My mother was aware that I was reading way above what was appropriate — I brought home Presumed Innocent at 13 and started reading a bit too much of Anne Rice’s pen-named back catalog — but she knew the truth about books. That a young reader’s imagination limited what they could understand. If they were not ready for certain material, they simply glazed past. And if they were ready, then it awakened things inside them or watered seeds that would soon come to bloom.

Then came Harry Potter and Twilight and a golden age of YA and children’s literature that lasted more than 20 years. For the first time at scale, teenagers had their own dedicated book world that spoke to their anxieties and made them the center of the universe. YA was so popular that adults started reading down to participate in the cultural zeitgeist: Divergent, Maze Runner, Hunger Games, The Fault in Our Stars… Teenage-driven books became the core of pop culture.

But since about five years ago, something changed in YA. For one thing, teenagers are less literate. COVID has stunted them. Screens have whittled attentions. Social media has given endless ways to passively consume versus actively imagine. Books are simply harder for young people to start, let alone finish.

Yet, something else happened that is less talked about.

The reason YA was so alluring is that it gave teenagers a safe place for authentic romantic fantasy. Not just in their imaginations, but in book clubs and fan fiction and message boards. The heroes and heroines of YA became “book boyfriends” and “book girlfriends” and a way for readers to self-insert into fictional realms and envision future partners. In the same way that the old fairy tales once served as survival guides to life, YA became a fantasy lab for romantic relationships.

TikTok dropped in on all that like a nuclear bomb.

In addictive short-form bursts, it presented real teenagers either as the subject or object of desire, with the viewer as the implied first-person protagonist. Who needed a 300+ page novel when you could ‘follow’ your crush, day after day, and literally skip to only the scenes that excited you?

Any wonder, then, that this particular generation has started to skip YA books altogether and move towards a new kind of book — the adult spicy romance, often a cobbled together pastiche of hardcore sex, with just the thinnest thread of plot between scenes? TikTok had made the slow-burn, PG-13 YA narrative seem painfully tame and immature compared to both what they were seeing on their screens and what the feed forced their desires to adapt to.

In a darkly ironic way, QAnon was right. There was a conspiracy to push young people into an adult sexual world. But it was a human-less one, driven by robot algorithms. No shadowy cabal needed — just machine‑learning engines optimizing for engagement. Suddenly, without any control, and without anyone realizing it, the protected walls of teenage romance had been blasted down. It’s why the TV show Euphoria hit such a nerve. It was an X-rated show about teenagers… for adults… that was watched religiously by teenagers. Because that is exactly how they felt in their own lives. Young, old, young at the same time.

Not that teenagers were having more sex in real life! Between the 1990s and the 2020s, there was a plummet in sexual activity amongst adolescents. By 2021, more than 70% of high schoolers said they’d never had sex, versus only 46% in 1991. In other words, the rampant adultification of the content they were seeing on their phones was instead dissuading teenagers from making similar moves into that adult world in real life.

It’s all very psychologically complex. But the end result is the golden age of commercial YA is over. As long as teenagers keep being adultified by their screens and algorithms, then teenage-only spaces will feel too young to them.

YOUNG WORLD’s been an interesting test case. The book is about the forced adultification of youth and the way this adultification at once motivates them and also deeply confuses them. It’s also created contradictions in the reactions to the novel. On the one hand, I’ve had some concerns from adults over the content, claiming it’s too mature for 14+ teenagers. On the other hand, I’ve had booksellers confide that the book will find its sweet spot in middle-grade, amongst 12-13 year olds. These booksellers encourage me to do school visits at as many junior highs as I can manage — because that’s where the book truly needs to be read.

So which is it, then? Is YOUNG WORLD an R-rated, 17+ illicit adult novel? Or is it a book that should have seventh graders clamoring?

That is the question that isn’t just hanging over the book, but all of adolescent culture right now. Because I think we know deep down, the answer is likely the latter. Teenagers are the ones propping up Heated Rivalry and Off-Campus and Elite and other shows that are so sexually forward that I can’t imagine having been allowed to watch them at 13 or 14. But that’s where online culture and algorithmic pressure has driven them. Which is why middle-schoolers, seeing their older siblings reading and watching ‘up’, will want to do the same.

Something like YOUNG WORLD will get caught in the crossfire. But unlike a TV show, which is literal and explicit and can push a child past what they’re ready for, I still believe what my mother did about books — that they are the safest, sturdiest place for exploration. For the longest time, books succeeded as an essential ingredient in helping kids grow into empathetic, worldly adults… before algorithms usurped the right to teach them everything.

It’s why book banning is so tempting for those adults who feel like their kid’s world is out of control. Deep down, they know books aren’t the problem. No book is going to harm a kid the way TikTok or an inappropriately mature TV show can. But these crusaders need to do something to protect the kids from the adultified world and stamping a book’s name on a list is easy and makes them feel better about themselves.

In the end, though, as YOUNG WORLD puts forth, lasting protection and sanity isn’t going to come from the adults.

It’s going to come from youth stepping up and remaking the world into one they want to live in. To restore the one right that they all deserve and has been taken away from them: the right to be young.

Until next week,

Over the months, I kept track of his campaign – particularly the evolution of Dean himself, who went from a shy, tentative high schooler, who’d been dared by his teacher to run for something, into a full-blown, confident candidate who believed he had something to offer.

Dean was already an amazing kid. But politics has given him his true voice. He is, in all aspects, the best representative that a future Revolting Youth party can ask for. Here’s your chance to meet him. Enjoy my recent conversation with Dean Roy, gubernatorial candidate for the state of Vermont.

SOMAN

I am here with the OG Revolting Youth, Dean Roy. Are you 14 years old now or 15?

DEAN

15, now.

SOMAN

Let’s start at the beginning. How did you become a candidate for the governor of Vermont?

DEAN

So this really all started last year, my summer after eighth grade. My teacher approached me during my eighth-grade graduation, and he told me that if I’m ever considering running for office, he would be my campaign manager. And that’s what made me then go home and look up what the age is to run for office in Vermont — and realize there were no age rules for governor.

From there I decided, you know what? I can do this. I can make some kind of change in the world. So then that led me down the pathway of figuring out how to get onto the ballot and then getting the 500 signatures that are required. I submitted them just last week, actually.

And then from there on out, it’s just been what you’d expect from a campaign. I have not started raising money. I do not know if I will. I think that it might actually be a better statement to say that I did not come from any money, and I didn’t raise any money at all.

SOMAN

Why governor versus a position on the town council or school board or state legislature?

DEAN

Two reasons. First, there’s only a select few positions in Vermont that have no age requirement. Most are local to the town. But statewide, governor is pretty much the only one.

Second, I realized it would gather a lot more media attention running for governor of Vermont than running for a more minor position in town. Running for governor is the biggest position in our state. It’s going to be a lot more impactful for a member of the youth to run for the big position, rather than choose a position that might be a bit more obtainable… but wouldn’t make a splash in politics as a whole.

SOMAN

In YOUNG WORLD, Benton Young is thrust into a big campaign he might not be ready for – not so dissimilar to you. But then there’s a moment where a switch flips and he realizes, I can do this. I can be a good president. At what point did it go from a fun challenge from your teacher to you thinking you could actually be a good governor?

DEAN

I think the switch went off when I did my first live, national news interview. It was with Newsmax… or Newsweek. I forget which one. I’ve done a lot of interviews.

SOMAN

Dean, those are two very different things!

DEAN

(laughs) Actually, it was Newsweek, I think. That’s really the moment that I realized that this could become a lot bigger than just me. And that’s made me realize that I should make the most of all of this. Let’s make sure that this leaves the biggest possible impact on people. Even if I win the election or I don’t, I want to help change the route of politics, at least in Vermont.

SOMAN

Art is such a parallel for life here, because you were living out the character’s story that I was writing on the page. The kind of character I wished would step up out there in the world. And here you are doing it! What have been the best parts of campaigning? And has it changed the way you think about things?

DEAN

There’s definitely a few stories that have been super interesting from this campaign. One is just the basic story of meeting people face to face at our local post office. Some of them recognize me from either the local newspaper or the news, and I get to seriously just talk with the local members of our community and learn what’s on their mind and what they think about politics.

It’s very rare for a kid to be able to sit down with the local members of your community and learn what’s going on and how you should try to fix it — and how they think that you should try to fix it. But what’s also cool is the fact that people are approaching me without me approaching them.

All of a sudden, I’m seeing kids at track meets coming up to me and asking for autographs or to take photos with me, and that’s starting to make me realize that I’m making a very big change in Vermont, and it’s a change that I love to see. And I’m really hoping that I’m inspiring these kids to also run for political office and create a bit of a movement that hopefully changes the way that politics is led.

Being on the news is also an incredible experience for me. Or something like this. I mean, currently I’m talking with an author. How many 15-year-olds seriously get to sit down and talk with a serious author about a book that you also sent to me?

It’s an experience that I’m going to remember for the rest of my life. And what I’ve also realized is I’ve become a lot better at talking with people due to this. I’ve realized that when I’m talking with friends or even with people who I don’t know, I’ve become a lot more confident.

I become a lot more vocal. I’ve been able to talk with them much longer. I’ve been able to talk about a lot of different kinds of things, things that I usually would not engage people in conversation with, and that is one of the other benefits of this. It’s giving me this learning experience of how to handle talking to people in real life. And yes, maybe sometimes I don’t want to talk with them. Sometimes all I want to do is just be quiet and just go away. But this is letting me learn how to deal with that. And it really is just helped me grow as a person in the social sense as well.

SOMAN

Every interview you’ve done, I’ve watched and there’s just such grown. Yeah. When did you first announce your candidacy?

DEAN

This was about six months ago. Yeah, it was in July.

SOMAN

Do you feel like you’ve changed a lot?

DEAN

Oh, God. Yeah. I mean, I know that not everyone wants to go down the route of politics, but I seriously think that everyone should try to put themselves out there as much as they possibly can at a young age, because it seriously helps you a ton with learning how to both learning how to be yourself and learning how you want to talk, but also learning how to just talk in general.

I mean, I understand that a lot of teenagers struggle with that. They struggle with social interactions, and probably one of the best ways to learn social interactions is to just go ahead and do it as much as you possibly can. And that’s what this campaign has given me a chance to do. So yeah, this is definitely resulted in me growing a lot as a person.

SOMAN

And the important thing is that the real win here isn’t being governor. It’s that you’ve shown what young people can do in your state. Candidates like you might spark the kind of youth third-party that the book envisions. In your mind, what does a Revolting Youth movement look like in the real world?

DEAN

I think there’s a lot of different ways to go about it. I think one of them would be eerily similar to the book, where they organize into a serious political movement and actually band behind this one candidate who becomes the big leader. But the other way to do it is to put up a lot of smaller-level candidates.

The important thing is that there might be no success in the first wave. That’s okay. But eventually, if more young people keep running, the movement will grow and grow. Smaller candidates will start finding success and they’ll move up the ladder to bigger positions, and soon you’ll have young people as serious contenders for the highest-level positions, both nationally and internationally.

I think the scenario of one young candidate rising nationally and forcing very fast change is more unlikely. We need to inspire a lot of young people to start their political careers. People who can attempt what I’ve done and what other youth candidates have done.

SOMAN

When is the next governor election after this one?

DEAN

Two years in Vermont.

SOMAN

So in two years, you run again. You’re 17. Everyone knows you. You’re older, you have more experience and you know more people. Then, by the time you’re 19 and can run again… you’re the old veteran. By then, you might be the most serious candidate out there.

DEAN

I know what you mean. Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of crazy to think that I’m going to leave this campaign as at least a somewhat experienced politician. I’m going to have a campaign under my belt, and I won’t even be 18 yet. By the time I’m 18, if I stay involved in politics, I will have a serious shot at some major, major elections.

And more importantly, by the time I’m 35, I’ll have much more experience. And then obviously there’s the big one to go for.

SOMAN

Yeah, though in my vision of things, we get rid of the age gate around the Presidency as quickly as possible, so people like you can run earlier.

Let’s talk about your teacher. In YOUNG WORLD, the teacher is a big character. And I know your teacher was a big character in your campaign. What do they think of everything that’s happened? And how involved are they now?

DEAN

I mean, my teacher is still very, very supportive of me. But he’s my old teacher now. So we don’t connect as much anymore. But every time I see him in the hallways, he always congratulates me. He’s been interviewed multiple times and he’s still staying somewhat involved — though not as much as you’d initially expect a campaign manager would be, but that’s obviously okay.

A lot of other teachers are still supporting me, and a lot of my friends are supporting me.

There is a lot more factors at play than truly just me. There’s a lot of people behind me and supporting me and who are really making this happen.

SOMAN

All right. Last two questions. How do you parents feel about this? Do you ever try to pull rank on them now that you’re a candidate for their governor?

DEAN

(laughs) I haven’t tried that yet. Maybe I will in the future, though. They’re pretty supportive of me, obviously. I mean, they’re the ones giving me a ride everywhere, so I need them. But they’re also maybe a bit shocked. Neither of them are super political, so maybe they didn’t exactly expect me to be running for office at just 14 or 15 years old, but they are still wildly supportive, probably my biggest two supporters that I have. And truly, this campaign could not work without them.

SOMAN

And my last question is, what can everyone do to support you? We all want to help you and not just for this election. I think you’re going to be a star of the future — and we might look back at you as the beginning of the real-life Revolting Youth. So what do you need for us?

DEAN

Just to tell other people about me. Tell your friends. Tell people who vote, especially if you’re in Vermont. And really just try to spread my message as much as you can. I don’t want money from you. I don’t want you to be a dedicated volunteer. I don’t want you to be going too far out of your way to spread my message.

But whenever you can mention me, just say — I heard this story about this 15-year-old who’s running for office in Vermont. And if have connections to anyone who could be of help to me, someone who’s a political insider or someone who knows a lot of people in Vermont, tell them about me.

Just put my name in there. You don’t have to do too much. That’s the important thing. All you really need to do is tell people about me, spread my message and just continue supporting me online. Continue doing what you’re doing right now.

@dean.roy.for.governorMy age shouldn’t be an issue, as long as I know what’s best for Vermont. #vermont #politics #youth

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SOMAN

I’m such a fan of yours, Dean. This was such a treat to get to talk to you.

DEAN

Yeah, the book was really good, by the way.

SOMAN

I’m glad you enjoyed it. Where should people follow you on Instagram?

DEAN

It’s just @deanroy_forgovernor

I also have a TikTok which is the same username.

SOMAN

Thanks, Dean. Good luck with the election!

----------

Until next week –

“It really depends,” he said.

On the research? On the side effects? On FDA approvals?

“On how you feel when you’re on them,” he replied.

An elementary answer. And yet, revelatory somehow.

It depends on how you feel.

Something I think we’ve all started to dismiss and disdain as a source of feedback, let alone the most important one.

We’re so overloaded with information and the potential to suss out more and more information that I find myself increasingly rejecting my own first-hand experience.

For instance, I searched the following during a recent book tour stop:

“Best iced matcha latte in Petaluma, California within a 2-mile radius of West California Avenue — rank the top 5”

I can’t drink coffee, even though I love it, because it makes my stomach hurt and my insides roil, so I’ve become an iced matcha with almond milk guy. On my recent book tour stop, I wanted the best one around. Perplexity AI spit out the rankings, supported by detailed evidence, and I trekked out to the #1 stop and got my latte… which was fine. I got it the next day too because it was ranked #1 and fine was apparently the best they had in this whole town. Then on the third day, I happened to stroll by the #5 place, which was much closer to my hotel, and thought I’d try it — only to be greeted with a far, far superior iced matcha latte.

