And, together, we took the last few steps.

Acknowledgments

First and foremost, thank you to my agent Gemma, who was the warm and humorous light at the end of a long tunnel of work and worry. She not only guided me through the submission process with confidence and positivity, but also suggested key editorial changes that made the plot work. Most importantly, she liked my vibrator joke.

Thank you also to the whole team at the Bent Agency.

Another person whose incredibly insightful suggestions shaped Bad Habits for the better is my talented, collaborative, and respectful editor Natalie. She made the dreaded revision process a breeze! Thank you also to Wendy and Jane for their eagle-eyed copy-editing and creative problem-solving, and to the whole team at Penguin Random House. As a bigger Anglophile than even Mary Kate, I am thrilled to have my book published in the UK!

Thank you to my first agent, Dan, and my first editor, Elizabeth, for giving me my start in YA publishing ten years ago.

On a personal note, I am grateful to my family, friends, and teachers for their support. Most specifically, thank you to my fellow artsy folks from the Arteles Creative Center in Hämeenkyrö, Finland, where I wrote a key draft of this manuscript. As I plugged away at my 2,000 words a day, they alternately cheered me on and distracted me with naked saunas and frosty beers. Both approaches were extremely conducive to productivity. Kiitos!

An Interview with Flynn Meaney

Where did the inspiration for St Mary’s as a setting come from?

Definitely my time at the University of Notre Dame in the early 2000s: we had the wild sports fanatics, the apocalyptic snowy winters, way too many priests, and even a pair of long huggers – who always seemed to be blocking my path when I was in a bad mood. To this day I don’t know who they were, because I never saw their faces! I wonder if they’ve let go of each other by now …

Why did you choose to write a YA novel about feminism?

Students at my college actually did try to put on The Vagina Monologues, and in the end they had to perform it off-campus. I wasn’t involved, but I remember sitting in the dining hall – me, a New York fish out of water in the conservative Midwest – reading outraged letters in the college newspaper from alumni who were offended by the word vagina and thinking to myself, How ridiculous are these grumpy old dudes?