The Bloggess

So about 6 months ago I started having this itching inside one ear that kept getting worse and nothing fixed it so I went to my doctor and he was like, “Huh. There’s a lump there. You need to see a dermatologist and maybe get a biopsy” and so I made an appointment and they were like, “We can see you in two months” and I panicked a little and they were like, “Okay, you can come in in two weeks and be seen by our PA” but then when I went in the PA was like, “Huh. Let me go get the doctor after all” and then he was like, “Well, it could be nothing but it also could be cancer and I’d rather have you see a specialist to look at it before I do anything” and so I made an appointment and they were like, “We can get you in NEXT YEAR” and then I may have cried a little because WHY ARE WE SO LOW ON DOCTORS? And I explained that I already have cancer and that I don’t want to wait until next year to find out if I have more cancer and she looked at my notes and was like, “I can fit you in with a resident doctor in a month” and yesterday I met with the resident and he was like, “Huh. That looks weird. Let me get the doctor” and then he came in and looked at it and was like, “Oh, that’s just eczema. You’re totally fine. You just need some meds.”

Anyway, all of that to say that I hadn’t realized how much this was weighing on me until I started crying in relief at the doctors office and I just want to say “sorry” that I haven’t been myself lately and that I’ve been a little absent from everything but I guess it was affecting me more than I thought.

SO, YAY FOR NOT HAVING ANOTHER KIND OF CANCER! That’s a weird thing to celebrate but I’m doing it anyway.

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I have this giant painting I bought second-hand years ago.

It’s a print on canvas called “Before Nightfall” and when I first saw it I was like, “I love how ambiguous this painting is” and the guy selling it was like, “Yeah, why is she catching a bird in a wedding dress?” and I was like, “Oh, to me it looks more like she’s going to free the bird from the guilded cage but has been caught in the act by probably the same person who has caged her and she’s wondering if she should fly away too” and he was like, “Huh. Maybe?” And then I said, “Or maybe she’s going to eat the bird because she’s hunched over it like a predator and she looks a little like I do when it’s 3am I’ve been caught in front of the fridge with a burrito I’m not supposed to eat” and he said…”I’m not sure-” and I said “Like maybe she’s a vampire and she’s really hungry and she’s already murdered everyone and wants dessert? Or maybe she’s some kind of ethical monster and she doesn’t want to eat the people she’s with at the party but she’s desperate so she sneaks into the bedroom to eat their parakeet but then she’s spotted by the mean girlfriend of the guy she likes and she’s like “Aw fuck” and is trying to decide if she should make up an excuse or just eat the girlfriend?” And the guy was like, “I don’t…um…what?” And then I offered him half of the price he was asking and he took it, and Victor wasn’t sure if it was because I’d baffled they guy or if he was now afraid that he was selling some sort of a haunted bird-devouring vampire painting.

Aaaaanyway (out of ADD meds, sorry) we moved a few months ago to a smaller house and I finally found a spot for this painting but then I noticed that there was what looks to be blood splattered and smeared all over this painting.

And I started wondering if maybe a murder had occurred when our old house was for sale and Victor told me I needed to stop watching so much Dateline and that it was probably just diet code so I just took pictures in case a detective needed it later and then I started scrubbing the painting but the blood (?) was not coming off and I was like, “OH THIS PAINTING IS DEFINITELY HAUNTED.”

But then I did a reverse look-up of the painting to see what it was supposed to look like without all of the blood and turns out the blood is part of the original painting. Or maybe it’s not blood and it’s burnt umber paint added to give it atmosphere? Or maybe it really is supposed to be a vampire attack and I was picking up on all of the subtle clues? Or maybe the artist was murdered as she was finishing the piece and never had a chance to clean it? Or, more likely, she spilled her diet coke on it and was like, “FUCK IT I GIVE UP. JUST LEAVE IT”?

Anyway, I don’t have an ending for this but I thought I’d ask your opinion about what you think this painting is about and also say that if you haven’t finished as much as you wanted to today, at least you didn’t spend an hour trying to scrub an art piece that is supposed to look like that after you took pictures of it in case it was evidence of a murder that never happened.

I decided to clean up the house and a frame I was polishing broke and the glass went through my finger and now I can only type with one hand because it keeps opening up and this feels like a sign that cleaning is dangerous and that instead I should be reading. And that is a very good coincidence because I wanted to tell you about new books you should check out this month.

This month if you’re part of the Fantastic Strangelings Book Club we’re sending you A Land So Wide by Erin A. Craig. An atmospheric dark fairy tale with Scottish folklore roots that’s perfect to read as Autumn creeps in. “The Town of Mistaken has a secret…and it’s up to one woman to uncover the truth, confront her past, and save the man she loves.” An eerie but romantic exploration of freedom vs security. Vibes = M Night Shyamalan’s The Village mixed with Hunger Games.

And if you’re in Nightmares from Nowhere we’re sending you Slashed Beauties by A. Rushby. A gothic feminist body horror revolving around three Anatomical Venuses – ultra realistic wax figures of women used by atonomists – that come to life at might to murder the men who have wronged them.

Need more books to get you through the month? Here are some of my favorite new releases:

The Book of I by David Greig: This small Scottish tome is so very good and weird. Vikings, beekeepers and monks in the year 825 CE.

In Defense of Dabbling: The Brilliance of Being a Total Amateur by Karen Walrond – A brilliant and inspiring book that I’ll actually be talking to Karen about at Nowhere!

Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings – A richly imagined dark fantasy that explores the beautiful destruction o a town reclaimed by the natural world.

How the Hell Did I Not Know That?: My Midlife Year from Couch to Curiosity by Lucie Frost – You may know Lucie from her fabulous instagram, but her book takes knowledge even further. She’ll be here with Wendi Aarons at Nowhere too!

Life, and Death, and Giants by Ron Rindo – This book is so sad, but also very good so read at your own risk. Amish, English, football, pro wrestling, lots going on here to get sucked into.

What are you most excited to read next?

Next week I’m going to New England to talk about my upcoming new book at a conference just for indie booksellers (yay!) and I was talking to Elizabeth (the lovely person who runs Nowhere Bookshop) about it and she asked “Where in New England, because it’s pretty big?” and I thought she was crazy because isn’t New England a small state? Like, it’s so small I can’t even remember what the capital of New England is and then Victor and Elizabeth just stared at me in horror, because apparently New England isn’t a state at all. I assumed that they were fucking with me but they explained that New England was a whole group of states and asked if I also thought “the midwest” was a state, and I said, “Obviously not, because there is a ‘the’ in the title. That’s how you know it’s a group. ‘The southwest.’ ‘The Atlantic Seaboard.’ Like, if New England isn’t a state then why do we have The New England Patriots? We don’t have “The Mormon Corridor Stallions,” do we? This is too confusing. Petition to rename New England “‘The Upper Righties’.”

And then they looked at me like I was even stupider and I wondered if New England wasn’t even in the upper right of the map. and reminded them that they didn’t teach me Geography in high school because I was too busy taking classes on judging-cotton, cattle insemination, boll-weevil eradication and square dancing. (Thanks, Texas! Super helpful!)

Elizabeth was like, “You never learned the songs about the states?” and then proceeded to send me something called “The Nifty Fifty,” which was decidedly not a bop and didn’t even rhyme. Then she sent me “Wakko’s 50 State Capitols” and I was like, “Ringo Star as a mouse teaching me geography sung to the melody of every square dancing class I ever took was not on my bingo card for today, but I guess here we are.”

So my question to you is, what is something you learned as an adult that made you feel incredibly stupid, because I can’t be alone here.

Also, whoever decided that we should capitalize “Capitol” when it refers to the building but not “capital” when it refers to the capital city that the Capitol is in is on my forever shitlist. Also, spellcheck is telling me “shitlist” isn’t even a word. I fucking give up.

Y’all. This should be a fancy-ass, glossy post where I breezily tell you about something I’m so excited about and I should be wearing a suit while talking to a news anchor as I toss my hair back and laugh confidently while not doing that anxiety-based blinking tic that comes on every fucking time I tell myself to not do that anxiety-based blinking tic.

Instead, I am writing this from under two cats while in my daytime pajamas with two inches of grey roots and blinking hard like a motherfucker. BUT…I’m also really happy because GUESS WHAT? NEW BOOK, Y’ALL:

This book is just as unhinged and baffling as my others, but it’s a little different. Two years ago when Hailey went off to college I fell into a pretty deep depression and felt utterly unmoored. I had a hard time living and writing and just being human, so I started using all of the tools and tricks that I’ve collected in the many decades I’ve lived with depression, anxiety, ADHD, executive dysfunction, squirrel-brain infestation, memory problems, etc to pull myself out. And I realized that all of these tricks that I rely on to save me are actually a pretty amazing toolbox of things that might help others too. This book pools together all of those strange hacks that keep me alive in spite of myself and that keep me creating even when it’s hard. Some are logical. Some are funny. Some are absolutely ridiculous. But together they are a quick-start manual that helped me to stay here, to keep finding joy even when it’s hard, and to stay creative in a world (and brain) that doesn’t always prioritize expression. They may speak a little more to those with my same issues, but I think they can help everyone who deals with fear, memory, focus issues, weariness of the world, doom-scrolling, introversion, artistic block, imposter syndrome, dumpster fires, or who just needs a little voice in their corner offering encouragement and reminding them that it will be okay.

I’ll have so much more to say about this book in the months to come, but for now…want to see the cover?

And you can preorder it today! Click here to preorder and keep that page bookmarked because I’ll be updating it with book tour dates and locations. I haven’t toured in so long that I don’t even know where to go so feel free to leave suggestions in the comments if you have a local place that you love.

I hope that it helps you to read it as much as it helped me to write it.

First off, a giant thank you to everyone who loves us because Nowhere Bookshop was named the Reader’s Choice Best Independent Bookshop in San Antonio in the San Antonio Current. WHOOP.

Secondly, today I wrote about stealing time from death on my substack if you want to read it.

Third, my favorite new releases this month are The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis and Tantrum by Rachel Eve Moulton. I picked The Hounding for the Fantastic Strangelings Bookclub. It’s like if The Crucible and The Virgin Suicides had a baby that was stolen and raised by We Have Always Lived in the Castle.

And I picked Tantrum for the Nightmares From Nowhere Book Club. Interestingly, this book is also an exploration of female rage…but a little bit darker.

READ THEM BOTH IMMEDIATELY.

Fourth, if you need more new releases to fill your month, I highly recommend Full of Myself: Black Womanhood and the Journey to Self-Possession by Austin Channing Brown and
Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle.

Fifth, Hailey is feeling better and their cranial palsy has recovered enough that they don’t have double-vision until the evening when they get tired. HELL YES FOR BABY STEPS IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

Sixth, I can’t remember the sixth thing.