I wrote a book!

MURDER BITES is coming out next year!!

Said book!!!!

The title says it all: I wrote a book. And Penguin Random House is publishing it next year. Meaning you can buy it, hold the actual thing of it in your hands, and read it. A book that was once a Google Doc on my shitty Macbook from 2017. A Google Doc that I worked on during the blue-black mornings before clocking into my job, my laptop balanced against the rise and fall of my sleeping dog’s back. A Google Doc that I worked on in coffee shops, in hotel rooms, on planes, in Airbnbs, in cars, at writing retreats. A Google Doc I continued to chip away at, for two years, without knowing whether anything would ever come of it. A Google Doc that will become something tangible, a weight that rests on your palms.

I’ve always wanted to write a book. It’s been the most persistent and greatest dream of my life. Throughout my twenties, I pushed it aside out of what I thought was laziness — a difficult but necessary chore that would leave you exhausted but happy it was done, like waxing the floors or your alarming bikini line — but I now realize was mostly fear. What if I tried and I couldn’t do it? What if I tried and it, you know, really fucking sucked?

And then I turned thirty. It’s a humongous cliché, but like most clichés, there’s some resonant truth to it: I realized all the time I was spending saying, someday I’ll get around to it was actually my life. And who wants their life to be a string of somedays? It was an epic wake-up call, an existential bitch slap, if you will: I could try and fail and it would be painful. Awful, really. But at least I wouldn’t be lurking Quasimodo-style in the rafters of my own life.

This is me getting the call from my agent about the book offer. I was with one of my best friends in New York, and she took this picture. Afterwards, we screamed to everyone on the street that I’d just sold my book but, it being New York, absolutely no one gave a shit. It was perfect.

I know we’re verging dangerously close to this post reading like an inspirational poster you’d find at a teen rec center. In fact, you might be reading all this and thinking, okay, damn, lil Brené Brown, Jr. over here, did you write a self-help book or something? And, let me assure you, I most certainly did not:

MURDER BITES is about a social pariah living in a small community filled with people who are fully feral for their Swarovski collar-wearing designer dogs. And when a canine reality TV show comes to town to film its new season and the Hollywood dog walker winds up dead, all the Maltipoo owners blame said social pariah — who suddenly has to team up with some of the locals she previously wrote off to clear her name.

It’s very weird and fun — seminal literary figures like the rapper DMX and Shrek’s Lord Farquaad make appearances — and I hope that, if you read it, it’ll make you laugh and think a little bit. Or, at the very least, make you appreciate the amount of dog puns I have managed to cram into one book.

My little Google Doc-turned-weirdo book has been a lot of things to me: A reintroduction to creativity and imagination, a crash course in taking chances and listening to intuition, a reminder that no one’s waiting for your thing, whatever it is — it’s up to you to take the first step.

Everyone has a version of their own Google Doc waiting inside them. Maybe you’re dying to go to culinary school. Maybe you wanna release a podcast. Maybe you really wanna be the dude in the tank with the dolphins at SeaWorld. To which I say, hell yeah, brother! Go do your thing. I will be cheering you on so hard from under my soaking wet, $40 SeaWorld poncho. Whatever it is — don’t let your Google Doc get lost to someday.

Thank you for reading and letting me share my news with you, my bookish crew. I am first and foremost a professional Grade-A yapper, so you know I’ll keep you posted on all things MURDER BITES — no need to hound me. (Lol, sorry, had to be done.)