Kristen Felicetti: On IRL vs. Online Relationships, How to Thrive on Book Tour, Writing about Non-Traditional Families, and Her Debut Novel ‘Log Off’
In the age of highly curated social media pages where people have become synonymous with brands, it’s hard to believe anything (even so-called friendships) can exist online without trying to sell you something. Spend enough time scrolling X and you’re bound to find aging millennials waxing poetic about the olden days of the world wide web—days when the internet was a portal outside boring suburban neighborhoods where the hegemony was slowly killing young people desperate to find other freaks like them.
Kristen Felicetti’s debut novel, Log Off (Shabby Doll House, 2024), is a time machine back to that golden age of the internet. Written as a secret LiveJournal from the voice of sixteen-year-old Ellora Gao, Log Off captures the excitement and relief that comes with finding your voice and your people as a teenager. Ellora is trying to manage both the large and small trials of teenage life. She is living with her former stepfather after being abandoned by her mother; her friends are all dating each other and breaking up with each other faster than Ellora can keep track of; her friend Alice is struggling with anorexia and Ellora doesn’t know how to help; on top of all that, Ellora is one of the only Asian kids at her high school which only makes it harder to fit it. In real life, Ellora is trying to keep it altogether for the people in her life, but on the internet, she feels free to show up exactly as she is.
Log Off fills in many of the missing pieces in the growing genre of internet novels. Felicetti captures the precariousness of teen life in the early aughts without ever trivializing the human depth of the teen experience. I spoke with Kristen via email while she was on tour about her debut novel Log Off.
Shelby Hinte: It’s been cool watching the book launch of Log Off. I don’t always see indie books release with so many in-person events to launch the book. Can you talk a little bit about what it was like organizing a book tour? How much of this did you take on and how much of it did your publisher take on?
Kristen Felicetti: Lucy K Shaw, Shabby Doll House’s editor and publisher, released two books on the same day this year—one was Log Off, and the other was The Island by Oscar d’Artois, and pretty early on we decided the three of us would go on a tour. We all like traveling, organizing in-person events, and have scrappy DIY origins. I believe a great way to sell books and get others enthused about what you’re doing is by putting yourself out there, reading in different places and talking to people IRL.
Lucy did the majority of the outreach, either to venues directly or to friends who helped connect us to venues, but Oscar and I did some of it too. In the months leading up to the tour, the three of us were in daily contact, as there were a lot of other elements to coordinate. Transit, budget, where we’d stay, and while we each planned to take a few strategic days off, we mostly worked our remote day jobs throughout the tour, so we had to plan everything in consideration of the others’ schedules. We also asked local readers to join us for the majority of the events, so that was another layer of communication. It felt like a real feat when we finally had all ten locations and their details locked.
I hope I see more tours for indie books and I recommend touring with another author in general, even if it’s just doing an event or two together. There’s the obvious advantage of being able to draw on double the amount of contacts for both outreach and audience, but it’s also simply more fun and less lonely. Midway through the tour, Lucy and Oscar and I had to take a long Amtrak from Springfield, MA to Syracuse, NY to get from one reading to the next. We were having some drinks and snacks in the train’s cafe car and I just felt really happy. That train ride would have felt so different if I’d been on my own.
SH: Wild that you have been working the whole time you’ve been on tour, but I guess that is the beauty of remote jobs. If you don’t mind my asking, what kind of job do you have and how does your relationship with work influence your writing and/or writing routine?
KF: I’m the Head of Support at Substack. Supporting other writers has always been such a big part of my life, so I like having a job where I get to do that every day. And it’s nice having colleagues who care about that too, they were all very sweet and supportive when Log Off came out.
Also, having a 9-to-5 is ideal because it allows me to build a writing routine at a regularly scheduled time. I’m in Chelsea Hodson’s Morning Writing Club and knowing that I’ll always have that time each day before work feels good. In the past, I’ve stacked together part-time jobs and freelance gigs, but having multiple things at different times a week, with varying deadlines, while also often worrying about where to find the next gig, was difficult. It actually made it harder for me to define what time was my own for writing.
