Holly Baxter | A dangerous obsession begins

1--What is the title of your latest release?

CLICKBAIT

2--What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?

Natasha is a journalist who’s just made a huge mistake, professionally and personally. It’s a mistake that cost her everything: her prestigious journalism job, her marriage, a lot of her friendships, and a great big chunk of her sanity. In self-imposed exile at the Rockaways on the edge of New York City, she now churns out clickbait stories for a tabloid obsessed with lurid tales of sex and death. Then her ex moves into the spare room — and a dangerous obsession begins.

3--How did you decide where your book was going to take place?

I always write about the place where I’m currently living, so I knew the book was going to take place in New York. But I grew up in a cold country by the sea and I wanted an atmospheric backdrop for Natasha’s breakdown that underlined the isolation she’d brought upon herself. I always wondered what it might be like to live in one of those high-rises at Rockaway Beach during the off-season. I wrote how I imagined it and then, during edits, my amazingly dedicated copy-editor suggested I take a look through Streeteasy to make sure all the details on the layout and decor were correct. 

4--Would you hang out with your protagonist in real life?

Oh, absolutely not. Natasha is a mess — more pertinently, she’s a destructive mess. Then again, she shares my dark sense of humor, so maybe I’d do it for a laugh every so often.

5--What are three words that describe your protagonist?

Low impulse control

6--What’s something you learned while writing this book?

I had a really interesting conversation with my agent and editor when I’d recently completed my first draft of the manuscript. I’ll avoid any spoilers, but basically they told me that American readers don’t like a protagonist who gets a redemptive arc without working for it. Apparently, cynical ne’er-do-wells who have stuff happen at them and then accept it are fine for European readers, but Americans like grit and proactivity. It made me think about what I owed Natasha — I needed to give her back a bit more control over her narrative. And when I did that, I realized I hadn’t been giving myself enough credit for how much control I have over my own life, either. I know that sounds very Dr. Phil, but I’m too poor for therapy so this was a revelation to me.

7--Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?

I like to keep the momentum going, but I am a perfectionist when it comes to words (not when it comes to anything else, as anyone who’s seen the state of my apartment can attest to) so I’ll often wake in the night with the realization that I used a less-than-stellar word in Chapter Three. I then go back and change it when I return to the manuscript. But I make sure I don’t get bogged down in trying to do full edits before the whole story is on the page.

8--What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?

This is probably going to sound disgusting to most people, but the real ones (Brits) know what I’m talking about: salt and vinegar chips in a sandwich.

9--Describe your writing space/office!

At this moment in time, it’s a kitchen island jammed in between my baby son’s high chair and a pile of assorted debris. I’m not fussy about where I write: I wrote sections of CLICKBAIT on my notes app on the subway, on my lap during train journeys, in hotel rooms during reporting jobs, and at home on any surface I could clear mess off. I used to be fussy about where I wrote and my “process”. Then I was given a reality check by my friend Clemence, herself an astronomically successful thriller writer, and I realized that I had to work with what I have.

10--Who is an author you admire?

I'm a huge fan of Zadie Smith. I've read everything she's ever written, and even went to see her Chaucerian play. I really admire how her prose manages to combine a deep compassion for the human condition with a wry sense of humor. Like the rest of the world, I love WHITE TEETH and ON BEAUTY — but I personally think SWING TIME is her most triumphant novel.

11--Is there a book that changed your life?

Alasdair Gray’s LANARK, which I was given by one of my dad’s girlfriends when I was younger. I use one of its more facetious lines for my epigraph in CLICKBAIT. It’s a deeply weird, wide-ranging, satirical yet emotional book that straddles multiple times, ideas and genres. I recommend it to everyone who thinks that they need to read Ulysses. Joyce is fine, but Gray is better.

12--Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published)/Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.

I was eight and a half months pregnant, and the book has been on submission for a couple of weeks. I spent those weeks obsessing so much about it and reloading my emails and checking my phone so many times that I decided I’d have to take a technological break for my own sanity. Of course, that was the day that the offer came in from HarperCollins. My poor agent had been calling and emailing me for hours before he could get hold of me. He thought I’d gone into labor! 

