I Wrote a Book

And You Can Read It Now!

Hello and welcome back to Why’s World. I am still enjoying my summer break from the newsletter, so this is a one-off announcement to say… I wrote a book and you can read it now!

Amy Of Suburbia is a novella I’ve been writing on and off during the pandemic. I first envisioned an outline for it when Bloomsbury’s 33 ⅓ series put out a call for book proposals in May 2020.

Stuck at home with nothing else to do, I figured why not come up with a proposal? Inspired by John Darnielle’s Master of Reality, I wanted to write a book about a 12-year-old girl in 2007 obsessed with Green Day’s American Idiot, told through LiveJournal entries. 

Even though my proposal was rejected a few months later, I still kept thinking about the story I envisioned. Last summer, I decided to write a full draft of it. Working on the first draft of this novella was by far the most fun I’ve ever had writing anything. 

While I’ve been slowly chipping away at a novel for the last few years about music as well, the spirit of Amy Of Suburbia was instantly different. Humorous and fun, the draft allowed me to revisit my gawky preteen self, my discovery of punk music and my greatest fear at the time: being labeled a poser. 

And now it’s ready to be read by the world! (Or, at least, my friends and family.) It’s now available as either a physical paperback or a digital PDF novella, which you can BUY RIGHT HERE.

I want to thank everyone reading this for supporting my writing over the years, whether you found my work through this newsletter, my book reviews, the music scene, or all the way back to my zine years. I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart.

XOXO

Alanna