Erika Turner had just gotten off work. After a full day at her new job at a publishing company, she hopped on a train to her Brooklyn apartment, opened up an empty note on her phone and started her first novel.
As the city lights zoomed by, Turner wrote down ideas that would shape her debut young adult novel: a Black, queer teenage girl finding her place in the world, a mother struggling to accept her daughter, a teenager at the intersection of queerness and religion.
The details were muddy, but the themes were loud and clear, like the chugging of the G train Turner sat on that fall night. So was the title: “And Other Mistakes.”
Six years and two cities later, Turner, 32, released her labor of love into the world at The Hangout in Long Beach on Valentine’s night.
“It feels amazingly scary and scarily amazing. It’s great,” Turner pauses. “…Yeah, it’s great, but also weird. You know, with it being my first book, I especially think there’s so much of myself in it as well and it’s interesting to kind of present yourself to the world that way.”
It’s a full circle moment to debut her first novel at the first bookstore she walked into in Long Beach, but a moment that has been decades in the making.
“We all make mistakes, especially when we’re kids and we are not necessarily defined by what people expect of us or what people think we’re supposed to be. This book is sort of meant to be like, ‘Hey, it’s okay to figure it out. You’re not by yourself. And also there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s okay if you feel alone. You’re not and there’s nothing wrong with you.’”
Erika Turner, Long Beach author
Bel Canto Books was one of the first places Turner and her spouse experienced when first considering a move to Long Beach almost two years ago. A short walk down Fourth Street brought them into Bel Canto and the two authors immediately fell in love with the book-loving community.
Both of her parents were storytellers, Turner explained, which almost certainly had an influence in her career path and aspirations. Turner’s early childhood memories are filled with her curiously flipping through her father’s book of song lyrics—he’s a musician—or getting into trouble and Turner’s mother telling her to write down what she had done wrong—she’s a mother.
“I just feel like I’ve always loved writing,” Turner said. “In elementary school, I was writing stories and trying to submit things. And then I was in journalism when I was in junior high and high school. I just always have written my whole life.”
Her love for the craft only grew as she got older, though the prospect of becoming a published writer was often tossed aside, thought of as “a pipe dream.”
Turner’s mother, however, knew better. Her consistent “How is the novel going?” and “Where’s the book?” questions were proven correct one night, when Turner, garbed in her doggy-themed robe, a cup of hot tea warming her hands, received a phone call that would quickly change her life.
Turner uses phrases like “off-chance” and “out-of-the-blue” to describe the life-changing moment. But after the countless submissions to editors and never-ending rewrites, her mother knew it was only a matter of time.
“When I told her that I wrote [a book] and that I sold it she was like, “yeah, I know, I told you,’” Turner recalls laughing.
Coexisting with her love for writing was her journey in faith. Turner attended the same nondenominational Christian church for 16 years and grew up “very religious” with a mother who was even more so, but who always told her to decide who she was for herself.
Turner expects that her mom didn’t anticipate her being queer, but by the time she came out in college she said “I felt like I had to become really comfortable with my own personal relationship with God, outside of anyone else’s kind of idea of what that should look like.”
The main character in “And Other Mistakes,” Aaliyah Marshall, grapples with similar issues. She’s outed as being queer by a member of her church’s clergy during her junior year of high school. While Turner had support from her mother, her character finds herself at odds with her home life where “every wrong step can become an explosion.”
Turner had graduated from high school and moved cities before people at her church heard about her being queer. Turner was already out to some of her friends and family, but her family ended up switching churches after their pastor died when Turner was in college. The character Aaliyah must rediscover her relationship with God, religion and people close to her in the church while simultaneously discovering herself.
“I felt like I had to develop that relationship one-on-one in order for me to be okay and take care of myself,” Turner said “That’s something that this character explores as well … you still have to separate between what is your family’s expectations and what is your community’s expectation and come up with like, ‘What is my own relationship to this thing that I’ve been a part of my whole life?’”
Turner felt drawn to young adult novels, as someone who found a respite in books growing up. She describes “And Other Mistakes” as a sort of love letter to her teenage self, who had little guidance in how to navigate her teenage years.
“I feel like there’s something really artful to speak to your 17-year-old self and think about like, ‘Okay, I survived. I’ve gotten to a place that the world said I would never get to because of who I am,’” Turner said. “So I’m going to write this story for her and other kids like her.”
Throughout the novel, Aaliyah is struggling while feeling like a stranger with the people who raised her, navigating through her senior year of high school and dealing with unexplained feelings for a girl on her cross-country team. She slips and makes mistakes many times, but that’s sort of the point of growing up, Turner explains.
“We all make mistakes, especially when we’re kids and we are not necessarily defined by what people expect of us or what people think we’re supposed to be,” Turner said. “This book is sort of meant to be like, ‘Hey, it’s okay to figure it out. You’re not by yourself. And also there’s nothing wrong with you. It’s okay if you feel alone. You’re not and there’s nothing wrong with you.’”
“And Other Mistakes” can be purchased at The Hangout in Long Beach, or in many locations online.
This article was updated to correct the age of Erika Turner on Feb. 25, 2023.
Very poignant thoughts!