Books
The longtime YA author makes the leap to adult fiction with her new queer romance novel.
The first time I ever boughta romance about two girlsat a bookstore,Nina LaCours namewas on the spine.
Books like that werent easy to come by in 2014.
How does it feel for you to finally usher this baby,Yerba Buena, out into the world?
Terrifying and also very good and right.
I started working on this book when I was 20.
It’s been a very long evolution.
I love that the main characters represent two very different types of lost girl.
Is that something that you were drawn to when writing it?
So much of so many people’s experiences in their 20s is this quest, right?
A quest to understand ourselves.
That’s when we’re deciding, where do we want to live?
All of those adult choices first land on us in that decade.
I was thinking about how the threads of grief come up again and again in your books.
It’s always been what I’m drawn to.
Or knowing what to do next.
Some sort of area where it feels okay to say goodbye to them for a little while.
That was a real gift of writing about slightly older characters.
One of the things I love is you have this balance of lushness and restraint in your writing.
How did you hone that part of your craft?
I didn’t know and I was just consumed with self-doubt over it.
Then I realized I just needed to write in my own voice.
What I teach people over and over and over again [is] just trusting your own voice.
It’s going to be fine.
I think that’s such a beautifully confident part of your craft, that you trust the reader.
It’s one of my favorite things.
Writing is so fun.
Don’t you find that?
Then we’re able to rely on these things.
What is special and singular about writing a love story between two women, for you?
That is the person I want to be with."
It took a while for that to happen, but it was just that sure.
I wanted to create that.
That was just really beautiful.
We met when I was 19 years old.
I wanted to bring that in.
I don’t know if that’s the best answer to your question.
What a question, Casey.
Well, I will start with the disclaimer that my wife is the cocktail maker…. How about this?
I’ll choose that because it has the delicious botanical gin notes but it’s brown in color.
I like that, I like a cocktail that has some color to it.
I would choose that because it’s both botanical and moody.
It’s just a shot of gin?
Are you going to add anything else?
I love a cocktail that has tea, some sort of tea in it.
That sounds really good.
I think that also we would need some sort of beautiful garnish, of course.
As in the book, something unexpected.
Maybe I’m seeing something, like a little sprig of something that has a little flowering element.
We have a little sidewalk garden, because we live in San Francisco.
That has been really lovely.
Let’s just throw that in there.
Lets put some yerba buena in it, too.
This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.
This article was originally published onJune 13, 2022
