Hello there, and happy Saturday.
My husband is in the kitchen baking his famous chocolate chip cookies for a family picnic. I’m on my third cup of coffee and already scavenged in the See’s Candy bag for breakfast (no one can convince me that dark chocolate covered almonds aren’t a healthy choice). Copy edits are due on my new novel on Monday (yes, Monday!), so naturally I’m whiling away my morning here on Substack, reading instead of working.
Here are ten things to read. All are related, in some way, to creativity and living well—whether that means writing, traveling, building something new, or rebuilding something lost.
The new novel is set in Paris—thus the random Paris photo above, of my favorite neighborhood park, Parc Monceau. The novel will be released in January, and I’ll reveal the title soon. In the meantime, I thought I’d share a few things you might enjoy reading this weekend.
Luke Jennings, the creator of KILLING EVE, on making art that AI can’t imitate: From Me to You, With Love.
“I don’t know where Villanelle came from. One day she was just there for me, fully formed. I was a little in awe of her at first…”
Villanelle is an excellent villain, but when I watched the series, I was drawn to Eve and Carolyn of MI6. Like real intelligence officers, they sacrifice their personal lives for their work and their country, with disastrous consequences. For a deep dive on Killing Eve, read Luke Jennings’s 2018 article for The Guardian.
Brent Hartinger of Brent and Michael Are Going Places on American expectations and unexpected endings: We Rented an Apartment in Istanbul. When We Returned a Week Later, the Landlord Was Gone.
If you need a “restore your faith in humanity” read, this one’s for you.
A tough but worthwhile assignment from Matt Bell of No Failure, Only Practice: The Autobiography of Your Novel, based on a book-length essay by Alexander Chee. By the way, I highly recommend Bell’s Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts.
Chris Bohjalian on why so many of his protagonists are women, and his new novel, The Amateur: The Heroine’s Journey. I’m a huge fan of Bohjalian’s books and can’t wait for The Amateur, which is getting rave reviews like this starred review from Kirkus: “Irresistible… a marvelous 11th-hour twist and a satisfying denouement lie ahead. It’s hard to think of any reason not to call this a perfect novel: a hole in one.”
Helen Russell of Living Danishly on the return of the wolves to a small town in Denmark, and David Attenborough’s 100th birthday: We Need to Talk About Wolves. 1
Ron Charles on a big, creative undertaking in The Library of Congress to make kids fall in love with library research: The Most Exciting Room in Washington
John Pearce of Part-Time Parisian on why no one needs a permit to sell flowers in Paris on May 1: On May 1st, Paris Smells Different (Pearce is the author of the Eddie Grant series of novels set in Paris.)
Julia Phelan on the long, painfully slow road to rebuilding in Malibu: Molasses
What She Really Wants to Know by Claire Polders at Fiction Attic Press
and finally, for anyone who is thinking of doing something new in May, here’s a short piece I wrote about trust and crocodiles, and my new favorite beachside motel: Another Day at Witch’s Rock Surf Camp
That’s all for now. I hope you have a lovely weekend!
Unrelated but kind of related: Back in 2017, my Danish publisher brought me to Copenhagen for an amazing week of events, including a literary festival at a prison in Horsens that had been converted into an event space. Klim had done an amazing job with The Marriage Pact (Til Doden Os Skiller, translated by Ninna Brenøe), which received a prize for the best foreign crime novel published in Denmark. I fell in love with Copenhagen, and with everyone at the publishing house Klim. Ever since, I’ve been wanting to return. It’s definitely on my bucket list for my new novel.
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