Well, it’s somewhere between 3 and 4 o’clock on a Monday afternoon, which means that it’s time for me to give you free stuff. OBVIOUSLY. Today I have an ARC of THE HALLOWED ONES by Laura Bickle, as well as a bunch of these really cool THE HALLOWED ONES card/bookmark thingies. I don’t know what you actually call them. You’re probably supposed to tape them to your doorknob at night to ward off garden gnomes. And during the daylight, hey, you can use them to hold your place in your book.

The text on the cover reads “If your home was the last safe place on earth, would you let a stranger in?”

SPOILER ALERT: It is. She does. And it’s epic.

I had the honor and the pleasure of reading this a few weeks ago, and guys, it was pretty much the most intense thing I had going on in my life at the time. Here’s the goodreads summary:

Katie is on the verge of her Rumspringa, the time in Amish life when teenagers can get a taste of the real world. But the real world comes to her in this dystopian tale with a philosophical bent. Rumors of massive unrest on the “Outside” abound. Something murderous is out there. Amish elders make a rule: No one goes outside, and no outsiders come in. But when Katie finds a gravely injured young man, she can’t leave him to die. She smuggles him into her family’s barn—at what cost to her community? The suspense of this vividly told, truly horrific thriller will keep the pages turning

When I was a kid, I was a fan of a little show you may have heard of called Are You Afraid of the Dark? In one particular episode, the characters found themselves in a silent theater. One of the vampires stepped out of the screen, into the theater, and effectively killed my chances of sleeping without a nightlight for the next five or six years. I have a little cousin who is eight, and when I told her about this freaking scary vampire, she didn’t believe that a vampire would be so terrifying. “That’s okay,” I said. “I’ll PROVE it to you.” I hopped onto google images, and it took me the better part of ten minutes and several queries before I found a very small, very blurry thumbnail image of this vampire. PS? Still scary.

THE HALLOWED ONES is going to make you dust off your childhood nightlight. When you get up at night to use the bathroom, you’ll be turning on all five lights between your bedroom door and the door of the commode. It is creepy, and realistic, and creepy again. It’s also wonderfully written. The protagonist, Katie, is astoundingly brave and strong while still mostly conforming to the rules of her Amish heritage. This is NOT something you want to miss. It comes out this fall, but if you start reading it now, you can buy up all of the nightlights and then sell them back to your friends at triple the price when they read it in September.

This giveaway is INTERNATIONAL. That means you are eligible to win whether you live in the US, Canada, Istanbul, or in the belly of a whale. Whenever I host an international giveaway, there are always “will you ship to X?” comments. The answer is YES. If you live on the moon, I will hire an astronaut. No worries. Cool stuff CAN be yours no matter where you live; believe it, my friend.

THE RULES:
In order to enter, tweet/facebook/blog/tumblr about this giveaway with a link to this blog entry (if you are on goodreads, please link to and comment on my blog post here: http://www.laurendestefano.com/blog/ as comments on my goodreads blog will not be counted). Then enter a comment below with the link to your tweet/facebook/blog/tumblr post. On Sunday, May 27th, at 11:59 PM, EST, this giveaway will end and I’ll select the winner using a random number generator. Your entry number will be based on the order in which you commented. The first randomly-generated number will determine the winner of the ARC, and 10 others will win the bookmark/postcard/gnome ward thingy.

Due to an overwhelming volume of email inquiries regarding the publishing industry, I have decided to post this handy guide for those of you hoping to enter the fray.

*Ahem*

How to be a Published Author (A Beginner’s Guide):

You will need:

Talent
A word processor
A whisk or wooden spoon
A 4″ baking pan
A gas or electrical oven
A window ledge
A literary agent
A pair of fancy slacks
A few foldout chairs
A unicorn (a pony, spiral shell and superglue will also do if you’re on a budget)
An ability to pretend to know what the (expletive) you’re doing.

Step one: Combine talent with word processor, and stir sentences until smooth. If you stir too rapidly or too slowly, powdery clumps will form in the batter. That persistent residue is caused by self-doubt and must be beaten with the whisk or wooden spoon. Failure to destroy doubt may result in unfinished manuscript, electrical shock, or public nudity.

