decisions in this book. Like: a LOT. And then when she’s finished making them, instead of going and sinning no more, she turns around and makes them again.

MOLLY. GET IT TOGETHER.

Full disclosure: I was nervous to write her that way. I thought a lot about fixing her, about painting over some of the uglier parts, putting some makeup on her face. Because what if people didn’t like her? What if they wouldn’t forgive her for all the boneheaded, hurtful things she does? What if they shrugged and said “Well, she deserves what she gets, then. I never did anything that stupid.”

And then I remembered: I did LOTS of stuff that was exactly. That. Stupid.

Stupid boy-related things I did when I was a teenager, a selected list:

* Made out with a guy at a baseball game even though his mom was there and I knew she could probably see us. (She could.)

* Hid in the bathroom for the duration of an entire party because I didn’t have the ovaries to tell a boy who liked me that even though I liked him back, I thought people would talk about us if we dated, and I didn’t have the ovaries for that either.

* Threw my friends over when I got a boyfriend.

* Did a bunch of stuff with a boy that I wasn’t ready to do and that, frankly, was uncomfortable and unpleasant, because I thought there was something wrong with me for not wanting to.

* Wore an Abercrombie T-shirt that said CO-ED NAKED WATER POLO TEAM to a my now-husband’s family barbecue. To be clear: the first time I met my mother-in-law, I was wearing a shirt that said we do it better in the water. 

And again, this list is selected. The point is, if you are a person who doesn’t look back on stuff you did when you were sixteen (or twenty-six) and want to die a little, I salute you. But I am not that person! And I kind of don’t want to write about those people, either. Yes, Molly acts in a way that is occasionally kind of shitty. But so did I. And I was lucky enough to have people in my life who loved me anyway and taught me and rooted for me, and I learned, and now I am (at least marginally, I hope? Right? Guys?) less shitty.

I wrote this book rooting for Molly with every particle of my being. I hope you’ll read it and root for her, too.

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five good things

1. Nina Simone Pandora with a little Bonnie Raitt added in: music to unpack a kitchen by. Bonus points if you light a candle.

2. The recharge app, for gentle reminders and help with sleep while I get some mind-body business back on track.

3. The kale salad I ate on Tuesday after like six days in a row of moving-related nachos and takeout Chinese.

4. I broke in the waffle maker last night and HOLY CRAP HOMEMADE WAFFLES ARE DELICIOUS, I’m already planning how I can incorporate them into every possible meal. Grilled cheese waffles! Waffle salads! A waffle revolution!

5. It is really, really warm today, you guys. Have the best weekend.

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as loud as you possibly can

Right before we closed on the house I was feeling legitimately unhinged so I started listening to a lot of Hanson, which is not a coping strategy I fall back on a ton anymore, only in the most dire of dire situations. It worked reliably when I was fifteen, though, and I will tell you: it still works.

I’ve talked about my weird Hanson thing before, but for those of you who are new here: I have a weird Hanson thing! I used to feel a deep and abiding lady shame about it, but I don’t anymore. I’ve seen Hanson many, many times in concert, and last week as I was listening to the high-pitched cheering at the beginning of Live and Electric I thought to myself, goddamn, I wish I could see Hanson in concert right the fuck now.

I really, really wanted to scream.

When people ask me why I like Hanson concerts so much I come up with a lot of bullshit reasons, but the truth is as follows: have you ever read Margaret Atwood’s terrifying dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale? You know how periodically they let the women kill a guy to blow off steam and prevent a total revolution? This is like that for me, but without the horrible crowdsourced murder!

Here is a thing I recommend you do, if you are a girl with emotions that occasionally get the best of you: go to a place where you can stand next to a few hundred other girls who are screaming their heads off, and scream your head off, too. Just shriek. Holler. Cry a little if you need. The lights are off and nobody is looking. Everybody is doing the exact same thing as you. I like Hanson concerts for a lot of reasons, but a big one is because screaming out my joy and love and anger and sorrow is the most cathartic thing in my life and I don’t get to do it that often.

I was thinking about that last week while my feelings were at a rolling boil, about how there are really not a lot of venues for women to raise their voices in ways that are socially acceptable. I was thinking about all the girls who are heartbroken over Zayn leaving One Direction, and how easy it is to make those girls into a punchline. I was thinking how unfair it is that we teach girls the only places to feel loud feelings are places we find fundamentally stupid and deserving of our derision. And I was thinking I’m in the mood to open my mouth and make noise.

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five good things

1. As you might have noticed this morning (or maybe not if you’re viewing this on a feed) like three years after I said I was going to take care of it my new website is live and no longer looks like radioactive garbage! My dear friend Dan who I have known since college is the one who did it for me, and he is awesome and amazing to work with and also, I believe, taking on new clients, JUST SAYING. Email me for details, which you can now do USING THAT HANDY LINK ON THE SIDEBAR.

