Hi everybody,
I’m so glad you’re here! Happy October, my favorite month of the year, halfway between the fullness of summer and the dead of winter. Things happen in October. Leaves turn. Birds migrate. Ghosts appear. Artists share daily sketches on Twitter (hashtag #inktober).
And I got to go to a Really Big Party in Cleveland thrown by Belt Publishing. It brought Belt friends and authors (including me!) together at the end of the Heartland Fall Forum, which celebrates indie bookselling in the Midwest. The party took place at the Skidmark Garage, a community motorcycle garage/event venue. (Photographic evidence below.)
Here’s the thing: Writing feels like a lonely business a lot of the time. It involves a lot of sitting around and starting into screens (or into notebooks, if that’s your thing) and gazing out of windows and drinking too many cups of coffee while trying to figure out why that sentence WILL NOT DO WHAT YOU WANT IT TO.
Being in the company of other writers and editors reminded me that we do not do this alone. My book, your book, every book carries on a conversation with other books.
And every book that makes it out into the world gets there with a lot of help, direct and indirect: from the publisher that gives it a home to the editor who shapes it to the barista whose friendly morning presence at the coffeeshop keeps a writer from going batshit crazy in her own head. Not to mention all the other writers, thinkers, journalists, researchers, artists, and creators whose own work, one way or another, contributes to a project’s creative DNA.
Thanks, Belt, for giving my book a home and for creating a community of writers. Let’s hit the road.
Things worth your time:
1) I love Austin Kleon’s weekly newsletter, in which he shares inspiring, whimsical things he comes across. It doesn’t outstay its welcome, and always delivers something that lightens/brightens my day. (Yup, I’m borrowing his approach for this section.)
2) My other go-to newsletter right now: Emily Atkin’s Heated, “a newsletter for people who are pissed off about the climate crisis.” As we should all be. Passion combined with expert reporting and informed analysis.
3) Some hope for the planet (and for parents’ tender feet)? LEGO tries out a brick-recycling program.
4) Want to subvert the surveillance state? Read a book.
5) Because not all the news out of DC is bad: Dolphins are getting up to all kinds of things in the Potomac River. (If you like critter-centric reporting, give the WaPo’s Karin Brulliard a follow.)
6) Three cheers for “cheap and shoddy” editions of Jane Austen’s novels, which brought her work to the reading masses in the 19th century.
7) Streaming has changed how musical artists write and share songs. Charlie XCX explains, and it kind of blows my mind.
8) What I’m reading: The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty, which delivers some of the magical-adventure pleasures of the SFF I devoured as a kid while inviting me into a world of Islamic folklore and traditions. There are djinn, yes—fire elementals more properly called daeva—and even flying carpets, but we’re a long way from “The Thief of Baghdad” here.
9) Forthcoming stories by me: a big feature in the fall issue of the NEH’s Humanities magazine on the public library in contemporary American life, and a look in Fine Books & Collections at book-collectors’ obsessions. More on those when I have links to share.
Thanks for reading. See you next time.
Cheers,
Jen