Step two: Pour word batter into your baking pan. Preheat oven to 450 fahrenheit and bake for however many months or years necessary. The finished product will appear supple and golden. Despite vigorous whisking, some doubt clumps may have caused bubbles or minor erosions in your manuscript. You may wish to do some minor touching up, but excessive prodding will cause the manuscript to collapse. These minor flaws are not a cause for concern at this time.

Step three: Set manuscript on window ledge to cool. Once the aroma takes to the wind, hungry literary agents should gather in your yard. There are many types of literary agents. I chose the one with $10, a zombie apocalypse survival guide and a meat tenderizer in her Kate Spade bag at all times. The more maniacal your agent appears in public, the better. When selecting the right agent for you, ask yourself, “Would I want to stand opposite this person in a battle for the last cupcake at the supermarket?” If your answer is, “Dear God, no,” then you may have your ideal agent.

Step four: Your agent will have you sign some light paperwork. He or she may treat you to lunch, and will then ask you to wait at the Starbucks on the corner while he or she enters a publishing house with a sack of jellybeans, a rubber mallet, and a plastic duck that can quack the national anthem. Enjoy your coffee of choice. Wait for your agent to emerge victoriously from the publishing house with a shiny new book deal.

Step five: Discreetly change into fancy new slacks.

Step six: Arrange chairs in a circular fashion. Fans of your newly-published book will gather.

Step seven: Ride in on a unicorn like a (expletive) boss.

Step eight: Engage with your readers and pretend you knew what the (expletive) you were doing the entire time.

Step nine: Ride unicorn some more.

Today has been, so far, a pretty good day. After a week of being bedridden with some kind of medieval disease I swear I thought had been eradicated from modern society, I’m finally up and about, wearing actual non-pajama clothes to the grocery store. The weather’s been so nice that I have the skylight in my office cracked open and for once, the neighbor’s seven-pound hound from hell isn’t yapping. The furniture company finally refunded me for my damaged chair, and seriously, you guys, I am eating the best sandwich ever.

My having a good day isn’t wholly uncommon. I love my life with the ferocity of a puma chasing another puma. Trust me, pumas love to chase other pumas. However, I’m always wary of April. It hasn’t exactly been kind to me in the past. April is a 30-day battle scar I must endure annually, and from the time I wake up to the time I go to bed, I’m filled with a distant sense of catastrophe.

When you lose someone you love, the first effect you feel is a chasm in your life. There’s a voice that doesn’t answer your calls, a phone that rings forever. There’s a half-gone glass of milk on the end table and the DVR is set to record a show that won’t be watched in death. Clothes that won’t be worn. And your life is still trying to act around this wound; everything you do is empty and strange. The first time you hear a new song on the radio, you’re outraged and frightened that time is passing, that the world is filling with new sounds all the while.

And then, bit by bit, the chasm forms a scar tissue. It smoothes over and it leaves a rivulet on the skin. It becomes a scar that you don’t think about every day. There’s guilt when a whole day passes in which you don’t acknowledge it, but that too will dull down. April is my month of scars, as has been the case for six years now. I distract myself, I cry unprovoked, I turn sullen, I remember.

Another thing happens every April. Ants march out of my garbage disposal. I’ve lived in three different places over the last six years, and this has happened to me every spring. I find one of the cats chirping as he follows a little black cavalcade from the sink, down the cabinets, across the kitchen floor. I’ve tried everything to be rid of them, from catching them and letting them loose outside, to vacuum cleaners, to cloths soaked in vinegar. But ants are a curious thing. Attack their little colony, and they scatter, but immediately return. Stomp on their little hills, and they rebuild.

Here’s the part where I get saccharine and tell you that grief turns us into ants. A kid with a magnifying glass burns our world. A giant cat swipes at us. We get disrupted and then we’re left to deal with the casualties. Living becomes an act of defiance.

Today has been one of the more defiant days. I’m under a bright sun, and my head is full of ideas, and every day the radio is filling the world with new songs while I write new things and try to fill the world with new books. We’re resilient things, whether or not we want to be. There are days for rain clouds and umbrellas and bad poetry, of course. But then there are days when you pull out of your driveway, and the road goes on before you, dotted with white, and it really feels like you’ll live forever.