Pre-AI, I would have just searched for any place that had matcha lattes and gone to the closest one and been perfectly happy with the outcome. Now, I was trying to optimize everything, because all that information was instantly available, instead of thinking about what the information actually was — a watered-down average of reported human experience, when what you want from an iced matcha latte is not the one that is the best for the average but the one that is best for you.

This reminds me of the 1990s, when you’d open the Arts section of the newspaper to look for a movie and you’d see one or two reviews of it, but for the most part you were operating blind and in the end, the question of whether that movie was good or not came down to your own experience of it. Many, many times I saw a movie that I loved that I later discovered had putrid reviews (a short list: Pretty Woman, Mona Lisa Smile, Birth, Sliver, Eyes Wide Shut, Death and the Maiden, etc). Same went for books. There was no easy access to book reviews so you judged a book by its cover and flap and blurbs and took a chance. Brick by brick, you discovered your own taste, trusted your own judgment, and became intimately familiar with what made you laugh, what turned you on, what made you you.

Now, unless I consciously restrain myself, I find myself doubting that judgment — checking Rotten Tomatoes and reading dozens of reviews before trying out a movie, or scrolling every last Goodreads review before I read a book, or asking AI to determine where I should take friends out to dinner. Just typing this infuriates me. It’s so stupid! I used to have such faith in my own ability to flow through life and find the things that mattered to me. Now, I’m apparently in such a rush that I need it all concierged by an app that literally knows nothing about me or what I really want.

What infuriates me more is that young people are growing up into a world where they don’t even get the soul foundation that I built for myself pre-AI — the one I can return to when I realize the truth of what I’m typing here: that I trust myself and the way I feel about things without digital curation or intervention or reassurance. But young people don’t. They are trained on the algorithm and increasingly using AI to think and create and both AI and the algorithm reward what’s popular — i.e. the average — so that everyone begins to share the same hive mind and the same hive personality instead of developing their own unique taste and way of being.

Deep down, I think it’s a major reason why I wrote YOUNG WORLD — as a primal scream to tell young people to take control of their world and mold the world to look the way they want it to rather than the opposite, where a digital world turns all teenagers into the same broccoli-haired, hoodie-wearing replicant.

Luckily, though, the algorithm is starting to tell on itself.

There was a great article in Vulture on the phenomenon of ‘clipping,’ where companies hire firms to elevate their content by manipulating the algorithm, which is why we all seemed to discover Clavicular and looksmaxxing and the band Geese at the same time.

Nothing is organic anymore. Our entire feed is the product of a stealth marketing campaign. And I suspect once AI starts supercharging ads, the same will hold true for the answers and information we find there too. Pretty soon, the robot won’t even try to tell me the #1 ranked iced matcha latte in Petaluma — it’ll just direct me to wherever is an ad-paying customer and pretend like it’s #1.

The collapse of the algorithm and a distrust of digital life would be the happiest ending to all this. I foresee an Age of Good Feeling, where we have to return to the old days, where the cesspool of information is just that, information that could be good or bad with no true way to assess, so instead we rely on our own senses to determine whether something works for us.

Sometimes I don’t think it’s a coincidence, then, that I write such divisive books. The School for Good and Evil and Young World couldn’t be more different, but I think there’s this deep-seated need for me to find my readers, the ones who vibe with my taste and my style and my sense of humor, and that means being relentless in making my work as authentic and specific to me as I can, even if it sacrifices a wider readership. I want to make work that AI or the algorithm would 100% sand down and smooth out and make more palatable and accessible and acceptable — and yet, I reject all of those in order to hold a final book in my hands that proved I was here on this earth for the smallest amount of time and made things that only I could make.

As for those magic peptides, I’ve lost interest in trying them.

It’s the Age of Good Feeling now.

And the better feeling is just to be the way I am.

Your turn.

What’s one thing you’ve outsourced to the algorithm that you can reclaim for yourself?

Leave a comment

Until next week —

The peak of the tour finished this past weekend — a furious build through 12 cities and 20 days to a big homecoming bash at the St. Louis County Library, where so many friends joined that it felt like some kind of ethereal scene at the pearly gates, where you’re greeted by all the souls you love. Our friend, Anna, threw the most glorious reception at her house, with a custom neon-orange YOUNG WORLD cake and a buffet so big that it had a menu board and a trolley filled with ice-cream sandwiches. Everywhere I turned, there was someone I cared about. So much so that when the night was over and my partner and I collapsed in bed at midnight, he said: “Now we know what our wedding would feel like.” I responded: “This might be better than a wedding.” Him: “Agreed.”

A wedding, after all, comes with politics — there’s always simmering tensions and drama and perceived slights, and here, there was none of that. Three weeks earlier, the NYC launch had a fraught quality to it. The feeling of stepping into the unknown, where the book might be a colossal flop or I might never find a way of organically talking about civic participation and current geopolitics without looking like a fool. The risk of forever being kicked back into my cubby hole as the “Fairy Tales Guy.” But now, we were at ease, both author and intimates. The book had gotten off to a flying start, two weeks straight a bestseller, and succeeded beyond expectation. I’d pressed the case for lowering the age-gate on the presidency in real, serious forums — PBS, Axios, CNN, Politico, and more. More importantly, I’d gotten home safe and healthy, without falling ill, the number one enemy on a long book tour. I had a summer ahead of blank-calendar days and routine and writing and friends and tennis and love.

For the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt euphoric.

Euphoria is a curious feeling, because we confuse it with joy. But it’s not joy. It’s release. Some subterranean handshake between your conscious mind and your unconscious self, as if you’ve had faith in something deeper and surrendered to it, and now have reaped both the material and spiritual rewards. It’s as if you’ve let the caterpillar that you know you are become the butterfly you never knew you could be... but only for a moment. Because euphoria is ephemeral. It starts to dim. Not to darkness or depression, but to a fresh understanding. That it’s time to fold your wings and go back into the cocoon. Time to start all the way over.

I’m not quite back into my cocoon yet. I can feel my brain still processing. Little glimpses and memories I collected during the last few weeks, like little jigsaw slivers that haven’t yet congealed into a bigger puzzle.

There was the audience of 300 kids at an east coast high school, where everyone looked exactly the same. The same outfits, the same hairstyles, the same hollow-eyed stares. Is this what this high school looked like back in the 90s? Or was it more like what I remembered, with contrasting pockets of style: the skaters, the jocks, the goths, the prepsters… Two decades later, how had everyone been sanded down into one template? The algorithm, my mind theorized. Everyone using the same apps, watching the same popular videos and memes, deploying the same AI to do their homework. Instead of raging against the machine, they’d let their souls fall asleep to it.

Then there was the boy who refused to take a copy, even though a donation had given free books to everyone in their small class. When I offered one to him, he shook his head: “No one here gonna read a book.” (The girl behind him smacked him and said, “No one meaning you?”) It wasn’t what he said that stayed with me. It was the way he said it. The defeat in his voice, as if the idea of a book, even one in raging neon color, was a bridge too far.

Then there was the librarian who insisted on telling the juniors and seniors that I was gay in her introduction — because she wanted them to realize they could be comfortable with their own identities. I said it didn’t bother me, but it did. Why? Did I feel like I’d lose some part of the audience before I began? Did I still have little lurking pockets of internal homophobia? Or was it simply that I didn’t want any mention of my personal life to color an urgent message about these kids’ political futures?

Then there was the librarian in St. Louis that had so revved up the kids and prepared them for my visit that they’d created custom Revolting Youth t-shirts with a certain president depicted as a zombie on the front and ‘BENTON 4 PREZ’ on the back — plus a balloon installation, Revolting Youth banners, and YOUNG WORLD tablecloths. These were seniors in high school and perhaps the only ones on the tour where I hadn’t started the show to a sea of hollow stares that I needed to work hard to wear down. It wasn’t just the preparation the librarian had done that changed things. Telling kids an author is coming isn’t enough. It was the involvement. The visit belonged to them, as much as it did to me.

Then there were the kids who’d come from all over for the public events. Convincing their parents to drive them hours, across multiple state lines, to get there. This, in itself, could bring me to tears. But more than that — I kept wondering how this conversation began. How did a teenager figure out I was coming, then convince their parents to rearrange their schedules, drive long distances, and get a hotel room in a random city, all so they could come to a 90-min book talk? How did that house become a forum for this kind of literary adventuring? And how could we get other households to be that safe for readers?

Lastly, there was the book itself, which continued to stay with me, even after days and weeks on the road. That wild neon glow that screamed in every room it was in and on every bookstore shelf, demanding attention, like some kind of primal scream (or like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction, a friend noted). I never fully assimilated the book into my ordinary field of view, the way I had other books on past tours. No matter how many times I saw YOUNG WORLD pulled out of a box or handed to a kid, something about it just seemed so different, like a magical talisman or some otherworldly grail. Nothing about it feels like it belongs to me, even now. Will that ever change? Or is this one just forever special?

There are other little memories that bob and float. They’ll come and go over the next few months, as I head back into the cocoon and turn to a new incarnation. Little by little, this Revolting Youth era will become a past part of me, the way Fairy Tale Guy was, like different facets of a polished stone, that exude their own kind of light.

But right now, I’m still in a liminal space.

I know I’ve changed because of this book.

I can feel it in every cell of my body.

I just can’t yet tell you how.

Until next week —

We had Carol Ly at Random House, who managed the interior layout; Jun Sekiya, who coordinated the flow of all the visuals; Tim Terhune at Random House, who spearheaded physical production; Michael Blank and Alexander Lu who handled the most complex visual illustrations.

But it was Matt Roeser, famed book cover designer and all around mad-scientist, who was my collaborator from the beginning on figuring out the look for YOUNG WORLD.

Here is my interview with him, looking back on how all of it came to be.

…

SOMAN

So when I came pitching this book — were you like, what the F?

MATT

You originally approached me and said, “I have this idea that’s sort of crazy.” But I’m used to you having crazy ideas and sharing them with me. In this case, though, you wanted me to collaborate with you on the first hundred pages of a speculative book.

You knew the book would be a long one — and it would have images and interstitials between chapters. That was it, though. What you wanted us to do was figure out the general language for the design throughout the book.

I will say: it didn’t seem as daunting as what it ended up becoming. I had an inkling of what you wanted, which seemed crazy and cool, but nowhere near as epic in scope as the final product. I just didn’t have the expectation of how big you were thinking.

SOMAN

I think you’re partially misremembering, because you are directly responsible for a lot of how crazy it became. When I first pitched it to you, I told you: I want a hot pink cover and lots of art inside. And then you were the one who said — if you want a hot pink cover, then you should use a neon Pantone for it… and if you do that, then you might as well have that neon hot pink throughout the whole inside of the book.

You got me hooked on the idea of two colors for the whole book. (Most books are printed in one color: black). I didn’t even know that was a thing!

MATT

Yeah, that’s true. In retrospective, you had your idea and then I through the nuke-colored Molotov through the window.

Here’s the thing. When I was at Candlewick Press, as a designer, I would often suggest big ideas and a lot of times, it was coming from a place of ignorance, not knowing that something was wildly expensive or that it was unfeasible with the number of copies we were printing.

I did know that normally, when you see two-color printing, it’s for short middle-grade books. And here you wanted a 500-page behemoth, so I kind of sensed we were in for some trouble. It was going to be expensive. But I also knew that we had a runaway train, where we both loved the idea so much that it became the gauntlet — if a publisher wasn’t willing to do two colors and a neon Pantone, then you wouldn’t go with them.

SOMAN

We spent three months working on the proposal, which was the first 50 pages of the book, with the illustrations and neon Pantone. We were so dead set on the color that you told me to get sample swatches of the nuke Pantone printed, so I could bring them to the meeting and make the publisher understand the importance of the color.

MATT

Yeah. We used a printer called John. P. Pow in Boston. I don’t think they were used to printing out big sheets of empty color. But we had to have it to make the point. Because like you’ve said — digitally, it just doesn’t show up.

And you needed to show them that color. That color is everything. It blinds your damn eyeballs out in such a big way that it’s just part of the book package. It’s how you sell it.

SOMAN

Let’s go back to the design because there’s over 150 visual illustrations. There were three designers. There was you, Michael and Alex. I would say Michael did the most complex illustration ones because he is a true “artiste.”

MATT

He can draw anything you ask for. Whereas I can make documents, posters — anything that would exist in real life. I come from my advertising design background. It’s like I can make, like real things. And Michael can just work abstractly to illustrate anything. Alex is just awesome, too. He would come in and manage anything that me or Michael couldn’t quite do.

SOMAN

Alex was the Wild Card. We’d hand him things and be like —

MATT

“Here, Alex. Figure this out.”

SOMAN

Exactly. Which was the if you had to pick the most difficult visual to work on, the one that gave you the hardest time?

MATT

Definitely the page with all the threat files.

I had nightmares about it. It had like seven different potential assassination plots, referenced in files, and in a complex collage. There was a lot going on in each of those images, plus having to interlock them into an overarching page design. Technically, it was the most difficult.

Actually, I’m flipping through the book right now… Sometimes there was a challenge just finding the right image. Like for the headline about the Indian assassination in the Washington Times, I couldn’t think of the right image. But then saw a flag that would give us this beautiful pop of nuke in the center, and I knew it was the one.

Often, that was the guide. Where would the splash of neon nuke be? How will the neon interact with the imagery? For instance, the spread about Toto the polar bear was all about how to use neon color effectively. You couldn’t make the polar bear fluorescent orange, obviously. So where was I going to use it? That’s when I realized I could use the nuke as its own neon highlighter to underline key bits of information.

SOMAN

Did you have a favorite image? The one you’re proudest of?

MATT

I really do like the Meet Toto one. Also, the Nuke Cola ad because it was one of the very first ones we finished. The Interpol murder poster as well, because that was the first one I did. It’s what set the tone for the book and got us moving.

SOMAN

That one had to be perfect. It’s the first page of the book. I really pushed and pushed on that one so every pixel was exactly right.

MATT

In that one image is the DNA. 95% real world authentic… 5% heightened. The style was set with that first page.

SOMAN

Let’s go way back. How did you get to this point in your career where you were the go-to for a book design this ambitious?

MATT

For about eight years I worked in advertising, branding and marketing in Saint Louis, a company called Atomicdust. And we basically did everything from developing marketing and branding and messaging for a client to then getting that out across every type of media, from websites and brochures and trade show booths.

So I have a background experience of launching a brand in all that entails. I got burnt out after about seven years because a lot of times, the fun clients don’t have any money. And the money clients are involved with remittance and healthcare billing… How many times could I do a website with a smiling nurse? It wasn’t as fun as working on a cool new restaurant in town that could be more of a design showcase — but they also had no money to pay us.

So I started to think about what would be a fun challenge going forward, and I knew I love to read and love design, so I started wondering how does one get into the world of book cover design. That felt like the dream job. So in my spare time, I kept a Tumblr where I made my own book covers for books that I really liked and posted them. They started getting attention. That’s what led to people reaching out to hire me for my first gigs.

