The Bloggess

This was supposed to be a post all about new book releases you should check out this month but then I got sidetracked because I’M GOING TO BE ON THE TODAY SHOW.

At first I thought this was a practical joke because I’m never asked to be on things like this but turns out it is real and I will be on next Saturday morning (the 28th) to talk about my new book. This is especially puzzling since there is a story in the book about how I was the first person to ever say the phrase “lady garden” live on CNN but I have promised to be on my best behavior. I am currently baffled though about what to wear and have winnowed it down to a pair of fancy overalls made of couch upholstery embroidered with kittens, a silky dress that I loved until I realized that everyone will see my knees on tv, a kaftan that I thought would be very sophisticated because it’s just black but now that I look closer looks a lot like a witches costume with floor-length cape, a vest made of actual ice cubes that I wear when I’m panicking because anxiety makes me sweaty. Pretty sure none of these work. I do have one dress that might work but when I showed it Hailey they were like, “It’s a little….vaginal?” and then I looked at all of the giant pink paisleys again and now all I can see is vagina. I wore it to the bookstore yesterday and was like, “Can you see the vaginas in this dress?” and they were like, “Oh. Well not before, but yeah, now that I’m looking for it I can see vaginas” and so now the best dress I have is one where I worry that I will show everyone my vaginas. This is where I would share a picture of it but if I do then I have either doomed myself to have you all see my vaginas on live tv or everyone will be like, “HOW DO YOU SEE VAGINAS IN THAT, YOU WEIRDOS?” and it feels like there’s not a win there either way.

Slightly related, copies of HOW TO BE OKAY WHEN NOTHING IS OKAY have arrived at the Nowhere Bookshop warehouse and I’ve begun signing them! You can also get signed copies from Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million and lots of indie bookshops everywhere. And I’ll be signing books (and whatever else you want) on book tour in PA, NH, CA, OR and TX. Please come.

And now…some other lovely March books you should be checking out:

This month I picked Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell for the Fantastic Strangelings Book Club. It’s a dark, gothic Welsh mythology reimagined to explore love, power and consent.

And if you’re a member of Nightmares from Nowhere Book club you’re getting Spoiled Milk by Avery Curran. The untimely death of a student at a girls’ boarding school turns out to be the first in a haunting series of escalating supernatural events. A thrilling debut novel about teenage repression, queer desire, and the everyday horror of coming of age.

They are both hauntingly good and I highly recommend them.

And if you need more books to get you through the month, here are a few more new releases I loved:

The Lost Daughter of Sparta by Felicia Day and Rowan MacColl– A fabulous sapphic graphic novel retelling the lost fourth daughter cursed by Aphrodite.

The Beheading Game by Rebecca Lehmann– We all know what happened to Henry VIII’s second wife, Anne Boleyn. But what if she woke up the day after her execution and took it upon herself to seek justice?

Statues by Junji Ito– I’m a sucker for any of Ito’s horror graphic novels. So very weird.

Hell’s Heart by Alexis Hall – Moby Dick. In space. With lesbians. It shouldn’t work, but it does.

Happy reading!

I’m not sure where time went, but the book I’ve been working on for years actually comes out in a few weeks. (Holy crap.) Preorders can make such a difference in whether or not a book is successful and so as a special thank you for everyone orders it before pub date, I have a little surprise for you that my incredible Random House Penguin team put together. If you click here to tell us that you preordered then you will get to see all of the drawings I made in the book and then you can print them or color them or post them on a wall or use them to set tiny bonfires.

And you’ll also get to read a few little missives from the book, including one called MURDER POTATOES and another about the time I tried to liberate a human head who was an in-real-life friend of mine. Sort of.

It will ask you for an email address but I promise you won’t get any emails unless you click the box that says that you want to get emails. And also there’s a place where you’re supposed to give the receipt number from your book order but I was like, “Anyone who needs this book is probably unlikely to have saved that number because honestly…I don’t even know where my own receipt is from when I ordered my copy. Can we just have people say ‘I totally promise I ordered a book – or maybe several because my memory is bad – but I’m not organized enough to prove it’ and my publisher was like, “For your people? Totally.”

Also, I was recently telling my sister that I had a meeting with the publisher and she was like, “You’re having a meeting with a random house penguin? That is awesome.” And to be fair, it’s actually Penguin Life which is part of Penguin Random House but I’m going to keep saying “random house penguin” because that does sound awesome.

