Having my own magazine is awesome. Not only has it enabled me to discover some truly talented up-and-coming writers, it's given me the perfect excuse to talk to famous creative types whom I admire. So far I've had the pleasure of interviewing musician Joshua Path, The Room's Juliette Danielle, and writers like Dan Kennedy, Mary Jo Pehl, Clane Hayward, Jonathan Bernstein, and now Ned Vizzini.

Vizzini is the author of Teen Angst? Nah...., Be More Chill, It's Kind of a Funny Story (which was adapted into a hit movie starring Zach Galifianakis) and The Other Normals, scheduled for release later this year. He's also collaborating with a big-name Hollywood director on a new series of Young Adult novels, which already creating quite a buzz around Tinseltown. So yeah, Ned Vizzini is pretty much a literary rock star.

And you can read my interview with him here.

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TTWF UPDATE: I found something fun on Amazon. Turns out that you can now buy a T-shirt emblazoned with the name of my book. The creators of the shirt are actually referencing the song, but it's still pretty awesome. Maybe we can team up for a product tie-in? In the meantime, here's my book.

QR...it means "Qool Read!" Really, it does.

Coincidentally, I just happen to have two QR codes for my book...

This one is for Kindle (or any Kindle app, of course. You're savvy. You know the deal.)

And this one is for any and every other sort of eReader... i.e. Nook, Kobo, Sony, iPad, LilyPad, even a plain ol' laptop. Yes, you can download and read my book right on your lap-(or desktop) computer doo-hickey! Just download it as a .pdf and you're good to go.

(This one is bigger, but size doesn't matter.)

The other thing about Thanks, That Was Fun is that it's only $1.99. Below is a partial list of things that are more expensive than my book.

• A gallon of milk. The price of cow's milk in 2012 (according to the internet, who never lies) is $3.50 to $3.99. Of course, organic milk is about $4.00 a gallon, and fancy pants veggie types like me pay an average of $4.19 for just a half-gallon of soy milk.

Chock full o' protein, but it will give you gas. My book won't. And it's cheaper!

• Two pounds of large strawberries. At Winn-Dixie, anyway.

Cover them with chocolate and the price goes up.

• One gross (144) of latex balloons.

At this price -- $5.75 -- you could buy two and a half copies of my book.

• Stapler ..... this one costs $6.99 at--where else?--Staples. But holy crap, six dollars and ninety-nine cents? That's more than three copies of my book!

Yep, $6.99. And it's not even RED!

$$$$$$$$$$

And finally, something that's cheaper than my book.....

• Hannah Montana kite. Price? $1.90.

Cheaper than my book, but only by nine cents.

$$$$$$$$$$

Face it, you'd rather buy my book.

So I've been super busy lately....promoting, marketing, and talking up my book, and I've gotten A LOT of questions in the process. I've decided to start addressing the queries here on the old blog. Below are the first two in what will probably be a lengthy (but entertaining!) series of FAQ&A's.

Here I go.

FAQ's: Thanks, That Was Fun

Q: How did you come up with the title Thanks, That Was Fun?

A: The title of my book comes from a song of the same name by the Barenaked Ladies. It’s a rather obscure track; a B-side of sorts (if you were born after 1990, ask an older person about B-sides. Don’t worry, it’s nothing dirty). It’s available on iTunes and also as a “previously unreleased” track on BNL’s greatest hits album, titled—appropriately—All Their Greatest Hits.

Thanks, That Was Fun (the book) wasn’t always called "Thanks, That Was Fun." The working title was actually Some Fantastic, another BNL song. This was mainly because I started writing my novel in late 1999, and I was obsessed with the Ladies’ seminal 1998 album Stunt.



Stunt was the perfect soundtrack for the book--funny, sad, dark, lovelorn, snarky, boozy—there’s even a song on the album called “Alcohol”—that track alone provided a great deal of inspiration. I listened to Stunt constantly and I was convinced that the title of the book had to come from one of the songs. For a while I called it “Light Up My Room” (track #3), but the more I wrote, the more I thought “Some Fantastic” (track #12) sounded a lot cooler. For those who aren’t familiar, “Some Fantastic” is probably the weirdest song on what is already a weird album. To give you a taste, here are some sample lyrics:

One day I’ll construct a satellite/And I’ll name it after you/Cause you were the greatest friend of all/Except for when you split my lip in two

What the hell did those lyrics have to do with my novel? I have no earthly idea. It was like having an unexplainable crush on someone. I didn’t know why I liked “Some Fantastic,” I just did. And once I settled on it as a title, I was very attached. It was smart and intriguing and catchy; in short, everything I thought a debut novel should be. That title stuck to my novel for years, from 2000 to 2009, to be precise.

