SOME KIND OF FAMOUS is on Netgalley!

& a few related thoughts about being perceived

Some Kind of Famous is now available to request on Netgalley for early readers! This is a moment I always feel very impatient to arrive, but when it does, my first reaction is to immediately start shaking & sweating. Three books in, I think it’s only gotten harder.

It’s no secret that authors use our characters to work through our shit— whether we know we’re doing it or not. Even though I started this book before I knew How to Fake it in Hollywood would ever be published, both Merritt and Niko’s character arcs accidentally ended up exploring the uneasy relationship between creating art and sharing it with the world.

Niko has been secretly drawing and painting for most of his life, a hobby he keeps to himself out of fear that external judgment will make him lose his love for it.

Merritt, on the other hand, has had staggering success as a musician, but feels scarred by the experience of being so exposed on a massive scale– not just as an artist, but as someone who spent many years openly struggling with her mental health.

I’m sure it’s not a spoiler to reveal that by the end, they both reconsider those stances, which I guess is how I found myself in an emotional place to want to publish this (or anything at all). And in the lead-up, I’ve been trying to untangle the satisfaction of making something with the discomfort of not being able to control how it’s received once it’s finished.

In theory, all that matters is I created something that is special to me, and I shouldn’t care whether it’s special to anyone else. But of course I want other people to love it as much as I do, otherwise I’d just keep it in a drawer and never show anyone (which, similar to Niko, was the attitude I had about writing for most of my life). In some ways, the magic of art really exists in the connection between the work and the audience, and I’ve been struggling to figure out my own place in all of that. We create out of a deep need to be understood, and it’s a painful inevitability that that won’t always happen the way we want it to.

This time around, I’ve been working to create stronger boundaries between myself & reader spaces, which honestly makes me sad to do. I love my readers! Hearing from someone who connected with my books is one of the best feelings in the world, and it means more to me than I can express. When I see other authors sharing beautiful posts and edits and reviews and memes and playlists and annotations, I second-guess my decision to turn my tags off, because I won’t get to appreciate the people doing the same for me. But leaving myself open to others’ opinions means all their opinions, not just the good ones. Before I left Instagram, I would feel a stab of dread every time I had a notification, because I had no idea if what I was about to see would ruin my whole day.

It feels especially important to insulate myself as I work on my next book, since it’s a unique form of mental torture to try to create something new while constantly being bombarded with what people didn’t like about the last thing you did– or, humiliatingly, seeking it out myself as a form of self-harm. In the past, I’ve justified it because not knowing has felt worse than knowing, and the things my own brain conjures up are often much crueler than reality, but I think the temptation to touch the stove (and let the stove touch me) has finally subsided. This book is done, there’s nothing more I can do, and now that it’s widely available to early readers, the best thing for me is to let it go and move on to the next one.

But all that being said… I really do hope you love it.

okay I think that’s it!!! love you byeeee!!!