I went onto work at Candlewick for 12 years. Now I’m full-time freelance, both to have more control over my workload but also work on my own books and illustration projects. So now I spend three days a week working on bill-paying stuff and two days a week on my own work.

SOMAN

And we met while you were working at Candlewick. You’d designed a book cover for Gregory Maguire, the author of Wicked. And he and I were on a panel at Boston Book Festival, your hometown.

MATT

Yes, the book was called Egg and Spoon. I think the panel was just you, Gregory and Cassandra Clare, if I remember. You guys were quite the group.

SOMAN

It was in a giant church, if I remember correctly. Gregory sang opera for some reason. And Cassie Clare opened by saying she’d fallen out of an Uber that day because the driver had opened the door, not realizing she’d fallen asleep against the window. A very memorable panel, actually.

MATT

That’s what I remember too. And I’d gone to meet Gregory, since I’d done his book cover and wanted to support him. I came to the Green Room… and then you and I got introduced.

SOMAN

I remember this very vividly.

MATT

Then I stood in your line to get a book signed. And we were friends from that moment on.

SOMAN

I came to you over the years for so many freelance assignments. Every book I started, I’d hire you just to sketch out some potential cover designs, so I could understand visually how I’d bring the book to market. Actually, YOUNG WORLD was the first case where the publisher hired you onto the project officially too. They wanted you to do the cover. And we both decided to just be as unhinged as possible.

MATT

Which, as a designer… that’s what I love.

SOMAN

I wasn’t sure we’d ever get one of your covers approved, but that was beside the point. I think the idea was to set expectations that the YOUNG WORLD cover was going to be unusual. So talk us through some of the concepts you had from the start.

MATT

We wanted it to be a neon glowing brick that everyone would just carry around. Something that would make people go: what the hell is that? A literally glowing book.

I knew it needed to be dramatically neon and it also needed neon edges. Also, no book jacket. It had to be a physically neon book.

I tried to really push the envelope here. Could we do no title on the front and just a title on the edge? Or a title on the spine only? What if there was just a title and no author?

We started with the idea of an exploding globe and a die-cut hole in the middle of the cover… So that when you opened it, you would see that exploding world on the endsheets.

Didn’t we also talk about just having no title and the exploding globe and then your name huge on the spine?

SOMAN

The narcissist in me loved that idea.

MATT

It would make the book feel so mysterious.

SOMAN

Random House disagreed, ha. They also didn’t like the exploding earth because it felt too sci-fi to them.

MATT

Alien invasion.

SOMAN

Which as soon as they said it, I agreed with. Then you tried a snarky emoji on the globe.

MATT

With sunglasses. That didn’t fly either.

But the point we were making, that eventually got through, is that this is different from every other book. We wanted a book that every bookstore would put face-out.

SOMAN

You had so many great ideas that helped inform the final.

MATT

Yeah, I played with spray paint and graffiti and upside-down images. I had an upside down presidential seal. I never came up with the upside down Capitol though…

SOMAN

That was Spencer Fuller at Face Out Studios. You’d moved onto to other projects and Spencer was able to just lock down a combo of all the elements we’re discussing. As soon as we saw it, we knew we had it. Though there was pushback at first… The publisher thought an upside down White House was better.

MATT

White House is too much of a rectangle. I feel like the Capitol has that point at the top, so upside down, it’s pointy and edgy and dangerous.

SOMAN

It’s like a top waiting to spin.

MATT

It also looks like a weapon upside down. But the thing I like best about the final cover is it does not look like any YA book before or since, and doesn’t even look YA. It looks like a book for absolutely everyone. An adult wouldn’t say — oh that’s for kids.

SOMAN

My last question for you: how do you feel about the book now that it’s out there in the world? And would you do more YOUNG WORLDs if I come knocking?

MATT

Oh, we already have color ideas for the next one. It can’t be the same color. It needs a whole new vision… something totally different…

See? I’m already on board. And now we have a visual language to work from. It can be even more ambitious. There’s no way there’s just one of these. This has to be a world.

SOMAN

Oh, man… You’re making me tired.

MATT

Get cracking!

I’m writing this in the backseat of a long drive from Boston, Massachusetts to Allentown, Pennsylvania, where I’ll spend two days doing public events and high school visits before I take another long car trip to Washington, D.C.

So much has happened already and so much keeps happening that to process all of it into thoughtful prose seems vaguely impossible… I’m thinking a list might be a better choice. Here are 20 impressions, conclusions, musings from my first full week on the road.

1. On the morning of release, the e-book purchase link at Amazon broke. The Kindle edition simply disappeared. No one at Amazon IT seems to be able to fix it, six days in. Which if you think about it is insane. Everyone is upset about this… except me. I have always hated the e-book for YOUNG WORLD. The color is a pale, putrid salmon instead of the vibrant nuke… the beautiful spreads are mashed and severed… the whole renegade diary aspect of the hardcover is muted to abstraction. I’ve been open about the fact that no one should read the e-book over the hardcover and that the only way to read this book is in physical or audio form. (When we get bad reviews, it is 99% tied to the e-copy.)

So this supernaturally strange sabotage of the e-book the morning of release?

Further proof that the elves extend their mystery beyond the body.

2. I’ve been preparing for this tour for more than a year. It’s my longest tour, the most demanding in terms of press and extra workload in addition to the public-facing events, and I just sensed from the very beginning that it would be the ultimate test. So I got myself in as good a shape as I could mentally and physically and went into tour feeling like a shiny, fresh machine.

As Mike Tyson once said, “Everyone has a plan until you’re punched in the face.”

What’s missing from preparation is the sheer spike of adrenaline and intensity and pressure of an actual book tour, especially one for a book as splashy and provocative as this one. I’m used to my brain processing things in real time, but you can’t do that on a tour, not when you’re meeting hundreds of new people a day, plus drivers and librarians and media escorts and teachers and booksellers and all your friends and family that are waiting at every stop. The only way to survive is to be utterly relaxed and present, everything flowing through, so that your shiny car isn’t backed up with sludge or accumulating wear-and-tear... but that’s a tall order.

Luckily, there are some things that help along the way.

3. Like a rest day. I haaaate the idea of a rest day when we’re planning the itinerary. To me, I’m here to campaign and get the book out to the world, and I want to spend every waking minute working. I don’t want breaks. I don’t want rest.

Fortunately, no one listens to me and the publisher plans a rest day anyway, i.e. today, where I’ll drive the 5.5 hours to Allentown and then be free for the afternoon.

The reason a rest day is important is this — your body can only pump adrenaline and cortisol for so long before it needs to crash. A rest day in the schedule lets your body anticipate this crash. No matter how strong and energetic I felt the past couple days, I woke up this morning feeling like I’d been flattened by a four-wheeler. Brain fog, soreness, a narcoleptic feeling that makes me want to keel over every 5 minutes… (I literally just fell asleep in the car for 15 minutes after writing that.) The good news is, I know this feeling. It’s a forced shutdown. Sleep mode on the computer. So that I regain charge, don’t give my brain anything else to process, and pop up better than ever in a day or two’s time.

4. The school events have been a marvel. True proof of concept. I’ll give you an example. At a school in Weymouth, Massachusetts, they couldn’t organize an all-grade assembly at the local high school, so instead we did three smaller workshops throughout the day, open to any students that wanted to come.

The first workshop had about 30 kids.

The next workshop had about 35 kids.

Then we went to lunch.

By the time we came back for the third show, the room was so packed, it was standing-room only. The kids laughed and applauded throughout and acted nothing like the first two groups.

It didn’t make sense. Until we figured out that during that 90-minute lunch break, word had spread around the school about the book, the shows, the experience of it all. Kids told their friends to skip class and go to the last show. And they did.

5. Same thing happened in Boston, courtesy of a kid named CEO Tommy. I did a show for 110 kids at one of my favorite schools in the country, where I’d done a SGE show long ago, and the entire campus is just intensely old and full of history. Performing in that theater feels like performing in Shakespeare’s Globe.

When the show was done, the librarian told the kids that if they wanted to buy a book, they should go to the library.

At first, no one really came.

Then CEO Tommy showed up.

“Can you sign a book to CEO Tommy?” he said.

“Why CEO?” I asked.

“Because everyone in this school knows I’ve got the plans,” he replied.

Behind him, kids were trickling in, as if CEO’s endorsement was exactly that.

83 kids bought the book.

(CEO Tommy also has a weekly newsletter that he subscribed me to; the moment he turns 21, I’m hiring him.)

6. It’s nice to be able to engage the boys for once. With SGE, I was conjuring a female fantasy, so no matter how much I managed to, at the very least, keep the boys from booing me, we all knew this was a girl’s kingdom. YOUNG WORLD is the opposite — this is Holden Caulfield in 2026, and I can feel the boys lurch out of their dead-eyed stupor during the heights of the show, and this time, they’re the first ones in line to buy the book.

We write boys off as readers so easily, assuming they can’t be reached. But they can be. They want to read. They just need a book that meets them where they are at.

7. Getting up at 5:30am or 6am every morning to work with a trainer I have never met is at once a nightmare but also the only way I stay healthy enough to do the job. In Boston, it was 3 days with Alex, who was from Puerto Rico and full of hustle and making it work in Boston, with his own private training gym and plans for a high-end clothing line and so many ideas, he said, that it kept him up at night.

And yet, in a novelist’s way, I sensed he didn’t really belong in Boston. He played salsa music at the gym, sang along soulfully to Bad Bunny, hacked and sneezed with allergies, even on a rainy day. On the third day, as we were finishing, he looked out the window at the dreary scene: “I have so many plans here,” he said. “But I think I’m going back to Puerto Rico.”

8. I wrote an op-ed for NOTUS about why people under 35 should be allowed to run for President. This is the one I spent a whole weekend at the farm writing. I just was so passionate and locked in about it. To me, it’s the solution to so many of our problems. Have a look at it and see if you agree.

9. Another fun announcement this week — I’m working with Eric Schultz on the adaptation for YOUNG WORLD. Eric is former Deputy Press Secretary to the White House and currently Obama’s senior adviser. He is a marvel and so smart and thoughtful that he deserves his own country to run. I hope an adaptation makes it to the screen just so I can keep working with him.

10. My mom is mystified by the above photo of me.

“They used AI for that article!” she told me.

“Mmm, that’s me. We took the photo at Katie’s studio earlier this year,” I said.

“But there’s an American flag. And you’re dirty.”

“It’s an homage to Springsteen.”

“It looks like AI.”

“It’s 100% real.”

“Maybe you should use a different photo.”

11. The Diary of a Novel preorder gift could have sank Jun, who was in charge of sending them out while I started tour — but as always, he managed it with aplomb. Here’s a pic of him celebrating sending out all 500 of them himself.

12. I normally start my day with an iced matcha latte with almond milk and two sugars.

“I’m dying without my matcha lattes,” I lamented to a friend.

“Go get one. You’re not in the wilderness,” he replied.

“There’s no time. Every minute of my day is scheduled. I don’t even have time to look in the mirror after I get ready, let alone find a matcha spot.”

“Is that why you still have a pimple patch on?”

I gasped.

13. I tried to read the beautiful, lyrically written novel of literary fiction that I brought on the road. I’ve traded it to re-read The Devil Wears Prada for the 30th time. That is what tour does to you.

14. I lose a lot of weight on tour, simply because I’m too wired to eat. The goal, though, is at least a big breakfast (either eggs at the hotel or if I can get to a Whole Foods, I make my own greek yogurt and nuts bowl), and then I do an early dinner at 4 or 5, and that’s enough fuel to keep me functional. In St. Louis, my normal diet is 3 meals a day, plus a protein shake, plus snacks — I try to pack on at least 8-10 extra pounds before tour so I can lose them without looking emaciated. But if you see me on tour in Week 2 or Week 3 and I’m looking scrawny… that’s why.

15. I had the choice on tour: I could either pack a box that weighs 40 pounds with 500 posters that encourage kids to run for office… or I could pack clothes instead.

I chose the posters.

So I came up with an efficient tour uniform: neon orange long-sleeve shirt, black bomber jacket, black jeans. I bought 14 of the orange shirts, big packs of cheap underwear and socks, so I could dispose of the underwear and socks after I work out in them. This keeps clothes to a minimum, leaves room for the box of posters, which also gets lighter as I give them out in each city… so by the end of tour, I’m returning home with basically nothing.

16. A kid pointed to the endpapers with my author photo at the back of YOUNG WORLD and said: “Oh look, it’s you when you were young!”

(I took the photo last year.)

17. Sam Koppelman, my former tutoring student turned NYT bestselling author / international superstar / CEO of a mega-company, was my conversation partner in Boston — and he asked about whether I’d ever run for office when I was younger. And I had! I’d run for Student Body President in high school at Gulliver Prep in Miami, and I’d won in Machiavellian ways (long story), but the thing that mattered was my campaign slogan, way back in 1996.

My slogan was… Revolution.

Lots of posters of things blowing up with my name and that catchy one-word slogan.

Wild, right? Show me the child and I’ll show you the man.

18. I miss tennis. Something in hitting a few thousand balls very hard every morning and the exhalation of breath keeps my body and mind clear of darkness. Without it, there’s kinks in the flow. I don’t feel as much myself. There’s something transcendent about the sport that is inextricably linked with who I am. Three weeks away from the court is too much for me.

19. No one can capture the color of the YOUNG WORLD hardcover in photos. I warned all of you a couple weeks ago — that the Pantone ink on the cover is a day-glo that digital cameras won’t pick up — but now everyone is finding it out in real time! Only two people have managed to capture the book in its true color:

20. I tear up a lot on this tour. At first, I thought that maybe I was just exhausted. But it’s deeper than that. I’m feeling so grateful for the chance to do something new, something that means so much to me, and to debut as a writer for the second time in my career. To be vulnerable to the world, lay it all on the line, and start clean. Something magical in those last two words. Because that’s also what the book is about: putting a young person into the presidency in order to bring back innocence and rinse the whole system clean. That’s what YOUNG WORLD has done for me, too. Given me back my innocence as a writer. Made me believe in my power to reinvent and unleash a new part of myself. To go back into the woods and take an uncharted path.

Until next week —

P.S. Come see me! Here’s the rest of my tour:

I’m nervous, of course. I don’t write the kinds of books everyone embraces. I look for the lanes unclaimed and the taboos unspoken and try to shine light there, in the hopes of causing trouble (the good kind!). In this case giving teenagers, particularly boys, a voice that captures their confusion, their disaffections, and most of all, their hopes for a life that’s better, deeper, more meaningful than the one they have now.

Then again: what I think the book says does not matter.

I’m the proudest book dad, but this baby belongs to you.

Meanwhile, I’ve had two things on the mind this week — both relevant to today’s milestone.

One was the sequel to the Devil Wears Prada.

My review of the movie is irrelevant; I think what affected me most was the feeling I had in the few minutes before it started.

I used to go to the movies three times a week, from when I was about 13 or 14, until about 2018, when there was a sizable drop in the number of original movies that came to theaters, once streaming swallowed everything. When I saw the original Devil Wears Prada in 2006, it was a real surprise — I remember a new Superman had come out the same day and was expected to dominate. I was young and lonely in Manhattan, so I made a double-feature for myself, where I saw Superman during the day and then Devil at night. The former was dreadful, and I didn’t really have high hopes for the latter, especially since I’d read an early version of the script while working for Mira Nair, the famed Indian filmmaker (now famed for being Zohran Mamdani’s mother), and the early script sent to Mira had been hideously bad.

