I wrote a book and it’s called This Time Tomorrow

In which I am, regrettably, totally earnest from beginning to end.

Hi! Hi.

Today is the day! Just now, Entertainment Weekly ran the cover reveal for my new novel, This Time Tomorrow, out May 17, 2022. That makes it official! Go ahead and click over there to read a lil’ interview, or continue scrolling to see the book’s beautiful face!

Okay, this is one that my child made and Riverhead cruelly rejected, despite the inclusion of both cigarettes and lipstick. See below for the cover that will actually be on the book.

Isn’t it beautiful? Look at those swoops, those gradients, those giant letters! Whew. And thus, the book has moved from its secret, hidden life in my head and computer into….well, let’s talk about it! What does happen in this zone? The book won’t be out for months, but what is it doing now? I’ll tell you. Welcome to the first installment of How Do Books Even Exist?

How Do Books Even Exist?

Okay, so there are several parts that come before this (the selling, the writing, the editing, the copy-editing, the cover design, all of which we can get into, if people are interested), but let’s talk about this weird mystery zone. A writer (for example: me) posts their book jacket on the internet. Maybe there is a pre-order link. There is probably a pre-order link. No, definitely, a hundred percent, at least one pre-order link. Then civilians don’t see that book again for months, until the publicity machine gets cranking and finally the book appears on the front table of your favorite bookstore. 

But what happens now—right now—is one of the most thrilling parts. The book gets sent to bookstores in hopes that booksellers read it and fall in love. That might look like ordering a big stack of copies, or hosting the author for an event, or choosing the book for a subscription, but to me, the most meaningful thing that can happen is also the simplest: a bookseller reads it, loves it, and then hands it to someone else. Maybe at first it’s another bookseller, or a friend, or their mom. Eventually, though, when that book is published, that bookseller will hand it to a customer, and the customer will buy it, because I can tell you from firsthand experience that good booksellers are very, very hard to say no to. Honestly, why would you? Don’t say no to a bookseller. 

This time around, Riverhead asked me to write a little letter to booksellers. Would you like to see it, too? Here’s an excerpt, which coincidentally tells you what my book is about, and where it came from:

I wrote this novel during the period of time when I was hardly in my bookstore at all, when childcare and school were vague, foreign concepts, and when my father was in the hospital with a failing heart. 2020 was an awful, destabilizing year for all of us, and for me, as always, writing is what helped me process all the fear and the sadness and the discomfort of knowing that—surprise!—life is not as steady as you thought it was. 

This is what came out—my most autobiographical novel yet. You might think that it would be weird to write an autobiographical time travel novel, but here it is. Alice Stern, a forty-year-old New Yorker, isn’t sure about her life, is sad about her dying, science fiction writer father, and wakes up on her sixteenth birthday in 1996. 

Things that appear on the style sheet of this book: A Tribe Called Quest, Peggy Sue Got Married, Barney Greengrass, Caboodles, the Color Me Badd episode of Beverly Hills, 90210, Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, Gray’s Papaya, Jeopardy, Jordan Catalano, JFK Jr, The AMNH,  Olde English, and Toast of New York lipstick. It’s a love story about a father and a daughter, it’s time travel, it’s sad, it’s funny, and I wrote it because I had to put everything that I was feeling somewhere. 

If someone walked into my bookstore and said, I’m looking for something fun that isn’t stupid, I might hand them this. If they said, I want to cry, I would hand them this. If they said, do you have anything that has multiple scenes with people eating hot dogs, I would hand them this. I really, really hope you like it. 

Aaaah! So that’s my book. I am so excited to share more in the coming weeks and months. 

Yours, excited and nervous, 

Emma

P.S. I will be sprinkling pre-order links to different independent bookstores throughout this newsletter from here on out. Obviously I have the most access to books purchased at Books Are Magic, and I can personalize those, but all independent bookstores are good! If you have a favorite indie, go ahead and pre-order there! Spread the love. If you don’t have a local favorite, I will be introducing you to some of mine!

P.P.S. Maybe I should do a whole newsletter about how pre-orders work? Tell me in the comments if more bookstore inside baseball would be fun or not! I won’t be offended either way. 

Here is Cindy Crawford wearing Toast of New York, as a present.

What I’m Reading:

Tom Perrotta’s Tracy Flick Can’t Win, out in June. It’s a delight to be with Tracy again!

What I’m Listening To:

Lili Anolik’s great literary gossip podcast, Once Upon a Time...at Bennington College, about Donna Tartt, Jonathan Lethem, and Bret Easton Ellis in their debaucherous college days.

What I’m Plugging In:

For the last many months, I’ve been surviving on an iced tea IV drip, but today it is chilly enough that I’ve plugged in my office tea kettle. Maybe you need an office tea kettle? I don’t know. I drink a lot of tea, which I like to tell myself is healthier than drinking a lot of coffee. Is it? Doubtful.