My editor Scott was the one who got me to call it "Thanks, That Was Fun." Trust me, I needed a little convincing. I was all but married to Some Fantastic. I mean, Some Fantastic and I had been through a lot together at this point. Did I mention that it took me a long time to write this book? Well it did. It took me a frustratingly long time. Some Fantastic had stayed with me through six moves, five significant relationships, two presidential administrations…we had a history, and that title was a part of me, dammit! But Scott (talented, wise, patient, funny, straight-talking Scott, more about him later) thought that “Some Fantastic” was way too vague and that I needed a title that was more descriptive, one that fit the story. He’d been at me for a while to change it and one day he told me over the phone to do a little brainstorming and come up with some alternate names before our next meeting. Reluctantly, I sat down at my desk and typed up a short list of song titles and some random phrases, then emailed it to Scott. When I met with him a week later, he had printed out the list I’d sent—there were about a dozen names—and he’d put big X’s through all of them but one: “Thanks, That Was Fun.” He presented me with the paper and said “Here’s the new title of your book. It’s funny, it’s descriptive, it’s sarcastic, it’s teasing, and it fits your novel to a T.” Seeing it there in print, I got his point. Scott was right. It worked.

Q: Your name isn’t really Andie Nash. Why did you change your name?

A: Again, it comes back to an album, although my mom was the one to first suggest that I use a pen name. I believe her actual words were “This novel of yours….you’re not publishing this under your real name, are you?” I had in fact been planning to use my real name; I didn’t see anything wrong with it. But my mom begged to differ, citing privacy and a bunch of other parental concerns and issues I hadn’t yet considered. So I told her I’d think about it, and left it at that.

It was around this time that I received an awesome gift from my writer’s group friend Becca: her old record player. I was super excited--not only to have a real excuse to shop for vinyl--but now I had a real turntable on which to spin it! Woo hoo! Never one to do things in half measures, I hit up every thrift store, used record shop and garage sale within a 30 mile radius searching for new (well, old) vinyl and bought up everything I came across. One of my purchases was a Crosby Stills Nash album, the one where they’re all hanging out on a ratty couch on some porch.

You know, this one. I believe it’s actually called Hanging Out on a Ratty Couch on Some Porch.

So I got the album home and put it on the turntable and I was sitting there staring at the cover while it played. I’ll just go ahead and say that this was before I got sober and I was a bit anesthetized, probably on something herbal. And my mind was wandering, and I started thinking about possible pen names. I wanted to keep Andie, because it’s really my first name. Okay, it’s really my nickname, but everyone calls me Andie, and I like it that way. But what to do about a surname? So I studied the CSN album and thought, Andie Crosby? No. Andie Stills? Lame. Andie Nash? Hmmm.

Yes, Andie NASH. Now that was cool. And pretty badass. (And Graham Nash is hands-down my favorite member of CSN. I’ve always loved “Our House.”) Anyway, I made a mental note and filed “Andie Nash” away, just in case I decided to use a nom de plume when my book came out.

Then, Simon Reid happened.

Chances are, if you Googled the name “Andie Nash” and/or “Simon Reid”, one of the links brought you here. So if that’s how you found this blog I’ll go ahead and say that, yes, I’m THAT Andie Nash, the American woman who blew the whistle on her conman ex-boyfriend and blah blah blah, you probably have a little background on the story already. If you’re looking for more, you can read my first Simon Reid tirade here, a 2010 update here, and a post about my March 2011 appearance on the Today Show here (and yes, the last part was a blast. Getting an all-expense paid trip to NYC, appearing on national TV, and hanging out with Jo, Laura, and Nicola made the initial Reid drama worth it in the end.)