When I was in college, I took a night class for creative writing. And one evening, on my way into the room, a woman stopped me and asked a few questions about the course. After chatting for a bit, I suggested that she sit in on a class to see if she’d be interested in signing up the following semester. That’s when she told me, “Oh, no, it’s just that my son really wants to be a writer and I’m not sure if I should encourage him.” She didn’t say as much, but I think she meant to say that it’s kind of a pipe dream. And I’m not really here to say that it isn’t. Growing up, when I told people I wanted to write, the response was usually “Okay. And what else?”

So, standing outside of this classroom, years before I would write and publish my own novel, I felt a kind of sympathy for this woman who clearly cared about her son. I think about this woman sometimes, and her son, who I’m sure is well into his wondrous formative years by now. Because the truth is that no mother’s protection and love can stop a writer from being a writer. I’ve seen the parents who discourage creativity, and the effect is like shaking a 2 liter bottle of soda. You can hear the bubbles fizzing around in there, you can sense an explosion, and in a way you even crave it.

There is also no “wanting” to be a writer. There’s wanting to be published, sure, and there’s wanting to be better. But if this is your path, then in all probability, there comes a day in which you reach the awareness that you just ARE a writer. You wake up in the morning, and the awareness is swimming in your brain. You sit in a classroom at a desk identical to those around you, and you have this secret. Maybe you’re even smug about it. It doesn’t even matter if you write things down. It doesn’t matter if the stories begin in your head with bold, certain lines, and then taper off like sand where the ideas cease to continue. It’s there or it isn’t there. It can’t be helped.

If you’re a writer that wants to be published, it gets increasingly hard to be timid. Your work will be emailed to agents, emailed to publishers. It will probably not stand out in some piles, and if you’re lucky, it will glow among at least one stack of other manuscripts. It will be discussed. It will be analyzed. It will be given a monetary value… and you’ll probably gag and maybe throw up in your mouth a little, whatever that value is.

Your work will be given a name, given a cover. The cover will be alien to you, but it will forever be a part of what readers will see. Your work will be discussed again. It will be praised, adored. It will be loathed, prompt disgust. It will be tossed aside in a malaise of someone’s cynicism. Your picture will be on the internet. People will ask you about your favorite TV shows and you’ll wonder how this is relevant. You’ll become a sort of character–strangers will use your work to justify points you never considered, much less intended. And then you, not your work, will be praised, adored, and loathed.

Individual experiences may vary, but the above is the norm. So you must be certain of your words. You must be proud of them. They will be your only shield. You’ll be judged for what’s on the page, and those words, printed in a font of your publisher’s choosing, will speak for you. It’s inevitable and unavoidable that those words will piss somebody off. They’ll also cause a lot of discussions, for which you won’t be present. Your book will wind up in places you’ll never visit. People will glorify you, and others will think the worst of you. You’re a genius; you’re a hack; you’re too arrogant; you’re too shy; you show instead of tell; your work is a lovechild of Sebold and Shakespeare; your agent must have been high to sign you.

Be unapologetic. I can’t say this enough. Write what’s there in your head, in your blood. Tell the story the way it’s meant to be told, because you are the only one who can tell it. There are so many people in this world. Forget what the population surveys say, there are too many people to be counted. So few of those people will have their words printed. If you have that opportunity, don’t take it lightly. Don’t waste your pages trying to fit a genre or to profit or to abate fears. If your characters run down dark alleys, follow them. Hide behind a dumpster and watch what unfolds. Tell the whole story. This is your only legacy. One day you’ll be gone and it will be all that’s left. Someone will find it in a garage sale and your twitter account will be a hundred years deactivated, so make sure it’s all there, bound and glued–everything you wanted to say.

Do not ever, do not ever, say you’re sorry.

What do Aimée Carter, Beth Revis, Tahereh Mafi and I have in common? We all write YA, and we all own webcams. We also each get our fair share of questions about our lives, our writing, and our lives as writers. And we’re rumored to be spies, but that’s another story.

Now’s your opportunity to ask us anything you’d like, and if your question is chosen, we’ll answer it in a vlog!


Leave your question or questions in a comment below. You can ask a general question for all three of us, a specific question for each of us, or a question for just one or two of us. Anything goes! The deadline for your questions is 12:01 the morning of Friday, March 23rd.