But that night at the movies was a revelation. I saw Devil at the old Chelsea Cinepolis on 23rd street with an audience of what seemed like exclusively gay men — and the theater was absolutely rocking. Every one of Miranda’s lines had them hissing at the screen. I came out fizzing with unexpected feeling, the kind of joyous surprise that can only come when you go into something with a very, very low bar and instead witness something transcendent. (Only other time this happened: the first Pirates of the Caribbean.)

But when the lights went down for DWP2, twenty years later, I had a very different feeling.

Fear.

A familiar fear: the same one I have today, on the day my new book is coming out.

Why?

Is it because in both cases, I wanted to control the outcome?

I wanted DWP2 to be good. Even if I knew that the magic alchemy that made the first one a pillar of my personality was impossible to replicate. Even if I knew that me (and the film) were chasing something entirely unattainable.

It’s the same with a new book. I want people to love it. Even if not everyone will.

But I don’t think that’s the fear, though.

It’s something else.

There’s a Madonna quote that has come back to me over and over since the beginning of writing YOUNG WORLD. I’ve mentioned it in a few diaries. Her notion that the artist is not the artist. The artist is only the “manager.” The artist are the unseen forces that turn the subconscious into tangible form. But you, the conscious body, are only responsible for creating the conditions for the art to emerge.

But here’s the conundrum —

Me, sitting here right now. Soman, who has to sell this book and go on tour and talk about YOUNG WORLD like it’s mine…

It’s not mine. I’m the manager. I did not write it. The forces inside me did.

And that gap, of me having to defend the work, to accept both the encomiums and the blame, to fight for something that came from such a primal place that I still do not fully understand it, in the same way that Noah probably had no idea how to articulately defend a madman’s ark…

That gap is what is causing me fear.

So good, bad — whatever the reaction is. Now you’ll know how I feel about it. Which is just plain and simple scared, because in either case, I am only the Dad, not the wild, reckless, irrepressible child, and trust me, this child has a mind of its own.

Speaking of Dads… the other thing on my mind.

My own Dad was here in New York City with my Mom, overlapping with me only for a few precious hours before they headed home.

He’s so calm these days, my Dad. He radiates peace and happiness and wisdom, all things I want but can only glimpse before I lose grasp of them.

I thought about what it must feel like to be my Dad.

Almost 80.

A self-made man. Fifty-five year marriage. Three children. Successful business that will carry on under two of those children. A third who is an artist, his wild card, swinging through highs and lows, but who in the end, will be just fine.

He’s done it, I thought. He’s finished the quest. Mastered the challenge. He has nothing else to do or prove or accomplish. He can just be. He can savor the days, knowing they’ll come to an end sooner than later, but in the meantime, what a glory it is to still be around and know that he not only survived the gauntlet, but left something behind, bigger and better than himself. He is more than happy. He is a human who lived a life.

And so today, on this book birthday, I sat quietly in my room before dawn and imagined what it will be like to be my father’s age. To have that sense that I did everything I was meant to do and that now, there is only peace and satisfaction at having lived. I let the feeling roll through me, all of me, like the tallest, gentlest wave, until I felt the light-headedness of old blood replaced with new.

Then I opened my eyes.

I looked at those bright books stacked against the window.

And I couldn’t remember what the fear felt like.

Thank you for coming with me on this journey.

Instead, that flight was cancelled right as we were boarding because the First Officer fell sick — which prompted me to beg for my three check-in bags back (don’t judge: packing for tour is a nightmare), then sprint up and down the long escalator from the ticket desk to the baggage carousel five separate times because the bags weren’t showing up (they’d gotten jammed inside the machine), and then hail a taxi to the Southwest terminal, where I got my bags checked and my ass in a seat on the 7:25am flight just before the door closed.

We are off to exactly the kind of start I’d imagine for a book about young people overthrowing the government.

In the meantime, I’m here to confirm the final details of the tour, so that hopefully you can come see me, somehow, some way, because I’d love to see you. If you are a Diary reader, please tell me, as it’ll make me blush in real time knowing that you know all my secrets.

Here’s the final tour poster:

And here are the individual links to tickets and details for each event:

Monday, May 4^th @ 7pm – New York City, NY

Wednesday, May 6^th @ 6pm – New Haven, Connecticut

Thursday, May 7^th @ 6:30pm – Plainville, MA

Friday, May 8^th @ 7pm – Brookline, MA

Sunday, May 10^th @ 4pm – Allentown, PA

Wednesday, May 13^th @ 6pm – Washington, DC

Friday, May 15^th @ 6pm – St. Paul, MN

Saturday, May 16^th @ 4pm – Dallas, TX

Sunday, May 17^th @ 3pm – Houston, TX

Thursday, May 21 @ 7pm – St. Louis, MO

Wednesday, May 27^th @ 6pm – San Francisco, CA

I’m so pumped to see some of you very soon.

In the meantime, only 4 more days to preorder YOUNG WORLD and get your free Diary of a Novel special edition. There won’t be any more available after Monday because we are on target to sell out every last copy of our print run. So upload your receipt today if you can, just to make sure you get yours — preorder.revoltingyouth.org.

I’ll be back on Tuesday with a proper diary to celebrate with you!

I’m pretty banged up! I spent the last five months getting in shape for this moment, physically and mentally, and even with all of it, I undershot. Thirteen years ago, when I put out The School for Good and Evil, it was a different landscape — books were still a dominant medium and there was a formula to success. Good reviews + touring + word of mouth = a reliable hit.

It’s different now. Reviews don’t matter. Tours are trickier, because so many schools don’t let authors in for visits (too many hoops to go through). Word of mouth, too, isn’t as steady, especially in the YA space, given declining literacy.

Instead, an author has to rely on all the things most authors intrinsically hate — social media, campaign videos, the lottery of algorithms. I didn’t even have Instagram during the first few School for Good and Evil books. Now it feels like half the energy and marketing budget goes into designing content for it.

Plus the scrounge to find publicity in a crowded media landscape… to relaunch myself for a new genre and audience… to write cold letters to people asking for early reads and shipping so many advance copies the UPS guy is now a friend… and perhaps most of all, to find the time to write, because that is what I am good at and want to spend my life doing, and all the rest seems like a distraction…

It’s all overwhelming.

Especially since the book itself was done months ago, the product of such careful, steady consideration, and something I stand behind with absolute conviction.

But everything around the book feels like a three-ring circus. My body and mind on the verge of serious burnout…

Then I discovered strip grazing.

I hadn’t been on the farm in over a month, having been working or touring non-stop since late February. In that time, the farm has changed. Spring is here, with the giant circle-of-life tree at the center of the farm in full bloom. The pond is full from April rains. Pooja, the calf left for dead after being hit by a tree, is now big and strong and part of the herd. Harriet is recovered from her C-section and back to stalking Pretty Ricky, her favorite bull. The grass is lush and green, so new and rich the smell carries.

Farmer Partner and I were due at our friend Anna’s for dinner, but he still had to feed the cows at the satellite farm. “Just come with me and we’ll go from there,” he said.

I’ve seen him feed cows many times before. In the winter, it means giving them a giant bale of hay, which they eat all the good parts from before mooing in chorus, demanding a fresh bale. (When Farmer Partner ignores these pouts, they go back to eating the rest.) In the spring, feeding cows means rotating them on pasture, which consists of daily paddock changes to keep them on consistently fresh grass and to keep the grass growing.

When we got to the satellite farm, though, he did neither of these things. The cows were on a field that looked unusual to me — a third of it was completely gnawed to the ground; the rest of the field was gated behind electric fence, tall and emerald and richer than any grass I’d seen on the other farm. Farmer Partner started pulling up the stakes of this electric fence, one-by one, and moving the line of the fence backwards, thirty feet at most from where it was before.

In a 13-acre field, a 30-foot shift of the line looked almost absurd.

But instantly, the cows surged forward in a perfect line, and began eating the new strip of grass.

“That’ll keep them until tomorrow,” said Farmer Partner.

“What happens tomorrow?” I asked.

“I move the line again,” he said. “Strip grazing.”

“Why don’t you graze them normally on the whole field and then rotate them to the next?”

He smiled. “The grass is too good on this one. And when the grass is too good, you can’t give them access to the whole thing at once. They’ll overeat and get bloat and then you’re in trouble. When the grass is premium… strip grazing.”

Huh, I thought.

And kept huh-ing for the rest of the weekend.

As a novelist, I know how to break things down into manageable chunks. This is what we do each day, building our fictional worlds little by little. And yet, there’s an openness to the design, a feeling of freedom each time I move to a new chapter, the way a farmer rotates his cows onto new land.

But Young World is different.

We’re in premium grass territory now, where there’s so much happening, so many things demanding my attention building towards release, that if I just plunge forward, I’ll keep going and gorging until I make myself sick.

Instead, I have to just move that line little by little. This is what can be done today. Then tomorrow, the line moves again, with the same refrain. This is what can be done today. Each and every day until the book is out in the world and the tour is over and my job is complete, or as complete as an author’s job can be.

But with each day, limits. I’m not disciplined enough to manage how much there is to do without them. I need artificial boundaries. And I need to accept that not only will I not be able to get to all of the field today, I might not get to all of the field ever. And that’s okay.

When you watch strip grazing in action, it’s a beautiful symphony. Because the cows all accept these limits together. None of them fight the line or fence. None tries to rip through for more food. They’ve accepted the rhythm and constraints and know exactly how much they’re going to get to eat.

We should all be on a strip-grazing diet, I think.

Because the whole damn field’s gotten too much for all of us.

Too much news. Too much work. Too much communication. Too much stuff. Too much everything, where we are tired and wired and just need someone to set the line.

We need to all give ourselves permission to draw the line in our own fields, no matter how premium and alluring the grass.

I came out of this weekend relaxed and refreshed and myself again, remembering that yes, I’m an author, and I love being an author a little too much, but I’m a human first. There will be this book and then another book and then another, the same way that these cows will keep moving from field to field, some fields rich and rationed, others that need to be raided raw.

In the meantime, I’ll wake up tomorrow and look at that do-not-cross line and be thankful for it. A gift that lets me savor and not take for granted my precious strip of grass for the day.

Your turn.

Do you need to strip-graze your life?

Leave a comment

Until next week…

P.S. Last week to get the free Diary of a Novel special edition paperback! Upload your YOUNG WORLD preorder receipt at revoltingyouth.org before we run out...

There would be no book jacket, but the book would have fluorescent pink stained edges. Perhaps there might not even be an image or author name on the cover. Simply the title, YOUNG WORLD, and nothing more.

The idea was revolution, inside and outside, and a book that broke the mold. The pink color was crucial — it would be the color of the party of Revolting Youth, one that at once remixed the Red of Republicans and Blue of Democrats into something aggressively new, but also had the neon-bright element of a primal scream. I wanted the book to be 700 pages of pure, fluorescent insanity, the kind of fever-dream ambition that people would either herald as bold or self-obsessed or both.

Three and a half years passed.

Now we are two weeks away from release.

It is remarkable how close the final product is to that initial vision.

There are some differences.

1. The 700-pages was a trip down the wrong neural pathway. I’d been re-reading The Secret History and initially imagined Benton Young, my main character, to have as lyrical and sophisticated a voice. But every time I turned a draft into my editor, she said the density and heaviness of it missed an opportunity. The book’s themes and concept were urgent, kinetic; Benton’s diary had to move that way too. By picking up the pace, the book started to thrum with the same neon-bright energy as the visuals. (In the end, the book was still a brick: 490 pages.)

2. Sales team said noooooo to the no-author-name on the cover. I triiiiiieeeeed.

3. The book isn’t pink.

Let’s talk about the last. There’s one and only reason why.

Barbie.

The movie swept the earth while I was writing YOUNG WORLD. Hot pink got rebranded into Barbie Girl chic, which meant using it for my book this soon after would bring too many subconscious associations, both new and old.

It was Matt Roeser, the lead visual designer on YOUNG WORLD, who suggested a subtle pivot. Matt is a visionary: he’s created many beloved book covers and was the one pushing me from the start to make the design of YOUNG WORLD bold and unhinged (he didn’t even want a title on the cover).

Matt agreed hot pink was now Barbie Land — but he pointed to the next Pantone color in the color wheel. A shade known as #805C. Hot orangey-pink, with a radioactive feel.

“Mmm, you mention Benton’s favorite soda in the book a few times — Nuke Cola,” said Matt. “That could be the color, right?”

I could read between the lines.

Not just the color of a teen president’s favorite drink.

The color of teen everything.

We christened the shade “Nuke.” The new official hue not only of YOUNG WORLD, but also the Revolting Youth party.

“You went from Barbie to Oppenheimer,” Matt quipped.

We high-fived.

Then slowly lost our smiles.

Because he’d warned me one thing… one thing he knew I’d forget… one thing that would haunt us for the next three and a half years…

That beautiful Nuke color?

The one that the whole book depended on?

It was impossible to produce.

* * * * *

First off, the color looks like crap digitally.

Pantones don’t translate to the RGB colors of screens, so you end up with something that’s not even remotely close to the final color of the book.

Take a look at what I had to stare at on my screen for three years:

Instead of radioactive, youth-revolt Nuke, we had… farm-raised salmon.

I hated it. At least once every 48 hours, I’d write Matt: “You sure Nuke will actually print?”

Matt: “I’m not sure of anything, but the finished book will look better than this.”

This was echoed by our in-house designer at Random House, Carol Ly, who had the job of standardizing all the color, meaning she had to stare at the fishy pink hue incessantly for three years, operating on faith that this would somehow turn into true Nuke in the end.

This also meant there was no way to advertise the book correctly — because everything you see on screens, on retailer sites, on my social media, is still that washed-out, bastardized version of the Nuke Pantone. Indeed, I had serious misgivings about promising something to readers I’d never seen for myself. So much so that for the Diary of a Novel color, I couldn’t bring myself to use the dreaded salmon, terrified that’s what the Pantone would end up being, so I compromised on a more stable red — even if it didn’t match the accompanying novel. All in all, for three full years, I had to operate on pure faith that it would look right in the end, even if no one could fully promise it or offer evidence that it would.

Even worse — when it came time to print the advance galleys, we used a domestic printer, which is the norm in galley printing, given the limited quantities and rushed schedules. But the printer refused to print our precious Nuke Pantone because they “couldn’t guarantee the quality or consistency of the color.”

I wanted to throw myself off a bridge.

The entire gambit of this book relied on a single color… and now it couldn’t be printed?

An eleventh-hour compromise was made for the galleys — to print the inside with a more stable red (the Diary of a Novel color) and the paperback galley cover with a version of Nuke orange.

When I got my box of ARCs, I managed a half-breath of relief.

I loved how they looked — even if it wasn’t what I imagined. The red interior color was lively and sharp. The orange cover was bright and distinctive. The book wasn’t incendiary or shocking in its appearance, but it definitely stood out.

At the very least, it wasn’t cheap-diner salmon.

* * * * *

Two months later, my editor Phoebe Yeh called. She was my editor at HarperCollins who shepherded me through the first The School for Good and Evil, and now I’d gone back to her for this new phase in my career. Phoebe asked when I was next coming to New York City. Samples of the final hardcover had arrived from China, where we were printing YOUNG WORLD, and she wanted me to meet with her, Carol, and Tim, the head of production, to go over them.