13--What’s your favorite genre to read? 

I love a Woman Going Through It book. I know that’s not technically a genre, but it should be. I’m talking about your Melissa Broders, your Rachel Cusks, your Ottessa Moshfeghs — stuff that gets messy and funny and unapologetic about the edges of female experience.

14--What’s your favorite movie?

Frances Ha

15--What is your favorite season?

When I lived in the UK, I would absolutely have said summer. The British summer is lovely and happens like clockwork about every five years. That’s why we all have to sit in direct sunlight and burn to a crisp when we’re on vacation. We get about five days to shore up our Vitamin D reserves for the next decade.

Now I’ve shaken off my British shackles and settled down in NYC, I’d say autumn. (I’m not quite converted enough to call it fall.) The colors, the weather, the way Americans go all-out for Halloween — I love it.

16--How do you like to celebrate your birthday?

My birthday is in January, so I have this plan every single year to go somewhere warm for it and be like: Look at me! Sunbathing in January! On my BIRTHDAY, no less! Eat your heart out, Instagram Story viewers (who mainly comprise my mom and a couple friends from work)! Except that’s never actually happened, so I guess I usually like to celebrate my birthday being bitter about the weather and complaining.

17--What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?

I absolutely devoured Alexandra Tanner’s WORRY, a book about a young woman and her sister trying to make it in NYC with a dog called Amy Klobuchar, a crappy job writing astrology predictions for a startup, a mean mom and a dad who does her Botox. It’s so darkly funny and on-point and addictive. I couldn’t stop screenshotting pages and sending them to my friends.

18--What’s your favorite type of cuisine?

I love Thai food. Red curry, green curry, drunken noodles, pad Thai, mango sticky rice — I’m obsessed with it. I had to stop allowing Natasha to order Thai food in CLICKBAIT because every time I wrote about it, I had to order some myself, and it was getting to be a very expensive habit.

19--What do you do when you have free time?

Mainly doom-scrolling on my phone and wallowing in existential dread, but sometimes, if I’m feeling really masochistic, I call one of my parents.

20--What can readers expect from you next?

I’m working on a thing-that-might-become-a-novel about a deeply weird family dynamic between a celebrity shrink and her two daughters. I don’t want to say any more and jinx it but I’m having fun with it right now.

CLICKBAIT by Holly Baxter

With the dark comedy and sharp observations of Monica Heisey and Dolly Alderton, a whip-smart and laugh-out-loud funny debut novel about a disgraced, newly divorced journalist demoted to a “clickbait” job at a Manhattan tabloid.

The first thing they tell you when you begin your training is never to become the news.

Natasha has screwed up royally. Her mistake isn’t just embarrassing, it's a breach of journalistic ethics that makes headlines and costs her a plum job reporting from London. Back in New York at thirty-five and single, divorced from a kind man she loved, she finds herself at the bottom of the media food chain—a junior reporter at a clickbait factory, rewriting sensational tabloid stories to make them just different enough to avoid lawsuits.

As if her professional fall from grace weren’t bad enough, she’s taken the money she’d saved for a down payment for a home on a charming Brooklyn block with her husband, and rashly bought a boxy apartment overlooking the gray ocean in Rockaway Beach, Queens.

Though seeing friends and family only serves to remind her of what she’s lost, things begin to pick up when her ex-boyfriend Zach moves back to New York and accepts her offer of a spare bedroom. The arrangement is strictly platonic, of course—for him. But Natasha can't help but wonder whether he might be the solution to all her problems.

As Natasha's obsession with Zach grows and her involvement in increasingly dystopian "churnalism" deepens, her worlds threaten to collide in the most cataclysmic, extremely public way.

Fantasy Urban | Romance [Harper Perennial, On Sale: August 13, 2024, Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780063375765 / eISBN: 9780063375772]