The Vent with Talia Tucker and SOLO STAN
In Which the Author Comes Aboard to Chat About Her New Book, Social Media Woes, and Accidentally Becoming a Matchmaker 📚
Have you ever wondered if you might have been the force behind someone else’s meet-cute? That just might have happened to this week’s guest, Talia Tucker, who explains more as she describes the origins of her latest novel, SOLO STAN (out now!). Plus, she vents about social media, and boy howdy do I think so many of us can relate. Here we go!
Jason June (JJ): When you started your writing journey, what was the biggest frustration you encountered as you tried to find an agent and/or went on sub to editors for the first time that you wish you could have vented about?
Talia Tucker (TT): Initially, it was the lack of information. When I started querying my first project, it was hard to even know where to start unless you knew people or were extremely active on Twitter. I’m chronically online and extremely resourceful, but it still took a lot of digging and asking strangers for help to figure out how to write a query, which agents to query, how to avoid shmagents, etc. There was just so much I didn’t know. I didn’t really understand how polished manuscripts needed to be at that stage, how short query letters should actually be, the importance of strong comps, and so many other things. Looking back, there are certainly several queries I wish I could unsend.
JJ: How about after you got your first book deal and continued on to publish multiple books? How did your frustrations (if you had any) change, and what would you have vented about or did vent about to author friends?
TT: SOCIAL MEDIA. It’s become the bane of my existence. If I wasn’t an author, I’d go dark and just stealth scroll on TikTok like everyone else.
Fun fact: I majored in communications in college. My first few jobs out of school were in social media marketing, which I absolutely hated. There was no playbook because social media was new, so it was a lot of throwing things at a wall and seeing what stuck. Being neurospicy, I probably just needed more structure. I quit and went to grad school with hopes of pursuing a law degree afterwards. But then I became very disillusioned with the idea. I was entering my late 20s and getting increasingly nervous that I hadn’t started a career yet. Law school would’ve just pushed that out another three years or more.
After grad school, I was pretty aimless, despite going into it with a solid plan. I decided to take a break and travel a little. I had planned to go for only a few weeks, but it turned into about four months. My best friend and I ended up traveling all over Europe together while I was having this quarter-life crisis. One evening while I was complaining about my champagne problems while sipping Cava (literal champagne), she turned to me and so simply said, “You like writing, don’t you? Why don’t you write?”
I’m not even kidding when I say that was the first time the idea had even occurred to me. Writing wasn’t necessarily a passion of mine. It was just something I did. Something I enjoyed. More of a compulsion than anything. If I’m the main character of my own life (which I hope I am), I think at that point I’d been treating writing like the second male lead. Fortunately, in this story, we do end up together. After I got my agent and began working with my editor on my debut, Rules for Rule Breaking, I felt like I’d finally found a career that I not only could tolerate but liked (dare I say loved).
You can just imagine my horror when I realized that being an author also means being your own marketing manager. So here I am today, with more student loan debt and now-obsolete knowledge from a decade-old degree, doing social media marketing again.
JJ: Tell us about your latest book! And (I bet you know where this is going) what’s the biggest vent you’ve got about the process of creating this novel?
TT: My latest book, Solo Stan, releases June 10, 2025. Solo Stan is a queer YA romance about two solo concertgoers and unwitting seatmates who, when the show is abruptly cut short, embark on an unforgettable North Carolina summer night together, discovering how opposites can attract under the right circumstances.
The idea came about when I went to an Agust D concert a few years ago. For those unfamiliar with K-pop, Agust D is also known as SUGA or Min Yoongi in the group BTS. The morning of the concert, I decided I wanted to sit closer (because, you know... Yoongi), so I posted my tickets for sale. Two separate people bought them, and I knew from how the seats were situated that they were both going alone. I became an author OBSESSED. Where are they now? Are they dating? Best friends? Married? Archenemies?
