This isn’t my first book. When I was fifteen I wrote Tea Parties and Catfish, a young adult novel about a girl trying to escape a glass bubble. It was truly terrible and roughly ten people bought it, including my mom, two teachers, and a fan from Canada I actually met this year!

Archie Comics are the reason I started to enjoy reading. As soon as I fell in love with Archie, I realized reading was not the worst. I now have a lot of conflicted emotions about Riverdale but only love for Cole Sprouse.   

I once wrote a three-hour musical about Amelia Earhart. It was performed at my high school and we recorded an album for iTunes. It was almost a big hit in Germany.

A philosophy class I took in college inspired me to write this book. My professor told me that “Kant would have been the greatest phenomena of mankind if he had been able to feel love,” and I remember thinking how sad it was that Kant came so close to being perfect but had such a hard love life.    

My philosophy professor thought this book was a joke. When I eventually let him know that his class inspired me to write a New Yorker article, and then eventually a book, he told me he was confused and didn’t understand the “prank.”

I am very uncoordinated and this is probably the real reason I am a writer. When I was in seventh grade I was kicked off the softball team for being “too pretty” but really it was because I ran with the bat to first base. Last month I walked into a glass door and broke my nose and then met the creator of Modern Family at a bar in Wisconsin. Apart from the occasional paper cut, writing a book is the only safe thing I know how to do.

I blame most of my bad decisions on the fact that I am a Libra. This hardly ever works, but it’s still always worth trying. 

I was in a Blink-182 cover band. We played for the fifth grade talent show and killed. The next year I sang a solo of Carly Simon's “You're So Vain,” but for some reason it was not as well received. 

I once asked a Harvard professor to help me with my love life. I ended up taking a tinder date rock climbing and did not know he was very afraid of heights. He climbed for two minutes, then couldn't stop shaking and asked if we could get sushi instead. I never saw him again. 

Tom Hanks emailed me a selfie of him holding my book. Before he sent me the photo, I asked if it was really him, essentially emailing Tom Hanks back “who dis.”