My sophomore book, SUPERFICIAL, a young adult superhero book, just released a week ago, and it was a whole different set of emotions from when my first book, DOES LOVE ALWAYS WIN?, was published.
With my first book, a couple of weeks before it was due to publish I couldn’t sleep. I had so many restless nights, worried people would hate the book or even worse, I would get canceled. This go around, I was sleeping like a baby, less worried people would despise it, and thinking, well whatever happens, happens. Or maybe I was so tired because my little toddler is so full of energy. Either way, I was way more well-rested this go around.
SUPERFICIAL was a super fun story to write and it includes so many things that I love like superheroes, museums, references to classical music, and Philadelphia. I wrote SUPERFICIAL when I was querying my first book. It first started out just as a side project, to get my mind off getting a million rejections. I didn’t expect it to get published. Superheroes are so niche, and right now people are having hardcore superhero fatigue. But once my first book got picked up, I sent SUPERFICIAL to my publisher to see if they might be interested and the editor who acquires new materials loved it!
Something else that makes this book really important to me is the main character identifies as pansexual and demisexual, just like me. It’s the first time I made a pan/demi character and it was a bit of a strange experience, but good. Growing up, I never had any queer lit available to me, so now it’s my mission to write the books I wished I could have read in high school, in hopes I’ll help someone see themselves on the page. This book I say is casually queer. There are loads of queer characters in it, but that’s not what the book is about. It’s just who they are.
The publishing business is a strange one with lots of highs and lows and I’m sure I’ll experience them now that SUPERFICIAL is published, but overall, this time around, I’m feeling pretty good. If you are interested in checking out SUPERFICIAL, you can find it here.
Diane Billas 