A Scatter of Light is out today!

Today’s the day. Nine years after I started writing this book, A Scatter of Light is finally out in the world!

(Note to readers in the UK, Australia, and New Zealand: A Scatter of Light is taking a few more days to arrive on your shores. And in your lands, this book will be published as adult fiction so if you don’t see it in the YA section of your bookshop, check the adult section.)

Every time a new book of mine is published I feel like I’m supposed to have a sensation of undiluted joy and excitement, but in reality, my emotions are usually more mixed. Along with that joy and excitement, there’s often trepidation about how the book will be received, exhaustion about the promotion that goes on around a book launch, and a little bit of sadness, because once a book is published, it’s no longer mine in any way. It now belongs to you, the reader.

All of those mixed emotions are present today on the publication day for A Scatter of Light, my seventh novel. They may be a bit more intense than usual because of the convoluted and sometimes painful publication process this book went through. Usually, by the time I get to the publication day, I feel totally separate from the novel I wrote, but I still don’t feel entirely separated from A Scatter of Light. Part of me still sees the first draft I wrote in 2013 in the finished pages, and part of me still feels that vulnerable first-draft feeling: the what if this book is terrible, will anyone understand what I meant feeling.

So far, the trade reviews I’ve seen have shown me that many readers do understand what I meant. I especially appreciate the wonderful starred review in BookPage, which ended with this paragraph:

“A Scatter of Light is set in the summer of 2013 as the U.S. Supreme Court overturned California’s Proposition 8, an amendment to the state’s constitution that eliminated the right to same-sex marriage. It’s fascinating to compare this novel to the 1950s-set Last Night at the Telegraph Club, and to consider the vastly different experiences of falling in love as a young queer person at these two moments in history. Aria’s story is not just about discovering and embracing your sexuality. It’s also about what it means to be an artist, a friend, a daughter and a granddaughter, and about how identities of all kinds can converge and crystallize as part of the process of growing up.”

A Scatter of Light is indeed about a lot of things. Being a young person who is coming into your own identities is always about a lot of things. I fear that our hyper-paced online world often prefers stories that are more straightforward, black-and-white, or that fit easily into trope checkboxes. But A Scatter of Light is not that kind of book. It’s a quiet book about big emotions. It’s about morally complex decisions made in the pursuit of love. It’s about desire for someone else and desire for something more in oneself.

I’ve already heard from people who have read this book and told me how it brought them back to a time in their lives that was both painful and transformative. I hope that you’ll connect with this book, too.