It’s amazing how quickly life can change.
I’ve written in previous newsletters that I had been in the process of decluttering my house in preparation for a big move in the fall. Well, it turns out our timeline has shifted quite significantly, so we (and by “we,” I mean myself and Castor and Pollux) are actually moving in THREE WEEKS instead of a few months.
Shortly after coming back from our cruise with my parents in Alaska in May, Bear and I immediately headed to Pittsburgh to search for a new place. We’d been planning this move for a while, thinking we would have the summer to prepare before Bear started his new position in the fall.
Well. The best laid plans, as they say.
We found a great new home, put in an offer, had it accepted, all in the space of a weekend. Fantastic! Unfortunately this drastically upped the timeline on selling our old home, which meant that the entire month of June was spent in a flurry of repairing, packing, and donating. Let me tell you: storage in a house is both a blessing and a trap. In closets all over my house I discovered stuff that I hadn’t seen since I moved into this place five years ago. If it hadn’t been needed in five years, then it’s highly unlikely it will be needed in the next five, so into the donation bin it all went.
There’s a sort of psychic clearing that comes with getting rid of possessions. I feel…freer somehow. We are downsizing (our current home is way too much house for two people and their dogs), which necessitates finding new homes for nearly all of our furniture, but it feels good. It’s like starting afresh, a blank slate, a fresh field of snow without any tracks in it. How appropriate then that this coincides with the closing of one creative chapter (Guardians of Dawn) and the opening of the next. (Maybe?)
In this issue
1. JJ’s magical world
2. Lexical gap
3. This creative life
4. What I’m reading
5. What I’m watching
6. Other things of note
lexical gap: 핑거 프린스 🧩
This is a bit of a cheat because 핑거 프린스 is literally just “finger prince” transliterated into Hangeul, but what a perfect word for today’s climes.
this creative life ✨
As one might expect, in the midst of all this moving, I haven’t been doing much writing. And frankly I don’t think I’ll be doing much writing before the fall as we get settled into our new digs.
But that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking.
It’s been a long time since I had the time to luxuriate in an idea like this. The past five years were spent on deadline, which exercises a different sort of creative muscle, but this slow accumulation of concepts and themes and feelings and mood haven’t been part of my process since Wintersong. Being out of contract is terrifying and uncertain, but it, like decluttering, is also freeing. Writing Guardians of Dawn was somewhat like making an intricate dish that required quite a bit of prep work, timing, and pre-planning. Rope at the moment feels like making a stew. I’m gathering ingredients and letting them all simmer, hoping that the resulting meal will be rich and full of depth. And I feel no pressure to rush it. Time is necessary to get all the flavors to marinate and meld together, but moreover, I’m not sure I have the skills yet to execute what I want. Every new project requires me to learn something new; if Wintersong taught me how to tell a story and Guardians taught me how to pace a plot, then Rope is teaching me how to be intentional. How to give something meaning, even if it’s only to myself.
The thing about forcing my body to move—either by walking the boys or packing and hauling boxes—is that it also forces my brain to generate thoughts and make connections. I had forgotten what it was like to be a child and forced to entertain myself without my phone while being dragged along on errands with my parents. No wonder I felt so creative then; I had no choice. I no longer find discomfort in the boredom and silence, and that seems like a revelation.
I am still chronically online, of course, but these moments where I am away from the perpetual merry-go-round of hype and discourse have given me perspective. So has age. I’m approaching my 41st birthday in a few days, and my sense of urgency and scale have shifted. Broadened. I want what I do going forward to have meaning, and that only comes with experience.
And right now, Rope is still mine. No one but my closest writing friends knows much about it, and even then they’re only aware of the vague outlines of what I am trying to do. The child in me thrills at not having to share my toys just yet. It is still secret, still safe.
Still my precious.
what i’m reading 📖
The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides. This was…fine. An entertaining read and one I devoured in one sitting, but considering how much everyone loved this one, I was expecting something else.
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke. A reread after watching Backrooms because I wanted to return to that feeling of liminal horror. Not that Piranesi is horror (or at least, not outright). Rereading this made me impatient for Susanna Clarke’s next book, which I discovered will be out in October. And there was much rejoicing.
City of Stairs, City of Blades, and City of Miracles by Robert Bennett Jackson. After blowing through Jackson’s Ana and Din mysteries earlier this year, I picked up his backlist and promptly blew through the Divine Cities trilogy as well. While I wouldn’t necessarily categorize the Divine Cities as fantasy-mystery, it is adjacent enough that it tickled the part of my brain that loves this genre mash-up. I know romantasy is the moneymaker du jour in the industry right now, but I am humbly begging that fantasy-mystery (fantastery? mystasy?) get its due soon.
what i’m watching 📺
Widow’s Bay. Unsurprisingly, I fucking loved this. I’ve heard this described as Stephen King meets Parks and Rec, but I say it’s Midnight Mass but make it funny. (With bonus Hamish Linklater!) Every day I have a new vocal stim from the show (currently it’s “Dead baby, dead baby, lesbian”), which I will be annoying Bear with until the show returns.
Backrooms. This is my jam. I don’t tend to find supernatural or slasher horror particularly frightening, but liminal horror lines up with the unsettled dread I get when consuming cosmic horror, and Backrooms was an astonishingly assured work from such a young director. I’m enjoying this horror resurgence in film, to be honest, and hope it continues.
other things of note 💾
Klein, Matt. “Our Culture Doesn’t Want Writers.” Zine, Substack, Jun 2026.
Healey, Eugene. “The Body is the Final Frontier of Capital.” Considered Chaos, Substack, Jun 2026.
Chiang, Ted. “No, Artificial Intelligence is Not Conscious.” The Atlantic, Jun 2026.
Nova, Lexi. “the yuri has always been doomed.” newlynova, YouTube, Jun 2026.
Yours entire,
It was a little eerie reading your post because it's the same thing that happened to me this year. We've been planning to move from Asheville to Baltimore this fall for two years but a house suddenly hit the market at the beginning of June that was perfect and we got it, so suddenly I went from a relatively relaxed summer to complete chaos. I don't think I'll really be able to think and work until the fall. Enjoy the migration north!