SH: It’s cool that you are all calling it the “Escape the Internet Tour” since Log Off is written as a Livejournal. So much of the book is about friendship and looking for connection. At one point Ellora is on AIM with Slayer and writes, “Every day I’m exhausted, trying to present my best self to the world, somebody people might like, but here I can keep it real. It’s where I can write my ugliest thoughts and know I won’t be judged.”
I feel like the internet has changed so much and a lot of what social media is, is a place where people curate themselves for consumption, but there used to (maybe?) be a time when this wasn’t as true. Do you think people can still make genuine connections online?
KF: When I started writing this novel around 2018/2019, social media definitely wasn’t a place where people could write their ugliest thoughts and not be judged, lol. It was also a peak time for Instagram influencer culture, where everyone was striving to present their best selves online, or very specific aspects of themselves that probably looked different from their day-to-day reality. Basically, everything was the opposite of what Ellora says to Slayer in 2001. Now in 2024, I think things have changed yet again, people crave more empathy and authenticity on social media, though authenticity, of course, can feel a little curated too. I doubt we’re ever going back to the wild west days of the weird early internet.
That being said, I do feel people can still make genuine connections online. I get as annoyed as anyone about how much time I spend on my phone, but so many wonderful things in my life (especially aspects of my writing life), and so many friendships, including many of the people that were part of the Escape the Internet Tour, began from connections that started online.
SH: How did Shabby Doll House end up becoming the home for Log Off?
KF: I originally pursued the traditional path that is querying agents or submitting to open submissions. There were some full manuscript requests, some personalized rejections, and mostly a lot of waiting and feeling like things were in limbo. Then, Lucy started publishing books with Shabby Doll House, after many years of publishing magazines and other literary endeavors. She knew about Log Off and was like, “Hmm, how interesting that I now have a press and you are shopping a book.” So, I sent her the manuscript, because I valued what she thought regardless. And within a week, she sent me this amazing fifteen minute voice memo talking about everything she loved in the story. It was also clear that she understood what I was doing. And so I looked around at these emails and submissions I’d been waiting on for months, and thought, what am I waiting for? Here’s a person who really gets the book, a person who is in fact actively seeking to acquire it, and she’s someone whose work I already highly respect and trust. From there, it was just a question of working things out.
SH: What’s been your favorite thing about working with Shabby Doll House?
Lucy really went to bat for my book, and for me as a writer, in countless ways, whether that was writing personalized publicity emails, the aforementioned event outreach, or talking about Log Off to every connection she has and everyone she saw on our tour (it’s also very rare that a publisher would accompany her two authors on their entire tour!). The level of dedication and commitment she has for her authors is extraordinary. We were already friends, but working together has been an incredibly rewarding collaboration that I believe has inspired us both to try more ambitious things.
I also appreciate how she, Oscar, and many people in the Shabby Doll House community share a lot of the same values that I do around books, publishing, and events. I want books to be smart but accessible, I value transparency around publishing and the publishing industry, and I like events that are welcoming, inclusive, and that inspire the attendees to do their own thing. During our tour, several people said they left our events feeling that the idea of publishing a book was more tangible or possible, or that they felt a renewed excitement for their own writing or reading series. That’s been as meaningful to me as when people have said something about Log Off itself.
SH: There’s this beautiful moment in the book where Tiff and Ellora hang out alone for the first time, and Tiff asks, “Do you ever think it’s weird that we’re Asian, but the people who raise us are white?” The girls have a long conversation about the nature of family which includes talking about Tiff being adopted and Ellora being raised by her mom’s ex-boyfriend after her mom abandoned her. It felt more reflective of how families actually are—fluid and complex—rather than that pervasive image in so much media of families as nuclear. What compelled you to push up against that traditional image in this novel?
KF: Thank you for saying that. I’m adopted and maybe that’s why I’m fascinated by the different forms families can take, as well as the different ways people define family. I like the words you used to describe how families actually are—fluid and complex. Biological nuclear families have fluidity and complexity too, of course, but with this novel any move I made to push against that traditional image felt like the smarter, more interesting choice for its story.
