flashback, warm nights almost left behind
"time after time" by cyndi lauper & romy and michele & the tucson festival of books
I just got back from the Tucson Festival of Books and had the BEST possible time. I also rewatched one of my favorite movies, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, because frankly it’s what I think of when I think about Tucson! So I want to tell you about that, too. Maybe this will be quite a chaotic mash-up, but let’s see!
First of all, Daylight Savings Time is FUCKING ME UP this week so if this newsletter does get rambling and weird at any point, let’s blame it on that. Arizona doesn’t do DST (good for them, honestly), which was perfect for not having to deal with schedule changes in the middle of the festival, but then also meant that me flying home to the east coast lost me three hours instead of two? I don’t even know. Things are up, things are down, time after (daylight savings) time.
I was super honored and excited to be invited to the Tucson Festival of Books in the first place! It was my first time in my Romance Era doing a book festival of this scale that features all different kinds of authors, rather than, say, a romance-focused convention. The weather was PERFECT, the vibes were IMMACULATE, I honestly can’t say enough good things about the whole experience. If you ever have the opportunity to go, I would highly recommend it!
I feel like there’s ton of representation for anxious overpackers, but I want some justice for anxious UNDERpackers. I don’t know why, but I start to get real nervous about like, not checking any bags because then I worry they’ll get lost, but also having the fewest carry-ons impossible because I worry there won’t be any overhead space left by the time I board the plane, I don’t want to have to deal with rolling around a suitcase all over the airport, etc. I read an essay by Roxane Gay a while back where she described why she ALWAYS checks a bag (they don’t get lost as much as people fear, then you don’t have to deal with it again until you arrive, you can pack extra shoes or books or whatever else and not worry, etc.). She made so many good points and yet still I feel somehow compelled to try to get everything to get into a single backpack.
Which is what I did!
Because of that, I was on a strict shopping ban at the festival. Probably for the best, because I could’ve bankrupted myself on books. I even gave one of my own books away, which probably seemed very altruistic of me but was actually just me anxiously trying to drop backpack weight. I would’ve shaved my head if I thought it would make a difference to me navigating the airport more efficiently.
Look, Romy and Michele grew up in Tucson, so who am I to argue with them! But FWIW in my extremely brief view of the city, I found it charming. I loved Tucson. I was fortunate enough to be in the same hotel as Liana De la Rosa (Ana María and the Fox is one of my favorite recent historical romances, and I’m looking forward to Isabel’s book coming out in June!), and she was the best tour guide I could’ve asked for. She’s from the area and went to the University of Arizona, so she was able to fill me in on a bunch of facts while we walked around campus. Tucson was given the option to be the state’s capital OR have the first university, and they chose the university! There are original stone walls on campus from the days they had to keep the cattle out! Liana knew the difference between the four mountain ranges surrounding Tucson and explained how you could always tell what direction you were facing! I mean, not ME — I am from the EXTREMELY flat state of Florida; they all just looked like mountains to me!
(One of the moments in this movie that can make me actually laugh out loud, no matter how many times I’ve seen it — when Romy whacks Michele in the face while dancing with her long Madonna ponytail. “You look so good with blonde hair and black roots it’s like, not even funny.”)
I was on three panels at the Festival — one on adventure romance (lolol admittedly a stretch! I do not consider my books that adventure-filled? but more on that later); one on academia in romance (Phoebe is writing her dissertation in Love in the Time of Serial Killers, so I can work with this!); and then an “Ask Me Anything” panel with all the romance authors at the end.
Okay, maybe this is JUST ME and I have poor self-esteem or something, but sometimes it’s hard to BELIEVE people when they say nice things about your books. Or at least it’s hard to really take it in.
I actually think of this moment from Romy and Michele all the time, when Michele goes to apply for a job at a high-end fashion boutique and stops to tell this woman how good a blouse looks on her. And then she ruins it by leaning in to say that’s what makes her a really good salesperson because she just has this “like, really believable way of telling people that they look really good” even when she’s talking out of her ass. And then, whoops. The woman totally overheard her saying that.
I don’t know what this has to do with the Tucson Festival of Books at all, except to say that it’s really nice connecting with people in person! It’s very meaningful to have someone tell you what your book meant to them; I enjoy the chance to tell other authors how much I loved their books directly to their faces. (And unlike Michele, pretending I liked something I didn’t is not one of my skills lol.) Sometimes I’m too shy to even do that, like I talked to Isabel Cañas VERY briefly and most of it was about shoes instead of me gushing about The Hacienda and Vampires of El Norte like I would’ve done if I’d had the wherewithal. I DID suggest a possible future book idea which I won’t mention here but if the book ever happens 3, 4 years from now best believe I will be shouting from the rooftops.
