Please Call Me Ali Hazelwood — You’re My Favorite Author!

Being a non-native English fiction writer and a professor is HUGE!

I don’t own any social media accounts (besides a half-heartedly I-registered-but-never-looked-back-Twitter-account), so my first meeting with an Ali Hazelwood novel wasn’t at TikTok but in my local bookstore.

Two remaining copies of The Love Hypothesis were lying on the lower bookshelf — no big advertisement, no extra table, they just lay there in a row with other novels, patiently waiting for an interested reader. No sticker.

As I mentioned here and there in some of my stories, I am a Ph.D. student, so the short story summary on the back made me cry out in delight and, against all reason (I’ve already had a few books on my arm), I took the book and bought it.

It was one of those books that immediately triggered a crush, and you couldn’t wait to get home, unpack it, pull it onto the sofa, and directly read it cover to cover.

And contrary to what they say about one-night stands — it was awesome!

The characters of all your books are so well drawn that I felt like I was working with them day in and day out, sitting in the lab and at the lunch table with them, crying, laughing, fucking, and trembling together in anticipation of the reviewer, supervisor, love-interest, or conference committee feedback.

As far as your Wikipedia entry, I read that you use a pseudonym, and I can understand that; hell, I also don’t use my name to write here – the possibility that some smart science ass will find my blogs and get unconscious because he profoundly regrets his manuscript rejection due to “the unreadable writing style that needs a complete revision“ is too risky.

(Just that you know, Mr. Reviewer, my professor calls my scientific writing style „poetic“ so at least you could have gone with this!)

Unfortunately, you’re not only living in the U.S., and I’m not, which makes visiting one of your readings nearly impossible; our research fields differ too much to certainly never meet at conferences as well.

I mean, I do flirt with Executive Functions and Emotions frequently, but I think this occasional entanglement is rather a hot affair than relationship material – which is why I’m not interested in any deeper understanding in regards to their biological needs and excretions.

(Especially because I think Executive Functions can sometimes be toxic — first, they lull you into safety, tell you it’s all about flexibility, then you recognize they just want to control you...)

Anyways, that brings me to my first big point: Do you still sleep? Eat? Cuddle your cats? Cut your nails?

As a professor and book author with so many well-written books in just a couple of years, I’m impressed with your time management and your presumably low need for sleep.

I tried to write a novel for two years, and since I started working at the university, I made significantly lower word progress than before. Identified reasons are sleep deprivation, working overtime, headache, general confusion, and puffy eyes.

As I mentioned above, I’m in love with all your protagonists, especially as no one is a computer scientist – I have to work with them too many hours per week I couldn’t endure one minute more (sorry, not sorry Dude(tte)s you’re driving me fucking crazy!).

They seem so real. They’re sexy but insecure. Physical but clumsy. Unerring but with a board in front of their head.

That's why I do constantly recommend your books to all my friends in academia, and they love them for the same obvious reasons.

Over some delicious Italian dinner, we once googled some reviews about The Love Hypothesis. You know, to bond over gossiping about negative opinions we don’t share. Just like people do.

One was a complaint about Olive and her being too insecure and “whiny“ for being a graduate student.

Oh boy, did we laugh. I almost choked on the sponge cake in my Tiramisu.

Speaking of Italian, I read you’re not a native English speaker — now I’m even more impressed (and intimidated).

Writing these phenomenal novels in your mother tongue is hard work, but writing them in a foreign language is outstanding!

I’m still struggling with bland scientific phrases, which according to some specific reviewers, must be dull and interchangeable, and you manage to conjure up outstanding scenes, sentences, jokes, facts, and multidimensional characters in a language whose sentence structure makes time and place seem unimportant.

For all these things, Ali, I admire you deeply.

So if there is any chance you stumbled across this article, feel free to call or write me.

I would love to talk to you about you’re great observation and writing skills to weave such great stories. Or about life in general.

Love, Annie

© 2023 Annie Avery. All rights reserved.

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