This is how it works: You’ve always wanted to be a writer, but instead you decide you should become a health care worker. You go to school for four years. You get a degree in social work. You are at your first day of your new job, listening to an orientation, and you realize you really did want to be a writer. You quit your job, go to the library

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Many first novels are written with no audience, tens of thousands of words written, edited, re-written, before the writers know whether they’ll get published. Thousands of hours put in, with no promise of the external world meeting your belief, but the belief is necessary; it’s a beautiful process, really, and has gifted us many incredible books... See more

In the months leading up to pub day, I sent approximately 8,613 emails out to friends, professional contacts, people I talked to once in a buffet line at a writing workshop 3 years ago, people who follow me on Twitter, and people who have never heard of me or my little book, offering them galleys and (in some cases!) directly begging them to cover... See more