i get knocked down, but i get up again
"tubthumping" by chumbawamba & that scene in LITTOSK
If I get one question about my debut romance, Love in the Time of Serial Killers, it’s . . . okay, but why “Tubthumping?”
Well, I’m finally breaking my silence*, so settle in if you don’t mind spoilers.
*it’s not this dramatic lol I just liked the sound of it
In LITTOSK, one subplot is that Phoebe’s younger brother, Conner, wants to propose to his girlfriend. He really wants to do it in this big, epic way but either rejects suggestions (Shani is afraid of turtles, skywriting is too expensive, etc.) or else it doesn’t work out (firework plan gets derailed by rain). Once Phoebe and her not-suspicious-after-all-neighbor Sam start getting closer, Sam suggests a flash mob. Sam is an elementary school music teacher, and he taught his third-graders a coordinated dance which is basically made up of TikTok moves and Fortnite emotes.
The only catch? The kids learned the dance to Chumbawamba’s 1997 smash hit “Tubthumping.”
Why a flash mob? My recollection is that I had recently rewatched Friends with Benefits, the 2011 movie with Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake, which features a flash mob set to another one-hit wonder song at the very end. I was generally thinking how cute and cheesy flash mobs are; how delightful I found them from the safety of watching on TV but how much I would want to sink down into the earth if I was ever at the center of one in real life. I liked the idea of a flash mob being integral to LITTOSK, but more for side characters than for Phoebe and Sam.
(By the way, remember how Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached were basically the same movie and came out in the same year? Isn’t it weird how Ashton Kutcher was in one and Mila Kunis in the other and now Ashton and Mila are married after revealing that they got together by being . . . friends with benefits? Like fuck crop circles, why is no one talking about this?! I tweeted something about the movies once, and a writer from MEL Magazine contacted me to participate in a round table to talk about comparing the two lol. Still one of the coolest things that ever happened to me.)
So that’s why there’s a flash mob in LITTOSK. But then why “Tubthumping?” Mostly, I wanted a song that’s very danceable and upbeat but that you would not associate with a romantic proposal scene. My first thought was “Hey Ya” by OutKast, because I love that song, it’s SUCH a bop, and it contains some lyrics you wouldn’t necessarily want in a marriage proposal (aka my favorite part):
If what they say is
“Nothing is forever”
Then what makes, then what makes
Then what makes, then what makes (what makes, what makes)
Love the exception?
But it also contains the lyric Don’t want to meet your mama/I just want to make you cum-a and I was like, you know what, that’s a bridge too far. Plus, “Hey Ya” is not really a “funny” choice to me. It’s too legitimately renowned as just a good-ass song. There’s no irony to it.
“Tubthumping,” on the other hand. Listen. *I* will go on record as saying I absolutely one hundred percent unironically love this song. It lifts me right up. But I get it, the song can be a bit of a joke — it’s dated, it made Chumbawamba a “one-hit wonder,” it includes a refrain that just repeats “pissing the night away” over and over.
A lot of people don’t realize how much anarcho-punk cred Chumbawamba actually had, or how long they’d been around before they had their one big radio hit that put them on everyone’s radar. The beginnings of what would become Chumbawamba formed in 1979, and they were more contemporaries with bands like The Sex Pistols and The Clash than anything else. At one point they all lived together in a squat house; they participated in demonstrations and direct action; they released an acapella album covering English protest songs.
Chumbawamba’s musical influences and sound are also legitimately interesting to me — they could be political, they could be playful, but they were trying all sorts of different things. I could see Sam, as a musician and music teacher, being drawn to this song and not at all in an ironic way. After the dance is over, for example, this is the exchange he has with one of his students:
One thing I wrote into LITTOSK, and I didn’t even fully know I was doing it — I’ve always wanted to be a more musical person myself. I love listening to music. I love thinking about the choices a songwriter might make in the arrangement of a song, a certain vocal technique, a tempo change, whatever. But that world always felt very inaccessible to me. I just assumed I could never learn how to sing better, or play guitar, or write a song.
It was actually writing LITTOSK that made me zoom back out and think, you know what? It’s not too late for you. You could learn guitar if you wanted to. You could just play around, experiment a little, find ways to enjoy music from the inside as well as out. I can play some songs now — not very many, and not super well. My “Hey Ya” isn’t bad.
Which is the final thing I love about “Tubthumping.” Call me a cheeseball if you want, but I find it legit inspirational. It has a message that’s especially resonant for writers, I think. When it comes to writing, rejection’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I’ve shared this before, but even with LITTOSK — I had about a decade before that book came out where it was nothing but rejection after rejection. I went on sub with at least four (?) books while I was still with my former agent. Nothing. Then I left that agent and tried querying at least three (?) other books. Nope. I wrote LITTOSK and submitted it to Pitch Wars, a mentorship contest. Not selected. The book got rejected again at the querying stage, again at the sub stage, you still get to simulate “rejections” even once the book is out by getting hit with negative reviews or lists you didn’t make or whatever.
