It’s kind of crazy to be staring down the barrel of another book release. These things have a VERY long runway, to immediately mix metaphors. It’s kinda like that scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (sorry, is my nerd showing?) where the knight is running in place forever, never getting any closer, and then suddenly he’s there, running a sword through the castle guards. Another metaphor I like to use is colonoscopies. I’ve got a family history so I’ve had THREE already (if you’re 45, schedule yours now!!). The first colonoscopy was terrifying because I didn’t know what to expect. The second one was terrifying because I DID know what to expect. And then by the third one, I was totally fine. If I have the good luck of writing a third book, hopefully the metaphor holds.
That book, by the way, is available for preorder, and has already been called flattering things like “poignant and bonkers” and “a BANGER.”
But I digress.
Five Things I’ve Recently Liked That You Might Also Like:
Surely I’m not the first to tell you this, but there was a total solar eclipse this week. Highly recommend those, really nothing like seeing a big black hole where the sun used to be. I went to Brown County, Indiana to see it, because I have family there. I also highly recommend Brown County because it is beautiful and if you’ve only seen the top half of Indiana, you can’t believe it’s in the same state. I spent large chunks of my childhood on this particular lake, swimming and fishing and shooting the shit with family. Indiana can get a bad rap, and rightly so, but like all places, it’s complicated and I guess what I’m getting at is it’s a good idea to try to hold two opposing feelings at the same time. Indiana is good training ground for that.
Look, I hate it too, but these things currently co-exist Recently, I learned the term Existential OCD, and I’m not out here to self-diagnose like the internet loves to encourage, but I can’t deny that it makes a lot of my childhood make sense. I’ve mostly outgrown my fear of the word “forever” and the occasional but overwhelming sense that nothing is real and I don’t actually exist, but one thing that hasn’t gone away is my terror of outer space. I made the mistake of telling my husband Kyle that the most effective treatment for this (and likely anxiety) is exposure therapy, and he took it and ran with it, buying us tickets to A SCREENING OF THE MOVIE GRAVITY IN 3-GODDAMN-D. Reader, I did not like it, but I am proud to say I did make it through, thanks to our old friend “wine.” Give me the deep sea any day.
I recently devoured Lindsay Hunter’s TERRIFIC new(ish) novel Hot Springs Drive, and I cannot recommend it highly enough. A thriller, a family drama with humor, sexy stuff, multiple POVs and so many unexpected twists and turns… I loved it so hard. You really should pick it up immediately.
DO IT. GET IT NOW. Because I just like to copy whatever cool thing Austin Kleon is doing, I’m thinking of picking up a tape deck and making some old school mixtapes. Listen, I love having every single song ever made at my fingertips at every moment of the day, but there’s really nothing like curating and physically recording two finite sequences of songs, sounds, and moods on a physical tape, along with homemade liner notes and a collage cover, and then giving it as a cryptic gift to your crush, worrying that they won’t pick up on the subtle nuances of your ardor. Who wants one?
I grew up on a steady diet of postmodern literature, which I only recently realized is pretty weird. This is literally all the context you need to understand my writing… and maybe also me. I could not tell you how it was that my best friend Michelle and I started reading things like Giles Goat Boy and Chimera when we were like 14, but somehow we became obsessed with John Barth. I always hoped to meet him someday, but he died last week, so instead I’m going to reread my absolute favorite of his books - The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. I think we could all use an injection of imagination and weirdness, so I hope you’ll read along!
But until then, I leave you with:
Bonus Lewd Animal Fact
Squid don’t have vaginas, and they only technically have penises (they’re called “terminal organs” or, more sexily, “hectocotylus”). Instead, the male squid takes his turgid terminal organ and firehoses sperm in the general direction of another squid, where it just… gets embedded in various parts of her body, eventually getting around to fertilizing an egg through what I can only imagine is a series of tubes. You can believe me, or you can believe an actual marine biologist (my friend, Dr. Craig McClain!) talking about squid sex in some very technical terms.
Thanks for reading! As usual, I’ll be back intermittently with more thoughts on life, art, stuff I’m up to, and animals fucking.
our old friend "wine"