A week after the call, we all met at Random House headquarters, in a room known as the Macbeth Room, named for the Macbeth Color Checker, which creates a controlled color-viewing environment that lets you accurately evaluate colors.

Laid out on the desk were the book cover samples for YOUNG WORLD and the proof of the interior.

“Holy shit,” I blurted.

Nuke!

Real Nuke!

For the very first time.

A color so bright and swaggering and audacious that my legs wobbled as if I might levitate off the ground. No novel had ever looked like this. For good reason. No one could possibly want a book to be this loud. Except us. Because that was the dream from the beginning.

“I need to take a picture,” I gushed, pulling up my camera. “We need to change all the digital images to look like this —”

My editor and Carol traded smiles.

They knew what I was about to find out.

Because of course when I took that picture…

…the digital color was completely different.

* * * * * *

The Uncolorable Color.

That’s what I’ve started calling it.

You just can’t see it any other way than to hold the final hardcover.

The e-book will be fine (if you like salmon). The audiobook will be sensational with a full cast turning 150 visuals into cinematic audio scenes.

But the truth is… if you want that full fever dream… the one that made me leap off a cliff and dive into a hot pink-orange sea… you need to see the color up-close in hardcover. Even if you don’t get your own, take a peek in the bookstore. You’ll feel all the madness that went into a single shade of color — and perhaps share my smile that it was worth it.

In the meantime, two more weeks of faith.

The Uncolorable Color is real!

I just can’t show it to you.

Your turn.

Ever had a fever dream of your own?

Leave a comment

Until next week…

P.S. The preorder gifts are in! Check out the final special edition DIARY OF A NOVEL: THE MAKING OF YOUNG WORLD.

All 100 diaries, in this big, little compendium. We printed enough where we still have some left — so get your preorders in ASAP to reserve your gift before they run out. Upload your receipt at RevoltingYouth.Org.

This, I could not take seriously, because as a former New Yorker, nothing is ever alright, and the only way to live is in an eternally heightened state of high-cortisol vigilance, so the idea of a name promising happy endings, following you from cradle to death, felt borderline irresponsible.

But lately, the name’s been coming back to me, because so much in my world, the world, feels uncertain — and sometimes faith in EGBAR is the only thing I got.

For the first part of this week, I was worried about Harriet, who I wrote a whole diary about, but as a refresher: she’s the 10 year-old, wild, goat-herding Great Pyrenees that lives out in the pastures, has no interest in humans or other dogs, will not come near me or Farmer Partner, has lived an entirely solitary life keeping tabs on animals of other species… and yet somehow managed to get herself pregnant.

This, in itself, was the story.

But now the real stuff: Would she survive her pregnancy? If she did, would she have healthy milk to nurse the puppies? Could she take care of all those puppies? And if she couldn’t, who could we ultimately trust to home each of these Great Pyrenees / Bernese mixes, that were highly nocturnal, meant for herding, and could only thrive on the open range of a farm?

We drew out every possible scenario. Made all the necessary arrangements. Farmer Partner and his co-worker watched Harriet day and night, noting when she stopped eating and started to build a deep nest in the barn, all signs that labor was about to start. Only it didn’t really start. At some point, she just curled up into a miserable ball and didn’t move. We knew she was really in distress when she started wagging her tail if Farmer Partner or his co-worker approached. For a dog not into humans at all, she seemed to be ready for their intervention.

Farmer Partner scooped her up, put her in the big truck, and for the first time in her life, Harriet was being taken off the farm – and straight to the vet’s operating table.

In the end, though, the one scenario we hadn’t predicted.

Harriet survived the surgery. The puppies would have also, except for the fact they’d never made it to full term. Only one of the five we saw on the ultrasound a month ago was there when the surgeon went in, nowhere close to being viable.

The other four had disappeared.

Where had they gone?

Another farm mystery, like so many before. Just as much of a riddle as a 10-year-old Great Pyrenees who long stopped showing signs of heat ever getting pregnant at all.

We were sad at first. Harriet would have made a wonderful mom. But the next day, she was back to her lively, herding self, as if none of the past few months had ever happened. She ate for the first time in days. She pestered her favorite calf, named Pretty Ricky. She played with our other two Bernese Mountain dogs, one of whom was the culprit in getting her knocked up.

This time, there’d be no repeat performance, because while we had Harriet in a vet office, under human hands for the first and perhaps only time in her life… we made arrangements to have the 10 year-old gal spayed.

* * * *

That Harriet’s life will stay the same is perhaps a relief.

So much else seems to be changing in the world — and at home.

I switched trainers, which is a big deal, because it’s the person I tend to see the most during the week.

My morning tennis bros are graduating after years of playing with them 4 or 5x a week. Also a big deal, because they’re usually the first faces I see each day.

I made a new close friend in St. Louis named Leo that turned my weekly duo hangouts with my other close friend into a trio.

I’m about to go into YOUNG WORLD promo and tour, which is a juggernaut of newness. New publisher. New team. New cities. New presentation. New audience. New everything.

I wake up and there’s no track anymore, no comforting routine.

Even Farmer Partner’s been away this week, consumed with the epic challenge of fencing a whole new piece of land for cattle.

So it’s just me vs. the changes. And I hate change. Even if my life keeps accelerating towards it, like an untamed horse that drags me behind.

EGBAR, I tell myself.

Just for the hell of it, I even switched up my morning breakfast of the past 2 years — coconut yogurt with nuts and granola. I got so sick of the gooey, fibrous taste of the yogurt that I took a flyer on my severe dairy intolerance and bought a 100% grass fed Greek yogurt from a brand called Maple Hills and substituted it in, expecting absolute disaster… only to find that my whole system reacted infinitely better.

I almost started crying.

What else have I lost in life for fear of change?

The whole ethos of being a writer is to have the same day over and over again. To take the immensity of the world and compress it into the palm of my hand, squeezing its juice onto the page, at my own control. It’s a megalomaniacal profession, even if it looks humble. But at the heart is a central contradiction: that from the outside, the life of a writer looks fairly boring, routine, stagnant — but inside, we’re living multitude lives, in a panoply of worlds. Worlds in which we’ve become God.

No wonder writers are terrified of change! On the page. Off the page. Even if change is the only thing that can make us better writers and bring us closer to the truth. Otherwise, we just write the same book over and over again, stuck in a rat maze we’re too cowardly to escape.

I’m lucky enough that somewhere beyond my conscious self knows this, and has no patience for my fear or reluctance or unwillingness to change. It’s why I moved to St. Louis for love after three dates with a farmer. It’s why YOUNG WORLD exists, even when everyone thought I was crazy. It’s why I know in my heart of hearts that not only is the rest of my life going to look very different than how I can imagine it right now, but also whatever happens, we’re gonna EGBAR it until the end.

One more farm story —

It’s about the Mighty Pooja, the calf that was crushed by a falling tree, was dead for 2 days, and then miraculously came back to life.

At first, I imagined the rest of Pooja’s life as our pet, hobbling around the lane, nosing around with the dogs, being hand-fed hay and grain, and being our loyal, bovine best friend. This seemed like the right end to the story. A picture book waiting to happen.

But Pooja’s story has a mind of its own.

Each day, she wakes up stronger. The tilt in her pelvis is straightening. She can hop up on her own power, where she’d needed assistance before. She’s starting to sniff at the spring grass through pasture gates. Mooing longingly at the rest of the herd that she’s walled off from.

She is our invalid calf.

Was.

But now, she might just want to be a cow.

We’ll shed tears when that day comes, the day where the miracle is complete and she no longer needs us and it’s time to let her go with the herd.

Hers is a lesson for everyone. Not just that we can outgrow our own shackles, our own bad starts. But that in the end, life might also have a much bigger story for each of us than the one we imagine for ourselves.

A story where everything’s gonna be more than alright.

It’s gonna be exactly what it’s meant to be.

Your turn.

What are you afraid to change?

Leave a comment

Until next week…

This early on, the number one thing I’m looking for isn’t what people think of the book. It’s whether they finish it. With a book about teenagers that ultimately skews towards a younger audience, this is the only metric that matters during the run-up. Are people getting to the end of YOUNG WORLD once they start it?

Reviews are less important. Mainly because in the pre-publication period, they’re weighted towards older “gatekeepers” — teachers, educators, librarians, media, reviewers — who don’t match the audience of young adults that will be unleashed in less than a month. I still look at the reviews, though. And the completion rate for YOUNG WORLD and the tenor of the reviews so far has made me deeply hopeful… even if hope can be a dangerous trap…

In these advance reactions, though: a quirk.

You know how one out of every twenty people tastes soap when they eat cilantro? (I am one of those people.)

In this case, we have a curious allergy to the format of the book, from a small subset of female readers, who wanted nothing to do with the first-person diary of a 17 year-old boy. They couldn’t even get past the first chapter. I wrote down some of their objections: too “horny”… too “irrational”… too “patriarchal”… too “entitled”… One noted that “a female teenager would never get away with talking this way.” It was a strange reaction in that it was rare – maybe 3 to 4% of readers – but also uniform. A blanket resistance that made them stop reading. More than resistance. Fury. Certainly something that transcended the first page or two of a novel.

It made me put on my detective hat.

What was really bothering them?

The long-held theory goes like this: young boys won’t read books about girl protagonists, but girls will happily read books about boy protagonists. That disparity is a symptom of the empathy gap that evolves between the sexes from an early age.

But that theory is often a myth, legendary educator Dr. Rose Brock pointed out, on a recent episode of the PLOT TWIST podcast, dedicated to the question of how we get teenage boys back to reading. Most pre-college educators are female, notes Dr. Brock; so even when they endorse books about boy protagonists, these books often present a version of boy protagonists most acceptable to female readers (i.e. the classic John Green hero).

In the case of YOUNG WORLD, however — which takes the unvarnished, first-person approach of a Catcher in the Rye or The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole — there’s no filter on the pulpy, high-hormoned, private confessions of a teenage boy. And as Dr. Brock and I suss out during our conversation, the truth is some people…

…just don’t like teenage boys.

They don’t like their language, their thought processes, their attitudes. They don’t like their ego and privilege and self-obsession. They don’t like the way they think about girls or sex or even love. They just pure and simple don’t vibe with adolescent males, the same way that some people don’t really like babies.

Which is why books from a teenage boy perspective are increasingly rare.

It’s easier to write for the market, which is predominantly female in YA, so if you’re going to capture the greatest possible share, your best bet is to write a female heroine or a male hero that feels like a female fantasy.

I know this first hand: the School for Good and Evil is six books and 4000 pages of female id. The epic story of female friendship, in which the male characters are seen predominantly through a female lens. (The one exception is the second book, A World Without Princes, in which I ironically foreshadow this very argument, with a cult of boy-hating girls launching a school without them.) Truth is, I feel at home writing female voices, young and old, and conjuring fantasies that make girls of any age feel seen and valued and powerful is the source of all my magical powers.

But I’m also terrified of boys being so casually left behind.

Once upon a time, they were reliable readers. Not anymore.

And we seem to be okay with that — abandoning them to their video games and Youtube binges and disdain for books, even though we know from experience and history that if we just give them the right book, they are often the most committed readers of all.

Boys need books for all the reasons that a subset of readers claims allergy to them. If they are indeed too entitled, patriarchal, horny, irrational… then where else to learn other ways to be than in the pages of the book? Where else to learn how girls think and feel and to come to appreciate the opposite sex, away from the objectifying lens of nearly every other art form?

As Louis Theroux’s new documentary on the Manosphere warns, boys are in danger of a reductionist anti-intellectualism that makes them afraid of empathy, afraid of emotions, afraid of their inherent sensitive — dare I say it, feminine — sides.

Books are the cure.

Stories that make them feel as seen and strong and powerful as all those fairy tales I wrote for girls.

So I went back into my cave for three years and came out with a new kind of story.

But YOUNG WORLD isn’t just my gambit for teenage boys to find themselves in a book. It’s also my siren call to everyone who is not a teenage boy to have faith in them again. Somewhere, we as a culture lost that faith. Started snowplowing all the obstacles out of their way. Made them afraid to be emotional and sensitive, for fear of being weak, and yet also made them afraid to be men, for fear of being toxic. Stopped letting them build skills and confidence in the real world and replaced it with algorithms that make them look for cheat codes and shortcuts.

Books can’t solve these things. They aren’t a substitute for the real world. But they are a hell of a good start. An immersive way of empowering, inspiring, mobilizing.

Which is why I made the teenage president in YOUNG WORLD a boy.

A teenage girl president would likely excel in the White House. (I’m picturing Tracy Flick.) But we can’t even elect an adult female yet. Our country is so backwards with misogyny and female objectification that I couldn’t yet find a believable route to imagine that teen girl into office.

A teenage boy – the right teenage boy – I can see.

And I don’t just mean on the page.

Politics is so broken right now that we’ve reached the stage of being Montagues and Capulets. An endlessly proliferating cycle of violence between two parties that will never be broken as long as we continue to entrust our country to members of either one.

Something needs to come to wash it all away. To crash a wave over the shores and rinse everything clean.

And I say this with the utmost seriousness: I think that something is a teenage boy.

A teenage boy president would require everyone to think differently. Yes, all the usual politics — as the book certainly accounts for. But a teenage boy that forces us to look at ourselves anew, at the world we’ve made for ourselves, at what we’ve all become…

His very existence would change the game.

And in a new game, finally a ray of light.

It’s why I feel weird calling YOUNG WORLD a novel anymore.

It’s become more than that to me.

Manifesto.

Prophecy.

Guide.

Your turn.

How will you feel reading a teenage boy’s diary?

Leave a comment

Until next week —

P.S. Three weeks to go! We’re almost sold out of the DIARY OF A NOVEL free gift. To get your 560-page collection of all my 100+ diaries, upload your receipt at revoltingyouth.org. Here’s a sneak peek at the book:

That is a word I’ve made up, but it best describes the feeling: this creepy-crawly, uncanny valley sensation of being lifted out of my body and redeposited in a parallel AI universe where everything looks right, but nothing feels right.

The eight Harry Potter movies are emblazoned into pop culture and our collective consciousness — the last one came out only 15 years ago, and one could possibly argue that a new generation of kids needs a new, more expansive version… except for the fact that the movies are replayed on TV in epic marathons 365 days a year, so that anyone under the age of 18 has an even richer encyclopedic memory of them than I do.

So why are we doing this again?

We all know why.

But there’s a despair to actually seeing it done, a retread of something that was already recently adapted with love and care, so that the only possible result of any of this is the thing they keep self-righteously insisting we shouldn’t do: comparison. Hollywood has been in reboot hell for the last twenty years, terrified of taking risks on anything new. But this is the apotheosis. This is the Emperor not only parading around without clothes, but coming back the next day and insisting it’s an even newer fashion.

It made me think of peptides.

Everybody is on them. At my gym, all the 40-somethings are suddenly jacked, with small waists and big chests and shredded bellies, and their skin is tight over their chins in this glassy, slightly cyborg way.

Some of this is from working out. A lot is from the personalized “stack” they’re getting from new-age health clinics (or black-market Chinese pharmacies), a combination of dodgy injections that they stab themselves with each morning, a cheat code to beauty and energy and youth. Give them truth serum and they’ll confess their code: CJC-1295… Ipamorelin… Tesamorelin… BPC-157… TB-500… GHK-Cu… MOTS-c… with a touch of TRT…

A trainer recently admitted of a client: “He made more strides on peptides in three months than we did in five years of training.”

