Order Yesteryear if you like nice things, have good taste, or don’t want Katie to show up in the middle of the night at your house with a strongly worded remonstration.

What does it feel like to spend 10 years of your life pursuing an uncertain dream when the chances of breakthrough success are one in a million?

What does it feel like to—finally, at long last—be “the one”?

Caro Claire Burke, one-half of your favorite podcast, is publishing her debut novel this Tuesday, April 7. Yesteryear is mouthy, thrilling, important, ambitious, and, as one of my favorite reviews said, “moves like a freight train.”

Sound like anyone else you know?

Today, I finally get the opportunity to talk to caro claire burke about:

* whether publishing your debut novel is a dream come true or a nightmare

* who she was before she wrote Yesteryear

* her seemingly endless years writing clickbait for a paycheck in the content coal mines of various aggregators

* how she felt when we met 🥰

* how I felt when we met 👹

* the psychological experience of feeling like everyone’s looking at you (Professionally™️) and knowing the precise dates and times when your life’s work will be dissected for sport in public lol

* to what extent it’s fair to infer someone’s politics from their fiction (a la this piece)

* her Official Stance on separating the art from the artist (compelling tbh)

* a spoiler-frenzied discussion of the Next Great American Novel

* and a very personal, very special update for Caro