Starting a cozy murder mystery and read that the main character is so old her joints pop and crack when she sits up in bed. She’s 60. The author appears to be in her thirties. I sighed and returned the book to the library, and went back Wentworths Miss Silver with some relief.

My publishers request social media footage of me outside. They’re in London. I’m in Seattle. After days battling gusty winds, strident planes and various lawn care clatter I have mad respect for content creators who are outside. And 120 seconds of me with branches whipping behind me.

We’re in that one week in Seattle where all the cottonwoods shed and it’s like driving thru fluffy snow. It piles up in small drifts by the road. Like thousands of dandelion puffs blown apart at once.

I think the cruelty is the point.

How do other authors handle the last month before their book launch? I wrote a substack about how weird this in between space feels. Then some friends read it, grabbed me and showered support. It helped so much! Ugly cry with people who read your work. Now I know.

Empty nets: We need a new spirituality of failure www.globalsistersreport.org/columns/spir...

AI is a plagiarism engine. For people who use AI to write or make any content, let's normalize some simple actions to be responsible users of words that might come from other writers. First, understand that AI scrapes the words, ideas and concepts of other artists, writers and thinkers.

When you send a review copy of your book to your old friend from college with post it notes on certain pages with who I’m really talking about.

Individual Republicans probably wouldn't take literal candy from an actual child, but their cruel budget cuts will take away food provided by food aid and vital healthcare provided by Medicaid coverage that keep those children alive. Children will die. Because of them.

My publisher says do more on social media before my book comes out. They are right. But I feel like I baked a lovely cake and now am being told the job's not done until I swim across the English channel holding it aloft. In the dark. And there are jellyfish.

You might, like me, have Reasons for being on social media sites run by soulless toadying oligarchs. Don’t buy anything advertised there. It’s a start, a tiny gesture, but in aggregate it is something. Something is better than nothing.

I live in Seattle, and the alerts I've gotten from the Seattle Times this week are "Stolen donkeys from Bellevue return home", changes in ownership at a local restaurant and, of course, snow. Not, you know, an unelected oligarch dismantling democracy. I'm guessing the click thrus on the donkeys rock

Don’t argue with reality