but i'm picturing your body with somebody else

"somebody else" by the 1975 (covered by chvrches) & jealousy in romance novels

One thing I’ve been working on lately is annotating a copy of With Love, from Cold World for a charity auction I participated in a few weeks ago. I really love the experience of annotating a book, even though it always takes more time than I anticipate. It’s a fun way to get back into a book, too, and relive my playlist while I was writing it and references I was excited to work in and little easter eggs or moments I love.

For example — there’s this one line in the first chapter, that says, “Since Lauren never took time off work, Kiki had been worried and texted her. Lauren hadn’t even thought Kiki was on shift that day, but it was kind of nice. To have someone notice, and care.” Canonically in my head, even though I never explicitly say so in the book, this is because Asa was on shift that day. He noticed, and asked Kiki about it — and then Kiki is friends enough with Lauren that she thought to text Lauren to check in. So it’s just this tiny little moment that to me always signified that Asa’s been noticing Lauren for a while, and caring, even if she didn’t know that.

Another thing I had fun with writing — and I guess if it’s not too late, now is a perfect time to warn you that I may low-key spoil parts of the book in this newsletter, so keep reading at your own peril! — was Lauren’s crush on Daniel, the boss’ son and a certified tool if you ask me, and Asa’s jealousy around that.

A sample from my annotations! I’m definitely no Asa but it’s not too bad! Especially for being small in the margins and DRAWN IN PEN which I thought about only after I’d already started might be a mistake.

I realized I love jealousy in a romance novel. Now, please don’t mistake me. I do not like when it becomes toxic, or super possessive, or like “I will storm in there and deck that guy if I so much as see him look at my girl.” Chill out. We are all adults here. I don’t like that shit because it’s not fun and a huge red flag, and also because it’s just embarrassing. When I see a character in a romance novel acting OVER THE TOP jealous I’m always like have a little dignity please.

But an internal jealousy that eats away at a character? Quietly, in a dignified way? God, I feel it right down to my toes.

Lauren is not as subtle as she thinks she is about her crush on Daniel, and it KILLS Asa to watch it. For one thing, Asa sees through Daniel’s shit from day one — a friend who read an early draft of Cold World told me that he loved that Asa may be bisexual but he has enough taste in men not to be into Daniel. Ha! It’s so true. And for what it’s worth, Lauren’s thing for Daniel has really more to do with her than with him. He’s who she thinks she should want, and it’s very safe to do so because she kinda knows that nothing would ever happen and she probably wouldn’t it want it to. He can just be an attractive guy who adds a little excitement to her days from the safe distance she likes to keep.

Daniel also is a perfect foil for Asa because of course Asa would feel insecure next to him. Daniel is “conventionally” handsome (I really did picture him as a ‘90s Harlequin Presents kind of hero), while Asa has his blue hair and tattoos (which obviously just make him hotter! but maybe not who you’d automatically pair with fairly “conventional” Lauren Fox); Daniel owns his own condo and has an Important Business Job, while Asa still lives with housemates and scrapes gum off the bottom of bleachers and helps kids ice skate. Then there’s the family thing, which seems important to Lauren and which Asa knows he can’t measure up to, given that he’s estranged from his:

But maybe he was being unnecessarily harsh, given that if one of Lauren’s key attributes in a potential partner was close with family, that would eliminate Asa from the running.

Not that he wanted to be in the running.

He so wants to be in the running!!! It drives him wild anytime Lauren interacts with Daniel — my favorite parts to write were things like “for the life of him Asa could not think what that walking GQ background model could’ve said that would be remotely funny” because he’s just being so PETTY. (At the same time, as a girl who often only had being “funny” going for her, NOTHING made me more jealous than if the object of my high school affection laughed at someone else’s jokes!! You’re pretty, Amanda, you have to leave something for the rest of us!).

But at the same time, he’s not going to like, make a stand at the Cold World Christmas party. If she’s there with Daniel, she’s there with Daniel. And he cares enough about her that it genuinely upsets him when he sees Daniel treating her dismissively, or leaving the party early, because as much as he doesn’t want her to be with someone else he also doesn’t want her hurt.

Both “Somebody Else” by the 1975 and the Chvrches’ cover of the same song were on heavy rotation when I wrote the Christmas party scene in particular. Even though the song isn’t quite right lyrically — their love has not grown cold, Asa very much does want her body, etc. etc., it has a perfect vibe. That feeling of having your attention very fixated on this one person, clocking who they’re with, feeling a little sick that it’s not you.

In fact, I based Lauren in that party scene off this exact “look” from the Chvrches cover performance:

She must’ve put in contacts, because she wasn’t wearing her glasses, and he could see even from a distance that she had some shimmer around her eyes and cheeks. She wore jeans and a simple fitted black shirt, long-sleeved and scoop-necked. She looked pretty and young and happy and . . .

