This is an excerpt of an interview between Eve Gleichman and Laura Blackett, co-authors of , a novel about a newly-wedded straight couple who move from Brooklyn to Upstate New York and quickly become entangled with a queer polycule living the dream, analog life. They discuss their inspiration for the novel and cover a range of topics including loneliness, Instagram, bi-erasure, what it’s like to write unlikable characters, and their individual writing processes. * We wrote the first chapter of this book in 2020, which feels like a long time ago.
So much has changed since then. What did your life look like at the beginning of this project? I had just moved from New York City to a small, rural town. Like our protagonist, I was feeling lonely, aimless, and in need of a change.
So I found a short-term sublet to feel out what it would be like to live in the country. I was supposed to have just one housemate while the other residents were traveling, but then the pandemic hit, and everyone came home. Anecdotally, we’d all ended up in that particular house because at one point in time we’d each matched with the homeowner on Tinder.
So I was doing my remote tech job in a house of queer artists. There was a seamstress, a painter, and a mycologist. I would peer over the top of my computer during Zoom meetings and see one of my housemates through the window, tapping maple trees to make maple syrup, while someone else was dyeing linens pink from avocado seeds.
I felt inspired, but I.
