We had our first freeze last night. Looking out the window at the still, frosted, fog-smeared vista right now is oddly calming; but then, there's always been something magical about the changing of the seasons to me. It's why fall and spring are, in particular, my favorites—though fall has to win out. There's something subtle and divine in the cooling nights and the resulting blaze of colors; something heady and stirring in the obscene liminality of this time.
There's a personal significance too. Fall is when Sarah and I celebrate our wedding anniversary (three years!); when my half-birthday falls, marking the mid-point of my personal journey around the sun; and when, four years ago now, I decided to finally start writing fiction.
Some strange mixture of all of that leads me to feel restless at this time of year, eager to start new plans and projects, to shrug off the complacency of warmer months and brace myself for the cold. This year is no different; in fact, I'm feeling more ambitious than I ought to be.
I appreciate you taking the time to read the newsletter today. It means a lot, truly! Please enjoy the rest and have a warm, wonderful, cozy, bracing, beautiful day.
💌 Newsletter Updates
To add support to my claim that I tend to start new ventures at this time of year: this edition of the newsletter marks the three-year anniversary of Coffee Chats! I started the newsletter shortly after Sarah and I's wedding as a way to keep friends and family updated on my writing, which was necessary after my father-in-law announced that my first story would be published in his toast (thanks, John—love you). It's grown a lot from there—but I think it's time for some new growth.
First, I'd like to be more consistent and thoughtful about the timing and content of the newsletter. I've slipped a bit in the latter half of 2026. There were a host of reasons for this, but the results remain the same, and that's unsatisfactory to me. I like writing the newsletter. I like it for the opportunity to connect with all of you and, honestly, I like it as a sort of open journal tracking my personal and writing journeys over the years. I'm planning to breathe some new life into the newsletter in this next cycle. Here are some thoughts on that:
Improved introductions. Moving forward, I plan to return to writing more thoughtful and incisive introductions. I've really enjoyed, in the past, treating these as an opportunity to write a sort of mini-essay about something I've been mulling over, and I'd like to make that the norm again. This will require me to start working on the newsletter further in advance, which will benefit everything else too.
Sharing writing advice and insights. The purpose of Coffee Chats is, ultimately, to share updates about my writing, and I think I do an okay job of that—but I'd like to be a bit more expansive about what it means. That will include sharing about new and different writing projects, yes, but it could also include sharing writing advice I've found particularly helpful, exercises that have spurred my creativity, and/or insights I've reached about my own process. These tangents won't be too long or in the weeds (I promise!) and I think by including them I'll be able to offer a more honest idea of what my writing life is like.
Refreshed recommendations. I mentioned this in the last edition, but I'd really like my Recent Favorites section to be more relevant and intentional—more representative of my media consumption and actual opinions. To those ends, I'm going to continue iterating on the design of the section, try to share more varied media (e.g., articles, essays, short stories, games), and offer thoughts that are pithy, pertinent, and thought-provoking (i.e., worth and respectful of your time). The ideal here is to curate my own personal version of something like The Drift'sMentions section (which, incidentally, I highly recommend checking out).
A more personalized Share section. The original intention for the Share/Show & Tell section at the end of the newsletter was to share a photo that I took accompanied by a personal anecdote, a resonant quote, or an excerpt from my own writing—but it's become more or less an extension of the preceding section. I'd like to cleave closer to that original intention moving forward, especially when it comes to sharing my art. Hold me to this one!
The second round of changes I'm planning to make might be a bit trickier. To be totally transparent, I'm looking for ways to make the newsletter more sustainable for both my schedule and my wallet. Now, to be absolutely clear: I am not and will never monetize the newsletter in any way. This isn't that. But there are some modest costs to maintaining the newsletter and my website and, honestly, earning a little income from my writing would be awesome right now. It would also help to justify the amount of time I spend working on these. To that end:
Starting in this edition of the newsletter I'll be returning to the practice of including affiliate links from Bookshop.org when I recommend books. Bookshop is a site where your purchases of physical or ebooks support local bookstores. If you click through and buy a book I recommend, I'll also earn a small commission. That's it! I'll still include links to check the book out from Libby too. If you're going to buy a book online anyway, this is a great way to also support the newsletter.
I will also now (very occasionally and in a hopefully-completely-not-annoying way) begin to include more visible reminders that you can support the newsletter by buying me a coffee through my Ko-fi page. There's absolutely no pressure to do so whatsoever—Coffee Chats will be free forever!—but I want to keep the proverbial tip jar out in case folks do ever feel so inclined.
Phew. Okay. Thanks for bearing with me. Before we move on, there's one final change I'm considering. Within the next couple months, I might decide to move the newsletter from its current platform (Kit) to Substack. There are a few reasons for this. One on side, Kit has been locking more and more of its functionality behind its premium plans and is limited to only sharing via email. On the other, Substack would provide a free place to host Coffee Chats (and potentially other writing), offer enhanced functionality (like including an audio version of the newsletter!), and make sharing the newsletter with new folks easier. It wouldn't change much for you, either—you'd still receive the newsletter via email, as usual (though it would also be available through the Substack app). It would look a little different though, and come from a different address.
On paper all of this sounds pretty good—but the downside is that Substack is, at its core, a social platform, albeit one dedicated to supporting writers and sharing long-form writing. Regardless, I know many of people, myself included, have reservations about engaging with new platforms. If you have opinions on this potential shift or if you would definitely not like me to include you in such a transition, please reach out using the button below!
