Hi from Missouri!

Hope all of my U.S.-based readers had a lovely (and not too explosive) holiday yesterday. I'm going to keep today's newsletter brief because of said holiday weekend and since I'm currently traveling. Don't worry—I'm still sitting on half an essay I wrote for last time, so we'll be back to intros that are waaaaay too long before you know it.

For the time being I want to say a big thank you to everyone who signed up to be an early reader; I feel really good about this draft and I'm excited to share it! With that said, I'm looking for just one or two more new readers for this final round of feedback. If you or someone you know would be open to reading, please feel free to message me or fill out the form below. Thanks in advance—I appreciate you all endlessly!

☕ Project Curses

I completed Draft 3.1 a few days early! I admitted last time that this was probably the least fun part of my process, but it was still good, you know? It's neat to see the story come a little more into focus with every pass. Still—I'm glad to be moving on to what will hopefully be my final front-to-back review of the manuscript (at least for a long while).

Work on Draft 3.2—what the next round of early readers will receive, and what, I hope, will be the draft I send to agents after some final, minor tweaks—is now underway. I'm calling this my polishing pass: I'm going through each chapter from front-to-back to clean up grammar errors and typos, cut out unnecessary words, and "edit to the ear"—i.e., read every word aloud to ensure it sounds natural and clear. The caveat here is that this work is infinite; I'll never make it perfect. But I hope to get it as close as I can. This may not sound fun, but I'm actually really excited for it.

📚 Reading

​How to Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix | I've been on a horror kick lately. The next solo-novel I'm planning is shaping up to be horror-adjacent, so I've been hunting for inspiration and potential influences—especially those that braid introspection and empathy into the genre. After hearing Grady Hendrix speak at last year's national book festival, I thought some of his work might fit the bill. While it wasn't exactly what I'm looking for—and though I have a handful of nitpicks—I did genuinely enjoy the book, and I'd like to read some of his other books somewhere down the line (e.g., The Final Girl Support Group or The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires). Also, if any of you have recommendations in this space, please reach out!

🎧 Listening

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"STORM" by GENER8ION ft. Yung Lean | After showing my mom Jungle's "The Wave", she shot back with this very, very chic music video by the French composer-director duo Ben Surkin & Romain Gavras, who produce under the name GENER8ION (yeah, my mom is cool). Both the film and the choreography are incredible, and fall into that same category of "it's amazing that humans made this". Highly recommend. Also, for the five of you thinking this: yes, it does absolutely look like they made an indie-film version of Rockstar's hit 2006 game Bully.

No Show & Tell today! Just a reminder to go do something nice for yourself. Enjoy a nice stroll (maybe you'll see a toad!); get lost in a book or movie; make an elaborate meal; have a treat. Whatever it is, you deserve it.

Until next time!

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