A Book Shaped Thing You Can Hold in Your Hands

I wrote a book!

Hello friends!

I am simply ecstatic to share this news with you. My debut novel, I Don’t Belong to You will be coming out in early 2027 from Norton Young Readers. It’s going to be a book shaped thing you can hold in your hands.

Miracle Gray has been internet famous since before she was born. As the daughter of a prominent momfluencer, Mira’s entire life has been photographed, cleverly captioned, and posted for consumption by her mom’s 2 million followers. But after a brand deal gone wrong forces Mira into the role of Proud Internet Queer, and her mom increasingly sacrifice’s Mira’s privacy for her own publicity, Mira must find the courage to stand up for herself by suing her mother for control of her online footprint.

The seed of this story goes back over a decade, to the late aughts at the height of the mommy blogger days. I was a few years out of college, a wide-eyed and naive teacher in the public schools outside of DC, and writing a blog about my experience that no longer exists and, like, 3 people read. (Which is fine, truly.)

As part of the blog-o-sphere, as tangential as my presence was, I couldn’t not be aware of the mommy blog phenomenon and I found it fascinating.

Not the blogs themselves, but the way people were so invested in the lives of total strangers. We didn’t have the term parasocial relationship yet. Facebook was still taking off. Instagram had yet to appear on the scene. And as stunned as I was by the readers who became intensely emotionally attached to children they would never meet, I could not wrap my head around why any parent would think it was okay to write about their child’s important moments and post endless photos on the internet for anyone and everyone to see.

I wasn’t writing fiction yet, not really, but I must have known I would, someday. Because I vividly remember having the thought,

Someday, I’m going to write a book about the daughter of a mommy blogger.

Fast forward ten years. I started writing fiction. I got my MFA. I queried a totally different book that had a very large piece of my heart in it, and while I got a lot of positive feedback from agents, I did not get any offers.

I knew I needed to write something new, but what?

The mommy blogger idea had been waiting patiently in the back of my brain and now it waved at me. Hey! Remember me?

Yes, I did remember. And with social media ruining all of our lives, the idea of a girl whose life had been exploited by her mother on the internet was still depressingly relevant. But ‘daughter of a momfluencer’ is... not a story, in and of itself. It’s not a plot. What would happen to this girl? What would she do? I had no idea where to start. So, I went down a rabbit hole of reading about parent influencers and in one of the articles was a throw-away line about ‘give it five years or so and a whole hoard of these kids will be turning eighteen and suing the crap out of their parents.’

I literally gasped out loud.

That’s it! That’s the story!

What followed was two years of an incredibly difficult writing process. This book was so hard to figure out. It was like one of those ridiculously difficult 1500 piece jigsaw puzzles with the same image rotated 90 degrees on the back side, or one that doesn’t have a picture at all, just one long fade from light blue to dark blue. I almost quit so many times. SO MANY. But I didn’t quit. I kept trying different things and eventually the last cog slotted into place and suddenly, I had a book.

When I sent it to my friend Nicole to beta read, she sent it back with the following subject line: Mark my words: this book is going to get you an agent.

She also repeatedly said that this book would be my debut novel and we’ve spent the last few months laughing about how obviously, the lesson here is that Nicole is always right about everything. This book did get multiple offers from agents, and in a little over a year, this book will be my debut.

It’s hard to describe what it feels like. Slightly surreal. A dream come true. From the moment I got on the call with Kristin Allard, I knew this story was in safe hands. She understands what I’m trying to do with this story, what I’m trying to say. Her vision for this book is completely aligned with mine. What a gift.

I’m so excited to share more about Mira’s story with you in the coming months. The world is incredibly scary right now and everything is so hard. And also, we must, each of us hold onto joy where we can find it.

I’m wishing you all joy, and close parking spots, and a pillow that is always cool.

Alex