and there's a storm that's raging/through my frozen heart tonight
"missing you" by john waite & the other side of disappearing by kate clayborn
What’s that meme? If Kate Clayborn has a million fans, then I’m one of them. If Kate Clayborn has one fan, then I’m THAT ONE. If Kate Clayborn has no fans, that means I’m dead.
I’ve been doing this challenge over on Instagram, where you’re given a prompt for each day of the month and you have to name a song that goes with it. The other day one of the prompts got me thinking about this song “Missing You” by John Waite again, which I haven’t thought about in years but which I quickly got re-fixated on because that’s how I work when it comes to music lol. And then something about the song made me think about Kate Clayborn, whose new book The Other Side of Disappearing comes out next week.
I was obsessed with this song as a kid. It may have been the first time it really occurred to me — wait, he’s saying he doesn’t miss her? But it sounds like he does? You know how it works. You get object permanence around 8 months old or so, then you get symbolic thought, and then you’re playing Barbies on the hallway floor of a New Orleans apartment building and suddenly you hear a John Waite song and think, okay, I get it, sometimes people say the opposite of what they mean. Just like how Piaget said it would go.
I also thought I remembered this music video viscerally, but I realized I literally only have one image from it in my head and the rest is like I’ve never seen it before in my life. The moment where he’s dialing the payphone in the little alcove area, and then he smashes it — it comes in around 2:39 in the music video — that’s it. That’s the whole video for me. Just that image on loop.
My favorite lyric delivery, incidentally, comes around 1:52 in the music video. It’s the way he sings In your world I have no meaning. One of the frustrating parts of trying to describe music is that it’s hard to put it into words — everything it makes you feel, what it is about the inflection he puts on that word meaning that gets to me, whatever. And that’s how I feel about Kate Clayborn novels. I’m a writer but words fail me, sometimes, in expressing the way her books expand in my chest and ache deep in my stomach and linger for a long time afterwards.
I did have to try to figure it out, though, because Kate asked me to blurb The Other Side of Disappearing! It was one of the most thrilling moments in my author career, for real. I was honored when Kate blurbed With Love, from Cold World for me, but I was even more honored to be asked to blurb something of hers. I think I texted ten different people nothing but a row of exclamation points lol. My dentist’s office texting one of their 18 “do you want to confirm this appointment y/n” messages (YES holy christ YES you know I WANT to cancel but I’m trying to do the right thing! I’m on the edge, don’t push me!!!), and they would’ve gotten the same row of exclamation points on Kate Clayborn Asked Me to Blurb Day.
The Other Side of Disappearing is about Jess, a woman who’s become especially guarded and private after her mother ran off with a guy who ended up being a huge con artist. This guy’s cons were later the subject of a popular podcast — think like a Dirty John type joint, if you listened to that one! — and so Jess REALLY does not like dredging up any of these memories or drawing attention to herself or her mom’s connection to him in any way.
Jess even tries to keep the truth from her younger sister, Tegan. (And if you don’t think part of my admittedly unhinged email to Kate about this book didn’t include several references to Tegan and Sara, welcome, you must be new here lol.) But Tegan puts it all together herself, and ends up bringing in the podcast to try to track their mother down. Jess doesn’t appreciate this challenge to her meticulously crafted comfort zone, but she comes along for the ride, not prepared to let her sister go it alone. And what she’s really not prepared for is the podcast’s producer, Adam . . . gentle, watchful, former-footballer Adam, who seems to have the key to unlock every carefully guarded wall Jess has put up . . .
One thing I love about Kate Clayborn characters — in many of her books but ESPECIALLY on display here with Jess and Adam — is how contained they are, and yet how much they hold inside that’s just waiting to explode. And they see that potential in each other, in a way maybe other people don’t — they see those things that are crackling underneath the surface, they want to see the other person let them all out, they want to be the person to help the other person let them all out. Take this quote from The Other Side of Disappearing:
I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a face like hers—it’s like looking through a window at a storm. There’s rain, lightning, wind; there’s trees bending and shaking with the force of it. Part of you is glad to be separate from it. But part of you wants to press against the glass and get as close as you can.
Like!!!!!!! A storm raging through a frozen heart indeed!!!! (I’m trying to thread John Waite in here a little bit lol.)
There’s a lot of skill, I think, in crafting characters who are so deeply empathic, who have such big hearts, and yet who can be so wrong about themselves, can lie to themselves so thoroughly. (So what, I lied, I lie to me, too, to quote one of my favorite Tegan and Sara lyrics; shades of John Waite again, insisting in the chorus that he’s not missing someone he just spent the verse absolutely tortured over.) Jess has spent so long believing a story about the world and about herself that when Adam pushes against it, she doesn’t know what to do. It turns out that she’s tougher than she thinks in all the ways she assumed she was vulnerable; that her heart is breakable in all the ways she told herself it was diamond-hard.
And Adam! Adam has his own backstory, his own storm behind his eyes. But — I’m sorry, maybe this is a spoiler, but it’s one of my favorite parts of many Kate Clayborn men — he is GONE FROM THE JUMP. Like this man is ALL IN on Jess. I was scrolling through my email to Kate, trying to find quotes and moments I wanted to highlight, but I think a lot of the joy is in discovering them as you read so I’ll refrain. All I can say is that the soft way he says “hey now” and rubs circles on her back can still get to me, even after almost a year since I first read this book.
