Krista Diamond: No Two Paths To Publishing Are the Same
In this interview, author Krista Diamond discusses writing about parasocial relationships in her debut novel, Close Relationships with Strangers.
Krista Diamond’s writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Paris Review, Cosmopolitan, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA from the University of Nevada Las Vegas and her work has been supported by Bread Loaf, Tin House, and the Nevada Arts Council. She lives in Las Vegas. Follow her on Twitter, TikTok, and Instagram.
In this interview, Krista discusses writing about parasocial relationships in her debut novel, Close Relationships with Strangers, her advice for other writers, and more.
Name: Krista Diamond
Literary agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord
Book title: Close Relationships with Strangers
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Release date: June 23, 2026
Genre/category: Literary fiction
Elevator pitch: Close Relationships with Strangers follows a Las Vegas wildlife photographer who moves to Los Angeles to become a paparazzo and in the process loses his relationships, his morals, and eventually his tether to reality.
What prompted you to write this book?
I spent my 20s working in the national parks and have always been outdoorsy, but I’ve also always been really into pop culture. These two interests seemed totally separate. It never occurred to me that I would ever find a way to write about wilderness and celebrity at the same time. When I was playing around with the idea for this novel, I started interviewing paparazzi. One of them compared the work that he did to wildlife photography. He said that in both paparazzi photography and wildlife photography, you have no control over the lighting, you’ve often got this subject that’s running away from you, and you might only get one decent shot. Hearing that unlikely comparison is where it clicked for me, and the novel just opened up. Suddenly, I was able to bring together my love of nature and my fascination with celebrity lore.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I started an MFA in 2021 with the intention of writing a completely different novel while I was there. While I was procrastinating that novel, I wrote a short story about a paparazzi photographer named Ben trying to get a picture of an elusive movie star. I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I procrastinated starting the other novel some more by spending the summer in Los Angeles, doing research and expanding the paparazzi story into a novella.
In the fall of 2022, I returned to campus and told myself it was time to put the paparazzi project aside and actually start the other novel, but I just couldn’t let it go. Maile Chapman, who is an incredible writer and teacher, was leading the fiction workshop I was in that semester. Everyone in the class very kindly agreed to workshop my 110-page novella. Hearing them talk about it made me want to keep working on it. After class, I told Maile I was thinking about expanding it into a novel even though it was not the novel I’d set out to write. She told me that being totally obsessed with a writing project was rare, and if I felt that way about this story, I had to follow that feeling, so I did. I’m so grateful to her for that advice and for reading a million subsequent drafts once I started expanding.
After finishing my MFA, I revised the novel a few more times and then I started querying literary agents. I signed with my amazing agent, Danielle Bukowski, in 2024. She understood the book right away and had such faith in it. I revised a bit more with notes from her, and then we went out on submission in early 2025 and sold it to Olivia Taylor Smith at Simon & Schuster, who was so passionate about the book and so thoughtful and generous during the editorial process. She gave me great notes but always reiterated that it was my book and she would never push me to make changes to it that didn’t align with how I saw it. Everyone who has been a part of this book has had that same generosity. I’m very grateful. From 2021 to 2026, the idea has pretty much always been the same—in fact, the first page of the novel is very similar to the first page of the original short story—it has just expanded and evolved.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I think the biggest lesson I’ve learned throughout the process is that no two paths to publishing are the same. Some books sell to publishers in just a few weeks; others take months or even years. Not every agent or editor does things the same way. And of course, every author is different. You can’t compare the experience of someone publishing a romance novel to that of someone publishing narrative nonfiction. Before selling Close Relationships with Strangers, I spent a lot of time on various forums where writers discuss querying agents, submitting to publishers, and things like that. I thought it would give me some idea of what to expect. Some of those places are helpful, others will make you even more anxious. Ultimately, what I learned from trying to predict the future of my book is that it’s impossible. You just have to focus on the part you can control, which is the writing.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
The biggest surprise was realizing the novel needed a non-linear structure. The story goes back and forth between Ben’s desperate quest to take a photo of the actor he’s obsessed with and his life before that point when he was working at a restaurant in Las Vegas and falling in love with a burlesque dancer. I have always believed in writing things chronologically whenever possible, so an early version of the novel began with Ben’s pre-paparazzi life, and it was about 100 pages of that before we were even in Los Angeles. I thought it could be a slow burn but honestly, it just lacked momentum. I resisted changing the structure for about a year and then when I finally did, it was so obvious that that was how it was supposed to be.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
This is a novel about parasocial relationships, the one-sided relationships we form with public figures, so I hope people will reflect on that element of it. I would love for this book to make readers think about the role that parasocial relationships play in their own lives, because I think it’s actually a pretty nuanced topic. Everyone, regardless of gender, age, or any other identity markers, experiences parasocial relationships to some extent, whether it’s having a favorite music artist or feeling like a politician is someone you’d have a beer with. There are versions of parasocial relationships that are actually quite healthy. Spoiler alert: The one in this book is not.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Write the story that only you can write, the one you want to write, not the one you think will impress people in your life or sell for a lot of money. Readers' tastes and the publishing industry are always changing, but if you write something you love, you’ll love it forever.