So I started thinking about using the name “Nash” just before I went on the Today Show. Since I was going on TV to air my dirty laundry to all and sundry, my mom was worrying—-again (I love my mom)--about privacy and internet searches and all the weirdness that you have to worry about when you’re a parent to a screwball like me. So in the end, that’s what convinced me to take the name Andie Nash, for both public and literary purposes. And there you have it.

Next time...I dish some dirt and answer more FAQs!

The new cover of my book!

Yes, it's here, and it's glorious! A million thank you's to John (my love) and Kris Stout from Crawfish Games, who helped to create it.

Got a Kindle? Download my book here.

No Kindle? Download it here (can be read on any computer).

PART IV:

GETTING MY GROUP ON

Initially, the very idea of a writer's group terrified me. I pictured a bunch of ponces sitting around a table, some in sweater vests, some peering at me over reading spectacles, all of them shaking their heads at my amateurish scribblings, searching their overeducated brains for tactful ways to tell me that my work, in fact, sucked balls.

I had been hammering away at my novel for over a year, a year that--as luck would have it--provided me with more than enough romantic angst to feed my creative process and keep my butt firmly planted in the desk chair, pounding away at my keyboard, planning, plotting, fleshing out characters and scenes to make up roughly two-thirds of my novel. But I knew that I still had a long road ahead of me, and that merely reading books on writing would only improve my work up to a certain point.

At the time I was working at the Indianapolis Art Center, (any similarities to the Art Guild of Thanks, That Was Fun are purely coincidental, natch) which was affiliated with

The Writer's Center of Indiana . I had taken a one-day workshop there on character development and felt that it had helped my writing a great deal. It was at the Writer's Center that I saw a flyer for an upcoming weekend-long writer's retreat featuring--holy shit--Dan fucking Wakefield, Indianapolis native and author of Going All the Way, a novel I loved so much I immediately started reading it again after I finished it the first time. I scraped together the fee for the retreat and signed up, ecstatic at the chance to meet Dan Wakefield and hoping to connect with other writers.

The retreat was awesome. Held at a hotel in downtown Indy, it was an intense weekend of lectures, Q&A's, and writing exercises. I not only met Dan Wakefield and had him sign my copy of Going All the Way, I got to attend one of his classes and had him critique my writing exercise. It was, for me, akin to getting a guitar lesson from Jimi Hendrix. I don't think I stopped grinning the entire weekend.

While I was at the retreat I met a young woman called Shahnaz, who was looking to start a writer's group. I said I was keen on joining and gave her my name and phone number. I'd been pleasantly surprised by the diverse crowd of writing enthusiasts I'd encountered at the retreat, and was beginning to warm to the idea of attending a writer's group on a regular basis, even though I still found the idea of sharing my writing with strangers a bit terrifying.

A few weeks later Shahnaz called me and said it was on; she'd managed to assemble a group of interested writers she'd met at the retreat and our brand new writer's group would be meeting at the Writer's Center the following Tuesday evening. I was excited and scared. I combed through my work, pondering which excerpts to bring in.

The first chapter of my book was so chock full of breasts, oral sex, and bodily fluid that I was too embarrassed to foist that on the group our first time out. I ended up selecting a section from what would become chapter three of the novel: the scene with Jordan, Iris and Genna at the art opening. I was looking forward to meeting the other people in the group and sharing my work, at the same time hoping that they wouldn't have problems with my copious deployment of F-bombs, or the description of the giant stone vagina that Genna and Jordan encounter at the art gallery in the same scene.

I showed up for the first meeting, eager but apprehensive, clutching a stack of carefully proofread copies of the art exhibition/stone vagina scene. It was a delight to meet the other members of the group; along with myself and Shahnaz there was Freddie, Reva, Rebecca and Jenny. They were writers from all walks of life, friendly, gregarious, and eager to share their work and receive feedback from like-minded creative types.

We all took turns reading our work out loud, and I was both impressed and a bit intimidated by the quality of everyone's writing. I read my stuff last, then, upon finishing, looked apprehensively around the table, trying to ascertain if anyone was put off by the content or skill-level of my work. To my relief, they all loved the scene and the characters (Iris was an immediate hit), and they were full of positive and constructive comments on what was good about the scene and what needed improvement. I needn't have worried about anyone being squeamish about the scene's language and imagery. The best comment that night came from Reva, who said, "I love the idea of a giant stone vagina, but I think this Genna character is too prudish to call it a 'pussy.'"

