look!
My next book has a cover. It also has some flap copy, in case you were wondering about what will be on its pages:
Things Lulu Shapiro’s 5,000 Flash followers don’t know about her:
* That the video of her with another girl was never supposed to go public.
* That Owen definitely wasn’t supposed to break up with her because of it.
* That behind the carefully crafted selfies and scenes Lulu projects onto people’s screens, her life feels like a terrible, uncertain mess.
Then Lulu meets Cass. Cass isn’t interested in looking at Lulu’s life, only in living in it. And The Hotel–a gorgeous space with an intriguing, Old Hollywood history and a trust-fund kid to restore it–seems like the perfect, secret place for them to get to know each other. But just because Lulu has stepped out of the spotlight doesn’t mean it’ll stop following her every move.
Look is for fans of Emergency Contact, Everything, Everything, and We Are Okay. It’s a story about what you present vs. who you really are, about real intimacy and manufactured intimacy and the blurring of that line. It’s a deceptively glamorous, feminist, emotionally complex, utterly compelling, queer coming-of-age novel about falling in love and taking ownership of your own self–your whole self–in the age of social media.
* That the video of her with another girl was never supposed to go public.
* That Owen definitely wasn’t supposed to break up with her because of it.
* That behind the carefully crafted selfies and scenes Lulu projects onto people’s screens, her life feels like a terrible, uncertain mess.
Then Lulu meets Cass. Cass isn’t interested in looking at Lulu’s life, only in living in it. And The Hotel–a gorgeous space with an intriguing, Old Hollywood history and a trust-fund kid to restore it–seems like the perfect, secret place for them to get to know each other. But just because Lulu has stepped out of the spotlight doesn’t mean it’ll stop following her every move.
Look is for fans of Emergency Contact, Everything, Everything, and We Are Okay. It’s a story about what you present vs. who you really are, about real intimacy and manufactured intimacy and the blurring of that line. It’s a deceptively glamorous, feminist, emotionally complex, utterly compelling, queer coming-of-age novel about falling in love and taking ownership of your own self–your whole self–in the age of social media.
I wrote the first draft of LOOK in 2016; I'd say about 2/3rds of it before November, and the rest of it after. I revised parts of it with the Kavanaugh hearings on in the background. It taught me a lot about what I'd made myself swallow over a lifetime spent around rich boys who were learning how to be rich men.
LOOK is about social media and trying to give language to girlhood desire, topics familiar from GRACE. But it is also about discovering and defining a queer self, and about falling in love with feminism. It's about the peculiarities, insular life lived by the children who go to LA's private schools (which is weirder and more interesting than any recent viral articles about their New York brethren suggest). It's about getting dumped by someone you still care about, and trying to figure out if you can stay in their lives. It is, as usual, about all of the things I learned the hard way. It is about me trying to make all of this mess into something that matters.
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In other news, my original Writing for the Internet class sold out, so we're doing a mini-version in August! It's just two Saturday sessions, and if you sign up for my class as well as Summer Block's What's the Point? you'll get a returning student rate on both. If you aren't local, I do offer private coaching (though I hate calling it that-- tutoring? just plain teaching??) and editing.
And if you're headed down to SDCC this weekend, I will be there! I've never gone before but a bunch of pals are in from the east coast and seeing them was too good an opportunity to pass up. I do not like lines or crowds, but I do like drinking and nerds. Find me by the pool most days, probably. (But for real, let me know if you're going and want to say hi!)
LOOK is about social media and trying to give language to girlhood desire, topics familiar from GRACE. But it is also about discovering and defining a queer self, and about falling in love with feminism. It's about the peculiarities, insular life lived by the children who go to LA's private schools (which is weirder and more interesting than any recent viral articles about their New York brethren suggest). It's about getting dumped by someone you still care about, and trying to figure out if you can stay in their lives. It is, as usual, about all of the things I learned the hard way. It is about me trying to make all of this mess into something that matters.
-
In other news, my original Writing for the Internet class sold out, so we're doing a mini-version in August! It's just two Saturday sessions, and if you sign up for my class as well as Summer Block's What's the Point? you'll get a returning student rate on both. If you aren't local, I do offer private coaching (though I hate calling it that-- tutoring? just plain teaching??) and editing.
And if you're headed down to SDCC this weekend, I will be there! I've never gone before but a bunch of pals are in from the east coast and seeing them was too good an opportunity to pass up. I do not like lines or crowds, but I do like drinking and nerds. Find me by the pool most days, probably. (But for real, let me know if you're going and want to say hi!)
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