2. Speaking of things that are new and awesome, 99 Days has a book trailer, and it is GORGEOUS. I hadn’t thought about this book as being super sexy, but then I saw this trailer and I thought about it some more, and I will level with you: 99 DAYS is sexy as hell. It’s cool when other people’s work helps you see your own work in a new light. Especially if that light is Johnny Castle’s paper lantern of lust. Anyway: thank you HarperCollins and Epic Reads and USA Today for all being so awesome about it.

3. The 99% Invisible podcast, which I discovered this week via the internet and am really enjoying. I like entertainment where you also learn things, which is why Sesame Street for adults will be a thing when someone finally gives me my own television network.

4. Are you all watching Bloodline? I am watching Bloodline because I am insatiable TV monster, but I can’t decide if I like it or not so probably you should come talk to me on the twitter machine and help me figure it out. I DO like that it’s set in South Florida though, which gives me a lot of warm HOW TO LOVE fuzzies. I like to watch the background shots and see if Sawyer and Reena are there.

5. Barring nuclear disaster (please God don’t let there be a nuclear disaster), I am closing on a house this morning. Whaaaaaat.

I don’t even know. Happy weekend. It’s all happening.

Also, hey hey hey, the winners of the HOW TO LOVE paperback giveaway are @poisonforsenses, @paper_daydreams, and @mzannn. Shoot me an email with your address to claim your prize!

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HOW TO LOVE in paperback, and a giveaway

tumblr_inline_n7de9kDPzf1qdr5v3I don’t think I ever did a proper cover reveal on here for the HOW TO LOVE paperback, which comes out TODAY. But: holy hell, this baby is beautiful. That blue! That wallpaper! The way these two are so clearly in love.

HOW TO LOVE will always be so absurdly special to me. It’s my baby, my first book, the one I started in my high school bedroom and drafted in my college dorm–the one that got me here, to this lucky, lucky place I am now. HOW TO LOVE is about growing up, because that’s what I did while I was writing it. And I’m so proud when I see it out in the world.

I’ve got three signed copies of the HOW TO LOVE paperback to give away today. To enter, tweet your favorite fictional romance(s) with the hashtag #howtolovegiveaway. Enter as many times as you want–anybody living in the continental US is eligible to win.See you back here on Friday for the winners, along with Five Good Things.

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five good things

1. An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler, the subtitle of which is “cooking with economy and grace” and which I am OBSESSED with. It’s not quite a cookbook and not quite essays, but more like a fairy princess of food and cooking whispering gently and lovingly over your shoulder as you stare into your fridge. There’s a whole chapter about beans! I’m not explaining it right but it’s an effing revelation. I’m getting it for all of you for your birthdays.

2. The other morning I felt like I needed a treat so I went and got a whole milk cappuccino at the hipster place near work where they make  a cup of coffee at approximately the same pace that Mr. Bean wraps that present in Love Actually. Recently I switched to whole milk because I read it was easier on your stomach, and I don’t know if that’s true yet exactly but I do know that this was kind of the sexiest cappuccino of my life in spite of the fact that I drank it at my desk at 9:15 on a Tuesday.

3. Do you know about the wet brush? Lisa B taught me about it because she knows about everything that is useful and good, and at first I doubted her because I have broken the handle off MANY A HAIRBRUSH like some kind of cartoon character on account of having the world’s knottiest hair, BUT: it is amazing. I’ve been using it for a year now, and while those little plasticky bits on the bristles were in fact no match for my giant snarls (two of which my mom had to have cut out of my head by a professional as a child) it is a game-changer nevertheless.

4. Shameless this season, which has been great and funny and sad. I love that Fiona is actively trying to make different kinds of choices. I loved the moment when Mickey identified himself as Ian’s boyfriend at the psych ward. And I love everything about that kid who plays Lip, who I always thought would make kind of a perfect Sawyer LeGrande.

5. I saw Roxane Gay read at Emerson last night. It was kind of religious. Also, it was nice to be home.

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at home

I watched all six hours of The Jinx in one go and scared the living daylights out of myself but other than that it was the most uneventful of weekends, a breakfast beer in Coolidge Corner because I had a gift certificate and an oil change because he had a coupon. I dropped paperbacks off at the Booksmith. I picked up some face lotion at the mall. We made steaks with blue cheese and mashed potatoes with truffle butter, roasted string beans with olive oil and salt, then walked down Broadway in the drizzle to try the new bar on Dot Ave. I packed a couple boxes. I wrote a couple hundred words. I put my tour dates down on the calendar, long stretches of travel in the next few months–everything coming quickly all of a sudden, long arrows drawn across the weeks.

“You’re here now, right?” he asked me, when I gave him the rundown. “Until we move at least, you’re here?”

“Yup,” I told him, sitting back in the passenger seat, turning up the radio. “I’m here.”

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