Then he sees Daniel with her and is like fuck.

Anyway. This has been a self-indulgent little ramble about a few parts of Cold World I’ve been thinking about as I finish these annotations and after I did a really charming event earlier tonight hosted by Bookends at Six Ten Brewing in Tampa. They took such care in setting everything up and it really meant a lot to me. I mean, check it out:

LOOK at all these props!!! A plate of cookies, including some that said "With Love" on them (not pictured: the guava/cream cheese pastries they also made in honor of Dolores!); a very Florida Christmas tree; THE COOLANT WITH A BOW ON IT; tiny little penguins; a blown-up poster of my book cover; and a photo-op cutout they CUT WITH A JIGSAW OUT OF A SHEET OF WOOD to looks like a snow globe and had actual HANDLES on the inside so you could hold it up to take a picture in it!

I was in conversation with two sisters who’d come up with the most thoughtful questions and did a great job facilitating the event. And one sister even knitted a Cold World-themed sweater vest for the other one to wear, which I spent all night thinking, “Wow, so cool that she happened to have a sweater vest in the exact colors of my book cover” until I found out! No, it was BESPOKE!

My conversation partner even made this meme lol the TALENT in this family!!!!

I could say a lot more about this event because it was really lovely. But one thing I’ll say, as a writer from Florida who writes about Florida and does all these events in Florida . . . not a single event passes without us talking about The Situation Down Here. We are constantly having conversations about what’s happening over at New College (my alma mater, which used to be a progressive haven and has been a Project of the governor’s; I can barely even talk about it because it makes me feel actually physically sick); what’s happening with LGBTQ+ rights; what’s happening with book bans and politics and elections. We talk about how everyone else thinks of us as a joke but how hard we’re fighting. So I just wanted you to know that. These conversations are very real, they’re very present, and there are SO many people here showing up and speaking out about what’s happening here.

I also wanted to thank everyone who reached out after last week’s newsletter. It was obviously a vulnerable one to put out there. I usually write these on Tuesday nights, so I literally write out the words (why there’s always at least one error — sorry!) and then schedule for 5am Wednesday and press Send. So sometimes I spend a lot of Tuesday night while I’m trying to sleep, second-guessing what I’ve written or wondering if I shouldn’t grab my phone real fast and unschedule it. (I did grab my phone real fast and change one instance of “super” to “hella” — see, I do edit!). Anyway, I’ve definitely felt a little bit, noticeably better this past week, and I think part of it was just the relief of opening up that release valve a bit. And getting so much kindness in response. And hearing the ways I’m not alone.

(and also the Rays clinched a playoff spot — that always helps)

Currently reading . . . It is an embarrassment of riches over here. I’m reading How You Get the Girl by Anita Kelly (with all of their trademark tenderness and humor and heat set around coaching a high school basketball team); Sex, Lies & Sensibility by Nikki Payne (who writes the SMARTEST Jane Austen retellings I stg and I have already laughed out loud several times; Nikki’s humor slays me); and listening to the audiobook for Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia in anticipation of her event at USF next month. (I will not be able to read her entire bibliography beforehand, but I’m doing my best — I’d already read Gods of Jade & Shadow and Mexican Gothic and am picking up a copy of Silver Nitrate, so I figure 4/1,745,289 or however many books she has ain’t bad.)

watching . . . Somehow a YouTube rabbit hole got me to watch “pacey and joey being obliviously in love for 14 minutes straight” and there are worse ways to spend 14 minutes!!! Asa and Lauren are a little Pacey and Joey-coded, aren’t they? I didn’t write them that way explicitly, but Dawson’s Creek is in my blood so it was probably in there. I definitely LIVED for all Pacey’s little jealous moments when she was dating her college boy and couldn’t help making the occasional dig. He also would get hella jealous about her relationship with Dawson which was just about the only thing Dawson was good for sometimes. Do you remember how there were message boards where you were a PJ-er or DJ-er?!? Are there people who in this the 2023rd year after Christ still consider themselves to be a DJ-er?!?!

listening to . . . I am STILL on my Avril kick and have thought about making an entire zine about her discography at this point. I’m deep in it. I also listened to my own Happy to Meet Cute podcast episode, which is a dorky thing to do, I know, but I couldn’t remember what I’d said past “Fuck Twitter” and encouraging people to practice “intuitive hydration” and stop bothering to track water consumption. Turns out those are still the highlights, but you’re welcome to check out the whole rest of the episode if you’d like! This is one of those podcasts where I listen to every single episode so I was very honored to be on it.