Interview: Annoying Actor Friend Discusses New Book #GRATEFUL, Why Twitter is out to Get Him/Her

Neither Laura Osnes, nor Billy Porter has loomed as large over the community in the past three years. Neither Lin-Manuel Miranda, nor Sydney Lucas has had as lasting of an impact on Broadway since 2013. Neither Laura Benanti, nor Lesli Margherita has revolutionized what it means to be a theatre celebrity as much as Annoying Actor Friend (@Actor_Friend) has since debuting on Twitter over three years ago; and he/she is about to do it again. On Cyber Monday, November 30th, 2015, the beloved internet personality releases a follow-up to the 2013 Best-Seller #SOBLESSED in the "Create Your Own Show Business Destiny" novel #GRATEFUL: EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON.

Though Actor Friend didn't start writing until January of this year, the nugget of an idea for a second book had been in the back of his/her mind since before #SOBLESSED was even released. "When I was doing the first book, I knew that I wanted to call the sequel #GRATEFUL no matter what. I didn't know what it was going to be, I just knew it was going to be called #GRATEFUL," Actor Friend admitted. "I was originally going to call it #GRATEFUL: THANK YOU TELSEY, but [redacted] came up with EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON when it became a 'pick the next action' book."

While Actor Friend's new book is very much a continuation of the first, the format is extremely unique, and pretty exciting; even if we can't use the most common description for this type of novel for legal reasons.

"The first book is about learning how to navigate the business, and the second is about being in the business and navigating it from your perspective," he/she said. "So, originally, you were just going to read about someone navigating the business. Sometime in January, that flipped. I remember I said to my intern, 'I think I want to do a 'create your own destiny book',' and she said, 'The first choice should be which class are you in Broadway High School.'"

In #SOBLESSED, Actor Friend explains how the Broadway community is almost exactly like being back in high school, with every class representing how you feel about the business at any given moment. If you were too busy #werking and never got around to reading his/her first book, Actor Friend included some CliffNotes in #GRATEFUL.

"You could pick up this book without having read the first one, and hopefully still enjoy it, but it does reflect the first book, so, I do a refresher. I say in 140 characters or less, this is what these classes are, now what are you?" Actor Friend explained. "The more I wrote this book, the more it became a sequel. There were things in there that I said, 'Oh shoot, do I have to explain this?" and I'm like, 'No, they should have read the first book!'"

In #GRATEFUL, each class in Broadway High School has its own book, and depending on the choices you make as a reader, and as the main character, you can jump back and forth between books, just like an actor's feelings for the business can change depending on whether or not he books a job, or if her show closed unexpectedly. Depending on which choices you make, you can experience over 60 different endings in #GRATEFUL, with hundreds of different choices along the way.

"Every time you open the book, it's a different experience," Actor Friend said. "In show business, you don't get to start over when you f*ck up, but in this book you do. So, you should be grateful."

However, some of the book's storylines do veer into far more absurd and serious territory.

"You're gonna die a lot," Actor Friend said. In fact, one of the Broadway High School books contains an entire Murder Mystery subplot, where the reader's character has to solve a Broadway-related murder.

Though Actor Friend started writing #GRATEFUL in January, it wasn't until July that he/she finally buckled down and started writing in earnest. And, fortunately in this case, procrastinating did have a few benefits.

"I'm thankful because Twitter's changed this entire Favorites to Likes thing, and I have all this $h!t about favorites versus retweets," Actor Friend said. "So, it's like, 'Well, $h!t, I've gotta change that and go through every single time I say it.'"

Similarly, Twitter attempted to throw a wrench into the release of #SOBLESSED as well. "What pissed me off on the first one is that, I designed the book cover in Georgia font, because that's one of the fonts they used on Twitter at the time," Actor Friend explained, "and then two weeks later they changed it to Helvetica Neue, and I was like, 'Well, sweet Jesus.'"

However, Actor Friend realizes that when your main source of material is social media, things are bound to change on an almost minute-to-minute basis. "Twitter is just out to get me," he/she said. "When you're dealing with a medium that changes every day, it's one of the many reasons I can never try to get a real publisher for a book like this; it's too of the moment. I'm looking through stuff I wrote in January, and I'm like, 'Yea, I can't have that many HONEYMOON IN VEGAS jokes.'"

In order to reflect how quickly Actor Friend's primary medium changes, the author strove to keep the story, and the humor, as up-to-date as possible.

"It is really current, I have stuff about STAR WARS VII having already come out," he/she said. "I don't liken myself to anything as good as Amy Sherman-Palladino, who wrote GILMORE GILRS, but so much of that show is reference humor. It's probably the first time I realized what my style of humor was, and it was just references left and right. Some you don't get, and some you do get. That's a lot of what (#GRATEFUL) is. It's a lot of references to things you might not get, but then on the next page, there will be something you do get."

Over the years, Actor Friend has written thousands of tweets, dozens of SMASH recaps and columns for Backstage, and now two books, but the unique challenges that a "create your own destiny" book presents still had him/her going back to the drawing board throughout the process, especially considering that the book is now over 112,000 words.

"It was half trial and error, figuring it out as I went along, and then half real outlining; like half-a$$ outlining," Actor Friend said. "I never imagined that it would be something as big as it got, but that was the four story thing; it was bound to."

Depending on how you prefer to read, the Kindle version of #GRATEFUL will be available to order from Amazon on Monday, with the hard copy being released on December 2nd. "If you want to be sure that you read everything, you're gonna want the hard copy, because you can mark it off as you go," Actor Friend said, "but it's sort of designed for ebooks, because when you're clicking around, you don't actually know how much headway you're making; you kind of just get lost in it."

Another reason that long-time Actor Friend fans will want to dive into #GRATEFUL as quickly as possible is that the author has embedded some pretty specific clues into the text about his/her real-life identity.

"This book has a very solid clue to my identity," Actor Friend said. "There is a hands-down, if you read this certain thread (in the book), it gives a definitive clue as to not necessarily who I am, but who I'm not."

To prep you to read #GRATEFUL: EVERYTHING HAPPENS FOR A REASON, Actor Friend's first book #SOBLESSED is currently on sale. Click here to purchase the ebook or paperback. And, Actor Friend said that the release day for #GRATEFUL was by no means a coincidence.

"I think it's a great Christmas present!"

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Are you going to buy #GRATEFUL on Monday? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or on Twitter @BWWMatt. If you want to follow along with my "366 in 366" articles, you can check out #BWW366in366 on Twitter.

Photo Credit: Actor Friend