We chat with author Haili Blassingame about They All Fall in Love at the End, which follows Cat St. Clair who is ready for her messy love triangle era now that she’s in an open relationship. But she didn’t foresee a forbidden love triangle with the only two people who are off-limits: her boyfriend’s best friend and his girlfriend.
Hi, Haili! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
Hi readers!! I’m a December Sagittarius and a producer for the NPR program 1A. I write literary fiction about love, desire, and the decisions that feel impossible to make starring plucky, loud-mouth female protagonists of color. My debut novel is THEY ALL FALL IN LOVE AT THE END. It has a hot-pink cover that I love more than most things in this world. I’ve written a New York Times Modern Love essay about breaking up with my boyfriend and a piece in The New Republic about Kamala Harris and Gretchen Whitmer. I was in an MFA program in Creative Writing but didn’t finish. I live in Washington, D.C with my 10,000 books and no bookshelf.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I wouldn’t say I ‘discovered’ a love of writing at all, I’d say I was born with that love already inside of me. I was always writing stories, always turning them into little stapled books. Writing has been the love of my life (after my mom, obvi) as early as I can remember. My dad wanted to write a novel for decades but never ended up doing it, and so I sometimes wonder if I inherited my desire to write directly from him while in utero (If you can’t tell, I don’t understand biology).
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
- The one that made you want to become an author: The Amazing Days of Abby Hayes by Anne Mazer
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (a fellow Scribner baddie)
Your debut novel, They All Fall in Love at the End, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Chaotic, messy, heartfelt, raw, gut-punch
What can readers expect?
It’s a messy love triangle story and a challenging family drama. It’s riotously funny at times and it will force you to sit inside several big questions about love and autonomy and what we owe ourselves when that debt is in direct conflict with what we owe those we care about. It’s more political than you’re anticipating and that’s on purpose. It’s literary and plotty and fast-paced. There’s spice and softness. So: expect ‘too much.’ Expect everything. Or better yet, discard your expectations entirely.
Where did the inspiration for They All Fall in Love at the End come from?
ME AND MY OWN MESS! I was searching for a story that would explain myself and my desires to me (why did I want three boyfriends? etc) and realized I was going to have to write it. Of course, the narrative ended up going off the rails, taking on a life of its own, becoming less and less about me and much more about the questions I was asking, the confusion I was experiencing. That energy is still in the book, even though the events of it now dramatically depart from my life.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
The ending, though I won’t give it away! It’s a tricky finale. It changed several times. My editor and I wrestled (lovingly!!!) over it. But I knew exactly the feeling I wanted to leave the reader with: a kind of warm, hopeful melancholy.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
I mean the whole thing was challenging! But the greatest challenge BY FAR was figuring out how to revise the book. I’d never done that before. I thought revision meant switching sentences around, so it was truly a paradigm shift, understanding that revision is, in some ways, when the real work of becoming an author begins.
This is your debut novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
It was crazy!! I needed money badly so I wrote an essay for Modern Love that somehow actually got published and that’s how I got my wonderful agent. I worked on a failed memoir for months while I was hiding away this novel: a messy love story. I finally abandoned the memoir and ploughed full speed ahead with the novel. I drafted it in a few months, I’m a fast writer, but revising it took around three years. My agent and I went out with it to editors like two weeks before the 2024 election and then sold it the week before. I’m one of those writers with a charmed path but there were certainly challenges. I worked hard and I got lucky, lucky, lucky.
What’s next for you?
Oh GOD, so I just finished a literary time travel novel that’s part domestic drama, part second-chance romance. Basically a loose 17 Again retelling (pray it gets published!!!). Now I’m writing queer celebrity fan fiction featuring a narrator loosely based on myself and the hottest nonbinary actor on Earth. I want it to be a slender summer novel–but we’ll see what happens there.
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I’m VERY excited to read Aureole by Carole Maso. It’s a collection of erotic vignettes published in 1996. I’m currently reading Come Back in September by Darryl Pinckney detailing the author’s literary mentorship (and friendship) with Elizabeth Hardwick. I’m also slowly making my way through the latter’s canonical novel, Sleepless Nights. My friends also have some super cool books out now too like, Don’t Tell Me How It Ends by Adrienne Thurman, Homebound by Portia Elan, The Maidenheads by Benny Peterson.
