This month marks the ten-year anniversary of The Fourth Wall. In honor of the occasion, I reread my debut novel for the first time since 2018. It was an illuminating experience—so much time had passed, it felt like I was reading someone else’s book. Like when you read old diary entries and remember the person who wrote them, but only from a great distance.
From that distance, I am grateful to find that The Fourth Wall remains a book I am proud to have written. I’m indebted to WiDo Publishing for doing an outstanding job, not only with edits, but with aesthetics. Although the cover has always been gorgeous to me, now that I know a thing or two about book formatting (and all the ways it can go wrong), I am equally impressed with the book’s beautiful interior design. It was a pleasure to read.
I remember the anxieties and doubts I felt when The Fourth Wall was published. It didn’t matter that I had a traditional book contract, it didn’t matter that it had good reviews. Or maybe it did matter, just not enough. I was full of insecurities and somehow more embarrassed than proud of my achievement. Out of a sense of obligation to my publisher I did the necessary things, like media interviews and a traditional bookstore launch, but I didn’t enjoy them as much as I should have.
Yet when I look back at my younger self, it’s with fondness and understanding. I was still in my thirties then, still modest to a fault, still under the thumb of imposter syndrome before I knew what that was. Somewhere in my forties I figured things out and learned to work through the worst of my self-sabatoging tendencies.
If The Fourth Wall were published today, would my efforts to promote it look different? Definitely. Would I change the past if I could? No. I love where I’m at now. I love the restless, winding path that brought me here and the books I’ve written along the way.
And I’m glad it all started with this one.
Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, June 2014
Tucson Festival of Books, March 2015
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