Now please preorder and go read the sneak peek and tell me what you think? I hope you like it.

Okay, several things…

First off, this was my drawing I posted on my art substack this week where I wrote about how we all need to start using the word “unfuckwithable” more so it can end up in the dictionary, but I’m sharing it here too in case you haven’t yet signed up to get these weird-ass emails from me:

Secondly, this weekend I was hit with very bad mental health stuff and so I posted on threads that I needed someone to tell me to get out of bed and then I curled back up to bed-rot but when I opened it up again it was filled with so many people sending encouraging words or cat pictures, or lovely things like this unexpected bit of fried gold from my friend, Matthew:

And so I did. I drove over to the park near my house, but I had to stop in the middle of the road and get out in traffic because there was an oblivious duck standing in the street and so I waddled behind him trying to shoo him to the park even though someone honked at me (rude). But then when I got to the (normally very quiet) park I could not hear myself think because there were fucking hundreds of those feathered idiots quacking their little asses off.

This is where I would put a video but I can’t figure out how to embed one here so instead just click to the second slide in this instagram.

If it works, you can hear me (barely) trying (and failing) to remember what you call a massive passel of ducks but I looked it up and apparently it’s “a waddling” which totally figures. And then I walked closer and THEY FLEW OFF and I was like, “THESE FUCKERS CAN FLY? WHY WAS I WALKING THEM ACROSS THE STREET?” and probably that’s what that guy in the street was saying when he was honking. I’d like to think I was escorting the one duck with a bum wing, although I suspect the waddling was all probably taking turns pretending to be unable to cross the road alone as a fun little prank to as many people run over as possible.

But the point is that it was really good that I got up because I’ve never seen so many ducks in one place and will probably always remember it. I wanted to write about this last night but I was still deep in the depression exhaustion and so forgive the pause, please. And I’m writing this down now to remind myself to get out of bed, because you never know when some ducks will try to murder you.

Third…shit…I don’t remember what the third thing was. Clearly my mind is getting better today but not that much better.

I apologize. More when it comes to me. Probably seconds after I hit publish here.

Sorry I’ve been MIA. I sort of fell off the world but I’m back today with actual energy and slightly less depression. YAY FOR LESS DEPRESSION!

Just dropping a few notes here to catch up on life, the universe and everything.

Some of you have asked if I’m making the audiobook for HOW TO BE OKAY WHEN NOTHING IS OKAY and I just finished recording it. Whoop! It included two days of me mispronouncing words that because I read them more than I hear them, including mispronouncing Maya Angelou’s last name because did you know it’s supposed to rhyme with “glow” and not “glue”? What else am I confidently mispronouncing? SO MANY THINGS.

If you’re a member of the Fantastic Strangelings Book Club check your email because I need to practice talking about my new book so I’m doing a sneak-peek zoom soon to practice reading and answering questions to try to shake off all of this anxiety before I actually go out on tour. I know most of you are non-judgmental friends so I can fuck up and you will not hate me. Much.

Speaking of Fantastic Strangelings…this months book pick is Superfan by Jenny Tinghui Zhang. Boybands. Obsession. Secrets. Loneliness. So good.

And if you’re a member of the Nightmares from Nowhere bookclub I’m sending you Trad Wife by Saratoga Schaefer. A trad-wife influencer allows a demon to knock her up and it gets even more nuts from there.

And if you need more than one book to get you through…here are a few new February releases I read and loved:

The Red Winter by Cameron Sullivan–  Historical fiction.  Gay werewolves.  Yes, please.  I loved this book although I will tell you that it is bloody and very open-door, which isn’t that much of a surprise for gay werewolves.  

The Glowing Hours by Leila Siddiqui. A mind-bending, revisionist gothic horror story about the fabled summer Mary Shelley began work on Frankenstein, as told by her Indian housemaid.

Evil Genius by Claire Oshetsky – An exuberant novel about a young woman’s quest to carve her own path—even if she needs to step over a few dead bodies along the way.

Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett – Magic, cats, bookstores…a cozy read.

Be Your Own Bestie by Misha Brown – A no-nonsense guide to changing the way you treat yourself.

I’m So Happy You’re Here: A Celebration of Library Joy by Mychal Threets and Lorraine Nam – A lovely children’s book about embracing libraries and patrons everywhere.

Happy reading, my friends.