As she releases her new book, Give Me Danger, the author opens up about writing through personal struggles, the financial reality of being a modern-day creative and the importance of going out
Sometimes you can absolutely tell when a book is written by an agoraphobic nerd who has settled into a dull life of home comforts. No offence to these authors, truly, but their work doesn’t speak to me. Thankfully, Dazed 100 alumni Tea Hačić-Vlahović is here to provide the good time girls with their deserved reading material: perfect prose for when you’re trying to avoid eye contact on the tube on the way to a party.
Croatian-born, previously LA-based and now residing in Milan, Hačić-Vlahović’s sharp writing perfectly captures her cool city girl protagonists. Her debut dark comedy novel, Life of the Party, follows Mia’s debauched antics in the world of Milanese fashion nightlife. Set in the 2000s, A Cigarette Lit Backwards tells the story of young punk Kat as she seeks acceptance in her local underground scene. Now, in her heartbreakingly hilarious latest offering, Give Me Danger, Val unravels under the weight of grief and career expectations.
The story will be deeply relatable for anyone who’s spent a large part of their career trying to infiltrate creative industry circles only to realise that they’re rife with self-important clout chasers. It’s no surprise to learn that the protagonists of all three books are rooted in the author’s own experiences, if their similarly punchy three-letter names didn’t already give it away.
Having devoured the book in almost a single sitting, it felt incredibly swaggy to speak with a slightly under-the-weather Hačić-Vlahović, accompanied by her nurse and cutesy canine companion, Winkle. Read below as we discuss writing through personal struggles, the financial reality of being a modern-day creative and the importance of going out.
Hey Tea! Our mutual late friend and fellow party girl Eden Young put me onto your work because your writing feels like going out rather than reading.
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: I actually met her in person once; we were Tumblr besties! What we all shared in that era is really hard to describe to people who weren’t there: we had our own girl world, but it wasn’t for views, likes, clicks and attention. My first blog was anonymous, but it was about real connection! We went out to live and then later tell the real stories; it was less performative than it is now.
They’re trying to replace us with AI. We just need to keep doing our art. I think maybe we will starve to death, but it’ll be chic of us
It definitely feels like more people are going out to post about it rather than for the sake of it.
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: Yeah, it’s not fun anymore, but I don’t want to sound like an old bitch. I go out, I go to parties, I hang out with the kids and really try to stay open. But I see people taking the video or photo, posting and being like ‘OK, I’m done, time to go home and get my beauty sleep so I can do my morning shed and do my fucking content’. It’s not their fault! I don’t blame the kids; we’re just trapped in this hell.
Were you in a similar mindset while writing Give Me Danger?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: I was so miserable when I was writing this book; I was going through a really dark time. My mother tried reading [it] and said she can’t, not because of the subject matter, but how dark a period it was. I felt frustrated; I was feeling very unfulfilled by the ‘success’ that I’d had and not had, which I wanted to express through the book. I was also mourning the very real death of this editor, Giancarlo DiTrapano [founder of Tyrant Books]. The book is based on when I went to his memorial in New York after his death and I got exposed to the extreme cuntiness of the NY literary world. The main character – who is a writer – predicts her own divorce through a book she writes, and then I end up getting divorced after I finish writing this book. Really weird shit; sometimes art is powerful. Writing it served as a sort of exorcism.
I was going to ask, how much of yourself do you include in these characters? It seems like a lot!
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: My first two books were basically autobiographies, but I insist everything is fiction to protect people because I don’t want drama. My first book [Life of the Party] was all true, my second [A Cigarette Lit Backwards] a little less. This is my most fictional so far, because Val, the protagonist, is like the alternate dimension Tea.
This was also my first-ever third-person book, which was really annoying as someone who learned to write via blogging and doing articles for Vice. It was always first person, present tense: I’m going to the party, I’m sucking a dick in the bathroom. Now it’s like: ‘she was on her way to the party to do some coke in the bathroom.’
As a creative person in the city, have you ever had to pick up extra jobs to support yourself?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: I’ve worked in nightclubs, catering, everything. But the strangest one was when I was tutoring TOEFL students. I was making good money, but I was walking in there, straight from the after-party, reeking of cigarettes, trying to get through my headache and these math problems: I was basically teaching them how to cheat.
These days, I’ve got my podcast and I teach at NABA University, which I used to go to. I’m also making videos for Zalando, I’m DJing; we need a million jobs to get by these days. You can’t just get a book deal and be fine anymore. That’s also what this book is about: these crumbling industries where you climb up the ranks, where 20 years ago you would have had a company card.
Do you have any advice for people also on the hustle?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: I say don’t give up, no matter what, because they want artists to give up by making it impossible to survive. They’re trying to replace us with AI. We just need to keep doing our art. I think maybe we will starve to death, but it’ll be chic of us.
There’s a moment in the book where Val gets into Chateau Marmont in a bikini. What’s the most out there way you’ve sneaked into a party?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: I’ve told lies, dropped names, read names off the clipboard that aren’t mine (back when there were actual clipboards). Now it’s all a code on an iPad. I used to work as the door girl on fashion parties in Milan back in the day, and you had to know who was worth letting into a party. It could be a kid who lives on the street, but if he has a cool blanket over his shoulders and is chic, you let him into the party over the guy who just wants to get a table with his five girlfriends. In those days, you needed to have taste, you needed to have that skill and the stamina. Now you go to a fashion party and it’s girls shivering, hired to hold the iPad with the definitive list.
The process of writing through traumatic shit helps you process it. If you’re writing autobiographically, you see patterns in your behaviour when you write it out
There are a lot of astrology mentions in the book. What are your big three?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: Triple Sagittarius. It’s like a straight line in my chart. My mom is a scientist and she was always like, ‘I don’t believe in this, how can you?’ And I’m like, ‘Mom, read my chart, read your chart, read my sister’s chart’. And she was just like, ‘OK, I can’t explain this scientifically, but it is true!’ I don’t believe in daily horoscopes, though. How can I be having the same day as someone in Gaza, you know?
Do you think your writing process helps you not to be destructive in your daily life?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: Writing used to be one of the things that inspired me to be destructive in my early 20s, like do it for Tumblr, stay out til 10am to tell your girls about it. But you also have to be sober to write, you have to be awake and have your shit together. The process of writing through traumatic shit helps you process it. If you’re writing autobiographically, you see patterns in your behaviour when you write it out.
Do you think everyone is entitled to go a little bit insane during a grieving period?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: Absolutely, it’s the only way to get through it. I just had a divorce this past year, and it’s not a death, but you’re grieving your life and the life you thought you’d have, for that person and the world you had together. I finally understood what it’s actually like to feel like you’re losing your mind.
Your characters will be at the bar, casually dropping the most insightful takes on modern life. Do you think clubs and bars are an important space for introspection?
Tea Hačić-Vlahović: The most important spaces! We need nightclubs and bars because that’s where community is formed, where girls, gays, freaks and sluts can go and be themselves after a whole day of having to be friendly in customer service, being afreaking robot in an office or just pretending to be a good wife to somebody. I love doomscrolling and posting a thirst trap, but God, the glory of a Friday night.
Give Me Danger is out now for US audiences, and December 18 for the UK