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Julianna Baggott Has a Novel Coming Out Next Tuesday [FIERCE ANTICIPATION]
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 to throw the stuff away, so does it come from a desire to shift everything in my life? Move without moving? Announce to the neighbors that I’ve lost it? Is it some desire to have my inner self – represented by my desire to buy uncomfortable Cleopatra-inspired benches – known in the outside world? Would we then live in the front yard? It feels like an urge to be more ephemeral. If it rained would we sit on the furniture in the rain? I don’t know.
I Wouldn’t Lick Doorknobs in a Doctor’s Office if You Paid Me.
I come from OCD stock. In fact, Abbot, the son of my narrator in THE PROVENCE CURE FOR THE BROKENHEARTED, has started washing his hands a lot and fearing germs and relying heavily on Purell. It’s been over a year since his father died. He still lives in fear and has a deep desire for control. Over the course of the novel, my narrator, Heidi, takes Abbot and her jaded 16-year-old niece to renovate an old family house in Provence. The trip shakes everything up. And Abbot isn’t cured, but he does confront the deeper issues of loss. Now, if I could confront my own deeper issues, I might one day be able to at least bare-hand a doorknob in a doctor’s office. For now though, I’ll just keep pulling down my sweater sleeve and opening doors that way. Thanks for asking!
Oh, and just in case you don’t believe I’m a fellow fierce nerd, here’s a recent family picture:
Write a novel! Put your furniture in the yard! Take a genius Tenenbaum family photo! Love it all. I will take some of your OCD, please. Congrats & best wishes as you move forward awkwardly and awesomely in the universe with your novel….looking forward to reading it!
Love the randomness of this. It’s like you saw a pair of mallards floating on a stream and started doing duck talk,’ Mrs. Mallard, we have to do the recycling.’ Enjoy all those awkward, someone holding your book in their hands moments that are coming your way.
I was sold at “Provence”…
There IS something really amazing about that word that always makes me want to read anything associated with it.
There IS something really amazing about that word that always makes me want to read anything associated with it.
Oh my gosh, thank you for capturing the awkwardness of talking about your own novel. I never know what to say IRL when someone tells me they really like my novel. Thank you doesn’t feel sincere enough and my feminism doesn’t allow me to take the humble out of dismissing my work. Usually I just push the subject back toward the other people. I don’t get out much anymore, and I’d much rather be talking to other people about themselves anyway.
Congrats on the novel! That picture is awe.some. My old family photos kind of look similar, but not intentionally ironic.
I hesitate to say this, but I used to push my sweater sleeve down, over my hand when touching anything in the outside world: bathroom doors or sinks, walk light buttons, grocery store doors that aren’t automatic (I never considered the doctors office door!) then I realized that the germs were on my sweater sleeve. So I started using my bare hand and Purelling immediately after. Nice to know there is one aspect of weirdness where I’m not totally alone. Can’t wait to read Provence Cure!
Purrell is kind of the best invention ever, isn’t it?
I love the family photo and the headshot. And yeah–I do the sweater thing too. And use a napkin to pour condiments at restaurants…or I ask someone else to do it for me! yikes. how did I get that bad? It happened so gradually…now that I have a child, I think I’m passing on some of that to him…I let him play in the dirt and all that, but before he goes to his gym class, I put on his hands staSafe (www.stasafesanitizer.com), non-alcoholic, all-natural, and it supposedly protects against germs for 2 hours after you put it on. Otherwise, I use all natural vinegar/essential oil based stuff on his and my hands, so at least I’m keeping the chemicals away from us in all my germ-paranoia.
-Anyway. I’m sure you get all sorts of people talking to you about your book. The people who are embarrassed they haven’t read it yet, the 60 year old gentleman who probes you with questions and goes on and on in a monopolizing conversation you’re stuck smiling and being polite in, the people in awe of knowing an author, the people who read it and maybe didn’t like it and call it “interesting”, the people who were shocked you would write anything sexual. But mostly, I bet people are just proud of you, proud to know someone who published a book, and proud to tell others to read it. Being humble is fine, but hey, it’s ok to be humbly proud, because you did something 99% of the people who try do not end up doing. Congrats on the novel! And make sure to bring your own pen when you need to sign copies! ;)
You’re so funny. I have always been the absolute worse when it comes to not carrying about germs. I mean I live in China for crissakes. But now that I have a kid, I find myself doing just about anything to prevent her from getting sick, and that all-natural sanitizer sounds perf for when I send her to preschool in September.