✿ The world's worst kept secret is out! ✿
𑁍 we can finally stop baiting you 𑁍
But only for our SYSCA supporters right now…
Holy SHIT angels, this has been a LONG time coming. We’ve been frustratingly baiting you, day in and day out, telling you that we’re working on SOMETHING, moving across the WORLD to chase down SOMETHING, and we can finally tell you, that something is…
✿OUR BOOK: MAKE IT MAKE SENSE✿
One day, over a year ago now, Bel and I were sitting in the coffee shop down the road from our office when she told me it was her dream to write a book. She’d been writing for SYSCA for a few months at this stage, chronicling the fucked up modern experience in a way that seemed to hit a nerve with us all, and I instantly knew this was a book I’d kill to read. Even better, I thought - what if we could do it… together? Crazy, I know. But if running Shit You Should Care About has taught me one thing, it’s that crazier things have happened, so we got to work.
Insert here a supercut of a year of early mornings, late nights, hiding this huge thing from our friends and families and bosses, taking phone calls from Sydney to New Zealand to the UK to whatever country I was in at the time, meetings with agents and publishers, and endless hours on Google Docs. Pause on the moment Bel asked me if we should move to Lisbon to do this, and press play again as I say to her “Why the hell not?”
And now that we’re here, and FINALLY getting to tell you about it, I guess you’re wondering what it’s about?
First of all, what this book is not:
a book about how to read the news
a book about getting famous on the internet
a book about dancing like no one’s watching while the world’s on fire
What this book is:
We’re calling Make It Make Sense a ‘collage.’ It’s a mix of cultural analysis, anecdotes, personal essays and poems, interplayed like a conversation between friends - because that’s what it is. You should be able to pick it up, read something that will make you laugh or cry or punch you in the gut, and then put it down until you’re ready for your next hit. From introducing new words for things that we’re all feeling but don’t know how to describe (hi phoenixing!) to real-life anecdotes of being young and ambitious and pressed up against the glass ceiling that still exists despite our best 2010 Girlbossing, how not to rob ourselves of joy, what happens when you lose someone you love, and how all of this is intrinsically bound up with the way the world’s working around us - this book is going to be the bedside table essential that you’re going to want to give everyone in your life who wants to feel less alone in whatever shit they’re dealing with.
But mostly, when everything these days feels like it's whooshing away in an endless scroll, we want Make It Make Sense to be something real and permanent, that will hold the answers (or questions) to what to do with all these big feelings.
~ A special mention to our Bookies, from Bel ~
Bookies! Argh! We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again, and we’ll say it until this thing comes out as a real-life thing to be read in real-life hands — we honestly couldn’t be here doing this without you.
When we launched our Book Club (nearly six months ago? Can you believe that?! Life’s a movie) we wanted to see whether or not books were something the SYSCA supporting angels cared about (coz we definitely did), and it’s become the cutest place on the internet.
Your bookshelves, fave covers, the BOOK EXCHANGE, the hours-long LOL threads we’ve had about which celebrity would play characters in a movie — I just feel like life can feel like a really lonely place sometimes until you have these spaces. When I think about it, it’s the same feeling we want to create with the book. Except this time, one you can hold in your hands and pass between friends when they’re going through times where they’re not so sure.
We want you to feel the essential part in writing this that you are, and help us write the book we wish we had. <3
The details!
Make It Make Sense is going to be released on July 18th, 2024
The cover is yet to be revealed, so sit tight for that!
We love you!
Lots and lots of love from your new… author crushes?
This is awesome!! Congrats! Is it only for kindle reading (as per Amazon) or is paperback available? Also will it be available for US?
This is soooooo cool, I love it!!! I’m so insanely happy and proud of you women, and to be part of this - especially because I joined sysca supporters for the bookclub in particular 🥳 it was the tipping point in convincing me to support the media I love! Everything else has been a fun bonus, and the idea of getting to hold a piece of SYSCA in my hands, to share with friends, is so super cool. Love that for you (and for us!!!)