Hi there! The Memo (June 2024) is my first novel, which was co-written with my dear friend Lauren Mechling during the darkest days of the pandemic. It centers on a woman named Jenny Green who, like so many of us, has long suspected that she never got the memo. At her 15th college reunion, those suspicions are confirmed, big time. Everyone she knows is killing the game, except for her. But all is not lost! With the help of an unorthodox career counselor, Jenny has the opportunity to undo her biggest mistakes and uplevel her existence by the time she locks into adulthood at 36. And you’ll never guess what happens next…
I have been writing for most of my career for newspapers and magazines. I always dreamed of digging into a longer, more ambitious book project but lacked the time (and, let's face it, the discipline) to pull it off. After several false starts, I put down my book ideas and outlines, too frustrated to even look at them again. But Lauren and I were talking one day and we had this idea, a proposition, really: What if “getting the memo” wasn’t a mere colloquialism? What if there were a group of people–not us!–who actually got the memo? We couldn't stop thinking about it. At the time, we were both freelancers with not as much work as we’d like, stuck at home overseeing remote schooling for our kids and trying to understand how seemingly everybody we knew had time to bake bread, do 500 Peloton workouts and try new skincare products. We’d worked hard, went to good schools and tried to make all the right moves, yet there we were, drifting along in a memoless tide. What if there was a magical memo that could help us optimize our lives? What would it tell us?
Lauren was convinced that this idea had the makings of a novel, and we decided to write it together. If nothing else, it would be a creative project to help us endure through these challenging times. I was skeptical. “I've never written a novel before,” I told her. “Don't worry! I'll help you!” she said. Lauren has written a zillion books–from YA to literary fiction–and she promised me that we could collaborate on an outline and then have take turns at the keyboard. We would hold each other accountable. And we did, catching up every day to review the most recent additions. She said it would be fun. And it was.
The most common question we are asked is, how do you write a book with someone else? My answer: How do you not? Having a writing partner is having a fellow creator as well as a therapist, seeing eye dog and accountant (I’m the latter). It’s also, in a way, having a co-parent, with the book as our baby. Lauren and I may have been more than two hours away from each other during the pandemic, but we had a shared document that we would work from every day, sometimes simultaneously. Later, when we were editing the manuscript, I was living in Berlin, so we were collaborating across the Atlantic. (We’d often chat inside of the doc - “HELLO LAUREN!” I’d write when I saw her lurking.) As mutual admirers of each other’s humor and style, we trusted each other to make changes that would benefit the work as a whole. In the end, the writing was a really delightful–and funny–process. That said, we appreciate that it’s a rare thing to be able to work in this way and remain friends, which, miraculously, we did.
When I’m not writing, I read pretty much anything I can get my hands on. My tastes range from erotic thrillers to Icelandic sagas and, of course, time-travel novels–Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse Five is my favorite. We wrote a lot of different versions of The Memo (one of them involved a horny Welsh sheep farmer; don’t ask), but eventually the story that The Memo wanted to be revealed itself to us. We hope that the fun we had writing it travels to you when you read it, and that it helps those who might have wondered if they, too, didn’t get the memo feel better about their life choices. If you want to get in touch and tell me what your magic memo would have advised you, or just say hello, I’m on Instagram and Threads at @racheldodes.
Take care and happy reading!
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