Katie Arnoldi: Kickass Writer and Friend

I always read.  Voraciously. Out of all those hundreds and hundreds of book (probably more – and, by the way, I read everything from the classics to young adult and sci-fi, I ain’t no literary snot)…out of all thosethere are countless ones I don’t remember reading…and there are a very select few I’ll never forget.  One of them was Chemical Pink.  I distinctly remember the moment I finished it.  I closed it and thought “If stuff like this is being written, I want to be a writer.”  It was so gutsy and enthralling.  My biggest complaint about literary writing is that sometimes it is so boring.  I’m like, wow, nice structure, well-developed plot and characters…and I don’t feel a damn thing.  I’m bored outta my mind.  But this book…well, you just gotta see for yourself.  Fearless.

Turns out, the lady who wrote it is the same way.

Years later, when I met my agent, he asked if I’d read Chemical Pink.  I told him I loved it.  Then he said his client Katie was the writer…and since I was moving to LA, would I like to meet her?

I was like, are you fucking kidding me?

Maybe it was karma.

I met Katie last August.  We’d go walking on the beach.  I’d moan and bitch about the two miles and how much I hated to exercise. Now, a year later,  I just got back from a 23 mile hike through the Sierra Mountains with her. I’m so sore my husband had to carry me upstairs yesterday.  It was worth it.

It was, without a doubt, one of the best experiences of my life.  Not just because I did something I never imagined myself capable of doing, but because I was with someone I adore and love – someone as weird and fucked-up as me – and someone I feel so lucky to have in my life.  I don’t think you need a billion friends, just a few who really get you, who embrace you despite all your faults and idiosyncrasies…and Katie is that to me.

Katie brings out the best in people.  If you told me last August I’d actually hike, or take a shit in the woods, or sleep on a rock by a waterfall, or publish a novel for that matter…I’d have laughed at you.  But Katie believed I could… and made me believe too.  She also believed in my book.  She said it would be published.  She said, even before it got published, that I was a already a writer and should call myself one.  And I did, even though I didn’t believe her.

Now I believe her.

I am a writer.  I am a writer who can hike into the mountains and quit smoking and go upside down on a pole and put all my weird disturbing innermost thoughts on display in a blog for the world to see and judge.

Not that it doesn’t scare me, all this stuff.  I still get scared.  But I don’t let it stop me from trying…and that is because I have such an amazing friend by my side, believing in me even when I don’t quite believe in myself…thank you, Katie.  I love you.

PS HER NEW BOOK, POINT DUME, COMES OUT IN MAY.  YOU MUST READ IT.  LOOK AT HER AMAZING WEBSITE www.katiearnoldi.com.  SHE IS SO HARDCORE KICKASS TALENTED AND COOL.