Here’s one example of that: while I haven’t been working on Log Off since I was an actual teenager, some of the first ideas for it began around that time. And I initially envisioned Ellora and her friends as white, even if I wasn’t, because most of the characters in the books I read at that age were. Years later, Ellora and Tiff being Asian feels important to me for a bunch of reasons, but having the family members that raise them be white, adds this other dimension to their already complicated family situations. As a writer, that’s what I always want to be doing—raising the stakes, building tension, and creating unexpected dynamics. TLDR: I like writing and reading stories that redefine what family means because it’s both narratively exciting and emotionally reflective of so many people’s lived experiences, mine included.
SH: I find this notion of initially imagining the characters as white so interesting. I’ve heard lots of writers of color (maybe most famously Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie) talk about having similar relationships with their early writing. What was the experience like of realizing you didn’t want all the characters to be white?
KF: I think most writers, when they’re first starting to write fiction, imitate what they read, and in my teenage years and early twenties, I mostly read books by white writers writing white characters, so that’s what I wrote too. Like, I’d read Jonathan Franzen and start penning my sprawling novel about a white Midwestern family, lol. But that type of thing didn’t work, less because of race, and more because I was trying to write like other authors. Then I started writing these short pieces, that when read aloud felt almost like I was performing stand-up, and those felt more authentically in my own voice. So, when I came back to writing more narrative fiction, including Log Off, I wanted to put more of myself into it more. And that coincided with a change in the literary landscape. There were more writers of color writing non-white characters, so that was now more of what I was reading, envisioning, and being inspired by too.
SH: What are some of your favorite books/stories that redefine what family means?
KF: Honestly, one of the first book series I ever read did that really well, and that’s Ann M. Martin’s The Baby-Sitters Club. More than half the baby-sitters had non-traditional families and the main character Kristy Thomas ruminates on that directly in the opening lines of one book, saying, “I’ve been thinking about families lately, wondering what makes one. Is a family really a mother, a father, and a kid or two? I hope not, because if that’s a family, then I haven’t got one.” Truly a series that was ahead of its time.
A lot of my favorites are in movies and television. My friend Tim Vienckowski (who did Log Off’s design) and I have this trope we love, that we jokingly call “charismatic yet irresponsible adult takes on a surrogate parenting role for a precocious kid while also burdening them with their adult problems.” You see it all the time, across all genres, from thrillers to fantasy to realistic drama, but some examples are: Paper Moon, Manchester by the Sea, Gloria (1980), and The Last of Us. When Tim read the book in preparation for doing the design, I was excited for him to discover I’d written a tribute to our favorite trope with Brian and Ellora.
SH: The book ends around the 9/11 attacks, and, without giving spoilers, the impact of seeing how people react online is really difficult for Ellora. Eventually she writes, “I want time away to reflect before I speak.” As a person who takes a really long time to process my thoughts and feelings into anything that can resemble an opinion, I connected with this. Do you ever feel pressure to stay relevant by having a quick take or are you comfortable in remaining quiet and reflecting even if that means you’re out of the conversation to some extent?
KF: I’m mostly comfortable with it, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I feel the external pressures occasionally. Here’s a light example: sometimes I’ll see a brilliant joke about a current event go viral, and I’ll think, damn, I wish I had the type of mind that could do that kind of thing, but I don’t.
I’m speaking very broadly here, but I think most people feel pressure to have a quick take about whatever discourse is happening online for two reasons. First, the way the media cycle brutally promotes this pressure to remain relevant. But the concept of being relevant in every moment matters much less when you zoom out and consider what I think is most creatives’ goal—to have a long artistic career. The other reason people feel pressure, especially when the conversation takes a political turn or concerns a social issue, is that most people want to be compassionate and sometimes it seems like online vocalness is the most rewarded way of showing that you care. And don’t get me wrong, I think there are moments where speaking up about something online is important, but it’s not the only way to show you care. You could be deeply reflecting, having important offline conversations, or maybe taking an action that you don’t feel the need to be performative about, and that’s just as meaningful.
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Kristen Felicetti is a writer based in Rochester, NY. For over a decade, she edited the literary magazine The Bushwick Review. Log Off is her debut novel.
