It’s been a while since I’ve written one of these! Almost a year.

In my mind, “I Survived Everything”¹ was the last issue I sent out, in September 2024, prior to my most recent hiatus. There was actually one more in December, but this is the one you want to read if you missed it, or if you want to understand more about where I’ve been during the ensuing months of time. It doesn't contain much in the way of detail but the vibe is right!

Some of that time I spent processing my grief, some I spent working on a book, some I spent eating chips and guac, and some I spent overthinking what would be the best cadence to resume writing newsletter issues. Turns out a cadence is a kind of organized sequence, and a sequence is a pattern of occurrences, and you can’t have a cadence without any occurrences, so it doesn’t matter when I’m gonna send out issues if there aren’t any issues to send out.

Recently someone suggested I tie it to the cycles of the moon. I was intrigued. Roughly once a month seems good for starters. The full moon’s the most obvious candidate, but its schedule is already jam-packed. Then I thought, you know what always gets short shrift? The new moon. Of which there is one today.

There’s no New Moon Jamborees. Nobody howling at the new moon. You can’t even see the thing. But it’s still there. It’s at the most reclusive point in its cycle, but the hibernation is temporary. It hasn’t disappeared; it’s building strength. It’s hatching plans. It’s coming out of its cage, and it’s doing just fine. It’s about to wax, baby.

And that all seemed to describe my hopes for resuming this newsletter fairly well. So the new moon it is.

Writing News

I’m still living off life insurance money for a little while longer, no full-time job yet, but I did get a very-part-time gig as a Daily Editor at the Chicago Review of Books. It’s been delightful to work with the talented staff and contributors, honing my editing chops and better attuning myself to the contemporary literary scene. We cover any and all new books, but we’re particularly known for making sure local releases get coverage.

I’ve had the chance to publish a few pieces as well:

Unaskable Questions in Heather Christle’s “In the Rhododendrons”²

• Here I reviewed a searching memoir about a damaged mother-daughter relationship

“Inauthentically Authentic”: Reliving Reality TV in the Aughts with Margaux Eliot (aka Julia Fine)³

• Here I interviewed one of my incredible writing mentors about her novelistic romp through a Newlyweds-era TV-production set

Read Your Resistance: 5 Books to Reckon with Big Tech⁴

• And this was an off-the-wall list of stuff that could be helpful if you're completely fed up with techno-utopianism, crypto, and/or the Paypal Mafia

I'll have another piece coming in January on a super-hot buzzy novel from a super-hot buzzy author whom you've probably heard of. Shhhh it's a secret!!

Good Stuff to Read

OK well, I have a year's worth of good stuff I've read sitting here, and I've already pasted four links into this issue. By my calculations, that means I can link to exactly one (1) more thing without getting annoying, and that means it better be good.

The History of the Holocaust Survivor by Brooke Randel

I chose this piece because it's both extremely sad and extremely hopeful. Kind of like my life during the past year, and kind of like my experience of life in general. There's a certain feeling I have about the passing of time and the inevitability of pain and loss. It's a very sentimental and melancholy feeling, and simultaneously it's somehow equanimous and determined. Almost impossible to evoke in writing. Brooke does that here.

Once a type, the term Holocaust survivor stays a type. Like a museum display, the image has been set, well-coiffed and out of touch. Only now, the type ages. It stiffens. It becomes mythic, or lost, or doubted, or revered. It becomes a point to make, a tool to wield, but mostly it fades, a frayed edge, a heavy arm, a quiet sound in a noisy room. It is an outline that will not fill, but it never empties either. The term means everything it has always meant, but now it also means old.