〰️〰️ IN 〰️

These are things I read, saw, ingested, ate, listened to, or just generally thought about in the last month that I want to share with you. It's an incomplete list (obviously) but it's the stuff I'm still thinking about.

A fairly short edition of this newsletter, because July was hard. Our beloved dog Moro was diagnosed with aggressive stomach cancer, and I'm predictably pretty sad about it! We're trying to give her a lovely last summer, but it means I haven't been in the most creative mood. Pet your pups for me!

I love objects!!!

I have become obsessed with this game, which shows you 10 objects from the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection each day and asks you to guess where and when they were made. I'm not actually very good at this game. Sometimes I can make an educated guess based on what the object is made of, the style, the writing on it, or other clues, but a lot of time I either have no idea, or am simply quite wrong. I love it!!!

The human desire to create objects is one of my favorite things in the world. Everywhere we go, for nearly as long as anybody has records, we have made things. Compulsively, almost. Humans simply must make stuff, often little guys.

reading

• "We’re trained in obedience and rule-following from a very young age. We need equivalent practice in breaking rules, in recognizing when a rule or law is unjust and needs to be broken, and in acting in accord with that recognition. We need this all the time, but damn if we don’t need it especially now. One day, possibly soon, we will be called on to break a big law in the name of justice and rationality. Be ready." 〰️ Mandy Brown
• "I sometimes divide people into those I’d want to be characters in a novel and those I wouldn’t. My husband says this is my main method for insulting people!" 〰️ Leanne Ogasawara
• "The diversity of life on Earth is so grand, bizarre, and sprawling that even the existence of a single beetle can make your head spin. But it needs to exist. The very concept of an artificially generated video of wildlife is profane, operating on a level of self-interest that I struggle to comprehend." 〰️ Sabs Imbler
• "Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe." 〰️ Brian Phillips
• "There are no new ideas, just new ways of giving those ideas we cherish breath and power in our own living." 〰️ Audre Lorde
• "In April 2026, my husband and I bought our first home in El Cerrito, California. By the end of June, I’d become public enemy No. 1 on the local Nextdoor." 〰️ Amy Brown

listening

this month I also...

• Took our dog away from Oakland to escape the fireworks
• Watched an absurd amount of soccer and volleyball
• Helped organize and clean out my late grandparents's house
• Dogsat a very cute dog
• Went to an instrument petting zoo
• Went to COYOTE happy hour
• Started watching One Piece from the beginning (and lost interest at about episode 12, but I've been told that the manga is better)
• Switched to a new gym closer to my house (love you forever Bay Strength!)

〰️ OUT 〰️〰️

This is stuff I wrote, created, or published.

PECKII

I sold a short story! Yes, I've published short stories in a few places before, but this is the first story I've sold where I didn't personally know the person who I was pitching it to. I'm really happy about it, and the feedback I got on the story made me laugh: "Weird as hell, poetic, and I may be unable to discern the point, but it definitely made me read the whole thing."

I can't tell you what the outlet is yet, as I'm still operating under a cone of silence, but I'll share when I can.

I also finished a few more shorts, and editing a story for publication this fall in a magazine. I have a longer short in the works now, but I'm mostly editing at the moment to try and get a few stories I have early drafts of further dialed in.

CUBENSIS

I got notes back on my novel from Caroline, my agent, who said very nice things and thinks the revisions I did (that I told you folks about here and here) really worked! This is great. I have another pass to do to really bring it home, but I'm excited about how it's shaping up.

OYSTOYAE

The big project this month was on the non-fiction book proposal. Last month I got notes back from Caroline about the absurdly long draft proposal I sent her (which I wrote about here). Overall, she really liked it, which was such a relief. As usual, she had very smart thoughts about how to make it sharper and clearer, including cutting a chapter and adding more signposts and explanations for connections that are clear in my head but need to be explicit on the page.

I'm pretty happy with how those edits went! And then I turned to the sample chapter, which I'm still working on and I'll write way more about in the next edition of this in/out newsletter.