You might notice that this is a new project. I should explain.
Now that I've reached the stage where I'm sending my completed novel (AKA Project Curses) to agents (i.e., querying agents), updates about it will be infrequent. At the same time, I've received the advice from basically every writer I know that I ought to dive into a new project to distract myself from the existential dread that comes with querying. So, I'm starting a new novel.
A few details to give you some context for this new project—a sort of narrative amuse-bouche, if you will: Project Nightmare is a cozy-ish horror novel about a man whose constant nightmares impair his daily life, his increasingly drastic attempts to make them stop, and the sinister, surreal consequences of his actions.
I think it's quite a fun story 👹
Now, elephant-brained readers will remember that I was working on a different project not too long ago (Project Rift), and eagle-eyed sleuths among you will notice that this is not that. Probably everyone else too. Don't worry! Project Rift remains in progress, but it's been low on the priority list for my co-writer and I—and that makes said progress slow. Working on this next solo-novel will be give me something to do in the meantime.
Anyway, I'm in the early stages of the story right now: plotting, outlining, writing sample scenes and the like. But that will soon change! I've made the probably ill-advised decision to participate in a personal NaNoWriMo challenge (November is National Novel Writing Month, in case you didn't know), which entails writing at least 50,000 words of a novel over the 30 days of November (i.e., about 1,700 words each day). This will, if all goes according to plan, result in most of the svelte new 65,000 word novel being drafted in a month (I will notwrite another 500 page chonker for a good long while). I'll share more about this maybe-terrible life choice in the next newsletter on November 1st!
For all my grandstanding up there about making my recommendations and reviews more pithy, pertinent, and thought-provoking, today's will remain a bit more succinct and subdued; this edition of the newsletter is long enough already. Regardless, there's some great stuff in here: an excellent novel, a very vibey album, two incisive video essays, and four films—so many, in fact, that I may have to stop making self-deprecating jokes about never watching movies. Enjoy!
📚 Exit Party by Emily St. John Mandel | Mandel's new novel is, in a word, resonant. Its disparate pieces, divergent structures, and strange doppelgängers echo each other across time and the pages of the book, from Paris to Ohio to LA, bouncing off sharp surfaces and layering over one another in an intricate, infinite soundscape. It's a book about parallels, about change, about huge, sweeping catastrophes, societal collapse, and authoritarian control—but most of all its about how all of that impacts individual, insignificant human lives. I should note that for how big and dynamic its themes are, the book is slow, even meandering, at times—but even that has a purpose, and a resonance. It's very good. Libby →
💽 Above the Clouds by Resavoir | Resavoir has become one of my go-to atmospheric/electronic artists for their ability to create really specific, unique soundscapes. This new album, described by the band as "cloud jazz", is that to a T. Throw this on while working, reading, or just staring out the window and have yourself a daydream.
🍿 Fantastic Mr. Fox | I'm ashamed to admit I just watched this film for the very first time. It didn't disappoint. Wes Anderson is brilliant. Roald Dahl stories remain as charming as ever. This was a joy to watch in the fall. That is all.
🍿 Killer Clowns from Outer Space | I don't really know what to say about this aside from that I loved it. It's terrible, of course, but in the very best way. It's a cult classic for a reason, you know?
🍿 The Thing | I'm slightly less ashamed to have not seen The Thing, given my strained relationship with horror films—but gosh was it worth the nightmares. This, to me, is a perfect example of how a relatively simple story archetype—in this case, a closed-circle mystery—can be mashed up with a different genre, or genres (i.e., a first-contact sci-fi story + body horror) to create something entirely new, unique, and incredible. That ending!!
🍿 Romeo + Juliet (1996) | What a wonderful Shakespearean fever dream. Why have I just now seen this? Why doesn't everyone recommend this to everyone all the time? I mean, yes, Baz Luhrmann's absolutely insane, highly-stylized, yet oddly faithful take on Romeo and Juliet may not be everyone's cup of tea—but it's entirely, exactly what it means to be, and that's enough for me.
📹 "Silicon Valley is Lying About the Apocalypse" by Michael Burns | A helpful reminder that tech companies are not your friends and that doomerism is problematic in multi-faceted ways.
Reading: 📚 = Book | 🔖 = Short Story | 📰 = Essay/Article
In the frame: The Craggy Pinnacle Tunnel along the Blue Ridge Parkway, viewed at sunset.
As I briefly alluded to in the introduction, this month marked Sarah and I's three-year wedding anniversary. We decided to keep our celebrations fairly low-key this year and set out for a hike along the Blue Ridge Parkway after Sarah got off work. The trails were empty since it was the middle of the week, and the autumnal forest took on a sort of fey, fantastic quality as we hiked and talked and walked together. We got back to the car shortly before sunset and stopped at an overlook to take it in, which is where I snapped the picture in the frame—one of my favorites in recent memory. We then drove back to town, ate entirely too much sushi, stopped off for custard anyway (don't judge), and wound down by watching the video of our ceremony. It was, in all honesty, as close to a perfect evening as I can imagine.
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Disclosure: I'm an affiliate of Bookshop.org, a site where your purchases support local bookstores. If you click through and buy a book I recommend, I'll earn a small commission. While this supports the newsletter and is certainly better than buying from the Company Who Shall Not Be Named, buying directly from your local bookstore or supporting your local library are the best options!
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