I knew then that I had found the right group.

Next time: more writing, more group, and The Big Move.

Pictured: The new cover of my novel.

I will continue the posts on my novel writing process, but right now I just want to say THANK YOU to the people who have bought copies. Of course my loved ones were the first to show me love (and THANKS to you all!), but it's also pretty cool that the darn thing is actually selling and that complete strangers are now downloading it. Yes, people I don't even know are buying my book!

While I am expressing my gratitude (there will be more of that soon) I have to say thank you to John for his love and support. He was the first to buy a copy, even though he didn't have to (he could have just gotten it for free, after all).

Also thanks to Becca, for helping me to format the thing...it was a pain in the ass and she rocks for doing it!

More to come soon...did I mention that you can buy my novel here?

PART III

Branching Out, Branching In

I realized that if I were going to be a good fiction writer I'd have to dig in and start using my imagination. As soon as I made a conscious effort to invent, my writing process got a lot easier and a hell of a lot more fun. I'd come home from work every day, pop in that disk, and write like a fiend. I'd take a break every 90 minutes or so, have a glass of wine and a cigarette and read what I'd written so far, thrilled at how everything was coming together. A story was beginning to take shape; a story about a woman named Jordan who was sort of like me but not really, a woman who had fallen for a guy who was sort of like Mr. Ex except funnier, more neurotic and much more compelling...especially now that I'd given myself permission to really create.

During this time I made a point to seek out and read as many books on writing as I could find. And there are a lot of good ones out there, ones that helped me to become (over time) a significantly better writer. I studied up on characterization, on plotting, on dialogue. I devoured time-honored classics like Bird By Bird, Writing Down the Bones, and of course The Elements of Style. I also found a goldmine of information in lesser-known gems like (the invaluable) The Art of Compelling Fiction, The First Five Pages, and one of the best books on novel writing in the history of ever, the simplistically titled but absolutely brilliant You Can Write A Novel (before you even think about writing a novel, buy that book. SERIOUSLY!).

I also began reading more fiction than I had in years. I'd always been an avid reader, but I now had a vested interest in learning about what made good fiction work, to pick apart the author's brain and try to see the process from the inside out. I had a second job working in a library at the time, which turned out to be a very handy way to feed my new obsession. I went through the stacks and re-read some of my all-time favorite novels like The Rachel Papers, Going All the Way and The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, all works that are essentially about a protagonist's self-discovery through heartache (a theme I suspected was beginning to take hold in my own novel). I also revisited classics I hadn't read since high school--Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby were a few--and was surprised at how much more I enjoyed them the second time around. I also discovered others I'd never bothered to pick up like This Side of Paradise and Lolita (the former was amusing, the latter completely blew me away). I also read lighter pop fiction like Postcards From the Edge (SO much better than the film), Bright Lights, Big City (ditto), Bridget Jones' Diary, and Steve Martin's Shopgirl. It was in that library that I first stumbled upon the brilliance that is Nick Hornby, first through About a Boy and High Fidelity, then later through How To Be Good and A Long Way Down. Between all the how-to writing books and all this wonderful fiction, I felt like I had my own personal cheering section in my head, inspiring me to write more, to write better, to take my novel all the way.

NEXT TIME
PART IV: GETTING MY GROUP ON

PART II

Sex, Drugs, and More Sex

Revelations From the Mornings After

I'll be honest--I put "sex and drugs" in this post title mainly to get your attention. Although Thanks, That Was Fun and the story of its writing centers on a whole shit-ton of the former and quite a bit of the latter, it has more to do with how I processed the experiences I was having while writing this novel. And a lot of this processing occurred on "the morning after," or, rather, LOTS of mornings after.

So....I'd been pounding away at this story for about a month. I had roughly fifty pages worth of dialogue and random scenes involving Jordan and sketches of characters that would later become Genna, Iris, and Dean. And--aside from a paragraph here and there--most of what I wrote was absolutely wretched. I didn't realize how awful it was at the time, thankfully so, because I probably would have trashed the whole thing and gone back to surfing for vintage concert t-shirts on my shitty dial-up internet connection. But I printed out those pages and showed them to my friend S. over a late night dinner at Denny's. She was nice enough to read what I had written, laugh politely over a few witty sentences, and say "Wow, this is pretty good. I didn't know you could write."