He said this with the same tone one might announce the arrival of aliens on earth — i.e. is this good? Evil? Are we in the presence of a friendly new life form? Or are we all injecting ourselves with our own destruction?

At first, I wasn’t sure why the new Harry Potter series conjured peptides for me, but if I think about it, they’re pretty much the same thing. In each case, we know the result we want: success, whether financial or aesthetic, and while the process to reach these things was once important in a world where time moved at real-time speed, time is now too slow for us to wait. Meaning we need to skip to the outcome as fast as we can and if that requires letting ChatGPT think for us or dumping Harry back at Platform 9 3/4 AGAIN or shooting ourselves up with the protein equivalent of crypto… well, no time for doubters or pussyfooters because we’re up against the robots now and if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.

All of this flows downstream from the cynically rich.

Specifically the self-appointed tech deities who believe that being human is a liability.

As author Naomi Klein referenced, these tech gurus genuinely believe that the tenets of humanity are weakness — emotions, introspection, consciousness — and that being human, to some extent, is a huge waste of time and energy, that a robot can not only simulate, but also supersede.

This is why these gurus spend their lives injecting peptides that haven’t been studied and building rocket ships to find a new “spare” planet and funding companies to find the cure for death and buying movie studios that will reboot Harry Potter so many times until Harry literally becomes Voldemort, a Horcruxed zombie that all of us want to kill for the sake of moving on.

On the subject of Horcruxes —

It’s worth mentioning the curious case of Amy Griffin, which invokes perhaps the creepiest-crawliest feeling I’ve had this week.

Amy Griffin is the billionaire founder of G9 investment ventures and wife of likely billionaire John Griffin, founder of Blue Ridge Capital. Her friends include Gwyneth Paltrow, Meghan Markle, Sheryl Sandberg. (She was invited to the Bezos wedding.)

She also ‘wrote’ a best-selling memoir, The Tell, about how she used MDMA therapy to recover long-repressed memories of being sexually abused by a teacher at her Texas middle school in the 1980s.

Big book clubs hailed it. The star of Law & Order: SVU, Mariska Hargitay, hosted her book launch in New York City. Time Magazine named her one of the 100 Most Influential People of 2025.

A year later, ‘Jane Doe’ filed suit against Amy Griffin.

And Amy Griffin’s ghostwriter.

Accusing them of stealing her story of sexual abuse and trauma and repackaging it as Amy’s in order to gain profit and sympathy and acclaim.

The alleged details laid out in the lawsuit are peculiar: a web that Griffin spins around the victim to suss out and thieve all the details of the assault. This would, then, allegedly allow Griffin to ply a ghostwriter with the details of the abuse, which she would claim as her own, recovered under MDMA therapy — a therapy she and her husband are said to have millions of dollars invested in.

I just shivered. Oogie-boogies returned.

Look, it’s an alleged lawsuit and one against a billionaire, who vigorously dispute the claims. We should be highly skeptical. But just as ChatGPT trains on stolen work, the idea of a memoir plundering a stolen life no longer seems as far-fetched as it should. Maybe that’s why the story has hit a nerve online. Because there’s a new American ethos spreading epidemic — that no one wants to do the work, especially the rich and powerful. We want the fruits of the work, no matter who has to be crushed along the way.

In the end, though, I still see a story where life wins out.

The peptide shot found to be dangerous to a body that sees it as alien invader.

The audience switching the channel away from something they’ve already seen.

The rich made to confront the one thing money can’t account for: conscience.

Eventually, that is. Much frustration in the meantime.

The world we live in is turning into a world of impatience, shortcuts, grift. In the short-term, depth and quality will be drowned by cynicism and slop.

But we are still human. At least for now.

And as long as we are, we know better.

That feeling at our core that we don’t know everything and we cannot control everything and the more we try, the further from true intelligence we will get.

AI Soman would have stayed Fairy Tale guy forever.

The human one threw it all away to plant a flag for a Young World instead.

Because yes: money, peptides, acclaim can give you that invincible sheen, that robot hit of beauty, riches, power that make you feel immortal.

But feelings are different than the truth.

And the truth is you can’t control your life any more than you can control your death.

Your life will reveal to you who you are — if you do not resist it.

In relinquishing control, you become the true you.

And in that you, there will be surprises. And ultimately, peace.

Don’t trade those for some magic beans.

Until next week…

I’ve written about wanting to be Mormon third wife. I’ve written about a tree-hit miracle calf. I’ve written about being a Bad Parent, because we let our one-year-old Bernese accidentally breed the 10-year-old wild Great Pyrenees that herds our goats (read to the end of this diary to find out if she’s pregnant).

But the book? What book?

Truth is, the closer we get to YOUNG WORLD’s release, the more I feel a steady, thumping fear.

What have I done? All my other fellow middle-grade authors with hit series just keep writing that series. They’re on Book 12 or launching spin-offs of the spin-offs, steadily building their lucrative empire. The rationale being that you only get a hit once in your life, so hop in with that lightning in a bottle and let it light the way.

It is a sound rationale. One that the Indian side of me absolutely endorses and should follow too, because I love the Indian side of me — a side that says I can go back to The School for Good and Evil and write Books 7, 8, 9, 10, 100 and keep banking royalty checks until I’m doddering around the house in luxurious faux-fur caftans and Chanel slippers, ringing the bell for mango lassis and caviar. This, the Indian side might approve of.

But fortunately — or unfortunately — I have a stronger Madonna side that loves reinvention and provocation and surprising myself and thinks money and security pales to the thrill of fresh incarnations.

The Madonna side is what made YOUNG WORLD.

But now the book is actually coming out… people are going to read it… or not… and I think the fear I’m feeling is this desperation to keep this Madonna side alive.

In other words: that old, pesky fear of failure.

Let’s define failure first.

It has nothing to do with reader reactions or reviews. Yes, I’ll peek at Goodreads reviews every once in a while to sense the flow (my favorite early review below from a retiree in Idaho that I wish I could put on the book cover) — but to me, a book is an intimate experience between the words on the page and the reader’s imagination and that has nothing to do with me. It is a private act in which I am no longer a party. I can only simply tip my hat to every reader who buys the book and gives it precious time in their lives and say, Thank you.

Failure to me, then, is something else. A feeling that the book was a mistake. That the prevailing reaction is I should have stuck to what I’ve done before and what I’m proven to be good at and to take a risk on something so recklessly original was… naïve. Worse than naïve.

Arrogant.

To be called arrogant for writing it.

That would be a failure.

Future Soman would lose faith in that renegade, go-rogue part of me that hungers to take big, ill-advised swings, that throws away genre and trope and convention and just commits to the force of a vision, no matter how wild and neon-bright.

Failure would make it easy to let that neon-bright lapse a little dimmer. Or at least gain a mercenary shadow.

Ugh, what a stupid way to think.

That would be true failure. Letting that happen.

I think of my favorite line from the Bhagavad Gita:

Beware the fruits of action.

And the action is done. Writing the book was a joyous, all-consuming fever dream. It’s finished. Yes, I still have to get out there and sell it and tour with it, but my work as the artist is done. As Rudyard Kipling once said: “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster / And treat those two impostors just the same…”

Key word: If.

To be honest, I’m forever in the iffy phase. Where I can’t cast an equal eye on Triumph and Disaster and I’m still buried in the wine-grape trough, waiting — insisting! — on my fruits. I’m just not evolved enough yet to do my work and let it go, no matter how much I convince myself I’m above earthly delights.

But what are these fruits, then? What is success?

It’s not sales or money, necessarily. It’s something more intangible.

Power. The power to keep reaching out artistically in new directions without doubts. Doubts from publishers and gatekeepers. Doubts from myself.

That might be what I’m afraid of most.

Having to justify my artistic impulses.

Having to explain the unexplainable elves that live inside my subconscious and do all the work.

An interesting contradiction, though —

Because off-the-page, I find myself in conundrums having to account for those on-the-page elves.

As I’ve documented in this diary over the years, I have zero clue what my subconscious is up to when I’m drafting. I just follow it faithfully and let it bring shape to an inchoate plan and trust it will all work out in the end, which somehow it always does.

The problem, though, is then having to talk about it.

Because my artistic self goes much further than my real self would go.

In real life, I’m not so bold.

So I know once YOUNG WORLD comes out, I’m going to have to defend all my artistic decisions the same way I did for SGE and BEASTS & BEAUTY — and this requirement to explain myself is the only thing in my life that makes me want to flee and become a plumber or flight attendant.

Because I have nothing to say.

The elves do the work.

I write it down.

The story is the story.

If anyone has an issue with it, I’m happy to set up a meeting with the elves.

Spoiler: they will not show up.

Speaking of BEASTS & BEAUTY —

My book of fairy tales has been named to a list of 50 dangerous books in Belarus and I have officially been proclaimed ‘harmful’ to the Lukashenko regime and a threat to the national interest.

When I announce this new achievement to students at school visits, they invariably stand up and applaud vociferously and suddenly think I’m cool. (“I want to be banned by Belarus,” one teenage boy chimed to me last week.)

But you won’t see me write any furious posts condemning the condemnation or even vaguely trying to defend myself, because a) I have no clue why B&B, a book that has had a big and uncontroversial life around the world earned the specific enmity of a Putin ally and b) the thing about being an author is that I am as surprised by what’s in my books as everyone else.

I want to write back to Belarus: “You do you, man.”

Which is why I look at each of the books on my shelf now, not as an author — but as an observer marveling that they happened at all. None of these books feel like mine anymore. They are apples that fell off a tree in my direction.

Silly, then, that I’m so overwrought about this one.

That I’m putting the weight of my artistic life on YOUNG WORLD.

A few years from now, it’ll just be another fruit on that tree.

A little neon-brighter than all the rest, certainly.

But one that I’ll love and embrace all the same, whether it shines or falls.

Surely the Indian side can find peace in that.

Your turn.

Have you ever put something out in the world that you were scared to?

Leave a comment

Until next week —

P.S. Time’s running out on the preorder gift. If you want the special edition paperback of DIARY OF A NOVEL, with all my collected diaries — 561 pages — upload your receipt for YOUNG WORLD at preorder.revoltingyouth.org.

P.P.S. Harriet is pregnant. Four confirmed puppies. At least.

But we must start at the beginning.

* * * * *

It’s birthing season on the farm.

Specifically for the heifers — a.k.a. the first time Moms — which is a perilous time, since starter moms, at least when it comes to cows, are horrendous at giving birth. One in three have complications, which requires a sturdy, alert farmer to respond in kind and safely extract the calf from inside the womb without damaging mom or child.

It’s harrowing work, but Farmer Partner had done it many times over the years, usually with reliable success. This year, though, a streak of bad luck had hit. One calf stillborn. The second calf twisted so aggressively in the womb that it died long before it came out.

Each time, he’d gone straight to the sale barn and purchased an orphan calf and smeared it with the childless mom’s afterbirth — along with a dodgy pheremonal product called ‘Orphan No More’ — in the hopes of tricking the mom into thinking its calf was still alive and claiming the orphan one instead.

Both times it worked.

But then a third complicated birth, with an even worse breach for the calf, which he had almost, almost rescued out of the womb, only for it to suffocate at the last second.

I’d come up to the barn just a few moments after the tragedy of the last and seen him vibrating with pain, both physical and emotional, having wrestled the cow’s insides for half an hour, desperate to save the baby. I’d never seen him so upset. Either had the dogs, who were sitting quietly beside the calf’s body.

I took the dogs home without a word, giving Farmer Partner space and time.

Again, he went to the sale barn. Another purchased calf. Another dose of Orphan-No-More. Another mom tricked away from grief.

But his own grief was worsening.

It was a curse, no doubt. Three dead in three days. Why?

That night, he sat in the bathtub for over an hour. When he came out, he had a wry smile.

“I’ve been lucky all these years. That’s all,” he said. “It’s just a bad spell. Part of every farmer’s life. Our luck will turn.”

Twelve hours later, a tree fell on a calf.

* * * * * *

There was no reason for the tree to fall.

It was perfectly healthy and alive. The sky was sunny, the air warm. A stiff wind that day, yes, but nothing to take a tree down with it.

The crack was so loud it brought Farmer Partner and his co-worker out running from the barn office.

It had fallen in the forest surrounding the pastures — but was so tall it had crashed over the electric fence, into the field and landed on top of a sleeping baby calf.

She was three days old, one of the only healthy babies born so far, a brownish-red sweet creature known for taking naps in the shade of the surrounding woods. If Farmer Partner had for a moment thought those woods were a danger, he’d never let cows near them. In 25 years of owning this farm, never had a tree fallen anywhere near the pastures.

He didn’t know how to tell me.

When he did, it was with choked laughter, the kind that’s so devastated it’s full of tears. It’s impossible what’s happening, he said. That a tree would fall and then fall right there. Again and again, he repeated the same phrase: “I can’t think too much about it,” as if any pondering of this worsening curse would only bring a harsher glare of the evil eye.

My Dad had a different assessment.

“He needs to do a pooja,” my Dad said.

* * * * * *

A pooja is an Indian ritual in honor of the spirits that cleanses negative energy and brings forth light.

That night, Farmer Partner pulled out the Ganesh statue he’d bought on our trip to India, lit candles and incense sticks around it and let the scent fill the house. (The dogs both took one whiff and left.)

Farmer Partner kept the candles burning for two days.

He didn’t doubt its need or his commitment to the flame.

At the end of the second day, he trudged up to the barn, finally ready to bury the body of the tree-hit calf, which he’d left in a corner of the barn, away from where predators could get it.

He took a deep breath and went to pick it up.

Instead, it opened an eye.

* * * * *

There was no explanation.

The calf had been dead when the tree hit it.

Now, it was alive.

Barely.

Farmer Partner’s only possible explanation is that the tree had smashed it in the head, causing massive brain swelling — and because it had been alone, untouched, and unfed for nearly 48 hours, it had become severely dehydrated… enough for its brain to contract out of swelling and back to functional life.

It could not move. It could not eat. It could not fully open its eyes. But it was alive.

“It’s a miracle,” I said.

“It’s going to die,” my partner said.

There was no dispute. The only question was whether to let it die by itself or to give it a lethal injection, the latter of which was encouraged by everyone he talked to, friends, family, fellow farmers.

Yet the calf wasn’t in pain. That much he could tell. So he did what he does when an animal is sure for death, but isn’t yet suffering.

“At least they’ll go with a full stomach and warm heart,” he always says.

He gently slipped a tube down the calf’s throat and gave her two quarts of fluids.

Then he let her sleep the night, expecting her to go in peace.

The next morning, she opened two eyes at him.

And stuck out her tongue just a tiny bit.

* * * * * *

Three times a day, he tube-fed her, his little calf in a heap.

He and his co-worker cleaned off the pee and poop — a good sign amongst all the bad ones — and made sure she had dry straw to lie on.

On the fifth day, that tongue started curling around his fingers, trying to suck.

On the sixth day, he let her try her drinking from a bottle.

She managed an ounce or two, then collapsed with exhaustion.

“Can we name her?” I asked.

“She’s going to die,” he repeated.

The next day, she managed four ounces from the bottle and one of her front legs twitched.

