I titled this blog "Between Books Right Now" as a cheeky excuse to procrastinate while working on my novels. But lo and behold, this summer I published my fourth book, I Fucking Hate You. A couple weeks ago, it hit paperback. Since I have a moment to breathe—and hopefully your undivided attention—I thought I'd discuss it in hopes you'll find it interesting enough to buy, read after buying, and perhaps give my other books a shot while you're at it.

I Fucking Hate You follows two friends, Kate and Rachel, whose relationship implodes after a girls' night gone catastrophically wrong. I've written it from alternating perspectives, starting with the inciting incident (literally called, "The Incident") and continuing through the wreckage of the year that follows. This structure lets you see what each character omits, what they refuse to hear, and how they're unreliable narrators to each other and to you. It's a dark melodrama with emphasis on dark—both protagonists are unlikable, unscrupulous, and unpleasant people who choose self-destruction over the radical act of having a conversation.

The easiest solution is always "why don't they just talk to each other?" But they can't. They're too miserable.

I'm hoping you'll laugh along because some of these situations are ridiculous and unbelievable. I wrote Kate and Rachel to be over-the-top with their venom and lack of self-awareness—like Joan Crawford and Bette Davis fighting over a dead bird on a silver platter. I want you to side with neither and both of them simultaneously. I want you to hate them and feel sorry for them in equal measure.

Since I'm not popular enough to be invited to conventions or give talks, I'm writing out my themes here in hopes this reaches someone someday. Also: slight spoilers ahead if you haven't read it yet.

Toxic Friendships (Or: The Art of Emotional Vampirism)

Kate and Rachel don't begin the novel as friends, though they insist throughout that they've been close since college. They're passive-aggressive to each other, speak poorly about each other to their spouses, and view their relationship as purely transactional. Kate sees Rachel as her designated shoulder to cry on about her mother's death; Rachel needs Kate as emotional support for her adoption struggles. Neither confides their real issues—money troubles, marriage problems, in-law drama, and worst of all, crushing dissatisfaction with their lives.

But Kate and Rachel aren't the only toxic friendship in the novel. Kate's relationship with her trendy theater friends, Louis and Faye, is arguably worse. They happily supply her with recreational drugs despite her known heart condition (if you've read my first book, congratulations—you spotted a Clout reference). When she has a heart attack, they abandon her like she might be contagious. From Rachel's perspective, they're outwardly cruel to Kate even when she's present.

Then there's James, Kate's boss at SACC. Their "friendship" exists in that gray area where Kate might be projecting feelings that aren't reciprocal, James might be leading her on, or they might actually ride off into the sunset together. The bottom line: Kate is sick, lonely, vulnerable, and has zero concept of healthy relationships. No matter the outcome, it's going to implode spectacularly.

Rachel, meanwhile, can't form friendships with women because she's too busy being envious of them. It starts small—daily battles with moms at preschool pickup—then escalates to her sisters-in-law, who don't even have names in her mind, just "the Viper" and "the Honeydew Melon."

Her half-sisters bear the worst of it. Holly, on her mother's side, genuinely wants to include Rachel in her life. But Rachel is steadfast in hating her, mostly to punish her mother for divorcing her father. She also silently accuses Holly—a teenager—of going after her husband. Whether this is true remains intentionally vague, but it's another layer of Rachel's paranoia.

On her father's side is long-lost half-sister Leah (née Robyn). Unlike Holly, Leah wants nothing to do with Rachel and actively avoids her. Rachel, however, is convinced they can be friends, ignoring that Leah's existence caused her family's original fracture. Determined to control her narrative regardless of who gets hurt, Rachel barrels through Leah's boundaries and ruins another opportunity for self-awareness.

Unreliable Narrators (Or: When Everyone's Wrong)

Writing from two POVs was challenging, but it gave me a creative way to cast doubt on who deserves more sympathy. From the Incident to their final meeting, Kate and Rachel's accounts vary in nuanced ways. This doesn't make them liars—it makes them human. They have different perceptions of the same truth.

What originally inspired this book was a similar event in my own life. To keep it brief: I had a terrible time, my friend did not. I stewed for weeks over this "Incident," ready to end the friendship because my entire opinion of them had changed. Then they contacted me out of the blue to say how much they'd enjoyed spending time with me, couldn't wait to do it again, and hoped I'd had as much fun as they did.

My mind exploded. What the fuck? They had fun? I was miserable! Could it be that I wasn't the only person in the world experiencing things, and—gasp—other people experienced them differently?

There are always at least two perspectives. What's fun and games for some might be a night in hell for others. It's human nature to see things selfishly, and when I realized that, I knew I had to write this story from two perspectives.

While Kate and Rachel aren't meant to be likable, they had to be empathetic. If readers hate both characters, I won't win them over. So regardless of the alternating POV, both women remain sympathetic. Kate is sick, grieving her mother, struggling in her marriage. Rachel is infertile, also grieving her mother, overwhelmed by motherhood. Even at their worst, neither should be condemned for their feelings. Kate faces a bleak future and lashes out; Rachel buckles under the pressures of motherhood. Both feel abandoned and don't know how to process it. Both hate how marriage has defined them.

Had I given Kate more first-world problems or made Rachel more of a trad-wife stereotype, this wouldn't have been a novel so much as a MAGA instruction manual.

Each character gets to destroy the other once during their climactic fight. They go after each other's biggest insecurities: Rachel tears Kate down for being boring, for losing the interests that once defined her, for exploiting her own grief, and—worst of all—for amounting to nothing but a housewife after all her grand plans. Kate rips into Rachel for being delusional about motherhood's joys and reminds her she never wanted to marry Dan in the first place.

This cuts to what each woman knows about herself: Kate has accomplished none of her life goals, and Rachel only got married and had children to repair her own childhood damage.

Ironically, the only time I made sure their POVs aligned closely was during their final meeting—when they say goodbye forever. Even then, there are differences in who gets the last word. Rachel looks good in her own story; Kate comes out on top in hers. We all write our own narratives and make ourselves the heroes. Neither character was going to let the other hurt them without one final response.

The title, I Fucking Hate You, is what they scream at each other during the novel's climax. So much hurt, resentment, and anger gets dumped out in that moment. But the truth is, Kate and Rachel don't hate each other. There's nothing substantial enough to hate. They're both the same—two women with marriage troubles, missing their mothers, dealing with health issues who go out for a night and don't have a good time.

That sucks, but it's not hatred-worthy.

The truth is, when they scream "I fucking hate you," they're not talking to each other. They're talking to themselves.