whygodwhy #13: isn't she lovely, this Hollywood girl?
Hi! It's been over a year since I last sent one of these. I feel pretty good about this cadence, but let me know what you think.
Real quick, here's what's been going on since I last wrote you:
I finished writing a book called Kim Kardashian: #BreakTheGame. They say that writing is about creating the thing you most want to read, and this is really it, so far, for me. It's about Kim, it's a creation myth for her Kimoji, it's about the violence of mansplaining, it's about the Christ-like end of One Direction, and it's about wanting things you can't have, and being stuck in between worlds. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's everything I wanted it to be and I love it.
I also started and finished a book called Chrissy Teigen's Culinary School for Wayward Models. I was really inspired by her cookbook, Cravings (it's genuinely great!), and challenged myself to figure out a way to write fanfic about it, incorporating Chrissy's recipes. In the end I kind of just fell on old habits and threw in some witches and Kardashians, but it was still extremely fun to write!
Currently I'm working on a book called No More Selfies. In a very near future dystopia a terrible man becomes president, people's rights and freedoms are being stripped away, the celebrities who campaigned against him are being rounded up and imprisoned, and Kim Kardashian is a freedom fighter, intent on overthrowing the government using weaponized selfies and the power of the personal brand. In my head it's sort of The Simple Life meets The 100 meets The Blacklist.
It's an ongoing serial on the Wattpad app and I'm about halfway through. It's based on my short story "Taking Selfies and Overthrowing the Patriarchy with Kim Kardashian" that appeared in the Imagines book last year. (Elizabeth Minkel called it "one of the best things I read, anywhere, in any form, in all of 2016.") It's been helpful, over the last year, to have this book as a place to go to when my head is overflowing with all the terrible things happening in our government, in our country, in our world. 😬
Also: I was profiled in the Boston Globe? I got to talk about my writing, my experience with Wattpad, the evolution of my interest in celebrities as narrative figures, and balancing my day job with my writing! This was a fun experience and the reporter, Meredith Goldstein, was great.
And: the Bookfight podcast spent an episode talking about No More Selfies. I think this was my first experience listening in while someone else described their experience reading my work. It was weird. But it was a thing that happened.
I'll be in Toronto in October for Wattcon! If you happen to be there and are interested in meeting IRL I would love to see you.
OK! The end. I don't know why I utterly resist sending these updates out. Something about trying to sum up the daily work, the showing up every morning with no idea what I'm doing except hoping the words come, the constant why am I even bothering when everything is so terrible, into some kind of quantifiable proof or justification for my existence, for the time I spend on writing that comes at the expense of everything else. Anyways good talk send email.
Talk to you next year I hope.
yrs etc,
xokfan
kevinfanning.com
PS: a few quick plugs for things I am really into lately:
Real quick, here's what's been going on since I last wrote you:
I finished writing a book called Kim Kardashian: #BreakTheGame. They say that writing is about creating the thing you most want to read, and this is really it, so far, for me. It's about Kim, it's a creation myth for her Kimoji, it's about the violence of mansplaining, it's about the Christ-like end of One Direction, and it's about wanting things you can't have, and being stuck in between worlds. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's everything I wanted it to be and I love it.
I also started and finished a book called Chrissy Teigen's Culinary School for Wayward Models. I was really inspired by her cookbook, Cravings (it's genuinely great!), and challenged myself to figure out a way to write fanfic about it, incorporating Chrissy's recipes. In the end I kind of just fell on old habits and threw in some witches and Kardashians, but it was still extremely fun to write!
Currently I'm working on a book called No More Selfies. In a very near future dystopia a terrible man becomes president, people's rights and freedoms are being stripped away, the celebrities who campaigned against him are being rounded up and imprisoned, and Kim Kardashian is a freedom fighter, intent on overthrowing the government using weaponized selfies and the power of the personal brand. In my head it's sort of The Simple Life meets The 100 meets The Blacklist.
It's an ongoing serial on the Wattpad app and I'm about halfway through. It's based on my short story "Taking Selfies and Overthrowing the Patriarchy with Kim Kardashian" that appeared in the Imagines book last year. (Elizabeth Minkel called it "one of the best things I read, anywhere, in any form, in all of 2016.") It's been helpful, over the last year, to have this book as a place to go to when my head is overflowing with all the terrible things happening in our government, in our country, in our world. 😬
Also: I was profiled in the Boston Globe? I got to talk about my writing, my experience with Wattpad, the evolution of my interest in celebrities as narrative figures, and balancing my day job with my writing! This was a fun experience and the reporter, Meredith Goldstein, was great.
And: the Bookfight podcast spent an episode talking about No More Selfies. I think this was my first experience listening in while someone else described their experience reading my work. It was weird. But it was a thing that happened.
I'll be in Toronto in October for Wattcon! If you happen to be there and are interested in meeting IRL I would love to see you.
OK! The end. I don't know why I utterly resist sending these updates out. Something about trying to sum up the daily work, the showing up every morning with no idea what I'm doing except hoping the words come, the constant why am I even bothering when everything is so terrible, into some kind of quantifiable proof or justification for my existence, for the time I spend on writing that comes at the expense of everything else. Anyways good talk send email.
Talk to you next year I hope.
yrs etc,
xokfan
kevinfanning.com
PS: a few quick plugs for things I am really into lately:
- Zan Romanoff (please read GRACE AND THE FEVER it's my favorite) wrote a great article about the Kardashians & plastic surgery
- Emily Gould's article about cooking & domestic goddesses
- Eli Goldstone's Strange Heart Beating is another of my favorite books of the past year, and probably the most underlined book I own
- Josh Allen has a new story collection out! Finally! It's called KNIFE FITE
- Tory Wollcott's super gorgeous Kickstarter for The Tessera Oracle
- A Facebook group about chips
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