I started out the “adventure romance” panel a little like, uhhhh maybe the most adventurous thing that happens in With Love, from Cold World is that Lauren tries ice skating which she isn’t very good at. But by the end of the panel I was radicalized to see everything as an adventure! At one point I brought up Mallrats and called it an adventure movie! (Any excuse to bring up Mallrats tbh.)
And okay, I will NOT be marketing my books this way, I do get that there are different genre conventions. But it was fun, just thinking about what defines “adventure” and the ways that all characters in books are going on an adventure in a way because by definition they’re being pushed out of their comfort zones.
One question from the audience was about age, and how we picked the ages of our characters. It was a very thoughtful question, and I’m haunted by the fact that I may have said the wrong number of days it was until my 40th birthday (I know my own birthday! I just didn’t know what day it was lol. Will you be mad at me if I drop an off-schedule This Is 40 newsletter on Friday??). Anyway, age was something I thought about a LOT for Cold World in particular, because I wanted Asa and Lauren to be right at that point where they’re still young but starting to feel those external pressures of like, what should my life look like? Am I enough of an “adult?”
And it made me think of one of my favorite age-related burns in cinematic history, when Romy tries to apply for MTV’s Singled Out and gets told “Our cutoff is 25 . . . try VH1.” This is one of the best deliveries of a single line of dialogue, I stg. It’s BRUTAL. Also such a niche ‘90s joke of VH1 being the “less hip” MTV. I don’t know; I swear my undying loyalty to this single reference.
On the academia in romance panel, we talked a lot about imposter syndrome — how it manifests in our characters as they navigate fields where women in particular might be underrepresented, how we ourselves experience it. This is a rich topic I could talk about for hours. I think a lot of it manifests when we feel others’ expectations, and worry we can’t live up to them? Or that we’re not worth the effort someone else is putting toward us, or whatever. Ooof, I don’t know. One thing I’ve learned, though, is that it’s VERY normal and the people you least expect to have imposter syndrome often do have it . . . probably in part because of that very expectation that of course they wouldn’t, they’re so brilliant. What a vicious cycle!
This panel also gave me the chance to reflect on how one of my favorite parts of Phoebe and Sam in Love in the Time of Serial Killers was the way that Phoebe really learned from Sam by watching him with his students, and the way he talked about teaching music to kids. I hadn’t thought about that in a while, and it was nice to spend time with it again.
When it came time for the big AMA panel, my main goal was just to not say anything weird or rambling or foolish when Ms. Bev was sitting only a couple chairs away. At one point we went down the line and all said our favorite trope, or a trope we’d like to write, and I said “fake dating” and went on to say something about “You know how it is, when your friends and family NEED you to kiss, to prove it’s REAL,” and Ms. Bev was laughing but also looking a little like, “What?!” and you know what, I’ll take it.
Beverly Jenkins is just the MOST delightful person btw and if you ever have a chance to see her, you should! Some of her bon mots during this festival included: “Finish the damn book” (her advice to aspiring writers); “if it gets you hot, it’ll get your readers hot” (on writing sex scenes); and sharing Adriana Herrera’s term for a writer who’s a “pantser” who sometimes outlines a bit as a “pantyliner.” (Ms. Bev self-identified as a pantyliner!)
Her personality comes through so much that when I was telling my husband all about this festival, including the “favorite trope” question, he said, having only heard about Beverly Jenkins about 20 minutes before: “And?? What did Ms. Bev say??”
(Marriage of convenience!)
So I have no idea if I sounded as smart as Michele reciting the formula for glue off the top of her head in a dream sequence, but it was a really interesting panel with some great, thought-provoking questions. If we were at a loss for questions I had one in my back pocket (Who’s the hottest Ninja Turtle?1 which became a full-on DEBATE thanks to the TMNT sweatshirt I wore throughout the weekend), but perhaps it’s for the best that it didn’t turn out to be necessary.
I really can’t say enough about all the volunteers and everyone keeping the festival running. The moderators of all the panels I was on — Hannah Gómez, Jennifer Bushroe, Jessica Pryde, and Jessica West — did a fabulous job. A volunteer kindly picked me up from the airport. (I also rode in with Krystal Marquis, whose novel The Davenports was an instant New York Times bestseller and recently optioned by Amazon! She was so sweet!) Volunteers guided us everywhere we needed to be, from panels to signings, to make sure we didn’t get lost. The festival was a huge undertaking, and I was just impressed by how smoothly it all ran and how kind everyone was.
