whatever remains goes on

love is the knife: sadie, five years later

Last month, I was tagged in a review of I’m the Girl that opened with the question Sadie has made of my bibliography, something that occurs with semi-regularity. Sadie released during my tenth year in publishing, but was the first time I received a not-insignificant amount of attention and support from it. It’s why the book feels like my first. It’s my sixth. Cracked Up to Be was my debut, which gets mistaken for my sophomore outing because it was reissued after Sadie and ahead of The Project, which is my seventh—not my third. Between Cracked Up to Be and Sadie there were four others: Some Girls Are, Fall for Anything, This is Not a Test, and All the Rage.

“No one knew you were smart until Sadie,” I was told by someone who worked on all of them, and in a way, that’s summed up some of the experience for me. Not because she was right—Sadie emerged, in part, from the support of those knowing readers who preceded it—but because one of the most important and lasting impressions its breaking out had on me was of the shifting value of my work in the eyes of others. What it suddenly is, was, wasn’t, isn’t.

At first, it overwhelmed me. Now it guides much of the decisions I’ve made in the name of my art, career, and readership since. I will never write this book again because I can’t, because the second it was done, it changed me. From Sadie, I learned the gift of reader expectations is the knowledge they’re impossible to meet exactly the same way as you have before. You honor them by growing, by giving everything you have to letting the work be what it needs to be, no matter what it’s been.

Sadie was published five years ago today.

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It started with the podcast.

Before I wrote novels, I wrote screenplays. I didn’t talk about that so much during Sadie’s run because I didn’t know how to frame this thing I’d done as a teenager that didn’t go anywhere as being so integral to the book, and to my writing as a whole. I’d go to Chapters to buy, if they were there, published scripts of my favorite movies and I studied them because I wanted so badly to unlock this medium that elevated those surrounding it. The command the writing had over all else was powerful to me, compelling. If I couldn’t find the script, I’d sit with a tape recorder in hand and record scenes from movies and TV onto its mini-cassette. Then I’d close my eyes and rewind and play, rewind and play. Over and over, just listening. I thought I could whittle the movie all the way back to the pages it was written on that way, and from this, something would reveal itself. That period of my life was an education in the cadence, the flow of language, what words actually give shape to, inside and out. I’m probably not explaining this very well. Some things are more felt than successfully articulated.

Ultimately, I don’t think I’ve ever written a book I couldn’t imagine played back through that small recorder I once held in my hand and when I sat down and wrote Sadie’s first script, I could feel the weight of it there. I heard it all so loud and so clear.

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Bad ideas: Sadie’s working title (Stories We Told That Kept Us Alive), the podcast’s working title (The Storyteller). Mattie imagined as a ghost by Sadie to keep her company on the road. West’s first fifteen minutes of fame relating to his culinary skills as a parent. (Don’t ask.) The original ending. (Do not ask.)

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How do I describe it—

2015. The partial my then-agent submitted to my former editor. So much of what was ultimately spread over 300+ pages smashed into 50 or so, a mess. It wasn’t great—but I knew that it would be. Except what does knowing that mean, or has ever meant, in publishing? When the book is done, one way or the other, you will find out. This time, pieces are put together in ways I only ever dreamed but had never been told how to believe—

2018. An August email I sent to a friend: I am so afraid to believe—

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Memories, but close-up: New York. Trapped in the hotel lobby because I didn’t know the elevator required my room key because I didn’t—don’t, really—travel a lot. BEA, the Javits Center. Readers in my signing line. Meeting my new agent, the incredible F, for the very first time. The Flatiron building. The beauty and impracticality of the Flatiron building. The sweltering heat of the Flatiron building. The Sadie cupcakes I should have tried. Sadie’s publishing team, both new and known to me, and the dinner, where everyone was charming and funny and kind. Sadie, performed live. Leaving the city. Good stress, still stress: on the way home from the airport, I cried. ALA, New Orleans. The heat of New Orleans, the cemetery in New Orleans, my friends in New Orleans, New Orleans at night. Beignets with K, powdered sugar all over my phone. Early thoughts of The Project when I was alone. The tour I didn’t understand was a tour, had to ask if I could call it a tour; a first, for both me and M. Launch. The Sadie: a red drink at a Starbucks at a B&N. My sister’s advice was best: don’t eat anything you can get at home. Home. Toronto. A taste of Canada’s literary and bookselling scene, my first time on TV, falling asleep across the bed with all that makeup on. Each breath held. Every exhalation. The list the second week out, then a second week lightning strike. The privilege of its moment, the beauty of its moment, and knowing, in the moment, I’d never live this book twice.

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Here is an interview I did in 2018, where I answered what have become some of the more commonly asked questions about the book. Some of my feelings and approaches have changed—like the ways in which the work gets under my skin now, and what I see myself doing next and where—but most of it holds true.

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Because the question is the end.

Because your resistance to it gives her story meaning, purpose.

Girl with a busted face, torn-up arms, begging for the opportunity to save other girls. Sadie was not published in a way that was conversant with my backlist and it was only later that I realized what this complicated; I can only tell you what its ending means to me in the context of all that came before, and how it frames everything after. Life goes on. Whatever remains, goes on: Mattie Southern, thirteen and wild. Ashley James, thirteen and wild. Georgia Avis, the girl Ashley or Mattie could have, would have, grown up to be. Parker. Regina. Romy. Lo. Someone has to love them. Sadie did. Sadie was willing to die for them all. In I’m the Girl, Sadie’s life has been further twisted as a means of entertainment and there are no vigilantes out there to love Georgia enough to wield, or want to wield, a knife against her world. I’m the Girl invites you to meet Sadie’s absence with a willingness to be that love. Love is the knife. Sadie with a busted face, torn-up arms, begging for the opportunity to save other girls. Why do I have to beg for that? she wonders. Because. Because it’s all my books have ever been begging for.

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It was one of the earliest podcast novels, and one of my most popular because of it, but relative to its contemporaries of that same time and of a similar expression, its sharp and uncompromising edges have been made clearer to me. Publishers move on, but readers feel less inclined; from the way I see it spoken of now, Sadie seems to have evolved into an if you know you know type read—and those who do remain champions of it like no others. To them, I give thanks. Five years later, I still hear from booksellers determinedly hand-selling it, from readers recommending it in spite of or because of its trigger warnings, from creators who spend more than a minute’s worth of their time to make a minute’s worth of content imploring their audience to please, please pick this one up, all of them ever-circling the original campaign’s directive to find her, to #findsadie because they’re the ones who know—they know she’s circling us, waiting to be found.

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Greetings from Sunny Los Angeles: A West McCray Epilogue is a short story I wrote concluding Sadie’s journey while setting the stage for Georgia’s as a gift to readers who preordered I’m the Girl. It explores West’s life in the years following the podcast. As thanks to you for your support of both novels, and in celebration of Sadie’s fifth anniversary, I present you with this special, annotated edition. This version is exclusive to this newsletter and takes a closer look at the story’s development as it relates to both Sadie and I’m the Girl and it will only be available to read online for the next 24 hours.

If you’ve arrived at this newsletter after the fact, Greetings from Sunny Los Angeles will be exclusively available in print in the paperback edition of I’m the Girl, releasing April 16th, 2024. Order your copy of the paperback here.

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Preorder the paperback edition of The Project.
Purchase I’m the Girl.

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