Lexical Gap No. 42: 處暑
August 2023 summary
Tomorrow is September 1, and it’s funny how I always think of September as the beginning of autumn when for most of my life, the first of September was still very much late summer. Back home in Los Angeles, we would be headed into wildfire season after months of no rain, and the searing Santa Ana winds from the desert would come roaring into the LA basin, bringing with them dry, sere temperatures, bringing a heat that could linger well into October.
But here on the East Coast, I always forget how much the humidity breaks at the end of August, just in time for school. As I type, the day is a beautiful and mild, with clear skies and a soft breeze. After a whirlwind summer, I’m ready for a restful fall.
In this issue
1. JJ’s magical world
2. Lexical gap
3. Events & appearances
4. This creative life
5. Morning Realms Dispatch
6. What you might have missed
7. What I’m reading
8. What I’m watching
9. What I’m listening to
10. Other things of note
lexical gap: 處暑 🧩
One think you should know about me is that I am a fairly diligent at keeping a bullet journal, even if I don’t actually journal in it all that often. For me, it’s a record of the days as much as it is a diary, and one of the things I track are the solar terms, which is a subset of the East Asian lunisolar calendar. We are currently in the 處暑 term, or the end of the heat, and it amazes sometimes how well the weather can line up with the solar term we are currently in. The heat has indeed broken, and I’m looking forward to the shortening days.
events & appearances 📅
Barnes & Noble asked me to host an Instagram Live with my wifey, Roshani Chokshi. Hope to see someone you there!
this creative life ✍🏻
The next (and hopefully final—fingers crossed) draft of GUARDIANS 2 will be due in October, so I will won’t be quite as active on here as I have been!
morning realms dispatch 🌞
The news is finally out and I can share the Illumicrate edition of Zhara! Illumicrate really went all out for this edition and I can’t be any more thrilled. We have sprayed edges and new endpapers, but the thing that absolutely slayed this for me was the new case, which is a nod to the romance novel Han and Zhara read together in the book. I love the art style and I love the nods to manga and light novels it gives (just like I tried to do in Guardians).
news & other press 📰
other things 🔥
The Morning Realms Dispatch No. 10: Casting call
The Guardians Gazette No. 6: Annotations. For my 절친 only.
stuff you might have missed ✨
Obscure arts: Shoulda stayed in the group chat.
Friends-locked: Are you tired? For my 절친 only.
Negative capability: the empress, the emperor, the hierophant, the lovers. For my 절친 only.
what i’m reading 📖
Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. I loved this. Something you should know about me is that I enjoy horror quite a bit, and this really scratched that itch. It reminded me a lot of some of Guillermo del Toro’s work, especially some of the shorts in his Cabinet of Curiosities. This is my first book by Moreno-Garcia, and it definitely won’t be my last.
The 7½ Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton. Sometimes a girl just wants a twisty mystery with a completely unique premise and Evelyn Hardcastle more than delivered. I don’t know why I was under the misapprehension that this was literary fiction for so long—maybe because I kept getting it mixed up in my head with The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins-Reid. I’m not much of a literary fiction person, but it wasn’t until I saw that it was a closed-room manor house mystery that I was sold. I don’t read a lot of mysteries, although I did see the twist coming, but then again, I was along for the ride on this one, not reading critically. A really nice reset for the brain.
Farthing by Jo Walton. This book is a reread, as The 7½ Lives of Evelyn Hardcastle put me in the mood for another mystery. The nice thing about being ADHD is that I have no recollection whatsoever of the whodunnit, so rereading this mystery was experiencing it afresh.
what i’m watching 📺
Good Omens: Season 2. This felt like watching fanfic, but in the best way. Except for that ending. Don’t touch me, I’m fragile about it. I need TV writers to give my gay TV dads the happy endings they deserve! This reminded me, in the worst way, of the ending to Our Flag Means Death. UGH.
Across the Spider-Verse. This might actually be better than the first movie, and I didn’t think that was possible. And while I’m now dying for the next installment in the series, I am perfectly content to wait until the strike terms are settled and also for as long as it takes for animators to work under humane conditions.
Amsterdam. The honest truth is that what I actually wanted to rewatch was Gosford Park, yet another murder mystery set in an English manor home, but it wasn’t available for streaming on a service to which I had a subscription. This was…fine. I didn’t finish it. It’s not terrible. But I wanted a murder mystery and despite this film opening with a murder, it’s really more a conspiracy plot movie and that’s not what I was in the mood for.
what i’m listening to 🎧
D-Day: The Final. I SAID DON’T TOUCH ME, I’M FRAGILE. I watched all three days and the last day utterly wrecked me. Yoongi crying through Snooze—a song that already makes me cry—just devastated me. And the tattoo reveal! Him walking through the door at the end to symbolize him having worked through his trauma! The announcement of his military enlistment! DON’T TOUCH ME I’M FRAGILE!!!!!!
other things of note 💾
Summers, Courtney. “stay true.” a letter to you from courtney summers. (
) Aug 2023.“Booklash: Literary Freedom, Online Outrage, and the Language of Harm.” Pen America. Aug 2023.
“AI Filmmaking is Not the Future. It’s a Grift.” Patrick (H) Willems. YouTube. August 2023.
“Everything is Content Now.” Patrick (H) Willems. YouTube. August 2023.
That’s all for now!
사랑해,
me when i see myself in the newsletter of an author i dig THAT ALSO FEATURES A DOGGO 🤩🤩🤩🤩