You know you're old when...

i would be such a good writer if books did not require tension, character development, or settings

“One must be careful not to wonder if these pleasures are superior to last year’s pleasures. They never are. That must be the seduction of the past again. But just wait until now becomes then. You’ll see how happy we were.” Susan Sontag—Unguided Tour

Good mail day. @autofocusbooks.bsky.social

It's almost Halloween so I guess it's time to eat the Easter candy.

The Onion doesn’t miss. We need the Living Wage for Musicians Act NOW!

@melissajorndwrites.bsky.social Lovelovelove the wildness of your Paranoid Tree story this month! (And the art with it is superb!)

"The next day, there's a message from Miss Birdy. 'We cannot give your boy his bottle. The milk you left was wild. Please bring better milk.'" —from Sabrina Orah Mark's title story in WILD MILK. (No matter how many times I read this, it surprises & delights anew.) @dorothyproject.bsky.social

My way of coping with all of the madness is focusing on what I can do to make my community a little bit stronger. So excuse me for all of the earnestness, but I wrote about ways we can all pitch in to support a thriving literary culture. lithub.com/how-to-be-a-...

Happy Monday! Read a short story today. Share a recent fave. Tell an author how much you loved one of theirs...

After over a decade of listening to them, I FINALLY saw The Avett Brothers live last night. At one point, my friend Kate turned to me and said, Are we even still in the same row? It was that kind of transformative. Long live live music. (And banjos.)

“Unlike some of the other horror writers who mourn a promised future, Schweblin’s stories often show how the future we are mourning is one we have, or thought we had, created ourselves.”

Feeding time. #backyardpond #thisishowikeepmyselfsane

Took my students to a stained glass workshop where this sign is on the studio door. I find it very refreshing.

Always a good mail day when a new issue of @paranoidxtree.bsky.social shows up! Love this evocative little ticket to defying gravity (if briefly)...

Coming back to social media after so much time away is kinda like visiting a foreign country or different era where I *kinda* know the customs. What goes on here, how do we talk to one another, what are the best things to see/do, what is expected and what is happening outside of those expectations?

2/2

‪“The first time you saw him, you thought, No one should be that perfect. It was impossible. No one’s lips were that color naturally.”‬ ‪— Sara Rauch, “December” in 25Q3‬ ‪https://vastliterarypress.org/2025/07/20/rauch-december/‬

We bought a new house this summer and inherited a koi pond with six koi in it that also features the stunning evening vocals of this fair friend and his/her/their friends. #frogs #backyardnature

I'm at the playground afterschool and a kid pulls up on a bicycle and asks (motocross helmet still on) if I've seen a cat. I haven't. Apparently, his telescope was positioned in the window just so that it caught the sun and lit a chair on fire and in the smoke and chaos the cat escaped.

In-process on a story that gives me plenty of notes and ideas but (thus far) refuses to yield an arc. A good half of writing (for me) is thinking and waiting.

Dunno guess I'm feeling adventurous this morning and ready for social media again? It's been a while, what's good here?