Farmer Partner’s eyes glittered for the smallest moment… then narrowed. He typed into his phone. Looked up. “Chat GPT says 5% chance of survival.”

That afternoon, he bought a sling.

The calf hated it. I don’t blame her. It forced her into standing on legs that didn’t work, but Farmer Partner kept her there for ten minutes, until she managed a bleat of protest and he released her, at which point she toppled over and slept the rest of the day.

Twenty minutes… then thirty minutes… then forty minutes… Day by day, he made her stand longer and longer in that terrible sling.

On the fifth day, she took a staggered step forward.

* * * * * *

There was ritual.

Every day, Farmer Partner spent hours with her: letting her drink from the bottle slowly until she was done… sling-training her to stand and walk… massaging her legs and body to reconnect the neurons that were damaged by brain swelling.

She was blind in both eyes at first, then vision slowly came back to one, enough that she could track the bottle and latch on.

Each night, he rested her against a bale of straw so she could sleep comfortably.

One morning, he arrived to find her ten feet away from where he’d laid her down.

“You can give her a name,” he told me.

I named her Pooja.

* * * * * *

This is Pooja now.

She spends her days sauntering up and down the lane, playing with the dogs, nosing at butterflies and frogs, sneaking into the barn office to steal milk powder, and sleeping in the sun wherever she can find it.

For now, she won’t join the herd on the pastures — she’s too far behind and more socialized to us and the dogs than other cows. But when the day comes in a few months that she’s ready to eat grass, we’ll give Pooja her own plot of land, with an open gate to the lane, where she has free run of the farm, all the way to the front door of our house. (“She needs a cowbell,” my partner grumped. “And no shitting on the doormat.”)

That she’s alive is a miracle. That she’s alive and healthy and chasing barncats is something more.

The opposite of a curse.

All the darkness we thought had come for us instead preparing us for the most beautiful burst of light.

She’s part of our family now. And I encourage you to think of her as part of yours.

Little Pooja, made of faith, love, and the luck of a fallen tree.

I knew nothing about the religion — and my grasp of it still remains vague — but it was everything outside the temple that called to me. Mormons, in my experience, were generally kind, neighborly, gentle. They didn’t drink alcohol. They didn’t drink coffee. Instead of partying, they spent time outdoors. They worked out a lot. They loved to read. They had an unusually strong affinity for Disney World. They were, in other words, my people.

For many of my book tours, I asked to make a stop there — and found the kids smart, engaged, and deeply literate, as if they’d not yet been entirely consumed by digital life. In 2017 and 2018, I taught at WriteOut, a writing camp founded by bestselling author Allie Condie, in the mountains of Cedar City, where I’d coach teenagers on figuring out what they wanted for their life, both on and off the page. Again, these kids were outliers from the ones I encountered everywhere else — softer, more innocent, more respectful.

Then COVID hit, I finished my fairy tale books, and I forgot about Utah.

Until last weekend.

After eight years, I returned to Salt Lake City for StoryCon, one of the best run book festivals I’ve ever been to, which wasn’t a surprise, because everything in Utah tends to be exceptionally organized and well-run. Again, the old siren call hit.

That in another life, I belonged here.

Mormon Soman, back on his beat.

Confession time.

I tried to make this life happen.

At the age of 22, I went hunting out gay Mormons, thinking I should marry one.

Forget the fact that the Mormon church was not into gays and gay marriage wasn’t legal, but I was lost in my fantasy and heteronormative dreams and if this was my way to Utah and being one of the tribe, then I was going for it the way I did straight A’s in high school.

I can’t remember the methods exactly — did I make a personals ad? did I just look for any boy from Utah? — but twice, I found a match.

The first time, it was a boy named Carl, who still went to church, despite being fully out of the closet, which meant he wasn’t allowed to participate in any of the activities. He didn’t mind this, though, and remained a devout Mormon.

In me, I think he saw a fellow soft soul, someone who joined him in abstinence from a lot of earthly vices — though he also sensed an undercurrent of subversiveness and mischief in me that he simply didn’t have (or at least hid much better). This all came to a fore when I took him on a movie date to the Alfonso Cuaron-directed Y Tu Mama Tambien, which I had no idea opened with an enormously long sex scene and was followed by 90 mins of erotic hijinks.

He wasn’t happy about it and I was dumped pretty soon after — a fate I think I could have avoided if I hadn’t called the movie one of the best things I’ve ever seen and gone back to see it three more times. (To this day, it’s one of my top 5 movies ever.)

Truth be told, I knew it wasn’t a fit. It felt like I coveted his childhood more than I coveted him — stories of idyllic bike rides and mountain climbs with his friends, high school parties where it didn’t end in anxiety-inducing drinking games, a college dorm at BYU where instead of kegging, kids played cards and hung out like they do in bucolic novels.

I’d tried to have that same life as a teenager in Miami.

But it had made me deeply unpopular.

The second boy was named Tim, only in this case, he was in his full-on questioning phase about the church and looking for a getaway car… while I was looking for the ride in. It only lasted a few weeks.

There was another fantasy along the way.

One summer, while in a rural part of Utah, we spotted a group of sister wives at the local store, doing their Sunday shopping. Fundamentalists, my Mormon friend explained. Occasionally, you’d see them with the husband, but more often it was just the women in a small family group.

A couple other writer friends with us were jarred.

I, meanwhile, wondered if I’d thrive in that system.

A patriarchal husband… me the third wife… Something about it sounded like a relief. A structure to exist within. One that had a rigid place for me. But in that place, none of the spotlight. Less attention. Less pressure. An ability to fly under the radar and disappear.

If a gay version of this existed, maybe I could apply?

In my 30s, therapy helped me make sense of all this.

That I had an inordinate sensitivity, the kind that’s almost crippling, and something in this particular group had made me feel safe to express it.

Oddly, the cure for the craving — to become Mormon, to move to Utah, to become the third boy-wife — came when I went to India one summer and felt the same gravitational pull in a place that couldn’t be more different than the snow-capped mountains of Provo. And yet, in the chaos and color of India, still the same gentleness and soft edges and intellectual bent and welcoming of sensitive souls. In both places, a home where I could be myself instead of steeling myself in spiked armor.

That’s all I really wanted: a home where I fit in, where I trusted others enough to let down the wall.

In this understanding, freedom.

And in freedom, love.

I found him on a farm. Not Mormon, not Indian, but all the same qualities I craved — an extreme sensitivity of the soul, the kind that almost feels otherworldly.

When I told him my Mormon fantasies, of getting to be my delicate self without shame, instead of ridiculing it, he just nodded with a far-off gaze: “I had that phase too.” As if everyone in touch with the softest parts of themselves makes pilgrimage to Utah.

Looking back, I approached those personal ads the wrong way. I didn’t need to identify with a tribe. I just needed to say who I was and believe I was made the right way from the beginning. And if I was honest and 100% myself… one day someone would find me.

What should I have said, way back then? What were the right words?

I think of a line from a Jewel song, one that’s long stayed with me and is the closest anything’s ever come.

Please be careful with me,

I’m sensitive and I’d like to stay that way.

Until next week —

P.S. We finally have a page count on the paperback edition of DIARY OF A NOVEL — the special edition compilation of all 100+ diaries I kept while writing YOUNG WORLD that you get free for preordering. It is… 561 pages!!! That means for less than the $20 it takes to preorder YOUNG WORLD, you’re getting 1000+ pages plus. Upload your receipt to get your free copy at revoltingyouth.org.

I play tennis, I write, I go to the gym, I see my friends, I hang with Farmer Partner.

There’s been short tours here and there, but mostly it’s been the kind I do on autopilot — a well-honed fairy-tale stand-up show that I’ve done so many times since 2013’s The School for Good & Evil that I’ve seen every permutation, the danger and challenge of a live audience whittled away by repetition.

I miss the danger of defending something new. I miss hearing reactions to something I myself am still processing. I miss the vulnerability of putting out a bold, unexpected piece of art.

But the time’s here.

Presenting the 12-city YOUNG WORLD book tour!

These are just the public events. I’ll also be doing high school shows during the day in every city, in addition to local media and some other cool collaborations. So it’ll be full-throttle for three straight weeks, multiple events each day, flight at night, go-go-go, like I’m running for President of Teenagers and my opponent is Apathy and Doomscrolling.

Most of the events are ticketed, so make sure to get yours early to secure your spot. All the ticketing links are up at revoltingyouth.org, under the TOUR tab, but if you have any problems getting one, comment on the post below and I’ll get to the bottom of it.

I’ve been working on designing the high school show over the past few days. The School for Good and Evil one was a raucous, 52-minute machine that was a blast to do… but it was honed by over 800 trials. I’m trying not to put pressure on myself for the Young World one to be as good straight away. It takes time with an audience to shape it and work through all the opportunities for humor and connection. There are potholes along the way. But little by little, you find it. Even if I know it’ll be hard to have that patience.

That said, I have some topics I want to talk to teenagers about: how the right to be young has been taken from them… the way algorithm and AI is shaping their future without them realizing it… the power they have to take back control… and the revolt that’s inevitably coming, so they might as well be the ones to lead it. Most of all, that any one of them could be the leader we need. Like the main character in Young World, they won’t know their true potential until they’re put in the kind of crucible that demands it. So don’t be afraid to get in the arena and get a little dirty.

The evening public events are much more unscripted. Some of them will have conversation partners — the one in NYC with Mary H.K. Choi will be an absolute banger — but often, it’s just me feeling the vibe and spirit of the room, like some kind of hippie medium, and trying to put words to it. It’s never the same from city to city, and I never really remember what I talk about. It’s about an intense connection with an audience and trying to feel as present as possible with them.

I spend a lot of time signing after each talk, so that I get to know each person that shows up. Sometimes with The School for Good and Evil, the kids were so young and shy that it was hard to have a conversation, so I’d just pepper them with questions until I got a sense of what brought them to the books. With Young World, I’m expecting an older crowd, and I suspect I’ll be learning as much from them as they do from me.

All of which to say… if you live anywhere close to these cities… you should come! There’s something magical about the alchemy of author and reader in the same space together, so I’m looking forward to all of us casting some mischievous spells.

So get your tickets at revoltingyouth.org and if you’ve purchased a book, also upload your receipt there, so that you get the free gift Diary of a Novel collection as well.

I’ll be back next week with a proper diary, but for this week, I just wanted to feel like Madonna, drop the tour dates, and prepare for a reinvention.

Or as Farmer Partner puts it: “Time for the showgirl to pull out the furs and boots!”

Your turn.

Can you come to any of the tour stops? Tell me in the comments below!

Leave a comment

Until next week —

My partner is walking by right now, and upon seeing the title, murmured: “I have a bad feeling about this one.”

But this is my diary and the truth must be told.

So let’s start at the beginning.

* * * * *

We have two Bernese Mountain Dogs on our farm. Remy, who is exactly a year old, and the son of Lady, our beloved former dog who died in a tragic accident. He looks and acts just like her, to the point that we can’t quite remember the distinction between them.

We also have Lola, who is 7 months old and Lady’s half-sister. In a wave of grief after Lady’s death, we drove to the farm in Iowa that had her and brought her home.

In the months since, Remy and Lola have become soulmates. They run loose on 100+ acres of farm and yet always know each other’s whereabouts. They stick together. They do not fight. They let the other finish their food. Their love is supreme.

But we cannot let them have sex.

Not because this would necessarily lead to some terrible outcome. Yes, Remy is Lady’s son and Lola is Lady’s half-sister, so there is some genetic crossover, but the vet insists the “coefficient of inbreeding” is beneath the level where it would be a problem.

Still, we didn’t want more puppies, at least not yet — and Lola had to have a serious surgery after ingesting multiple socks last year, so putting her through a pregnancy feels like too much trauma. (Also, she’s a bit weird; at once a thief and a spaz, who sometimes sneaks up behind you to touch you with her tongue, then slink away. We should have named her Mata Hari.)

Long story short: Lola needed to be neutered.

We could wait, though. For one thing, she wouldn’t be in heat for another 6 months. And Remy, despite being of pubescent age, had shown absolutely no desire to hump his best friend. This is common in dogs, where a pair becomes too friendly and habituated and ultimately loses all sexual interest in each other. (What this forebodes for humans, I leave unsaid.)

Meanwhile, we didn’t want to neuter Remy, because he was Lady’s son, and we see a future where we have descendants of Lady on this farm for the rest of our lives, meaning we need Remy able to sire puppies when the time comes.

But for now, all was peaceful and quiet.

Lola scheduled for her spaying appointment.

Remy barely at breeding age, with no one to breed, because there are only two dogs on our farm and no other dogs for miles and miles.

And this is where the problem starts.

Because that last part about there being only two dogs?

That is a lie.

* * * * *

Harriet is a Great Pyrenees, who lives out in the pastures, is not socialized to humans, and refuses to eat dog food because she thinks it’s gross.

She is almost 10 years old.

Farmer Partner got Harriet as a puppy and put her in the fields with his herd of goats, careful not to let her imprint on him, and as a result, Harriet grew up thinking of herself not just as a goat, but the Queen of the Goats. Over the years, she has managed herds big and small, anywhere from 100 to 1200 goats at a time, herding them from field to field, protecting them from predators at night, licking newborns clean.

Because of her, not a single baby goat has been lost to a hawk or a coyote or a wolf in the last 10 years.

We do not interfere with Harriet’s job. The moment she sees me or Farmer Partner coming, she growls and begrudgingly moves the goats to another field. Though she knows who we are and that we feed her goats, she still makes a point of barking at us for disturbing her herd. And in this bark, a clear message. That she isn’t just wild. She is working.

We don’t know what Harriet eats exactly. We tried leaving dog food for her, which she sniffs at and leaves untouched. All we can assume is that the whole farm is her buffet — and that when predators come for the goats, she kills and eats these interlopers. She never seems hungry, is at a robust weight, and takes full care of herself. If she’s getting too skinny, there’s always deer season when inevitably a deer dies in the woods (usually stuck in a fence or breaking its neck trying to jump said fence) — and my partner gives it to Harriet, who lives off the carcass for a month and suddenly looks healthy and young again.

But things have changed with Harriet over the last year.

She’s slowing down, and when we transitioned the farm from mainly goats to mainly cattle, she also lost her job. Indeed, when the main goat herd was sold, she was so depressed that she lay under the trailer and slept for a day.

Then she snapped out of it and realized there were 80 new calves to take care of and declared herself their new leader. The calves follow her like the Pied Piper, let her sleep on their straw and cuddle up to her at night, dogs and cows not normal bosom buddies, but in Harriet they sense a motherly presence — eh, more grandmotherly.

She’s also started eating dog food too. The days of her catching all her own meals gone. So each morning, we give her a heaping scoop of food, which she eats only after we’ve left.

And this is where the real trouble begins.

Because guess who also realized we’d started feeding Harriet?

* * * * *

Remy was spending more time up at the barn.

We figured it was to steal Harriet’s food.

Remy’s mother, Lady, had lived on the farm two years, and she and Harriet had zero contact. Zero. Not that Lady didn’t try. She chased her a couple times, tried to sniff her butt. In turn, Harriet gave her such a dark, menacing glower that Lady avoided her after like the plague. So we never really considered that Harriet might actually engage with Remy, who was younger, dumber, and most of all, a boy.

