CURRENTLY QUERYING MY DEBUT NOVEL, THE PLACES WE GO TO DISAPPEAR
JASMINE SABA
Stories about change, connection & the lives we almost lived.
AUTHOR OF THE PLACES WE GO TO DISAPPEAR
THE PLACES WE GO TO DISAPPEAR
The Places We Go to Disappear is an upmarket contemporary novel about Althea, a woman who leaves the life she built and arrives in Prague without a return ticket. I wanted it to have the intimacy of a slow burn romance novel while still making room for marriage, female friendship, family history, memory and the harder question of what happens when the life you planned no longer feels like the life you want.
Who are you when no one around you knows who you've been?
some things become important quietly
About the writing
I’m interested in people at those strange turning points where something in their life still technically works, but doesn’t feel quite right anymore. Relationships, friendships, family, the places we attach memories to, the versions of ourselves that come out around different people, and what happens when we finally admit we might want something different.
I love writing about romantic love, but I’m just as interested in books about female friendship, family history, old versions of ourselves and the people who know us in ways we sometimes don’t know ourselves. I’ve always been drawn to books about starting over, especially the quieter kind where nothing changes overnight and someone slowly realises they might want something different. I think I’ll probably always be drawn to stories about change, connection, memory and the messy space between the life we thought we’d have and the one we end up choosing.
This is me. Jasmine.
I’ve spent most of my working life making things for other people, so putting my own name on something still feels slightly strange.
I’m also a graphic designer and illustrator, which has turned out to be very convenient when you write a book and immediately want to start making all the things that exist inside it. A lot of what you’ll see here, from maps and illustrations to handwritten notes and little pieces of the book’s world, is created by me. I feel very lucky that I get to share the story visually as well as through the writing.
I’ve always written in some form, but The Places We Go to Disappear began in a way I definitely couldn’t have planned. I had an incredibly vivid dream that played out almost like a film. I could see the places, hear the conversations and feel what was happening. There was even a song.
I woke up partway through with this very clear feeling that I needed to write it down, which is not something I normally do with dreams. So I grabbed my phone, typed out as much as I could while I was still half asleep, then went back to sleep.
And the story continued.
Those first fragments eventually became the beginning of the novel. Everything after that was written very much awake, but I still find it strange that the whole thing began somewhere I wasn’t consciously looking for it.
Since then, writing fiction has become the place where I get to explore all the things I’m endlessly curious about anyway: why people stay, why they leave, what we remember, what we forget, how places become attached to entire versions of our lives, and what happens when we finally give ourselves enough room to ask what we actually want.
This started in a dream...
And I mean that very Literally.
Prague, the projection, the patchwork jacket and the beginning of Althea’s story first appeared while I was asleep. I woke up with enough of it still intact that I knew I had to write it down.
I’m sharing the bits that don’t really belong anywhere else. The images that inspired things, pieces of Prague, little details from the book, things I’m thinking about while writing, and probably far too much analysis of why people do what they do.
If you want to follow along as The Places We Go to Disappear finds its way into the world, you’ll find me on Instagram.