As for my biggest vent about this book, I was really adamant about keeping my original release date. But it took a while to get an idea approved. I had one I really wanted to write, but my publisher wasn’t feeling it. Around that time, is when I went to the Agust D concert, so I had that idea bouncing around in my head. I was getting desperate since I had no other ideas, so I floated it past my publisher, and they loved it. I had planned to write it as a K-pop book, but it didn’t feel right anymore, especially since I wanted to give one of my side characters from my first book their own story. I ended up adapting the idea to fit Dakarai better.
Once the idea was approved, the timeline was tight if I wanted to keep the summer 2025 release. Otherwise, it would have been delayed by almost a year. That would have meant two things: I wouldn’t be paid, and I’d have to keep sitting on a book I wrote back in 2022 because of the option clause in my contract. I wrote Solo Stan in just a few months, and I won’t sugarcoat it—it was really hard. In the future, if I have a multi-book deal again, I’ll take the extra time, even if it means the release gets pushed.
Side note: The book I mentioned that I wrote in 2022 was released from the option early this year and ended up selling almost immediately. It’s called GHOSTED, and it’ll be released in fall 2026.
For those interested:
GHOSTED follows an 18-year-old boarding school student with a bad attitude, worse manners, and a sleep paralysis demon named Steve, who finds herself ghosted by Some Guy she meets late one night at her favorite food truck. Armed with blackmail-worthy intel and more spite than should fit into any single body, she decides to ghost him right back—literally—by scaring him so profoundly (with assistance from a cute girl from across the quad) that he'll never set foot on campus again.
JJ: Any words of wisdom you have for writers whether they are at the beginning of their journey or multi-published?
TT: I rambled a lot in the last few answers, so I’ll keep this one short. The best advice I can give to authors is to lean into your communities. The friendships I’ve made with fellow authors are some of my most valued relationships. Without them, I wouldn’t know half as much and probably wouldn’t want to continue in this chaotic industry.
JJ: Thanks so much for joining us aboard the Ventorship, Talia! Author-passengers, read below for more info about Talia and SOLO STAN!
About SOLO STAN
From the author of Rules for Rule Breaking comes a queer YA romance about two solo concertgoers and unwitting seatmates who, when the show is abruptly cut short, embark on an unforgettable North Carolina summer night together, discovering how opposites can attract under the right circumstances.
Dakarai (Kai) Barbier was supposed to be at CYPHR's sold-out show with his best friends. Instead, he finds himself going solo, reeling from the news that they've decided to accelerate the next chapter of their lives, leaving him alone the summer after high school graduation.
Meanwhile, Elias Davis has just been sent from New York City to North Carolina to live with his uncle after a last-straw fistfight. Stuck in a town he doesn't want to be in, and without knowing a soul his own age, he buys a single ticket to CYPHR's Raleigh show.
When a sudden blackout ends the show early, forcing these unwitting seatmates back onto the streets of Raleigh, they are faced with a choice: get on the bus and head home or take a chance on each other. They might have arrived alone, but will they be leaving together?
About Talia Tucker
Talia Tucker (she/her) is a young adult author who has spent her life investigating how identities shift and change between geographies, time, and cultures. Her Jamaican and Korean heritages inspire her to build worlds highlighting multiracial, queer, and neurodivergent characters of color within narratives that emphasize joy, something not typically centered in marginalized stories. She enjoys writing about messy women, soft boys, family, food, and trying to navigate the world as a child of multiple cultures. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram @taliatuck and on her website www.talia-tucker.com.
Authors, the Ventorship is looking for traditionally published writers to be featured with their latest book release in a future edition of The Vent! Email me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: THE VENT to let me know you’re interested. All you’ll need to be featured are answers to the same four questions asked above, as well as an author bio, cover image, and book description.
If you’d like to vent about anything author/writing related, write to me at heyjasonjune@gmail.com with the subject: VENTORSHIP. I’ll give you my take in a post, and we’ll crowdsource author opinions in the comments. You’ll remain anonymous, and any haters will be thrown overboard. Ultimately, I think you’re going to be buoyed up by author love and support as we realize we really are all in the same boat 🛳️