6 things

Project check-ins, summer goals, submissions, and two summer books to preorder

Novel progress is slow and steady, but it’s progress, and also the summer is coming. It’s easy to be optimistic this time of year.

I want to be outside, so here, quickly, are 6 things.

1. For the Chicago Review of Books, I reviewed In Vitro: On Longing and Transformation by Isabel Zapata, translated by Robin Myers. I loved this book and I loved writing about it. If you liked Rivka Galchen’s Little Labors or Sarah Manguso’s Ongoingness, you’ll probably like In Vitro. Order it here.

2. My friend Stephanie Austin has a book coming out in July with WTAW Press. It’s called Something I Might Say and it’s about complicated family relationships and grief and if that is your thing, join me in preordering it.

3. My other friend and part of my agent family (this is what I call all the writers who have the same agent as me — is that weird?) Jiordan Castle has a book coming out in August called Disappearing Act. It’s a YA memoir-in-verse about her father’s incarceration and if that hooked you, join me in preordering this one too.

4. Last week, I checked in with myself on my long-term writing goals and realized it’s been a while since I was really on the short story submission circuit. It’s time! I have one complete story right now and while lots of magazines close their subs in the summer months, there are enough open that I can make a big push. Consider me out on submission…

5. And then I will be out of short stories! I wrote a ton of short stories in 2018; most of what I’ve published since then was written then and revised in the years since, including the one on submission now. I’ve decided to pause the novel during 1000 Words of Summer this year and just focus on writing new stories. Start a new story each day and by the end of it I’ll have 14 beginnings to work with. I’m excited.

6. To get in the short story mood, I’m going to be reading as many as I can during the month of June. Do you have any recent favorites to recommend? Drop them in the comments.

That’s enough for today! I’ll be back next week with my 1000 Words of Summer prep plan.