The Boy Who Never Woke

A slight digression into meta-narratives bc they are my FAVORITE THING.

So the book that was too dark for my agent to take out (in, oh…2018? 19?) is coming out in June — it’s called Photobomb.

It’s about a girl who may (or may not!) have killed her older sister to get to her older sister’s boyfriend — it’s a psychlogical thriller — and I love it wholeheartedly.

I’m really glad to be getting it out there — especially seeing as psychological thrillers are hot — and — it’s a wickedly creative book.

Lara, the protagonist, is an art student in high school, on the quest to make her therapist think she’s sane, and also to be the younges person to ever be awarded the prestigious Halleigh Scholarship for her art.

So it makes sense that I’d lean into her ‘art’ for my promo.

Cannon in the book is that she couldn’t bear to leave her journal behind when she was done with it, even though it has all of her sordid confessions — so I’ve decided to have a version of her that’s angry with me for publishing it.

Starting with this Instagram account I whipped up this morning, right here: @theboywhoneverwoke

And?

Here’s the first entry, so y’all can see:

I used AI to get/keep a consistent character, and then I hired a friend of mine who is an AI-friendly artist (they’re out there! really!) to do the scratches and make things work — I’m going to be populating that IG account with her increasingly unhinged commentary as the publication date of the book — HER therapy journal — comes out.

Like thus:

I really thought I could let it go.
I told myself it wasn’t worth the energy.
Let her have it. Let her put her name on the cover. Let her talk about it in interviews like it wasn’t mine.

But then I saw the press release.
“A powerful story about memory, healing, and the lies we tell ourselves to survive.”

Memory? Healing?
It was my fucking journal.
I didn’t write it to survive. I wrote it because I had no other place to put what happened.
Because I needed to document it somewhere that didn’t talk back.

And now it’s a product.
With a title I didn’t choose.
With her name on the spine.

So this is me talking back.
These images aren’t from 2007.
They’re from now.
I’m not posting them because I want attention.
I’m posting them because I’m tired of watching her pretend my life was a metaphor.

Look closely.
Frame by frame.
You don’t have to understand it.
You just have to admit it’s real.

I have no idea if this will work or not — I’m going to be letting my ARC team in on things, for certain — and I have aspirations of creating an AI avatar for her to begin using a Tiktok account so that she can bitch live-time about her journal having been stolen.

Here’s to hoping I pull it off! And follow Lara’s IG there, up above, if you’d like to come along for the ride!

xoxo!

Cassie