As Farmer Partner put it: “Harriet’s been around five male dogs over the years and they all tucked their balls and ran scared for their life.”

And yet, each day Remy would go up to the barn and raid the last crumbs of her food, and then they’d chase each other around a bit, like toddlers at the yard.

Harriet even wagged her tail at him.

This was the warning.

A week later, my partner came up to the pasture — and found the two of them tied.

Tied is vet language for a very painful sexual process in which two dogs get stuck internally together for 45 MINUTES. I won’t go into graphic details of the act, because they are appalling. Suffice to say: when it was done, Harriet dashed to hide in the forest and Remy cried and sat in a corner, licking his swollen weenie.

The next day, while Farmer Partner took a shower, Remy escaped and snuck back up to the barn and they did it again.

Life finds a way.

It was clear drastic measures needed to be taken. For the last 5 days of Harriet’s heat cycle, Remy was confined to a makeshift dog run — a.k.a. “sex jail.”

(Lola, meanwhile, avoided going up to the barn entirely, as if she knew whatever was happening there was sordid.)

When I heard about all this, I was vaguely amused, if slightly horrified that our Remy was no longer innocent.

Then my heart lurched.

“Wait,” I said. “Harriet can’t get pregnant, can she?”

My partner didn’t answer.

* * * * *

It is called a geriatric pregnancy.

When a dog that should be too old to get pregnant does indeed get knocked up.

We are not 100% sure yet that Harriet is pregnant, but it is highly likely, given she was in heat and allowed the tie. But the vet can only do an ultrasound at 45 days — at which point, we’ll learn our courses of action. An ultrasound which will have to be done on the farm, because Harriet has never interacted with humans so getting her to the vet would be damn impossible.

“How is this happening!” I yelled.

My partner’s weary reply: “Remy is a stud.”

You do not want a geriatric pregnancy. It is dangerous for the mother and complicated for the babies. (Not to mention, the vet says the Bernese x Great Pyrenees cross is a ‘nocturnal dog crossed with an overemotional dog,’ meaning you end up with insomnia and chaos). But if you catch a geriatric pregnancy early enough, like we did, there are ways to protect both Mom and Pups. We’ve got top-notch care out on the farm for Harriet and we’ll make sure the tale has a happy ending.

Meanwhile, though, she’s definitely acting pregnant. She’s eating more than usual, sleeping more, and most tellingly, anytime Remy comes near the barn, she runs as far away from him as she can.

All in all, it is a mess, and the kind of wonderful mess that can only happen on a working farm, with working dogs, and a little too much love to go around.

“We should have protected against this,” I say to Farmer Partner, as we were falling asleep. “Are we bad parents?”

“Yes,” he said. “But the kind where everyone is very happy.”

Until next week —

P.S. I know I said I wouldn’t give away any ARCs of YOUNG WORLD… but never trust a fiction writer 😀 Check out my Instagram (@somanc) later today!

Can you believe it?

More than two years ago, I started Diary of a Novel because I was at the beginning of a new career, turning away from fairy tales, with a new manuscript that was absolutely kicking my ass — and I had nowhere to talk about it. I was so used to being the smooth, mysterious Fairy Tale Guy who never divulged the behind-the-scenes of work and then dropped a new 600-page book each year at the appointed time, like it was all effortless magic, a way of being that I learned from tennis legend Roger Federer, my truest North Star and idol.

But Young World was killing me and I needed a place to confess my struggles, both on the page and off the page, since I was also leaving Manhattan and moving to Missouri to start a new relationship. This diary became that confession, and little by little, my emotional crutch.

It wasn’t easy. If you read all 100 diaries in sequence, you’ll see how tentative I am to reveal myself in the beginning — until slowly, I trust both diary and audience. But now, at 100, I can look back and see just how much this forum has helped me become a better writer, a better boyfriend, and overall better version of myself. For six days of the week, I accrue karma and inventory, and on the seventh, I unload it here, a true screed that I do not allow myself to edit. What you are reading is first-draft, unfiltered me, and I never take breaks while writing these — the words just come out in one long flow, like a held breath that once exhaled, leaves me a wee bit clearer than I was before.

I’d tried diaries in my youth before, but they were self-conscious and inherently protected. The possibility of someone reading them was too frightening to ever really let go. The cure, it turned out, was inviting people to read them and to trust that we are all human and understand how hard it is to be one.

So thank you for being here. In more than two years, I’ve never had one negative comment about these diaries posted or sent to me. No matter what I reveal or how emotional I get, there’s never been a single sniff of accusation or attempted cancellation. Even though I’m sure I’ve said some incendiary things. But I think it’s because all of us have a diary in our own life — some safe space, where we consider and debate and genuflect, and come to small reconciliations. Maybe it’s in church. Maybe it’s in a recovery meeting. Maybe it’s at night, next to your partner in bed. For me, it’s here, with a blank page and all of you.

Not that the diary erases my anxieties about the work itself!

Ironically, Young World wasn’t a stressful book. It was a hard book. A completely new genre, voice, format, plus working in full-color instead of black and white — I was at sea most days, following instinct instead of a plan. But I never felt stressed or anxious. Instead, it felt like a calling I had to answer and I followed it open-hearted through hills and valleys.

What is stressful, though, is putting the final product out into the world.

It is a controversial book. It’s brazen and naughty and no-holds-barred. It takes the kinds of big swings creatively that I would never take in real life. Because unlike in real life, I always tell the truth when I write.

Releasing the novel, though, means I have to deal with everything that comes with that truth.

My family reminds me I’ve gone through this before.

The first School for Good and Evil came out to a firestorm. Reviewers absolutely hated it (the best I could get was from Kirkus Reviews, that called it “strange”) and Goodreads was alight with outrage and rants from people who “DNF” — aka didn’t finish the book — and yet still had so much to say about it. They called the book everything you can imagine: sexist, debaucherous, immoral, deviant, gay propaganda, feminist propaganda, misogynistic, male-bashing, homophobic, even satanic. (Meanwhile, the Brits nominated it for Book of the Year.)

I was in tears most nights, wondering if my career was over before it started. My instinct was to apologize. But for what?? I’d written exactly the book the creative elves told me to. The same way I write these diaries. I’d told the truth and I have no power to edit the truth, because I am not the master of the words I write. Something deeper inside me is. And that master will not tolerate censorship or fear.

The next week, I went on tour and started to see that maybe the adult gatekeepers were revolting against SGE. But the kids were loving it. They were dressing up as the characters, forming secret clubs at school and online, and gatekeeping the adults in their lives from reading it (“I tell my mom she won’t understand it,” was the refrain I heard again and again.)

But even the adults came round in the end.

Years later, they were assigning it in classrooms, the Goodreads score was solidly high, Universal had bought the movie rights, and a new generation of readers was sending angry messages saying the book “wasn’t gay enough”.

It taught me a lesson.

Write without fear. Write boldly, passionately, and show all of yourself. Time will eventually catch up, even if that time is after you’re gone.

I should have known all of this already, having been the world’s biggest Madonna fan. From 1992 to 2019, she was my muse. (Everything since 2019, I’m as baffled by as you). What I loved about Madonna is she was one step ahead, a compass to future culture, willing to endure the backlash for stomping all over taboos. She reveled in our discomfort, always a knowing wink and smile, along with conviction in her art and absolutely no regrets. (My favorite moment came when she took on the burlesque character of “Dita Parlow” during her Erotica years, complete with gold-tooth, slicked hair, black corset, riding crop, all of which she flaunted while leading several buff, shirtless male slaves on the red carpet at some inconsequential premiere. A journalist yelled out: “Madonna, the Pope wants to excommunicate you! Why do you think everyone is against you?” She flicked a gold-toothed grin in her fake hair and fake eyelashes and fake accent and replied: “Because I speak the truth.”)

I want to be like that Madonna, but don’t have her courage. All those things I learned from the SGE years feel hard to grasp onto again. More than a decade has passed. I worry the world has changed irrevocably, eternally so no one can tell the truth anymore about anything.

Yet, in the end, it’s this diary that gives me solace.

Because here, for 100 weeks and 100 entries, I revealed every part of myself and no one punished me for it. Instead, you opened your own hearts and told me your stories back.

So thank you for giving me courage.

And to the friend, who told me in my moment of doubt and weakness: “Listen, kid. You can’t be Madonna without doing the Madonna things.”

Cheers to that.

Your turn.

Which was your favorite diary from the first 100?

Leave a comment

Until next week —

P.S. First official trade review of YOUNG WORLD is here! Beware some spoilers.

P.P.S. If you’d like all 100 diaries in sequence, they will be in both the e-book and paperback editions of Diary of a Novel: The Making of Young World. Available for *free* by preordering the novel at revoltingyouth.org.

A lot of you have asked whether there will be a YOUNG WORLD galley giveaway to Diary readers and if that will only be for the paid tier of subscribers.

First off, there is no paid tier and there never will be. This diary is 100% my cathartic release and the fact you come along for the ride is a joy and a wonder, and if I ever start charging for it, then something in me has gone wrong. I’m even giving away the Diary of a Novel special-edition paperback with preorders of YOUNG WORLD, at a ridiculous cost to myself, because I see the whole experience of documenting the journey of this book as something to be shared.

The real reason I’ve been reluctant to give away galleys to you is because the finished book is just so much cooler. Here they are side by side:

This is why I want you to wait for the real thing.

Now, onto more real things…

* * * * * *

There is a threshold for darkness.

A threshold for the amount of pain we can take as the protagonists in our own lives before we’ve had enough and stand up to take action.

That threshold for pain has increased over the years — primarily because we have more distractions and comforts to convince ourselves that the darkness isn’t happening. We play video games and read fantastical books and watch true-crime on Netflix and listen to podcasts and drink and smoke and swipe and surf and scroll until our eyeballs are sore, all so we don’t have to actually be in the world. Escaping isn’t just easier; it feels nice. Because it replicates how we’d like our lives to feel: peaceful, self-directed, ours.

The problem is, it’s your conscious mind that wants to escape.

But your subconscious mind isn’t under your control. It doesn’t know how to escape. Instead, it’s quietly absorbing everything that you’re trying to flee.

And at some point, it’s had enough.

I think about the difference between the conscious and subconscious mind a lot. When you grow up secretly gay in the homophobia of the 80s; when you are one of the only brown people on your island and at your school; when you are severely underweight so you look like a twig next to all the other growing boys… it leads to an absolute fascistic desire for control. You have been born into the wrong body, spirit, world, and all you want to do is bend it to your will so that you will better fit in.

This was the source of all of my suffering.

To explain the journey I had to go on to undo all of this wiring would take many books — I tried everything, everything — but it was two books that finally set me on the right path.

One was A Little Life by Hanya Yanagahara. Perhaps the saddest, most immersively intense book ever written. I’ve tried rereading it recently and it sent me to such a dark place that I put it back on the shelf, accepting that it is at once my favorite book of all time and yet I will never be able to re-read it.

The book centers around Jude (a close relative of the Bible’s “Job”) who is subject to unspeakable horrors as a child and seeks a way out of that swamp of trauma as he gets older. Something about the haunting legacy of pain resonated with me (and millions of others) — because no matter how much love and comfort Jude finds in the present, he keeps being pulled back into the darkness and shadows of the past. At its core, it’s a book about the war between your conscious mind, trying to control your life and move on, and your subconscious self, where all your secrets have taken root and grown into a swallowing, inescapable fog.

I know that feeling. Too well.

The relentless push forward, without acknowledging that there are hidden binds holding you back. And that those binds will win, terribly, tragically, unless you find a way to sever them.

A Little Life was the book that taught me the stakes of the battle.

Then a second book — Awareness by Anthony de Mello — showed me the way out.

It’s a strange little book, very slim, almost riddling in its prose, but I just read it over and over until it started to sink in. Namely, the understanding that underneath the conscious, underneath the subconscious, there is a part of you untouched that is not only pure and clean and clear, but also naturally intelligent and able to respond to the present moment in the best of all ways.

The proof that my journey was heading in the right path — that I was not going to become Jude, that A Little Life was more of a wake-up call than a forecast — came when I blew up my life and started over.

That process I’ve documented fully in these diaries, my abandonment of Manhattan, my previous type in men, my fairy tale and fantasy career to move to Missouri for a farmer and take a total 180 to write YOUNG WORLD… but it’s the last that’s worth honing in on.

I’d hit the threshold for darkness.

That’s what forced me to implode my life. A rock-bottom, maximum level of self-suffering that required bold action.

And once you blow up your life and get rid of all your old comforts… only the darkness is left. For the first time, I was facing it square on, with patience, silence.

That’s what finally allowed it to leave.

Ironically, the clearer I got from the shadows of the past, the more I was able to acknowledge the darkness of the present.

There was plenty of it.

In those years of writing The School for Good and Evil, I was sensing how our world was starting to abandon youth — eviscerating the right to carefree childhood and replacing it with surveillance and social media and data farming and dopamine addiction and all the things that have made growing up so angst-ridden and confusing these days. The old coordinates and structures of a map for youth and adolescence hammered and shattered to nihilism.

None of this was registering consciously, though.

I was writing fairy tales.

But it was accumulating, this darkness, little by little, until I must have had enough.

Because when I went to write my next fairy tale, YOUNG WORLD came out instead.

A deep-born response to the darkness.

An incendiary, nuclear-bright, supernova neon blast meant to blowtorch that dark to fire.

When the book was done, I felt lighter, clearer.

Not just because I’d expunged whatever had built up, but because I had a new understanding — I no longer had to be a slave to the shadows of my past, recycling them over and over in my work. Because I’d cleared out so much, I was alive in the moment. Able to see the difference between darkness and light here and now. And by following my subconscious without trying to control it… I’d now trained my creative engine to be its own little life.

No longer would I plan my whole career in advance and be an authoritarian dictator over my own art. I could just live between projects and wait… until whatever darkness had piled up would hit a threshold… and then the new work would begin.

But the more I thought about it, I realized there isn’t just a threshold for darkness in you.

There’s also a collective threshold for darkness.

A threshold that once we hit together — we turn back and seek the light.

All of this was on my mind this week, because I had a friend over and we were talking about frivolous things (whether we need to get on peptides, how my one-year old Bernese Mountain Dog decided to impregnate the farm’s 11 year-old unsocialized Great Pyrenees, why Rachel Zoe is not cutting it as a Bravo housewife), before a strange, loaded silence seemed to fall, as if both of us had converged on a deeper thought, one that both of us were sitting with.

“I think it’s turning,” he said.

I knew instantly what he meant and spoke it out loud. “That we’ve had enough. That we’re done with all the negativity.”

“Yes,” he said.

Expressed in a moment, but something I’d been feeling all week.

That the tide had shifted. That we, as a people, have found our tolerance for darkness and pain and now we want to turn back.

But how? What does that look like?

YOUNG WORLD is my best guess — when I wrote it, my subconscious’ fantasy of how we could fight this darkness, but now increasingly predictive and real.

There is one point, though, that my friend and I left out. One that is a central tenet of the book unfortunately. Of all the books actually. A Little Life. Awareness. And mine.

We might have a threshold for darkness.

But the darkness has no threshold.

It will go darker, darker, as dark as it needs to go.

And the only way through is to blast it with so much light — quantity and quality — that it becomes a single, lonely shadow on a bright, cloudless day.

Your turn.

Do you feel it too? That we’ve had enough?

Leave a comment

Until next week —