It’s official. Polished Edges is out in the world, and I’m oscillating between pure euphoria and the kind of vulnerability that makes you want to hide under weighted blankets until the reviews settle.
The strangest part of publication isn’t seeing your name on a cover — though that never stops feeling surreal — it’s the moment when your characters stop belonging exclusively to you. The TikTok dancer with her coral crash, the diplomat hiding behind nude diplomacy, the ballerina choosing blackout over revelation — they’ve all left my notebook and gone wandering into other people’s imaginations.
It feels like launching ships you’ve built in bottles. You’ve crafted every detail, worried over every flaw, but once they hit open water, they’re beyond your control. Readers will see things in these stories that I never intended, miss things I thought were obvious, connect dots I didn’t know I’d drawn.
Several early readers mentioned how authentic the nail studio atmosphere felt, and I keep coming back to how crucial those years of actual practice were. You can’t fake the rhythm of a manicure appointment, the particular intimacy that develops when someone trusts you with their hands for an hour. The weight of professional scissors, the chemical bite of acetone, the way certain colors bring out confessions — these details only ring true if you’ve lived them.
My MBA classmates joke that I’m the only person they know who turned a service industry job into anthropological research, but that’s exactly what happened. Every client interaction became a masterclass in human psychology, every appointment a study in the performance of identity.
The response so far has been overwhelmingly kind. Early reviewers appreciated the balance between satire and compassion — apparently I managed to write about wealthy people’ problems without completely dismissing their humanity. One reader called it “精准的观察” (precise observation), which feels like the highest possible compliment given my background.
But honestly, the most meaningful responses have come from fellow nail artists and beauty industry workers who recognize the world I’ve depicted. Several sent messages saying they felt seen, that their daily experience of being invisible witnesses to other people’s lives had finally been acknowledged in literature.
None of this would exist without the people who encouraged me when writing fiction felt like an expensive delusion. My studio clients who let me test early stories on them during lengthy gel applications. My MBA cohort who provided feedback on everything from chapter structure to cover design. The London writing group that met in increasingly cramped café corners, offering brutal honesty wrapped in genuine support.
Publication feels simultaneously like an ending and a beginning. The collection that started as scattered observations in a London notebook has become a real book that real people are reading on real commutes. That’s simultaneously terrifying and intoxicating.
I’m already deep into research for the next project — something about the luxury industry’s relationship with authenticity, inspired by conversations with MBA professors and clients who work in brand management. The questions that drove Polished Edges — how do we perform identity, what’s the cost of maintaining facades, where do we find genuine connection in a curated world — feel more urgent than ever.
Right now, somewhere in London, someone is reading about Daisy Chen’s coral crash for the first time. Someone else is discovering what Minister Valerius Kazlauskas hides beneath his perfect nude manicure. These characters who lived in my head for over a year are having their first conversations with strangers.
That’s the real magic of publication — not the book launch parties or review coverage, but the quiet moment when a story finds its intended reader, when something you wrote alone in your flat at 2 AM creates recognition in someone else’s commute or lunch break or insomnia-driven late-night reading session.
Polished Edges began with curiosity about the stories people carry beneath their carefully maintained surfaces. Today, those stories officially join the larger conversation about authenticity, performance, and the beautiful complexity of being human in a world that demands perfection.
The characters no longer belong just to me — they’ve begun their journey toward readers, carrying questions I hope are worth asking and observations I hope ring true.
Posted from a world where fictional characters have become real and real experiences have become fiction, and somehow both feel exactly right.
— Writer Julia Zolotova