Ask as many questions as you’d like. You may want to check our FAQ pages to see if your question has already been answered:


Lauren’s FAQ page: http://laurendestefano.com/faq.php
Tahereh’s FAQ page: http://taherehmafi.com/ (This site makes really cool noises when you click on stuff)
Aimée’s FAQ page: http://www.aimeecarter.com/FAQ.html
Beth’s FAQ page: http://www.bethrevis.com/frequently-asked-questions/


We’ll each select our top three questions and answer them on camera. And when we answer them, maybe we’ll be wearing fancy hats, or holding a basket of kittens, or preparing a delicious apple pie. Really, who knows. We like to keep readers on their toes.


Aimée Carter is the author of THE GODDESS TEST


Beth Revis is the author of ACROSS THE UNIVERSE


Tahereh Mafi is the author of SHATTER ME


Lauren DeStefano is the author of WITHER


Ask away!

So, as most of you probably already know, Facebook is changing to a new layout that looks something like this:





(Thanks to my friend Andrew for letting me use his page as a sample. PS, he’s also in Fever’s acknowledgements for other cool reasons).


And my fanpage currently looks like this: https://www.facebook.com/LaurenDeStefanoFan


Here is where the free stuff comes in:


To the person who designs a banner for my fanpage, I will award this basket of super cool stuff:





The basket contains:


* A hardcover of FEVER and a paperback of WITHER.


* THE HUNGER GAMES edition of People, which features a super spiff ad for Wither and Fever. I forget what page it’s on, but there’s a ton of Peeta all around it, so it probably smells like bread and epic winning.





* The latest UK version of WITHER, which features a soft cover and a short story from Rose’s perspective, which was previously only available as an eBook.


* A WITHER bookmark, which can only be found in the Indonesian version. If you want the Indonesian version too for whatever reason, just let me know and I’ll throw one in.





I will of course sign these things and personalize them however you’d like.


I feel like there’s something I’m forgetting…


Oh yeah. I’ll also be hiding a sentence from BOOK 3 somewhere along with my signature. Just to put this in perspective, Book 3 has no title, and it is not printed yet. It is in a word document on my editor’s computer, so you’ll be getting the sneakiest of sneak peeks.


And maybe I’ll get crazy and throw some other stuff in there, too, like this page from my Powerpuff Girls coloring book or a piece of toast that looks like a patron saint, or some kind of field rabbit (if the box has airholes and is jumping around, you might want to invest in a cage and some carrots).


Do you want this stuff? Do you want this stuff? Here are the rules:


1.) The banner must contain Chemical Garden content (example: the covers, photos of the pages, text, etc) and/OR original artwork that belongs to you. That means no photos of celebrities and no ripping artwork from the internet. If you have a friend with heterochromia, don’t just photograph her while she’s at the mall sipping her diet coke and then put it on the internet without her knowledge. Make sure any artwork is your own.


2.) Understand that by sending your banner to me, you are allowing me to use it on my fanpage for however long I’d like. That may mean a hundred years. But things happen. People change. One night I may be sitting down to a romantic dinner with my banner, and it might have had a rough day at work, so it insults my delicious meal or doesn’t notice my new dress, and I might decide that it’s time to end our relationship. Don’t take this personally. These things happen to the best of them.


3.) Have a cupcake while designing your banner. This is optional, I just thought it might make you happy.


4.) Be creative and have fun! I don’t know exactly what I’m looking for, and that’s why I’m turning to YOU. Make a banner that you feel really captures what this series means to you. Maybe it means lots of text, or pretty pictures, or a hand-chiseled ice sculpture of me, in which my chin is prominent and my hair looks fabulous. Just putting that out there.


You may use photos of me if you really want to. I only ask that you don’t use any licensed photos, which means any of the photos on facebook that are copyrighted to Ali Smith, my photographer. You can use any of the goofy pics I clearly took with my own webcam. I have to warn you, though, that using my photo runs the risk that you’ll have to see my face every time you visit my fanpage.


5.) Tweet/facebook/tumblr about this contest. Tell your friends. Tell your pets. And include a link when you submit your entry or it won’t be counted.


6.) Enter as many times as you like! Felt compelled to specify after receiving questions.
You should submit your banner as a high-resolution image to lauren (at) laurendestefano (dot) com. The deadline is Friday, March 30th at 12:01 AM EST. This is open internationally! Why are you still here? Grab a bottle of glue and a bag of popsicle sticks and a local politician and get to work!

