Felicia Day Wants You to Embrace Your Weird in New Book

You may like her for her acting as Codex, Kinga, Vi, Tallis, Holly, Poppy, or Charlie, but Felicia Day is perhaps better known as an author, producer, and entrepreneur. Now, with her new book, the creator of The Guild and Geek & Sundry steps into the role of inspirational force of geeky good.

Announced today, Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity, is a motivational guide to cultivating creators, and challenging the imagination with exercises – coupled with Day’s own personality, and personal anecdotes drawn from “therapy, self-help, and just plain trial by fire,” as she describes in the press release. 

The October 1st release by Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, follows Day’s 2015 memoir You’re Never Weird on the Internet (Almost). According to the publisher, the book is “Part guided journal, part imaginative workbook” that is something of a “Wreck This Journal meets You Are a Badass meets Felicia’s inimitable blend of hilarity and hard-earned wisdom.”

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Some of the topics the book will cover include “Discovering Your Hero Self,” and unearthing “weird” and unique creative superpowers; “Vanquishing Enemies” and negative forces, anxiety, or naysayers; “Gathering Allies” within a creative community of mentors, and supportive friends; “Finding Joy” through playfulness; “Starting A Quest” through daily creative habits.”

Day, who will kick off promotion for Embrace Your Weird at San Diego Comic-Con, joined Den of Geek for an exclusive reaction to today’s announcement. In the following, she discusses the reasoning behind crafting a self-help workbook for nerds and how she hopes fans will be impacted after readers. She also gives us an update on her potential return to Mystery Science Theater 3000. 

DEN OF GEEK: What was the motivation behind doing this particular book next?

Felicia Day: I was inspired by the many people who responded to my memoir so positively around the areas of creativity and anxiety. That audience feedback made me want to go deeper into these issues in ways that could be more customized to the reader’s needs. This book has stories, graphics, and exercises all aimed toward overcoming resistance to creativity. I am a self-help book lover and the idea of making a book like that accessible to my audience, especially geeks, really was appealing to me. (There are more than a few video game references in there, promise!) 

What are you hoping your readers (even the ones who may not already be fans) will get out of it?

I would love if people walked away from the book with a new sense of identity and motivation to get their voice out there into the world. I think it’s a fundamental part of being human to be creative, so I like to think of this book as my own personal tome of life-coaching, filled with advice I give myself on a daily basis. No one should be afraid of being themselves, and this book aims to give people the strength to own that fact!

Is there any word on you returning for another season for MST3K?

I know that planning for the live tour has been a big venture lately, but that’s finally about to start, so hopefully, Joel will have the bandwidth to figure out next steps for the TV show now! I love being a part of it and hope we do many more seasons!

Aaron Sagers is a freelance contributor. Read more of his work here.