Fiercely Anticipating Once you’ve published a post-apocalyptic novel, you’re a post-apocalyptic writer. There’s no way around this. It’s something I didn’t really understand when I was writing PURE, the first book in a post-apocalyptic trilogy that came out on February 8th. Sure the book was post-apocalyptic, but me? It just seemed like a strange thing to have to embrace about myself. In a starred review, Publisher’s Weekly called it a horror novel and in those two words I became a horror writer. It’s also a thriller, so I’m suddenly a thriller writer. It’s a lot of things my earlier books aren’t, and so I’m a lot of things I’ve never been before. I thought about this post-apocalyptic writer thing for a while and realized that, actually, I was kind of a post-apocalyptic teenager. But aren’t the teen years, by definition, post-apocalyptic? Then I thought about how, as a child, I feared the end of the world and was the only kid to take Civil Defense Drills seriously. I curled up in a row of kids along the inner hallway wall of my elementary school, taking in the elementary school dust, and knew that we weren’t going to survive. I imagined the searing light of nukes and felt sick. The end — that’s what I was clear on. How could we go back and do math when the end was so inevitable that we had to practice for it? Truth is, I was probably a post-apocalyptic baby. And so what am I fiercely anticipating? What I’ve always fiercely anticipated. Total mutual destruction. Nations made of human beings who can’t truly learn from the past and are doomed to repeat it. Have I gone a little dark at the end here? I have. But what else...

Fiercely Anticipating Awkwardness This is what people don’t necessarily know: publishing a novel is socially awkward. (Okay, most everything I do is socially awkward because I’m socially awkward, but I don’t think I’m alone on this one.) Friends and family don’t know what to say. If they haven’t read the novel, they’re embarrassed. If they have read it (even the sometimes nudie bits), they’re embarrassed. In general, I’m embarrassed because publishing a novel seems to declare: I think I’ve got about 300 pages worth of smart, funny, interesting stuff to say that deserves to be bound with glue and sold at round tables, which is pretty uppity. So THE PROVENCE CURE FOR THE BROKENHEARTED (written under my Bridget Asher pseudonym) pubs on Tuesday. I am fiercely anticipating weird conversations and making blanket apologies for no real reason. And just when I see someone holding my book and approaching me (perhaps at some kind of backyard bouncy-house birthday party event) and just as I hold up my hand and start to put her mind at ease – It’s okay if you haven’t read it! You don’t have to comment! Let’s pretend this never happened! – the woman will grab me by the hand and her eyes will be brimming, and she’ll tell me that the book broke open something inside of her or gave voice to something she hadn’t yet given voice to or that it touched her. These moments always catch me off guard, and as the person is saying, “Thank you,” I’m saying, “You’re welcome,” but what I really mean is thank you. I Kinda Want To …. I kinda want to put all of my furniture in the front yard. It’s this strange inexplicable desire that hits me sometimes. I don’t want...