Dear My Home:

Thank you for being my home. You keep my cats and me nice and cozy. Without your roof, all of my stuff would get wet when it rained. Without your walls, vagrants would steal all of my shiny things. You may not have 24-hour room service, and your bathrooms may not replenish with cute little shampoo bottles or soaps each morning, but I like your picture at the top of the staircase that is somehow always crooked even though I constantly straighten it. I love your blankets covered in cat hair and your bedroom door that only closes properly in the summertime. I love your skylights that make the moon and stars look like they are in high-def on a clear night. And even though I am not nuts about the popcorn ceilings, I am happy to look at them each night before I go to sleep. Thank you for letting me paint and paper your walls to suit my whims, and for not complaining when I don’t mop or vacuum your floors as often as I should. Thank you for being my home.

Love,
Me.

Most of us moan and groan about our parents at some point in our lives. But for all intents and purposes, I was pretty lucky. I had parents who sat back and let me become whatever it was a dreamed of becoming. I’m sure they secretly worried that I’d die penniless and alone, but still, they catered to my wishes for spiral notebooks and Lisa Frank pencil toppers.

They probably took a lot of crap for it, too.

In my early years, I was routinely made to rewrite formal essays for embellishing. Okay, Ms. Floral Dress, you caught me, my golden retriever DOESN’T have mind-reading powers, and no, I didn’t have a dream that there was the ghost of a little girl telling me where she’d been buried under my pool, and no I didn’t find her locket gleaming at the bottom of the water the next morning.

I was friends with another little girl who liked to write stories, and in response her father taped a list of the New York Times Bestsellers over her bed and he told her that if she couldn’t be the real deal, she’d better find something more worthwhile to aspire towards. He also said this to me. I promptly disregarded it. Actually, I tended to disregard any tidbits of reality I didn’t like. I still do this often.

I was the kid that never fit in. I was ridiculed for my crazy hair and my habit of staring off into space. It was strange that I was reading Sidney Sheldon in the sixth grade. In the fifth grade, my parents were called in for a meeting because the quiz stated “In your own words, explain (whatever it was)” and I responded in the form of a poem. I would walk around for days and days in mourning when I’d killed off a character that only I knew existed, because I had written her. I hoarded notebooks and showed them to no one. I glued comic strips to my walls.

And most of the time, my parents, both traditional and reserved, were as confused by my behavior as anyone else. I was their only child, their only shot at molding a human being that would one day go out into the world and leave some sort of mark. They could have begged me to be a doctor or a candlestick maker. They could have demanded that I declare a business major if they were to help me with college. Instead, they never told me I had to be something else. They never said that if I couldn’t be the “real deal,” I’d better find a more worthwhile aspiration. Only as an adult can I look back and truly appreciate what a bang-up job they did of accepting me. But even with that support, I worried for myself. I worried that I wouldn’t be the “real deal,” and I worried that my dream wasn’t to BE the “real deal.” I didn’t care about being a bestseller. I just wanted to tell stories. I didn’t understand why I had such trouble fitting in. I thought I was some kind of mistake.

But like a rolling stone, I kept doing what I felt compelled to do.

My true moment of validation came when I was 25. Shortly after my publisher acquired my trilogy, we all went out to lunch. Here were these professional people with fancy city jobs and snazzy hair, talking about my characters and asking me questions. I’d like you to take a moment to appreciate how weird that was. All the silly imaginings I’d had since I was a child were now the topic of a business lunch. It was kind of the best day ever.

It shouldn’t have taken me that long to feel validated. I shouldn’t have felt like a mistake. And it shouldn’t take a book deal or snazzy hair to make you feel validated, either. At the end of your life, do you want to look back and say that you never worried your teachers, that you always behaved, that you fit in and everything was like a 50s sitcom?

Maybe you’re weird, and maybe you’re not. Whatever you are, just embrace it. Be you. Be unapologetically you. If people look at you funny, you stand on a chair and proclaim that you’re lord of the mud people. If someone tells you that you aren’t good enough, tell them you have as many hours in the day that Shakespeare and Einstein and Dr. Condom had. And know that your life is yours to make. Someday, maybe years from now and maybe tomorrow, people will be in AWE of you. They’ll see an octagon in a room of squares. So unzip that silly square costume. You don’t need to aspire to be the “real deal.” You already are.

