I absolutely love the quotations in this piece. I've heard quite a bit about The Clackity, too -- it sounds legit terrifying -- a SERIAL KILLER in MG? How do authors who are not me get away with that!? My editor gives me side-eye if there are too many unhappy people in a story.
I am ...so tired. This has just been A Week and I want it over and it's only Tuesday and there's no amount of sleeping and waking up again that will make this a bad dream. The best things right now for me are books; books close down my first and second thoughts to let my third thoughts work more effectively. Books allow me to escape and believe that the world can BE changed.
So, we'll keep reading, yes? And taking just one more step, and eating those rolls, and saying, to these intrusions, forcefully, "NO."
YES! The serial killer aspect threw me, as did the portal to the other world... because it was located in an abandoned slaughterhouse??? Both of those aspects made me think of/want to re-read Dia Reeves' YA—maybe of Slice of Cherry in particular?
I'm glad the quotes resonated with you, too—I may have just sat on the couch and cried for a bit after typing out the Raymond Carver one. It's weird how the right words in the right order can set me off like that, but also be a balm. It's the heart-too-full feeling, it gets me every time.
And yes, as of Tuesday evening before my first shift of the week as even ended, it has absolutely already been A Week. Last week was A Year, and this week looks likely to be headed in the same direction. Books don't always work for me in shutting everything out—that's why I've read so comparatively little in the last bunch of years, I think—but podcasts and walking or podcasts and baking or podcasts and some other simple manual task will usually do it. So I've been doing a lot of that. But books are starting to work on me again, thankfully.
We'll keep reading, we'll keep taking steps, we'll keep finding our small, good things. We'll keep looking out for and holding on to our people, and we'll try our very best to continue saying NO in the moments that we need—or WANT—to say NO. Love to you from all the way across the country, friend.
I absolutely love the quotations in this piece. I've heard quite a bit about The Clackity, too -- it sounds legit terrifying -- a SERIAL KILLER in MG? How do authors who are not me get away with that!? My editor gives me side-eye if there are too many unhappy people in a story.
I am ...so tired. This has just been A Week and I want it over and it's only Tuesday and there's no amount of sleeping and waking up again that will make this a bad dream. The best things right now for me are books; books close down my first and second thoughts to let my third thoughts work more effectively. Books allow me to escape and believe that the world can BE changed.
So, we'll keep reading, yes? And taking just one more step, and eating those rolls, and saying, to these intrusions, forcefully, "NO."
YES! The serial killer aspect threw me, as did the portal to the other world... because it was located in an abandoned slaughterhouse??? Both of those aspects made me think of/want to re-read Dia Reeves' YA—maybe of Slice of Cherry in particular?
I'm glad the quotes resonated with you, too—I may have just sat on the couch and cried for a bit after typing out the Raymond Carver one. It's weird how the right words in the right order can set me off like that, but also be a balm. It's the heart-too-full feeling, it gets me every time.
And yes, as of Tuesday evening before my first shift of the week as even ended, it has absolutely already been A Week. Last week was A Year, and this week looks likely to be headed in the same direction. Books don't always work for me in shutting everything out—that's why I've read so comparatively little in the last bunch of years, I think—but podcasts and walking or podcasts and baking or podcasts and some other simple manual task will usually do it. So I've been doing a lot of that. But books are starting to work on me again, thankfully.
We'll keep reading, we'll keep taking steps, we'll keep finding our small, good things. We'll keep looking out for and holding on to our people, and we'll try our very best to continue saying NO in the moments that we need—or WANT—to say NO. Love to you from all the way across the country, friend.
💕