If you haven’t yet heard, I’m reinventing myself. New novel, new name, new social media profile. Publishing loves a debut, so it’s fun to put on the world’s least effective disguise and get to be one again, this time with lower expectations and a better understanding of the industry. Not like I’m actually pretending to be someone different—it’s an open secret that Margaux Eliot and I are one and the same. The nom de plume is less about my own anonymity, and more about signaling to readers that I contain multitudes, and they publish under different names.
When I started writing HONEYMOON STAGE, it felt to me like a book that fit on the shelf with all my others. Women constrained by societal expectations! Underlying darkness/mystery! Messy relationships! After reading the first seventy-five or so pages that I sent her, my agent slipped in the idea of publishing under a pen name. “Maybe!” I said, aka absolutely not. Why shouldn’t I be able to go from a conceptual novel about baroque musicians to a send up of early 2000s MTV? After all, I had already jumped from dark fairy tale to contemporary ghost story to 1717. Surely anyone who reads me knows I am down for it all, so long as it’s appropriately maudlin and lands at about a 3.2 on Goodreads.
I still think HONEYMOON STAGE is related to the books I’ve published under my own name, and maybe there’s a world in which I held fast to my initial skepticism and leaned into a Spooky Speculative Literary Reality TV book. That world is not the one we live in. As is always the case, my agent was right. Taking on a new name let me become, in a way, a new writer. When we sold the novel and my editor wanted to highlight what made the book commercial, becoming Margaux Eliot helped me say goodbye to some of the things that might belong in a trademarked Julia Fine book, but did not belong in this one. Julia Fine might not write sexy banter, but Margaux Eliot could! A Julia Fine novel might finish with a reader wanting to throw the book across the room, but Margaux Eliot understood a happy ending.
Is Margaux my true self? I suspect that while promoting this book I’ll come across far less “wow you’re so much more normal than I expected”-type comments. I spent my entire headshot session blabbing to Collin Quinn Rice (headshot GENIUS if you’re Chicago-based) about Nick and Jessica and how they had to rewatch Newlyweds and give Jess the justice deserves. I’ve focused my professional energy on what matters most: figuring out which zodiac signs align with which 2000s pop princesses. This is just as much me as the gal whose google search history would scare you (“what did they do with blood from bloodletting in 1700s?” “what happens when a newborn has frostbite?”). I like it dark, and then sometimes I like it light.
The logistics of the pen name are a little bit weird. Do I use my own headshot? What should I call myself? Am I starting from scratch? But there is also something lovely and freeing about unleashing my Margaux side: no monsters but the ones we made of young women in the early 2000s, no fantasy but my imagined rockstar boyfriend. Maybe this time instead of ‘darkly funny’ the blurbs will just say ‘funny’? I guess that remains to be seen.
If any of this sounds good to you, you can find Margaux online, and you can preorder her debut today.
New Feature: 2000s throwback
In researching and writing HONEYMOON STAGE I did a deep dive into Y2K culture, and I’d be remiss in not sharing some of my best finds/memories. Hence this new newsletter feature. Enjoy!
Just take the bottle, dip it and shaaaaake it (Baby Bottle Pop commercial, 2000)
This 15-second spot lives in my head, as the kids say, rent-free. Is it the lowkey middle school girl bullying? The objectively bad and yet impossible to de-earworm jingle? The haircuts, the shirts? Are these children at a house party in a…camper van? An overcrowded diner after the final performance of their school play?
Why is this product still available, and should I have it at my launch event?
xoxo, Julia Margaux Fine Eliot (a debut!!!)
Very excited about the new name and the new book, with love for your other name and books! xo