About four years ago, before the days of Rhine and Wither World, before I had a social media platform and when I was just a bright-eyed dreamer with a hard drive full of unmarketable manuscripts, I received a phone call. That phone call was an offer of representation from an agent. And at the end of that phone call, my shiny new agent asked if I had a website. I didn’t. She asked me to start one. And so, this blog was born.

And from that very first day, before I had a book deal or any readers, I knew there were certain topics that I’d never blog about. Politics was one of them. Body image was another. The reason I stay away from those types of posts is because I don’t have much faith in my own finesse. There are other bloggers who introduce these topics in a way that is fabulous and thorough. Whereas I ramble a lot, give books away, and show you pictures of how ugly my bathroom was before I exorcised the pink from it.

Today I’m breaking my own restraint to blog about this topic. Maybe it’s fitting, in light of the whole SOPA censorship debacle. Maybe now is the perfect time to say the sorts of things I wouldn’t normally say.

The topic is body image. It’s snowing today, and I thought I’d curl up on the couch and indulge in a little TV before diving into my line edits for Book 3. I flipped through the DVR lineup and decided to watch the latest episode of The Biggest Loser. I was only half paying attention, clicking around on the internet as I usually do, when I heard one of the contestants say that she had dreams of being a writer. She went on to say, “How are you gonna go into these publishing houses and be like ‘Hey, you wanna publish my book’ when you’re the fat girl?”

This ripped my attention from the computer screen. I hit rewind, sure I misheard her. I played it back three times, not just astounded but horrified by what was happening on my television. Was this aspiring writer really citing her weight as the reason she felt a publishing house wouldn’t take her seriously?

We can’t have this. This is not okay.

The most devastating part of this sentiment is that, in addition to this young woman believing her weight is congruent with her success as an author, millions of viewers nationwide have just heard it. How many of those millions are writers? How many are going to feel that they cannot take a step towards their dreams until they’ve lost a few pounds?

Actually, scratch that. How many of those millions have dreams they now fear can’t be attained because of their weight?

If I’m going to go into full disclosure here, my weight is something I have been conscious of for most of my life. It’s something I struggled with in my teens and something I struggle with now. I gained a bunch of weight after selling Wither, between the pre-publication stress and having a job that required movement only from the wrists to the fingertips. I’ve since lost all of that weight, and I know that it is as emotionally taxing as it is physical. And I’m not alone; I can’t count on both hands the conversations I’ve had with friends over the years about calories in vs. calories out, and abdominal crunches and weight watchers points and diet soda. It’s a significant part of my life. And it has nothing to do with my ability to dream or my determination or my worth as a person. It took me years and years to understand this. I used to think of myself as a work in progress. I used to think that I would have a good life when I lost weight. I’m so thankful that I learned the difference between having a goal and having self worth. My wish is for everyone to learn that difference, because it’s a liberating day when you do.

For this Biggest Loser contestant, her weight is something about herself that she would like to change. I can understand that, because my weight is something I am perpetually working to change. And for someone else, it’s another issue entirely. Maybe you think you’re too timid, or too rude, or too tall, or you think you have two mismatched ears—whatever it is. There is nothing wrong with wanting to change the things we don’t like about ourselves; in fact it can boost our self-esteem to know we’re doing something healthy for ourselves. But it becomes a serious problem when we think we are substandard until that change is made. If you’re a writer, write. Write because it’s your dream and because it’s what you love. Write because you deserve to have dreams and it is your right to work for them.

There’s no scale when you step through the door of a publishing house. I can tell you firsthand that there’s just a security guard and an elevator.

You have to believe that you are good enough right now, today, because losing weight or getting an earlobe tuck or dyeing your hair isn’t going to do that. When you look in the mirror, it’s dangerous to dream of The Flawless You. What you should see is your face, your shoulders. You should acknowledge the freckles you may not like or the hair that flips the wrong way. You should know that your tools and your weapons and your mind are all staring back at you. You should be in awe of the power you possess over your own destiny. You aren’t substandard. You are amazing. The person staring back at you in the mirror is the person who is going to go out there and grab those dreams by the freaking balls.

