Thanks for following me over to this Substack experiment. I think the newsletter will be easier to read here and less sales-y. Do I have books you can buy? Sure do! Might I offer a paid subscription later on? I might! But I really just want to share what I’m reading and writing without spamming your inbox or “making an ask.” Ew.

I’ll probably send a roundup like this every two weeks or so, with a full essay on writing craft or literature coming once a month. Let me know what you think. Substack tells me you can reply to this newsletter and I’ll see your messages. Let’s find out together.

The Translation

I’m currently working on translating a woman’s nineteenth century memoir from French to English. I should have the first draft done by the end of the summer, with the book coming out summer 2023. It’s a very cinematic, compelling book; I like to translate without reading the work first, and I keep having that “one more page” feeling as I go. I can’t wait to share it with you … next year. But I’ll keep you posted here.

The Reading List

Doja Cat Video Reminds Me of My First Luhrman Film:

https://www.thefader.com/2022/06/03/doja-cat-vegas-video

When I was in college, free movies were shown in the student union. Having grown up in a town so small that Dirty Dancing finally arrived in our theater at the same time that it arrived on VHS, any movie was a revelation to me. I’d watch free movies any night I didn’t have something else going on, and I didn’t particularly care what was being shown. This is how I saw Reservoir Dogs.

It was also how I saw Strictly Ballroom, which was even more bonkers to me than the Tarantino movie. I walked in knowing exactly zero about this film or its director, Baz Luhrman. It was so much. The characters. The costumes. The dancing. The drama. I had not encountered that mockumentary before (had I seen Spinal Tap by then? I’m not sure), and so I wasn’t even sure if what I was watching was real. I didn’t care. I went with it.

I did not grow into a Luhrman fanatic; I do love Romeo + Juliet, with the best Mercution I have ever seen, but I skipped The Great Gastby. When I am in the mood for Moulin Rouge, there is nothing like it. I’m also not a huge Elvis fan. So I have very little skin in the game for Luhrman’s biopic, which means it might be a whole lot of fun for me to watch. I’m just here for the characters, the costumes, the dancing, the drama.

It’s a Tanker, Not a Cigarette Boat:

https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/photographer-and-artist-chris-burkard-on-not-shying-away-from-opportunity/

I started a master’s degree in English this spring, and I love it. I knew that I wanted to keep doing the kinds of work I’m doing in publishing, but I also want to do new things. What new things? I don’t know. That’s why I’m going to school and meeting new people and writing new works and learning more about how books work. But after a decade and a half, my job feels like a big ship that’s hard to turn rather than a little cigarette boat that can change direction on a dime. It’s frustrating.

I was glad to see I’m not the only person using the ship metaphor. Here’s photographer Chris Burkard:

I think that what I was seeing was that it was a big ship. The more successful you get—and I guess it’s not even success, it’s just the more comfortable you get—it’s like the ship gets bigger and it becomes harder to steer. And so it was all of a sudden like I made a small shift, but after a couple weeks, after a couple months, you’re all of a sudden way off course from where you were, and you’re in foreign waters and you’re scared. And it felt new and exciting and immersive and scary. But also like I was seeing new things. And so it’s funny because there’s almost this balance of opposites where like, yeah, I’m in uncharted territory, but I’m also feeling fulfilled in ways that I didn’t really realize, I didn’t know.

Anyway, The Creative Independent is a bottomless source of creative kindred spirits in a million different disciplines at different stages of their careers. This is just one example of the interesting interviews they share.

I’m So Sorry, I Was Rooting for Wales in That American Way of Being Too Involved in One’s Heritage:

https://www.thefader.com/2022/06/06/ukraine-world-cup-wales-russian-warship-yarmolenko-soccer

Like many Americans, particularly white Americans, I know that I have an ancestor who came to this country. In my case, it was a man who came from Wales in the mid-nineteenth century. Thus I have a half-hearted kind of Welsh affinity. It’s not anywhere near the passion Irish Americans seem to feel; it’s usually more about rooting for the perennial underdog Welsh national team.

So that’s what I sat down on my couch to do the other morning when I saw that Wales was playing Ukraine. How can I root against Ukraine in spring of 2022? I can’t. I did the unthinkable in soccer and rooted for both teams. It’s quite possible to be a neutral and watch a match for fun, without caring who wins, but I wanted both teams to win, both to have a berth at the 2022 World Cup, both to have to face the US and England in the first round (yikes). In one case, they hadn’t been to the World Cup since 1958. In the other, they were fighting literal fascism on the streets of their cities.

If you’re a fan, you’ve watched this match, and if you’re not, you don’t care, so I’ll tell you Wales won. I was happy, and I was also very upset. May that be the worst thing that happens to me this week.

Just Some Pretty Writing:

https://lithub.com/kim-stanley-robinson-on-waking-up-in-the-high-sierra/

I read an ungodly amount every week. I haven’t even told you about the books I’m reading. But I respect your time, so I will end with this lovely excerpt from a new book by Kim Stanley Robinson.

I Promised You Dog Pics