collecting my buttons and my nickels

hello from london with a broken phone and trench foot from an outdoor sauna

Me getting ready to sew my buttons back on

Last summer I sold my first novel. Or, actually, I sold my second novel. The first I never let anyone except my friend Jos read. It was about a young instagram influencer who gets cancelled when she accidentally doxxes a sex worker by making her a gofundme. I was going for something Houellebecqian, something madcap and contemporary but true and serious. Except the subject matter made it feel like one of the Clique books that got passed around in summer camp. Every time I read my own writing about a meticulous selfie it made me want to bang my head against the wall. Not because I didn’t like the sentences– I didn’t trust the imaginary readers of the novel to not think of me as a dumb girl. Probably because if I read a gloss of that novel I’d think it was dumb also.