It’s no secret that I’m peculiar. I live with myself every day, so sometimes I forget that the things I do aren’t always normal, and it takes a quirked eyebrow from a total stranger to remind me.

Today I went to Subway, and I asked for my usual veggie sub, which includes jalapeno peppers, ground pepper, onions, and hot sauce. The person making my sandwich started to confirm my decisions. “Hot sauce?” he said, his hand hovering over the mayo, like perhaps I didn’t mean to consume a heartburn cocktail on whole wheat. But no, I got the hot sauce, and it was delicious.

It made me think of my dad. My dad used to pop hot peppers and spicy pepperoni slices into his mouth like they were Chicklets. In fact, my grandmother kept these things in her house specifically for when he’d visit. When I was little, my parents and I were having dinner at a restaurant, and when the salads were brought out, I noticed a different little vegetable resting on an altar of cucumber wheels. My father assured me it was just a happy baby pepper. He had a way of personifying food. In retrospect, I should have noticed my mother’s efforts not to grin.

This was my first encounter with a hot pepper. And while I crinkled my face and whimpered, my dad narrated my misery with, “Oh wow. Maybe I was wrong. Your nose is turning red. Now it’s turning blue. Now your forehead is starting to smoke. Barb, run to the kitchen and ask for a bucket of ice before she bursts into flames.”

I was understandably mad.

When I got over my anger, though, I vowed to conquer that shriveled happy baby pepper. When they appeared on salads over the years, I ate them whole. I began to love them. Not only hot peppers, but hot garnishes and dressings of any sort. I can only conclude that this personality detail began with my dad and that fateful day. He also used to tease me when I shook bottles of grated parmesan. He said I was “murdering the happy clumps.”

One of my favorite things, though, was a game we played with time. When he was driving me home from a swim meet or from school or something, he’d look at the clock and ask me what time I thought we’d get home. To the minute, his predictions were most always right, and mine always missed the mark. Sometimes when I’m driving home, I still play this game with myself. And I still lose most of the time.

My dad was hilarious and peculiar. When I was younger I thought he must have been the silliest person to ever live. My dad would burst into (off-key) song in the canned soup aisle. In public, he would rustle my hair (while I was in my teens and early twenties) and call me a nut. He met my cynical stares with shimmy dances. He was absolutely unapologetic and unafraid of who he was, and that scared the hell out of me. I’d walk a pace or two ahead. I’d roll my eyes. I’d hiss, “Dad, cut it out!” Sometimes I’d skip all that and just wait in the car.

One night, my dad and I went out to dinner, and I went on a tirade about something or other. Shy thing that I was, I apologized for having said so much and making him sit there and listen to all of it. He told me not to apologize for who I was. He said he liked who I was. I had no idea at the time what this conversation would mean to me later.

The great injustice of my life is that I lost my dad before I found my own bravery. In fact, the day my dad died, I stood before the mirror, thinking that I’d get older and my face and style would change, and I’d be something my dad wouldn’t recognize. There was an overwhelming and unwilling feeling of having to let go, of knowing that I would have to go on.

And now, sometimes I sing in the grocery store, and eat hot peppers like they’re Chicklets, and I meet embarrassed glares of my friends with shimmy dances, and in public sometimes people will hiss, “Lauren!”

And sometimes it takes a lot of effort to look in the mirror and be okay with what’s staring back at me, or to look at the copy of Wither on my shelf and be confident in all those sentences I labored over; sometimes it’s almost an act of defiance, just being okay.

Now that I’m an author, and reasonably grown up (at least, as grown up as I’m ever going to get), I’m met with plenty of fans, and plenty of not-fans, and plenty of odd stares in the grocery store when I sing 90s dance mixes while perusing the potato chips. And my number one fan will never get to read my book, or embarrass me in bookstores. A thousand and ten people saying “Your dad would be so proud of you” could never hold candle to my dad saying “I’m proud of you” just one time. Just once. That’s very hard to do without, and some days, if I’m being honest, it makes facing the world difficult.

But those are the days when it’s extra important to get up. To do something silly. To play games with clocks even if I’m going to lose. To write the best damn story I possibly can. Those are the days to be unapologetically weird.