And that was enough to keep me going.

It was around this time that I became involved with an ex-boyfriend. I knew on some level that this relationship was doomed to fail yet again, but I was desperately infatuated with this guy and he fulfilled my deep hunger for companionship and sex. He was also inadvertently giving me material for my book, something that I realized one night while we were at a dinner party with some of his friends. This guy--let's call him Mr. Ex--was recounting something that happened to him at work that day. It was a really dumb anecdote, and, as Mr. Ex's friends howled with laughter, my antennae went up and I thought "Aha! I've got to remember this. I'm going to use this guy and his lame-ass story and the crappy way he's telling it and his friends' drunken fawning in my book. This will make a fantastic scene!" So I furiously took mental notes and the morning after I went home, sat down at my computer, and began to recount the scene as vividly as my hungover brain could recall it. I pounded out the events of the night on my keyboard, struggling to capture every word, every nuance, everything that I thought was significant and telling about Mr. Ex and his friends and the booze-soaked dinner party. I got it all down on the page, marveling all the while at my own brilliance and wit, the way I was able to take a real-life scene and transform it into art.

When I went back and read what I had written, I was dismayed to find--like Mr. Ex's annoying friends and his anecdote and the dinner party itself--the scene I'd written was completely dull and pointless. I was puzzled. I saved the writing on my disk and put the scene on the back burner for a few days. Then I went back and tried to fix it. I tried to make it funny. I tried to make it sizzle. I tried to make it sing. I couldn't. And that's when I had probably the most important revelation of all: when you write fiction, you make stuff up.

That's what fiction is. It's fabrication, it's fantasy, it's lies.

NEXT TIME:
Part III - Branching out, branching in.

Part I:

The long, strange trip commences.

The story of how I came to write this book is a long one, but I'll try to keep it concise and interesting. It all began in the final days of the last century.

I had just had a very unsatisfying date with a guy who would--in the novel--become the Elliott character (loosely based, , of course). The guy was a co-worker of mine, and I'd liked him for a while. We'd been flirting for several months and I'd been dropping hints to let him know I was interested. When he finally picked up on it and asked me out I was elated. How did the date go? The first chapter should give you an idea.

Needless to say, I never went out with the guy again. I had to interact with him periodically at work, and it always made me supremely uncomfortable. Our single botched date had killed off any lingering attraction I had for him, and he seemed to feel the same way. Still, I was embarrassed and more than a little bitter at how it had all played out.

One evening I grabbed my journal and took to my bed to hash it all out on the page. I scribbled furiously for a few hours, then stopped. I went back and read what I had written, thought for a minute, then turned to a blank page and started over. This time, I began writing about the date in the present tense, as though it were happening now, in real time. I also began to alter the narration. I was using my own words, but I wasn't the one doing the talking. I was using a voice that belonged to me, yet wasn't mine. It was a character. I gave the character a name. Jordan. The guy she was on this disastrous date with wasn't the same guy I that I knew. It wasn't a real guy, it was a character. His name was Elliott, and together he and Jordan helped me write the first chapter of my book, right there in my journal in sky blue ink.

A few days passed. I went to work, I socialized, I did all the usual activities that filled my time when I was twenty-six years old. But I couldn't stop thinking about these two people I had just met, the ones who now resided in my journal--Elliott and Jordan.

Especially Jordan.

One day at work I had an idea. I rushed home, grabbed my journal, and sat down at my ancient desktop computer. I took out a floppy disk and typed out that story, the one I'd started in my journal. But when I finished transcribing the story, I didn't stop. I kept writing. I created a character. I created a life. I created a bigger story, one that started with Elliott and Jordan and went on from there, went on and on and on and on to something bigger, something that I hadn't foreseen. After a solid month of sitting down at my computer every night after work and typing furiously, I had a startling realization.

I was writing a novel.

Coming next time....
PART II: sex, drugs, and more sex. The saga continues.