A SAMPLING OF WORK OPTIONED FOR FILM/TV
MENTAL DIPLOPIA – a story currently optioned. A strange new virus is spreading – its victims are reliving happy moments from their pasts, straddling two worlds, then and now. We follow an epidemiologist, trying desperately to find a cure, while falling in love.
THE ANYBODIES Trilogy – novels under pen name, N.E. Bode, optioned by Disney+.
I’D REALLY PREFER NOT TO BE HERE WITH YOU — the title story in an upcoming collection, this story was pitched as Fleabag with a sci-fi twist.
WHICH BRINGS ME TO YOU – a novel co-written with Steve Almond, with BCDF, starring Lucy Hale and Nat Wolff, directed by Peter Hutchings, in post-production.
THE NOW OF NOW — a short story that will appear in the upcoming collection I’d Really Prefer Not to be Here with You, a girl realizes she has a special talent, brought on by anxiety.
HOW THEY GOT IN — a short story that will appear in the upcoming collection I’d Really Prefer Not to be Here with You, psychological horror.
VIRTUALS — In the not too distant future, people won’t talk to a therapist while sitting on a couch in an office. We’ll all be in virtual reality gaming rooms, designed to help us work out our issues. It works as the natural evolution from THE BOB NEWHART SHOW to FRASIER to now. Maybe a little THE GOOD PLACE but set in our world. Originally published at Tor.com.
WELCOME TO OXHEAD — a short story that will appear in the upcoming collection I’d Really Prefer Not to be Here with You, in development with Paramount and Iron Ocean with Jessica Biel attached to produce.
BACKWARDS — a short story, created with Finneas Scott, that will appear in the upcoming collection I’d Really Prefer Not to be Here with You, in development with Safe House, 21 Laps, and Netflix with Shawn Levy attached to direct.
RABBIT, RABBIT, RABBIT — a horror story optioned by Paramount, 3Arts, Atomic Monster, with Melanie Toast attached to adapt.
SIX DAYS — created with Finneas Scott, in development.
SCENES FROM THE DISASTER — created with Finneas Scott, a big world building love story, in development.
PORTALS — a short story about a small town with a big problem, in development.
INKMORPHIA — a horror story that appeared in Nightmare magazine, in development.
NEST — a short story of suburban horror, in development.
SAMPLING OF PUBLISHED STORIES
GASLIGHTER’S LAMENT – a story. In a future where all of our emotional dirty work is done for us by AIs, one AI is working as a gaslighter – helping a man gaslight his girlfriend. But is the girlfriend who she says she is?
THE POSTICTAL STATE OF DIVINE LOVE, a story in Lightspeed.
After her mother has a seizure, a woman has to deal with the alternate reality that her mother clings to: that they are part of the matriarchal line of vampires, dating back to Queen Elizabeth. The story only nods at the massive world building backing it up, rewriting history and science with vampires while creating a whole new mythology.
THE VELVETEEN LOVER, a story in Agni and based on “The Velveteen Rabbit,” which is in the public domain.
An AI sex-toy (not a stuffed toy rabbit), cast aside by the rich woman who once loved him, must now seek out his own autonomy. [Preview here. Email to request.]
POSEY GIRL a story in Terraform magazine, VICE.com.
The story of a young AI prostitute working in a bubble-dome in a city’s red-light district is programmed to be a virgin, over and over again, and a young teen boy, freshly beaten up for being gay, who’s forced to be with a prostitute to prove his masculinity.
CUBBY SAFE, a story in Cincinnati Review.
For real, a few years ago in Oklahoma, octagonal bullet-proof structures were installed in elementary-school classrooms – so the kids could get inside if there was a shooter. The news story shows the principal firing on the structure at a gun range to prove its safety. So, yeah. Baggott wrote a story about it from the kid’s perspective. This has a kid at the center of it but it’s not for kids. There’s a FARGO feel here.
THE YELLOW WALLPAPER GIRLS, a feminist super hero origin story in Monkey Bicycle and inspired by Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s famous feminist, horror short story “The Yellow Wallpaper.”
EXCERPTS, ESSAYS, POEMS & INTERVIEWS
Read an excerpt from Julianna’s new book PURE. Go here, and click on The Opening Pages.
Baggott’s New York Times’ Modern Love essay on how she reacted when her therapist wrote her a love poem. The essay was voiced for the Modern Love podcast by Isabelle Huppert.
Click here to read Julianna’s essay in Real Simple about writing a love letter for a stranger on a plane.
Click here to read Julianna’s essay in The New York Times Book Review on famous living authors versus famous dead authors on Facebook on Twitter.
Click here to read about the day that a zombie and a zombie-epidemic survivor showed up in Julianna’s workshop, published in the Boston Globe and International Herald Tribune.
Ta-Nehisi Coates, while Senior Editor for The Atlantic, picked Julianna’s poem, “Mary Todd on her Deathbed”, which is published in Lizzie Borden in Love for the Culture page on TheAtlantic.com web site. He’s also chosen two other poems to feature — one entitled “Monica Lewinsky thinks of Bill Clinton While Standing Naked in Front of a Hotel Mirror” and the other “How It Begins” which appears in Julianna’s first collection, This Country of Mothers.
This is an extensive five-part interview of Baggott by Sebastian Matthews. It was conducted over the course of a few months and was published at Fiction Writers Review.
The National Endowment for the Arts conducted an interview with Baggott before her reading at the Folger Shakespeare Library. Here’s the podcast.
Roxane Gay interviewed Baggott at The Rumpus.