The Sampler - Interviews: Christina Amini

May Interview: Before the Mortgage

Recently it was my pleasure to have a little IM Interview with former Sampler contributor and now super-fancy book editor/author Christina Amini of Before the Mortgage! It's a pretty amazing and inspiring little jump from zine to going on a book tour. Totally rad, and just check out this wicked blurbage:

Before the Mortgage: Real Stories of Brazen Loves, Broken Leases, and the Perplexing Pursuit of Adulthood is a collection of smart, funny essays on life post-college but pre-picket fence, covering everything from heinous temp jobs to "fake dating" to moving back in with your parents. The contributors include FOUND magazine's Davy Rothbart, ReadyMade magazine's Shoshana Berger, TIME magazine's Joel Stein, and My Girl star Anna Chlumsky, among others.

hello, Christina Amini! How are you today!?

I'm doing great, thank you! Am recovering from the west coast tour of Before the Mortgage and gearing up for our New York reading!

wicked sweet! Before the Mortgage is now a book (hence the book tour) but once upon a time it was a zine. May I ask how the zine began?

Sure, my friend Rachel and I started the zine Before the Mortgage about five years ago, after we left our 1st real jobs in NYC, and then we moved back to our hometowns... and into our parents' houses. We wrote essays back and forth -- it was our way of making sense of what to do, who to love, how to be... basically trying to make sense of adulthood. I guess it wasn't like what we expected. We wrote about moving back in with the 'rents, coaching a soccer team, working some weird jobs -- at one point, Rachel had a paper route.

Rachel and Christina

when you were writing your essays back then... did you specifically have "zine" in mind? how did you get the idea to self-publish your writings?

Good question. We started off by writing personal essays and just sharing them back and forth, helping each other edit them. (Meanwhile: Rachel had just started interning at Minnesota Monthly magazine and I had just started working at Chronicle Books, so we were both working on our editing skills...) Then in the summer of 2001, Rachel came to visit California. On our way home from the airport, we decided that we needed to start a zine. Inspired by publications like To-Do List magazine, Beer Frame, and ReadyMade, we thought maybe it was time to collect some of our own work. And all three of those people, Sasha Cagen of To-Do List, Paul Lukas of Beer Frame, and Shoshana Berger of ReadyMade were really encouraging of us starting. We wanted to make it a literary zine. So the first issue was laid out in Word and photocopied in Rachel's parents' basement.

how did you first get word out about your zine? how did you distribute it? It looks like you had some awesome friends in publishing, did they give you some super advice?!

I think that some of the best advice that we got was from Paul Lukas: Send out the zine to people you like -- basically saying, "I like what you do; here's what I do." In fact, that's how we got in contact with TDL, BF, and RM -- we liked those publications, so we wrote to the editors. And now, over time, we've become friends with them, which is really nice. We sent the zine to our friends and heroes, and the amazing thing was, we got a lot of great responses. Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket sent $20, telling us to spend it on wine--that it helped him when he was working on his zine. We got a distributor (Desert Moon, now defunct) that sold to independent bookstores, and ended up in Tower Records. We met a guy recently who came across the zine in a youth hostel in Bozeman.

when did you start thinking that the zine could become a book?!

We wrote a tiny article in ReadyMade about making shrinky dink accoutrements. Our bio said something about Before the Mortgage, an agent spotted it, and subscribed to the zine! (Yes, we were really lucky. Also, cuz the agent rules.) She asked if we had any book-length works. We wrote back immediately, saying, "Yes, yes, we have book length works," and then called each other and said, "Wait, what are they?!" So we proposed a book of Before the Mortgage. And she was all for it. At that point we sought out our favorite young writers -- Davy Rothbart from Found, Shoshana Berger from ReadyMade, Meghan Daum (author of My Misspent Youth, which btw, I totally recommend) and asked them to contribute.

wow... how quickly did all of this happen? could you give a timeline from essays to zine to article to agent to actually working on the book?

Sure. We started the zine in 2001; the agent spotted the zine in 2002. We gathered the contributors and wrote the proposal in 2003-4, and then got a deal with Simon Spotlight Entertainment in 2005. Six months later, we turned in a final manuscript, and the book came out this April. One year exactly from contract to finished book -- which is really fast for the book publishing business. But we wanted it to come out in time for graduation.

could you maybe sum up before the mortgage in a haiku? we like haiku in Samplerland.

5, 7, 5 ?

yep!

fax machine intern
roommate borrowed the car keys
before the mortgage...

This is addictive, I want to do more.

okay

now, in haiku, please sum up your experience of going from zine to book...

pamphlet staplebound
verizon to verizon
now a finished book

now, in haiku, please tell us the essential items necessary for living a life before the mortgage.

hilarious . . . okay, here goes: friends that like laughing
pub trans and no picket fence
full roll of t.p.

ah yes. how much closer to the mortgage are you now? is it on the horizon? will there ever be a mortgage?

Let's see. I'm not really closer to the mortgage. But I think that through doing Before the Mortgage, I did find out what I like doing -- writing, editing -- and feel more confident with that.

will there be more before the mortgage books? before the mortgage is a looonnnngggg time . . .

I hope so! in fact, in doing the book tour -- we've been asked by audience peeps, "Wait, is this going to be in the next book?" So hell, I'll just say yes. There ARE going to be more iterations of BTM; I think that there's more to say. And I love working with my friend Rachel.

I think there's definitely more to say, and I think that there are only going to be more and more people in the same sort of limbo...

It's been really fun to see how this is resonating with people -- there are a lot of other people like us, who are reinventing what it means to be an adult.

Rachel and Christina get their sign on!

what's your favorite part of being a fancy author on a book tour?! are there book-tour groupies?

We do have someone who is our self-proclaimed Number 1 fan. She got into a car accident on the way to our reading at Stanford AND STILL CAME, even though she was also coming to our SF reading the next night.

I would call that a number one fan. that's hardcore

I think that my favorite part of being on a book tour was visiting our friends and meeting people in different cities. The last time I went to LA, I was Disneyland age, so it was fun to hang out there as an adult. Oh, and meeting LA Times columnists/BTM contributors Meghan Daum and Joel Stein. AND two people came to our LA reading as their first date! And then came out to dinner/drinks with us afterwards and got "date coached" by Meghan and Joel. It was awesome.

that is so cute!

Oh, can I say one other highlight? It was hearing all of the pieces read aloud and hearing the audience laugh with the readers. It's such a different experience, after having edited them and read them to myself so many times.

a happy audience at A Clean, Well-Lighted Place for Books

When you were approaching people with whom you weren't already friends for essays for the book, was it weird?! was it intimidating? did they feel you right away?

Maybe a little intimidating, but not weird. Basically, we sought out our favorite young writers, people who we considered BTM generation heroes. We described the project and why we thought that they'd be a match for it, then asked them if they'd be interested. Some people were harder to track down than others. Like for Sarah Vowell of This American Life, we went through her editor. But you know, one thing I've really learned from doing this book, is that it's worth it to try and seek out the people whose work you admire (in whatever realm). People actually WILL write back.

that's so cool.

Seriously, the book was a good excuse to get in touch with people whose work I like. And now they're part of the book! And they're really nice, good people.

can I just tell people I'm working on a book and then we can go out and have tea?

totally!

rock

if there were one piece of advice you could give to someone btm and looking to find his/her way.... what would it be, in haiku?

follow what you like
it will only lead to more
good things good people

aaw, yay. thank you so much for taking the time to talk to the Sampler, Christina!

of course! it's been a pleasure!