Haili Blassingame

How did you feel about it?

I, how did you feel?

I asked you first.

I know, but I don't know.

I don't know either.

You wanted to talk about it, so you must know.

It's not that, it's not simple like that, he paused.

Did you tell Jay?

No.

Thank you.

I mean, I think my goal with this wasn't

to sort of wade into the political discourse, my goal was almost archival.

I was thinking about the fact that we are living in a singular moment in history.

And obviously there's always something going on in history, but really to be in the nation's capital

And at this point, 2025, where the book takes place, it was, I don't want to use the word unprecedented, but we understood that we were living history as it happens.

I'm not sure that it's always like that for people when they're living.

And I do think the work of fiction

is archival is to be able to have people look back into not just know in a dry historical sense what happened, but how people were living.

And I think because that was my goal, I didn't have to stand on a soapbox.

I just captured what it felt like to be in DC.