I Finished My Book Again!! But for Real This Time

Another HOT (Temperature) Excerpt from Adult Braces

Hello, my angels!

As you may or may not have seen on Instagram, a week ago today I sent in my absolute final changes to the manuscript for Adult Braces. When I wrote to you in June I’d finished the substantive bulk of the book, but now I’ve finished all the finesse too (and, actually, it changed more significantly than I’d expected). Now the book is DONE done, and all that’s left is marketing and publicity and reviews and touring and fame and fortune and accolades and megalomania and becoming an eccentric recluse and saving my pee in jars and I have to thank you all again for your patience and your support throughout this seemingly endless process that has now come to an end. I feel unconditionally loved by my Butt News cohort, and that’s not a feeling that’s easy to find working in modern media! I am so lucky! I love you back!!!

I’m still a week away from our marketing/publicity kick-off call, so no one has told me yet that I CAN’T post deleted excerpts from the book because I need to save them for some kind of “important” “media” “strategy,” so I’ve got another one for you (if you missed it, the first deleted chapter was posted here). Originally Adult Braces had a substantial through-line about hiking and being sweaty and the psychology of walking uphill, but I ended up scrapping most of it because my editor (correctly) pointed out that the book was 30,000 words too long and had approximately seventeen different guiding metaphors, which is about sixteen too many. We compromised at, idk, like five guiding metaphors (braces, road trip, jumping off stuff, infinity, and Moby-Dick), but hiking didn’t make the cut. Just kidding, it’s in there too! I have no self-control! But I scaled it waaaaay back. So here are chunks from two of the dearly departed hiking chapters. Hope you enjoy! More to come soon!

(And if you like what you see, please pre-order Adult Braces here! You can read my little spiel about why pre-orders matter to authors over here. It’ll arrive in your hot little hands on March 10, 2026!)

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Seven Hells

Seattle is built on seven hills, or so they say, though I’ve just learned that being built on seven hills is a proverbial thing that cities LOVE to say about themselves. To the point that there’s an entire Wikipedia page called “cities claiming to be built on seven hills.” That is so bitchy! They might as well have put “claiming” in all-caps. I didn’t even know cities could be insecure!

Anyway, much like Rome, Athens, Vilnius, Thiruvananthapuram, and literally HUNDREDS OF OTHER LIARS, Seattle CLAIMS to be built on seven hills, but anyone who has ever lived here can tell you that that is false. Seattle is actually built on 750,000 hills. Name one place you need to go in Seattle that isn’t uphill! The top of the Space Needle? Uphill. Mount Rainier? Uphill! The battle to get billionaires to pay income tax? Uphill!!! The wet rat ugly clothes passive aggressive tech worker amoral NIMBY death of my childhood social club? Literally vertical!