… Lucy Bexley

1. What’s the time of the day when you feel most like yourself?

Definitely 3 am when I should be sleeping but instead wake up with a funny joke or plot idea. 

2. What’s your coffee order? 

Flat white with soy.

3. How would you describe yourself in three words?

Depressed but enthusiastic.

4. What do you think of garden gnomes?

When I first looked at this question I thought, “I don’t think about them at all.” Then I woke up in the middle of the night and had a surprising amount of thoughts on garden gnomes.

Here’s what I scribbled in the back of the novel I was reading:

Gnomes are divisive and not just because of the sneaky g at the beginning. You rarely just see one gnome—is that because gnomes get lonely? If so, that’s pretty relatable. I also like their commitment to fashion and trying new things. But really gnomes make me think of my grandma, she had a ceramic goose on her porch for years. If you’re wondering, yes, I do know that geese and gnomes aren’t the same thing. For starters, geese are very mean. Though both do interest my puppy on walks. 

Anyway, back to the goose at hand. These were really popular at the time, many houses had these ceramic porch geese. My grandma would dress hers in seasonally appropriate outfits. There was always a hat and some sort of accessory. I liked at Thanksgiving when she dressed it as a turkey like some sort of turducken homage. I loved her commitment to that goose. If it was raining, that thing was in its rain slicker. If it was Valentine’s day you bet your booty that thing had a bow and arrow. 

Anyway, no one had two geese on their porch. Maybe they were expensive. Or maybe ceramic geese are solitary creatures. So in this way, they’re really not like gnomes. With gnomes I imagine you adopt one and they convince you to go back for twenty of their closest friends, which is pretty admirable, actually. 

5. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? 

Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good. (Does it count as receiving advice if I read it in a novel? Books are friends, right?)

6. What makes you smile?

Dogs and really bad jokes and a brilliant turn of phrase. I smile so much that no one feels the need to tell me to smile more. 

7. Do you believe in soulmates?

Not in the way I think most people mean. I think we meet a few people in our lives who we have an instant connection with. Sometimes it turns into romantic love or friendship or you just follow each other on twitter forever. 

8. Funniest/best/saddest/proudest (choose one) thing that ever happened to you as a lesfic author?

After publishing Must Love Silence, people reached out to me about how much Reese (a very introverted character) meant to them and to thank me for how I handled addiction. As an introverted person in recovery, readers feeling seen made me feel seen.

9. What makes you cry?

Commercials and sports movies. Some random team coming from behind to win the championship? Better have tissues on hand.

10. What’s your best feature?

I’m going to cheat a little and go with a trait, which is my sense of humor. If it has to be a feature, I have a dimple on my right cheek that you can only see if I’m really smiling or laughing.

11.  What author would you follow till the ends of every literary genre they chose to write in? 

Carmen Maria Machado, a truly brilliant author. Her footnotes in Carmilla alone are perfect. 

12. Cheerleader, marching band or sportsball team captain?

Team captain for sure. I’m very competitive but I also love to organize projects and a team is kind of like a group project where the project is winning.

13. In a crowded room, what makes you notice a woman?

I hate crowded rooms, but I love a good laugh.

14. What’s the word you cut out of your drafts most often?

Felt, which is very interesting in my current book because I’m often talking about felt as in the material.

15. What would be the title of your autobiography? 

Fail Better.

16. Three women you’d have over for dinner and what would you serve? 

My grandma, my friend Anna, and my sister.

I know some people pick celebrities but I just want to spend time with people I love who I don’t see enough. 

I’d probably serve pizza, but fancy. 

17. What’s in your fridge right now?

A lot of zucchini and broccoli and sweet chili sauce that we need to eat ASAP.

18. Favorite place?

The Boston Public Library.

19. If you could choose one song to be played every time you enter a room, what song would that be and why? 

Maggie Rogers’s cover of Tim McGraw, just because I love it and I’ll be hearing it every time I walk into a room, which is a lot because I enter a room and immediately forget what I went in there for so then I leave and then I remember and then…

20. What’s the one book you wish you could read again for the first time? 

The first Bryce Oakley book I read was Undone it was when we were first becoming good friends and there was something that felt so magical reading a book my friend wrote. It was like hanging out and getting to know her and laugh at her jokes. Friendship magic.

Lucy Bexley’s new funny and charming book No Strings can be found here: mybook.to/LucyBexleyNoStrings