I loved so much more about this book — the progression of Jess’ relationship with Tegan, which really resonated with me as an older sister myself. Some of the commentary on toxic masculinity and health in men’s sports, which comes out in Adam’s past. And, of course, the interstitial transcripts from the true crime podcast, which made me feel like, wait, did Kate write this book SPECIFICALLY to my interests?!
There’s a genuine mystery component to the podcast, figuring out what happened with Jess and Tegan’s mom, and that part of the book felt like Kate taking a big swing creatively in a way I was HERE for. I also just happen to think that there are a lot of parallels to be made between how vulnerable you can feel, especially as a woman, to con artists and criminals — and then how vulnerable it can feel to fall in love. I mean, I kinda wrote a whole book about it! Kate is nothing if not a deeply thoughtful writer, and so I loved to see how she tackled those kinds of themes in The Other Side of Disappearing.
Anyway. Since I couldn’t make my official blurb for the book newsletter-length, and since “It makes me feel the way John Waite singing the word meaning does” is perhaps too niche a blurb, here’s what I ended up saying:
“With her signature beautifully crafted prose, Kate Clayborn delivers another masterclass in romance with The Other Side of Disappearing. I fell completely in love with prickly, private Jess and Adam, the big-hearted giant of a man who’s gone for her from the start. I was so intrigued to follow the clues about what happened in the past, but so, so invested in Jess and Adam building a future together in a way that was careful and tender and achingly true. I never disappear into a book the way I do into Clayborn’s.”
If you feel moved to preorder The Other Side of Disappearing, you can get a SIGNED copy from East City Bookshop!! And Kate has the LOVELIEST handwriting, one of the many overly gushing compliments I have given her in between saying things like “Tegan and Sara are also Virgos, you know” and “Did you ever listen to the Finding Richard Simmons podcast?”
I signed up for the Chicago Spring Fling romance conference coming up in April pretty much because I saw Kate Clayborn was speaking at it btw! So if you’re in the Chicago area around April 20, you can come meet her and also me! I’ll be there signing books OR hanging around Kate Clayborn’s table OR sneaking off to try to snag a copy of the David Byrne/Paramore split record for Record Store Day.
Currently reading . . . My romance book club is doing a double-header of Liana De la Rosa’s Ana María and the Fox and Lisa Kleypas’ Devil in Winter, so I’m reading the latter which I’ve shockingly never read before! (I know, I know! I’ve read the Ravenels and the Hathaways but never the Wallflowers series!) Talk about a BANGER first chapter! Evie shows up at Lord St. Vincent’s house all timid-seeming at first but surprisingly resolute, like, “we should get married now, tonight, because we both need to for different reasons” and he’s like “damn you’re the last person I ever would’ve thought of . . . but you’re kinda intriguing actually . . . okay, fuck it, let’s go.” Imagine me cannonballing into this book, my clothes still on.
watching . . . Okay, I’m just going to say it. I’m going to admit it. I’ve been watching Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for what seems like YEARS. Part of this is because I watched the first two seasons when they came out and then fell off the show, then went back to rewatch, and now only get in a half-episode here or there on the occasional lunch break . . . so I will admit that I might be my own worst enemy on this one. But I am close to the end of Season 3 and it is just DRAGGING for me. The characters are funny, I still enjoy the musical numbers, but I feel like I want to like it more than I actually like it. Is this just a known rocky part of the show? Do I owe it to myself to actually watch the full 45-minute episodes in full as god and Rachel Bloom intended? Or should I just bail on it and find another show?
listening to . . . I have been listening to lots of episodes of The Casual Criminalist, which feels fitting given the true crime podcast angle of Kate’s book. It’s oddly comforting to me. Except the cannibalism episodes, which I have decided to start skipping, because I do have my limits.
preordering . . . I mean, obviously, this entire newsletter is about Kate Clayborn’s new book The Other Side of Disappearing which is out March 26. BUT in non-romance news, my friend Sarah Zachrich Jeng’s speculative thriller When I’m Her is also coming out on March 26, and *I* get to be her conversation partner at her launch event at Third House Books in Gainesville, Florida. I am so excited about this, you have no idea!! I LOVED Sarah’s book, and there are so many interesting things to talk about surrounding the book itself, Sarah’s writing process (I may have been stalking her newsletter a little), music (I listened to Britney Spears’ Blackout on repeat while reading the book and, you know what, I highly recommend this curated experience), you name it. I got to hear Sarah speak on a panel at the Orlando Book Festival last year, so I know this is going to be a conversation filled with nonstop bangers. Kinda like Blackout.
I have to agree that there's a dip in the energy of CEx-G. I made it to the end, which was worth it if only to enjoy the bonus ep which is a stunning live musical performance! This happens with some other shows too for me, enough that I wonder if it's my ADHD or their problem. I also can't tolerate when a show swaps an actor for the same character, no matter how many jokes they insert trying to be meta-funny. It always smells to me like unimaginative writing and reminds me of a daytime soap.
Lmao how did I miss this one? Gmail is so capricious with what it chooses to put in my primary inbox. ANYWAY I have the exact same dominant mental image of John Waite smashing the phone in the "Missing You" video. (The way it synchronizes with the musical escalation!) And seeing the event graphic reminded me of such a great night!