Weirdness Journal Entry #4: The Lightning Bottles Part 2

This blog is turning into a full-time weirdness journal. I think that's okay. 

[In case you’re just joining us now, the weirdness journal is a collection of all of the strange synchronicities and oddities surrounding the writing and publishing of my upcoming novel, I Think We’ve Been Here Before, a book which, incidentally, is about synchronicities and oddities and which has been absolutely mired in them from its conception. The story was born out of a billion conversations with a couple of good friends about synchronicities and quantum entanglement and deja vu, and it has felt as though the simple act of writing about these things has acted as a lightning rod, but for a different sort of energy, attracting all manner of strange coincidences and eerie fortuities. Like, one day I was working on the part of the book that’s about a girl desperately trying to make it home from Berlin to her family as the world is ending, and worrying that she won’t be able to get there in time, grappling with how to spend the rest of her life and not waste the whole thing wishing she was somewhere she can’t get to, and later that morning someone (who knew nothing of this book) sent me a Voxtrot song they thought I would like, called Berlin, Without Return. The first line: Do you spend your whole life trying to get back home? Weirdly specific, Voxtrot! Anyway. That’s not what this entry is about.]

Today's entry has to do with Marissa Stapley again! (Refresh your memory here.) The TL;DR is that I asked this writer I admire, Marissa, to blurb ITWBHB and she said yes and then she asked me to blurb her book, The Lightning Bottles, and when I read it I found that there were a number of intriguing similarities between her book and mine—themes, settings, very abstract but particular ideas—and that both books were set to be released this coming fall around the same time. I mentioned this to her as I was reading and we had a delightful conversation about synchronicities. 

Okay, so on Tuesday, at supper, Sully was like, "Hey Mom, you keep saying this word, blurb. What does it mean?" And I was like, "It's um—oh, here..." I was standing next to the bookcase so I reached out and grabbed a random book. I pointed to the blurb on the cover. "This is a blurb," I said. "It's a quote from an author saying how much they liked this book."

He nodded, satisfied, and I went to put the book back on the shelf—but right before I did the name of the author who'd written that blurb on the front caught my eye.

Marissa Stapley strikes again!

How is she doing this??

So I had a little chuckle. Maybe a whole guffaw. My family stared at me blankly. "Marissa, again!" I said. They didn't really get it. 

It's fine. 

But literally one hour later, Marissa emailed me to tell me that her publisher had changed her pub date: The Lightning Bottles is now coming out on September 24, the same day as my book. 

Wacky!

If you're not impressed by any of this, that's okay. I am impressed. That's why I'm keeping track.

Also, this is the book I randomly pulled off the bookshelf.

It's called Mitzi Bytes, by Kerry Clare. And here's a little bonus thing: I became Instagram friends with Kerry just a couple of weeks ago, not connecting her name in my head with this book I've owned for quite some time now (it came out in 2017 or something like that). I think we should all take this as a sign that it's time for us to read (or reread) Mitzi Bytes. 

Okay? Deal.