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On a new year and a fresh start –
Hi friends, Happy new year! Welcome to 2021, and good riddance to the hellscape that was 2020. Though that feels weird to type for a variety of reasons, but especially because nothing actually changed except a digit in the date. It isn’t a big change. But it feels big, and naysaying that feeling just seems…
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On (not) finishing projects –
Hi friends, Well, March was quite a month, huh? I almost don’t believe it’s over. I have no idea what April will bring, or May, or… You know what, I’m not really going to talk much about current events, except to say that I am fine, and doing about as well as anyone can be…
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On swimming and anxiety –
Hi friends, I swear I did not mean for this newsletter to be a journey of my personal attempts at self-improvement. Oh boy does that sound obnoxious. Instead what I set out was to just write about what was on my mind every month (and yes, I have failed at that “every month” part, but…
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On the fear of being tacky –
Hi friends, Yesterday was a very nice day. Last month I emailed you all about buying an apartment — about the emotional need that drove that decision. Not too many days after I composed that newsletter, we closed on the place, and spent the next few weeks frantically painting, assembling furniture, packing, and handling the…
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Grief, housing, and an extended boating metaphor –
Hi, friends — Around the time my father died, I started having dreams about cleaning out my childhood bedroom. The house I grew up in was a bit of a tumbledown wreck — think: ceiling leaks every spring as the snow melted off, a staircase where each step had a different height, not a single right…
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I wrote a paragraph, and other life news.
Hi folks, I had really good intentions with this newsletter. At the very least, I figured I’d, you know, send out something on Freed by Flame and Storm‘s pub day. But pub day was last week and this newsletter did not go out. It wasn’t just pub day, though. I had a list of ideas…
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Reading and Writing and Dad, and Freed by Flame and Storm’s Pub Day
Today is the release of my second book, Freed by Flame and Storm. This should be a celebratory blog post, but it isn’t quite. This is the book’s dedication: My father passed away two weeks ago today. You can see how Freed’s release is bittersweet. * It wasn’t until I was in college that I…
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Of Author Neuroses and Upcoming Books
Hello, friends! There are about ten of you on this list so I feel pretty safe in referring to you all as friends. And actually, “friends” is what I want to keep this newsletter promotion update list thingy focused on. Because here’s the thing: I write books, and I need to market them, but… I’m…
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The Scourge of Apathy and The Catcher In The Rye
So. The Catcher in the Rye. I have to admit, this was one of the books I most dreaded reading for this project, because it’s also one of the very few I’ve read before. And the truth was, I didn’t like it very much. And it’s really hard to talk about why without feeling like…
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The Free World of Francie Nelson’s Brooklyn
I knew even less about A Tree Grows in Brooklyn when I started reading it than I had about Little Women. But it was, in a lot of a ways, a perfect answer to Little Women, right down to the moment, early on, where Francie mentions that she read and enjoyed Little Women. Liberty vs.…