it really is. occasional thoughts on how to make it survivable and keep from losing your mind in the process.
I had reason to take a long drive recently, down the length of California from the Bay back to my home in Los Angeles. I made the mistake of taking the 5, saving me some time but the route took me through the flat monotony of the central valley. An
I saw an old friend for brunch recently. It was a beautiful day and we sat outside feeling the cool crisp air and shared a Japanese-style pancake with the approximate diameter of a basketball, custard-like in the middle, golden brown on the outside. We had warm soft tofu
Recently, I climbed into an alpine lake. The rocks were slippery and unstable, the water near freezing. In the time it took to gasp, the cold was in my bones. I waded deeper until I found sandy bottom and crouched down, the water up to my shoulders. I breathed through
Categories are made up. They will always be nothing more than an approximation of the thing itself. Nothing as simple as a label can encompass the experience, the reality, and the nuance of any individual work of art. A book, a story, will contain multitudes that defy categorization. I don&
Hello. It's been a minute since I've done this – I'm excited to announce that I am accepting unsolicited submissions. Queries are the heart and soul of what we do as agents and I am absolutely thrilled by the idea of digging into some
I have moved three times in the last year. From New York to California. From a friend's house situated in a mountain valley to a condo in Los Angeles. From that condo off of a too busy street to a small house in a quiet neighborhood that no
There’s a thing you hear when bad things happen: “At least they’ll make great art about this.” And, idk, man. That doesn’t feel like enough right now. To hear that your suffering, the pain endured by the ones you love, the degradation
Business is booming in the book biz. At least for some. Romantasy is the word of the day. Hugely profitable, hugely successful, it has been remarkable to watch this unfold over the last year or so. The readership's appetite seems insatiable. What a time to be a genre
I've been thinking a lot about rules lately. I'm not someone who gets on well in highly structured environments. Authority figures and me have a complicated relationship. Rules, in a lot of ways, aren't really my jam. So, whenever I find myself defending them,
There's something deeply pleasurable about making a list. It is a way of exercising a little bit of control, of organization, to a fundamentally chaotic world. But it's an illusion. The list can never capture the totality of the thing, all description is reductive, sure, but
Twitter is dying. Whether that will be the precipitous decline from technical issues piling up, or strangled to death by fleeing ad revenue, or a horrible corruption in the userbase due to a lack of moderation – time will tell. But, to my eyes at least, Twitter is in its
I'm writing this on my birthday, nursing a hangover, ignoring the dishes in the sink, the bucket of melted ice full of seltzer and beer, the empty bottles left by my friends. It's been another year, another decade, marked complete, marked done. Finished. Kaput. Fin. I&
Hello friends! I am adding a new feature for all subscribers that is designed for you all to come ask me your burning publishing questions and gain a little glimpse into the industry from a perspective that is not wholly mine! I'm going to start doing regular Twitch
Last week I flew across the country to LA, met my friend Kate, got on a boat, and stepped off on Santa Catalina Island. The plan was to walk the 38.5 miles across the length of the island, climb over 10,000 feet, with everything we needed to survive
There’s a joy to talking on the phone. In an era where we are inundated with text, with communication coming at us non-stop in emails, texts, tweets, instagram comments, dms, slacks, discords. We are constantly talking but never speaking. And text, well, this is ironic given what