Anxiety, meet Gratitude

T-Minus 6 Days Until Making Friends Can Be Murder is Out!

We’re turning into the homestretch on book 4, and wow, what a race it’s been.

Over a year ago, maybe like 18 months ago, my friend Anders asked me how close we were to the finish line on Making Friends Can Be Murder. I held up my hands about two feet apart. “If this is a marathon,” I said, and then made the gap 75% smaller, “we’re here.” And then we laughed because we’ve both run multiple marathons, and we know that though that last bit is objectively shorter, it can also be the most excruciating.

That was 18 months ago (it’s been more like an ultra marathon), but now, I’m really sprinting toward the finish. The gap is just a little sliver between my thumb and pointer. We’re basically there.

If you’ve been reading this newsletter for a while, you know that my brother died just as I started working on a fourth novel. He was 40, and his death threw my whole life into… well, something. I’m trying to think of a running metaphor for how that grief felt, but nothing matches, though I did run through it. I’d go out, start jogging, and this weight would descend over my head and shoulders and constrict my lungs. I’d close both eyes while I ran, just peeking every so often so as not to get hit by a truck. When I got home, I didn’t necessarily feel better, but I did feel like I’d done some work, made some forward progress.

And somehow we all moved through it, the thickness and heaviness of that time. And, Kevin (that’s my dead brother) crept into Making Friends Can Be Murder. I tried to do the right thing by him through this very flawed character, who also had a dying brother. The character is the murderer, actually, which gives you an idea of how good a sister I felt like I was to Kevin.

And, even though there was all that heaviness, the book also became really light and funny. Quirky. Optimistic. It’s the lightest, funniest book I’ve written. I’m not sure what that duality means, but it tickles me, and I’m trying to take that weird, zingy energy into launch week.

Will the book hit the bestseller list and be some kind of international phenomenon? I mean, no. But, will people hand it around this summer, passing it off to the slightly odd friends who like offbeat things? I think so.

Last fall, I talked to my therapist (her name is Meredith, so we call her TherMer) about how I’d handle bad reviews. In the end, there haven’t really been bad reviews of this book. The people who read it really like it. But anyway, TherMer’s advice was to focus on gratitude, to think about how wonderful it was to give people a little escapist moment, to have made something that exists in the heavy world that might make people laugh.

I’m going with that. Thank you for all of your support of me and Making Friends. If you haven’t bought it yet, you can do it now. It’ll arrive in your mailbox next week, just in time for me to wear a green dress and launch it into the world.

And here are some details on that launch!

Minneapolis people, the party at Pryes Brewing on June 10th is shaping up to be really fun. We’ll be there from 6-9pm with a short program at 7. You can sign up for a mini intuitive session with AJ, my psychic and tarot reader, (for free) here. Click through to June 10th, and choose a 15-minute session. If you pre-order a copy from Magers & Quinn, you get a drink ticket (8-dollar value). You can also take your photo in this cover just like Skip, my brother’s dog that I inherited.

And, there was a feature story about me in my local paper, The Star Tribune. My quirkiness really comes through, but my friend Sarah says I also seem endearing. Let me know what you think.

And I think that’s it! The next time you hear from me, I’ll officially be the author of four published novels. What a trip. I mean race. We’re running.