Two Decades in Los Angeles
All hail the greatest city in the world.
L.A. Story
Dear Readers,
Yesterday a friend told me about a conversation she had while she was back home, when someone asked where she lived and she said Los Angeles and the person made a face and said, “ugh, I’m sorry.” This has happened to me multiple times! Too many to count! Joke’s on you, if you say this shit to our faces, we are just thinking about the weather and the sushi and the taco trucks and the way creative folks from across the nation and world have made their homes here. When our city burns down we unite to help people who need it. When New Yorkers write pondering pieces about our traffic, we just laugh and share them because who the fuck cares, this city can be so stupid and traffic-ridden and also it is wonderful and magical.
Also yesterday, I looked at the calendar and realized that I moved to Los Angeles twenty years ago this week. This feels both true and impossible. I was right out of college when I arrived (don’t do the math because I graduated both earlier and later than makes sense and no I don’t feel like explaining). Every time I’d visited Los Angeles I’d connected to its relative chillness (I am from the Midwest and nothing ever felt chill) and its relative lack of humidity (less true now but still in comparison yes) and of course its politics and connection to the entertainment industry. My first job in L.A. was as a studio assistant. I was like a cartoon of someone with big dreams making it*.
I moved here with dreams of becoming a writer, but it was in Los Angeles where I did it. I told myself, in so many words, to stop fucking around and get serious. Learn about the industry I wanted to enter. I constructed my own six-month course of learning about query letters and the submissions process, and it only took another year or two before I secured representation for my first novel, and a few more years after that to land my first book deal. It felt like the slowest process in the world then, but now I can see that it wasn’t.**
When I was planning to move here, people kept asking, “What if you get there and hate it?” I was certain that I wouldn’t, but, still. So few things in life are permanent. Tattoos (kind of) and death? So I shrugged and said I could just move somewhere else. But that never happened. I never did. I don’t know what the future will bring but I am grateful for the last twenty years; they have been more good than bad.
It is tough feeling positive about things these days and I am not going to spew toxic positivity at you or doomcast. I will say that what helped me today was going to 5calls.org and leaving messages for all of my reps. They provide a script and all the phone numbers, so you literally just have to dial and read. I know that many of you will think, “gross, I hate the phone when it is not about looking at hot celebrities and or memes” but I promise you it is not too painful, and gets even easier every time you do it. Look, do I feel super hopeful about where a lot of our reps stand these days? I absolutely do not. So they are going to hear from me! I am going to add my own flair to the scripts and remind them of their jobs to represent the people and the constitutional crisis at hand, and I know the world will not be saved with five phone calls a day, but five phone calls a day is a thing I can do. I am doing it. Will you do it too? Please do it. It takes so little time, and I guess I want to be doing something besides donating money in my communities and screaming into the void. I would LOVE to hear what you are doing to help, so please leave a note in the comments!
It is mindbogglingly weird and also super normal to promote an upcoming book during the downfall (??) of democracy (???). I am capable of many things at once so I am absolutely not going to let *gestures wildly* all of that stop me from talking about On Her Terms which is out in just a few weeks and I am SO EXCITED to share with all of you!
Did you know I am going on tour??
Los Angeles, New York, DC (note that the location shifted in DC!), Minneapolis/St. Paul/The Twin Cities, and St. Louis — I cannot wait to see you. If I’m not coming to your city and you’re salty about it, please leave me a note in the comments; time passes strangely and honestly I will be planning Preposition Her Noun #4’s*** tour before we know it, so you might as well stump for your town!
I am grateful for all of you for letting me into your inboxes and being so warm and supportive. It is a strange time to be a person, much less a queer romance author, but I am going to do my best to keep on keeping on.
xoxoAmy
Consumption
Some recent and recent-ish stuff!
Wearing
Maybe it’s age or maybe it’s going red (again) last year, but I found myself wanting an orangier red, and NARS’s Heat Wave is truly my platonic ideal of a red. I’m obsessed.
Reading
I know it’s rude to talk about a book that’s not released yet, but I just read an early copy of Camille Kellogg’s next romance, The Next Chapter, which is pitched as a queer NYC Notting Hill (I KNOW) and I adored it.
Watching
I just mainlined all of the TV series adaptation of My Brilliant Friend, which didn’t always capture the magic of the novels but, man, I adored it nonetheless.
Planning
I just bought my latest Ramona & Ruth Daily Overview Planner. It is the perfect daily planner for me, and I love that I discovered it while browsing at Powell’s Books the other year. SUPPORT INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES. BROWSE IN THEM IN PERSON!
On Her Terms
ON HER TERMS comes out in just a few weeks on February 25! There is still time to preorder it and guarantee an exclusive sticker sheet with your signed copy! (I will also bring the sticker sheets on tour, as long as they last!)
EXCLUSIVE STICKER DETAILS: if you preorder ON HER TERMS from Skylight Books, you will receive this sticker sheet featuring the pets of ON HER TERMS, Fernando and Small Jesse Pinkman (plus some other cute stuff).
*A $33k gig where I was scared all the time but fuck if it wasn’t magic
**To be fair I was like the last person of all the aspiring authors I knew at the time to get a book deal and I felt like shit about this! That much I can still understand!
***Not the official title
How am I helping? 5 calls and now this - Picked up this tip from our friend Lori - making sure I help support the local economy first by signing up for their email lists and unsubscribing and stopping shopping from big National/Intl retailers. Easy way to remember to shop locally first and help our neighbors.
You asked what we’re doing in/for the resistance? I’m radicalizing the youth; teaching them about the relationship between knowledge, power, oppression, and freedom in this crazy colonized world. And I have not just one, but THREE berets.