This has VERY LITTLE directly to do with the Tucson Festival of Books, but bear with me. I actually think about this movie all the time, and one reason why I do is because I think Michele is such an icon for saying this. Every time I’ve watched the movie, I’ve always been especially drawn to Romy as a character. I mean, for one, I just have a massive crush on Mira Sorvino in this movie. She looks INCREDIBLE and also has that inexplicable deep-voiced Valley Girl accent (which she described as “part John Wayne, part Captain Kirk,” part an impression of her little sister Amanda, and which nobody knew she was going to do until she arrived on set). I also think we as the audience are SUPPOSED to attach to Romy in particular, because she’s the character who really wants something. She’s the one who wants them to be impressive for the reunion, she’s the one obviously struggling with the lives they’re living, she’s the one who drives the whole plot and has to make the most change.
But this speech from Michele! Because it’s so true. They always had each other, they always had fun, and in some ways it’s a disservice to focus on all the ways they weren’t “enough” in high school or aren’t “impressive” now when the truth is that they have something really rare and precious in their friendship.
I think about this moment from Michele all the time. Sometimes, in publishing, you have to get a little Romy on it — you have to get neurotic and ask questions and try to figure out what to do next. (But for Romy’s dissatisfaction, remember, none of the movie would’ve happened! They’d still be in LA, underemployed and watching movies and stuck in a bit of a rut.) But I think sometimes it’s nice to be a bit of a Michele, floating along, enjoying the moment and not letting some magnets on your back brace bring you down. That’s how I felt this weekend, just having fun and talking about books and hanging out with some really cool people.
One person asked us on one panel how we made money writing books, or if we made money, which was such a big question it feels like I’d need a whole separate newsletter to even tackle it! I don’t mind this question — I actually love talking money, especially budgeting and stuff like that — but of course it’s always a little awkward to be put on the spot. It’s a lot to explain royalties and advances and all that in a brief answer under the time constraints of a panel. But a future newsletter topic for sure.
I’ve been yelled at several times now that this newsletter is too long, so I’ll close by reiterating that I had a fabulous time at the Tucson Festival Books and met so many engaged, kind, thoughtful readers and loved hanging out with so many talented, incredible, hilarious authors.
Random moments from Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion that really make me laugh:
every time Michele acts like it’s so special to have the most BASIC things in common, like not liking throwing up in public;
the way Romy says “we never had a reason like a reunion to motivate us before”;
when Romy tells a guy that her shoe is filling with blood as an excuse to walk away;
the background dialogue at the discount outlet that says “you could make curtains for the motor home with this” and “what’s the mark down for a small blood stain”;
the deathbed scene with “*I’m* the Mary!”
every Heather Mooney moment but especially when she dribbles beer on herself in response to an alum being announced as playing professional football now (I even thanked this moment in my LITTOSK acknowledgments lol)
Currently reading . . . I just finished Love and Other Conspiracies by Mallory Marlowe, which was SO CUTE and made me want to deep dive into all sorts of cryptid and conspiracy theories. There’s this scene where Hayden and Hallie fall asleep together that was so sweet, and their skeptic-believer banter gave me Scully-Mulder flashbacks in the most delicious way.
After spending the weekend with Jo Segura (a GEM of a human, albeit devastatingly wrong in her Ninja Turtle opinions), I also picked up her book Raiders of the Lost Heart at the airport and devoured it on my flights. I’ve been wanting to read it since it came out in December, but she was on every panel with me and I couldn’t wait another minute after hearing all the smart and hilarious things she said about it. It was so fun and a true adventure romance!
watching . . . At one point, I went to find something comforting and familiar to put on in my hotel room, and I stumbled upon The Office, so I was like, okay, this’ll do . . . except it was the SCOTT’S TOTS EPISODE!!! *Michael Scott No! No! No! gif* The opposite of comforting! I’d rather be alone with my thoughts!
listening to . . . On my flight up, I listened to Nirvana’s In Utero on a loop while reading a 33 1/3 book about the album. Then I walked around the airport during my layover and saw several people wearing Nirvana shirts and so made this meme to post to my Instagram stories:
preordering . . . Neely Tubati Alexander’s In a Not So Perfect World comes out 3/19!! I read this one early and said: “In a Not So Perfect World by Neely Tubati Alexander was a delight from start to finish. Sloane and Charlie were an easy couple to root for, and it was fun to watch them go from wary traveling companions faking a connection to two people who really understood each other. When I reread this book, let it be on a beautiful tropical beach, please!” I’m very excited for it to be out in the world!!
HOW IS RAPHAEL WINNING THE TMNT POLL!?!?!?!?!?! JUSTICE FOR MICHAELANGELO!
Would not be upset at all with a bonus This is 40 newsletter on Friday!