had a good time but i guess i’ll see ya

some reflections on my debut novel being out

My debut novel, Midnights With You, is out today! 

If you preordered it: Thank you, thank you, thank you! Leaving reviews on retail sites—B&N, Bookshop.org, Target, Amazon, the indie bookstore where you bought it—helps me out so much, whatever you thought of it, good or bad. (I will be doing my best not to read reviews aside from the nice ones friends send me, so please don’t worry about being honest!)

And thank you so much to everyone who read early and reviewed it, and to everyone who supported me through the ups and downs of this year—I really am so grateful.

If you’re new here: Midnights With You is about two children of immigrants with family trauma keeping them up at night who fall in love over a series of secret late-night driving lessons. Ann Liang called it “everything I’ve ever wanted in a book” and Trang Thanh Tran called it “a tender punch to the heart” and Laura Taylor Namey called it “raw and redemptive.” (And several other authors I admire so much said nice things about it, but I wanted to end this sentence in a timely manner lol! I appreciate everyone who blurbed more than I can ever express). It’s out now, and you can buy it here!

Also, a reminder that I’ll be having some launch events! If you’re in the area, I’d love to see you!

Los Angeles, in conversation with Racquel Marie: Thursday, November 14, 7 p.m., The Ripped Bodice, 3806 Main St, Culver City, CA 90232

Get tickets here

New York, in conversation with Shannon C.F. Rogers: Wednesday, November 20, 6:30 p.m., Lofty Pigeon Books, 743 Church Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11218

RSVP here (free)

Long Beach, in conversation with Hannah V. Sawyerr: Sunday, December 15, 4 p.m., Belcanto Books (KUBO LB), 3976 Atlantic Ave, Long Beach, CA 90807

Ticketing details to come!

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So how does it feel for my first novel to be coming out, after so long building toward this point?

Well, for one thing, after the election it feels very…muted! It is certainly hard to feel celebratory in general right now. 

But I didn’t choose this pub date (and asked multiple times if we could change it, and got told multiple times no—but hey, that’s showbiz, baby!) And though it’s landing during a pretty fucked up time, this is still a huge life event. I’ve wanted to write and publish a novel since I was four years old, after my dad died and someone told me he’d always wanted to be a writer. This specific book has been years in the making, and it’s made with love, from the bottom of my heart. So if you’ll indulge me, I’m going to talk a little bit about the layered emotions that come with all that.

I’ve been listening to the song “Normal Thing” by Gracie Abrams on heavy rotation for months because it captures that very specific bittersweet feeling I associate with debuting. Especially these lines:

Had a good time but I guess I’ll see ya—

And you changed my life but I guess I’ll see ya—

As far as I can tell, it’s a song about a parasocial relationship, but maybe the throughline here is “intense emotion about fictional things.” And the soft sounds of this song, and the way it wraps these big feelings up in a series of dry understatements—it’s been really soothing to me.

Because this book really did change my life (and when I say that, I don’t even mean that this book got me an agent and a book deal, though it did those things, too). And putting it out into the world has felt like this strange, long goodbye—a process of letting go of something that was very precious to me. (Gracie Abrams voice: Don’t worry, I know I’ll see you again)

When I started writing this story four years ago, I told myself: Just finish it, and who cares what you do with it afterward? Just the act of finishing it will change your life in some way.

I’d wanted to write a novel since I was a little kid, but aside from something I finished in middle school that I barely remember, for years I started projects without finishing. I knew it was really hard to get published, and my immediate family was pretty against the idea of me trying to be a writer. I got in my head about it, all around. For many years after college, I stopped writing fiction altogether.

I picked it back up during lockdown, when I was working from home and not really seeing anyone and the whole idea of the rest of the world, let alone book publishing, felt further away and more abstract than it used to. And against that backdrop, I found I really just wanted to write for its own sake.

The thing that still astonishes me is how different I felt, before and after finishing this book. And when I look back on how much has changed since I started writing it, I just have this surreal, far-away feeling, like: Wow isn’t that funny?

I feel more comfortable in my skin, more settled in myself, because I wrote this book. I feel like the process of writing and rewriting it for years actually did help me heal from the pain that drove me to write it. While that pain will probably always be a part of me, to some extent, I don’t feel it as acutely. I went to therapy for ten years, but I didn’t really feel healed until I wrote this. (Isn’t that funny?)

It was strangely transformative, in a way I didn’t expect at the start, to create a story about fictional people experiencing a pain that’s familiar to me, and to give them all a good ending. (For a while I was saying “a better ending” than mine, but you know, I’m upgrading that—I think I turned out alright.)

It helped me make more sense to myself. It helped other people make more sense to me. It helped me feel more like myself than I had in a long time.

And I had first started writing MWY out of a place of feeling so deeply misunderstood, illegible and incoherent. In the middle of writing it, I thought maybe no one on earth would be able to relate. So it feels lowkey miraculous that several early reviewers have said the book made them feel seen or that it resonated deeply with them. Four years ago, I seriously wondered if it was possible for me to communicate a single thing.

This book is also basically the entire reason I got to know dozens of people who I now consider friends. (Me four years ago: Literally what?!) And this book taught me the joys of fiction and most of what I know about the craft of writing a novel—the power of the three act structure, the magic of character voice, the craft choices that can create propulsive pacing. (I’m not saying I have mastered any of these things, but to the extent that I know anything about them at all, it’s this book that first taught me).

When I started the first draft, I was so bad at dialogue. Dialogue was my nemesis! I dreaded writing it! Now it’s my favorite part, and the part I always start with when I’m planning out a scene. It’s the thing friends have shouted out as my greatest strength. (Isn’t that funny?)

In traditional publishing, it takes so long for a book to come out—typically two years from deal to release—that a lot of authors probably feel like a different person on pub day than when they first wrote it. It’s been a full year since I made my last substantive changes to MWY, and it was funny to read it through earlier this week for a refresher after so long away. (And even though, in retrospect, I probably have used fewer commas in this book, it still made me cry.)

My main goal going into this year was to keep writing—and I’m very grateful that, in the months since I finished working on MWY, I’ve still managed to have a lot of good writing days. I hope to keep having them, and I’m excited to share more about what else I’ve been working on before too long.

So what’s the bittersweet part? Why does this big life event come with a weird, soft strain of grief?

From talking to other authors who’ve recently debuted, I think it’s common for the reality of publication day to be a lot more surreal and anticlimactic than you might expect. Maybe it’s because of how long this process takes, and how much build-up there is over years, and how much excavating a novel out of your heart and mind can take out of you, especially if it’s your first. 

But I think it’s because the part of MWY that changed my life the most was the headspace of writing it, and that’s over now. The part that was mine is over now. It’s out there for people to misunderstand it or hate it or whatever they choose. And I’m telling myself that what people think of it is largely none of my business—though I really do appreciate the good reviews people have tagged me in and that friends have shared with me.

And to be clear, I’m so grateful this book exists out in the world. I’m certainly very grateful not to be in the process of writing it forever.

It’s just that I spent so much time inside this story, it feels like a place I used to live. And maybe seeing my book in the world is like driving past a house where you used to live, where intense, emotional, formative moments of your life unfolded. And as you pass by, you’re hit with the knowledge that this isn’t your home anymore, and the time of your life it belonged to is one to which you can never return.

This book changed my life, and it’s yours now.

I guess I’ll see ya <3

Love always,

Clare