For this week’s newsletter you may be noticing something different. You’re getting this newsletter on a Sunday. I changed this newsletter to a Sunday release for many reasons: one of which is that I am hoping this newsletter sets the tone for your week, whether that’s something to listen to or something to read.
Well let’s get into this week’s edition.
Today, I’m sharing a new interview with author Haili Blassingame whose debut novel, They All Fall in Love at the End, was released last month via Simon & Schuster.
The novel follows Kat, a writer living in DC who is in an open relationship with her college sweetheart Jay. When she falls for the two people most off limits, Jay’s best friend Tristan and his girlfriend Nia, she has to reckon with how much she’s allowed to want, in love, in art, and in life. Set against the backdrop of a politically charged DC, it’s a literary love story, a family drama, and one of the most honest books about desire I’ve read in a long time.
Haili felt like exactly the right person to open On the Record, a series where I sit down with authors and musicians to talk about the relationship between books and music in their creative lives. Every conversation goes both directions, and Hailli’s did not disappoint.
In this conversation we get into:
How she used the Challengers soundtrack to write one of the most electric scenes in the book, and what that says about how music shapes her process even when she’s not listening to it
Why the parts of the book are named after songs
What revision actually means, and the moment she felt like she became a real writer
What drew her to a character who refuses to want less in any area of her life
Writing the current moment as it was happening, unprocessed, and why she would never do it again
The F. Scott Fitzgerald connection and what it means to her that they share a publisher
You can listen to the interview wherever you listen to podcasts, or watch it here on Substack. Also, be sure to follow Haili’s Substack Touch Her And Die! or on Instagram at @hailiwroteabook. Lastly, read the New York Times’ review of Haili’s novel here.