Man, you do get knocked down. But you do get up again. No one’s ever gonna keep you down!
LITTOSK has been out for nine months now, and it’s truly changed my life in so many ways. Sometimes it’s hard to even wrap my head around or put into words. I put some very emotional, vulnerable parts of myself into that book. I was a ball of anxiety before it came out, to tell you the truth. I remember even right after signing the book deal, celebrating with my family, feeling so excited — wow, it’s really happening! — but then lying in bed that night actually thinking to myself, I wonder if it’s too late to pull out. Sometimes you can even knock yourself down, just by being afraid.
But since it’s been out, I’ve made so many connections with people I really cherish. Florida-based people who sometimes know with EERIE SPECIFICITY the EXACT locations I’m describing in the book because yes, some of them are based off real places. People who have also lost whole summers to watching Disappeared and feeling mad paranoid and depressed. People who resonate with some of the parts about Phoebe and her relationship with her dad, the way she guards her heart, the way she tries to tell herself she doesn’t care.
It’s really powerful, when someone reads all these vulnerable little parts of you that you put into a story and they really get it, and they care enough to reach out to you to tell you. I don’t take it for granted, believe me.
Which is why! I will be doing a little giveaway over on Instagram later today for a (lightly) annotated and signed/personalized copy of LITTOSK. I bought a whole tub of new annotation pens in all different colors (“That’s a fuck-ton of G2’s” my husband said when they came in), I have a few more little tidbits I’d love to share, I have to go to the post office this weekend anyway, so fuck it. Happy nine months to LITTOSK and thanks for reading.
Currently reading . . . I have an EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES of books right now, and yes, I’ve been reading them all at roughly the same time. First, I just finished Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren. I’m going to their event in Tampa tomorrow, and just on the off chance that someone is like “Quick! Is there a Beautiful Bastard expert in the room!” I will stand up and shout, “Here! Yes! I just reread it for the eighteenth time and wrote a 3,600 word email analyzing it scene by scene!” Tripping over myself to get up to the front of the room and provide my emergency services. It could happen.
I’m also reading Julie Tieu’s upcoming romcom Fancy Meeting You Here, which comes out in November. It’s about a wedding florist and an aspiring chef with a 27 Dresses kinda feel to it. It’s so cute and there are all these tiny, real moments I keep wanting to call out.
I’m ALSO reading Do Your Worst by Rosie Danan, another November romance release. The description I read on Rosie’s social media promised fun with archaeology and curses, the caretaking trope, The Mummy vibes, and that it would be very fun and very horny and man is it d e l i v e r i n g on all fronts
FINALLY, I just finished That Summer Feeling by Bridget Morrissey, which comes out in just two weeks! I’ve put links so you can preorder all these books if you’re so inclined, but you should really pop on this one because it’s almost here! That Summer Feeling is a story about a divorced woman who goes to an adult summer camp thinking she feels a connection with this Man of Her Dreams (it’s very Only You-esque, one of my favorite movies of all time), only to realize she’s falling for his sister instead. It’s such a gentle story of bisexual awakening and contains the Parent Trap references you know you want from a summer camp story and the Hannah Montana movie one you didn’t even know you wanted and generally was just a delight.
And if you’re thinking, jfc that’s a lot of books, I would say hahahahahaha, I’m back in the game, baby!
watching . . . FINALLY we’re back into Money Heist, too! We just finished Part 3 on Netflix, which ended with another classic Money Heist HOLY SHIT WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN NOW type of moment. I’m really in awe of the way TV writers know how to Always Be Escalatin’! I put my characters through just a little bit and then am like, oooooh okay that’s enough, time to back off. Sorry, guys.
listening to . . . I’ve been listening to the audiobook for Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. I knew roughly about Chris McCandless, the fact that he died in the Alaskan wilderness after going walkabout for a bit after college. But I’d never read this book, although I’d always meant to. What’s so interesting to me about the audiobook is that it’s clearly just a recording of the original Book on Tape, so it will interrupt once in a while and say, “Continued on Disk 2” or whatever and then keep going. Anyway, it’s very good. I’m immersed. I might try Into Thin Air next, which is Krakauer’s book about the 1996 Mt. Everest disaster. I’m in a real “nonfiction on audio” place right now!
"The description I read on Rosie’s social media promised fun with archaeology and curses, the caretaking trope, The Mummy vibes"
Say less, as the kids say. You had me at Mummy vibes (assuming we are talking about the cinematic achievement that is The Mummy 1999 starring Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz).
I think Tubthumping is a great choice because the "pissing the night away" lyric is exactly the sort of mildly vulgar thing kids absolutely love, because they feel like they're getting away with something singing it. I remember the song playing when I was playing Mom Taxi to a group of my youngest kid's friends, and the sheer delight with which they sang along to that song in the car brings me joy to this day.