May was a blur. It can be summed up like this: migraine, had the MOST fun at Sunday afternoon karaoke with Ms. Emily McCombs and Ms. Louise Hung—celebrating Emily’s birthday (one week early because her actual birthday fell on Mother’s Day, or what I like to call Mother’s Birthday, but I digress), finished my novel and sent it to my agent, Mother’s Day, allergies, elementary school book fair duty for two weeks, migraine, bad allergies, youngest child turned seven, horrible allergies, avoiding the news because everyone has lost their damn mind, migraine, more allergies, and lots of reading and listening to music to escape the malaise caused by all of the above.
As I have done for four and a half decades (from the age of four because I started early and I have been here a looooonnnggggggg time), I escape the discomfort, pain, and anxiety of reality (see: the world) through art, especially books (and music).
I didn’t write much in May, but it’s a new month (or eleven days into one). I have three new projects that I am excited about (because why live in the dystopian horror of reality when you can create a whole other life in another body with other problems?) that will hopefully see the light of day at some point (rather than sit in development purgatory or revision hell).
Why am I overusing parentheses? I don’t know. I have heard it’s a Gen X thing. (Maybe it is. Maybe we were conditioned to diminish our thoughts by putting everything in parentheses. Or maybe it’s just me.)
Thank you for reading Ask Erin. This post is public so feel free to share it.
The whole point of this was to say hi/hello/this is what I’ve been doing with my time and, hey, here are some books you might want to read and music you may want to listen to because we need art more than ever. And expect a bunch of Ask Erins to drop the next few weeks because my inbox has been BUSY!
Amerikaland (Danny Goodman)
Animal (Patricia Grifasi)
Housemates (Emma Copley Eisenberg)
Killer Amidst Killers (Billy Jensen)
The Light Eaters (Zoë Schlanger)
Love is a Burning Thing (Nina St. Pierre)
Margo’s Got Money Troubles (Rufi Thorpe)
One Perfect Couple (Ruth Ware)
Shame on You: How to Be a Woman in the Age of Mortification (Melissa Petro)
Volume 0 (BOTM’s new lit mag)
(some of it’s old; some of it’s new; some I have shared before—but whatever, you need good tunes for summer)
What have you read or listened to lately that makes your world better?
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