Posted by Athena Scalzi
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/10/21/the-big-idea-juliet-brooks/
https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57857

All work and no play makes author Juliet Brooks write a Big Idea about how the US should have better worker’s rights and conditions. In her newest novel, A Fae In Finance, her main character finds herself in a challenging work dilemma that we can all relate to. Or, if you can’t, at least there’s a cat!
JULIET BROOKS:
In the early pages of A Fae in Finance, Miri, my book’s protagonist, eats faerie food and gets trapped in Faerie. This isn’t a spoiler; it’s on the back cover.
Miri knows she shouldn’t eat the food. She’s seen the subway PSAs warning people not to eat faerie food. The Fae are weirdly evasive about saying that it would be safe for her. She isn’t even particularly hungry. But, feeling cowed by implicit pressure from her boss (he never threatens her aloud) she caves and eats the food.
Early reviewers(1) have loved the cat, thought the writing was fun, and asked why the main character’s mother doesn’t get more air time.* But reviewers consistently have one frustration with my main character: Why is Miri so deferential to such an obviously terrible boss?
And that’s… actually the entire big idea of A Fae in Finance.
There are material considerations (food, housing, healthcare) that keep the scales unbalanced in favor of employers. We talk about those regularly. But there are also social and emotional considerations that lead people to stay in suboptimal work environments, and which we should talk about more.
Once Miri gets trapped in Faerie, she doesn’t need money for food or housing or healthcare (the Fae are a lot more progressive than the United States on that front). Since her job security is no longer tied to her material needs, you’d think that Miri would immediately tell her dingbat of a boss to stick it where the sun don’t shine.
Instead, she plods along for another 300-odd pages, apologizing incessantly for breathing weird and also existing.
I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my life to never seriously wonder how I will be able to get my next meal. But I, like Miri, have disengaged from family and friend obligations for one more email, made myself meek in a workplace to paper over management failings, and folded to meet a boss’s insane requests.㊷ I think most people have, at some point in their careers, done the same.
I’ve bent over backwards to go the extra mile for a shitty job because I feel fungible and am worried an employer could replace me; I have a socially ingrained set of semi-pathologic emotions about being unemployed; and my sense of self-worth is very much tied to my perception of how I’m doing at work.
But, in large part, I’ve struggled to leave workplaces because I have taken most of my past jobs in the hopes of helping people and advancing the climate fight; I’ve gravitated towards roles that I think, if done with care by caring people, could make the world a better place. I don’t want to fail in achieving that mission, even when it means I end up feeling overwhelmed and ineffective.
It’s incredibly important to improve workers’ conditions in the U.S. by advocating for single-payer healthcare systems, family and medical leave, and living wages. But in A Fae in Finance, I wanted to explore the non-material ways in which we are tied to our work, and the impacts of those emotional bonds. What value do we assign our work, and how do our own perceptions of that work influence our actions and reactions?
I don’t have any great answers for you about consciously uncoupling the relationship between work and worth.& I do, however, have answers for you about Doctor Kitten, the cat in A Fae in Finance.
A. Yes, he was named after my cat, Adjunct Professor Moo, who is a professor of moosicology.σ
B. He sheds a lot, and he only sheds the white fur.
C. He’s opening a cat cafe in book 2 of How to Do Business in Faerie, A Mermaid in Marketing, out August 2026.
Footnotes:
1. My dad, brothers, and editor.
*. This last critique came from a small subset of anonymous accounts that oddly all originated in my hometown and had my mom’s initials in the user handle. I remain baffled.
. Most readers likely think that the Big Idea of A Fae in Finance is that everyone should adopt at least one cat, but preferably two, as cats are social creatures, which I demonstrate via the relationship between Doctor Kitten (Miri’s cat) and Lene (Miri’s friend). That is a Big Idea but not the Big Idea. You should adopt two cats, or, if you aren’t ready for the commitment, you should look up a local foster organization and foster some cats. But I digress.
. It, specifically, being a cactus.
㊷. A Fae in Finance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. And for you, my former boss reading this blog post, I was talking about other workplaces.
&. I imagine unions, which create worker communities and advocate for you as a whole person, could help.
σ. The “all characters are fiction” disclaimer doesn’t apply to the cat. Adjunct Professor Moo’s commentary on the state of academia will be a future The Big Idea post if he ever gets around to publishing.
A Fae in Finance: Bookshop|Barnes & Noble|Amazon (US)|Hachette web page
Author’s socials: Instagram|Website
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2025/10/21/the-big-idea-juliet-brooks/
https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=57857