Your Weekly Dose of EEE #5: Blessing in Disguise?
Also, a brief existential panic
Hello!
Who’s ready for some EEE?
This week was the Virtual Launch Party, and while I tried to stay away from talk of what went wrong on Wednesday, we can consider it entertaining in retrospect and therefore I’ll tell you now.
I knew Zoom had a 40-minute limit on free accounts. Since Eventbrite allowed me to schedule a 90-minute meeting, though, I assumed that limit didn’t apply to that partnership. I considered upgrading ahead of time, but it slipped my mind until the moment I logged on and the Zoom header told me we only had 40 minutes. And the party hadn’t even started yet! Upgrading mid-stream or using someone else’s account would have required me to start a new meeting and get everyone over there, and so we opted to condense the party into the remaining 34 minutes.
I was so angry.
But, you know what? It worked out. People seemed to enjoy themselves, and have requested that we do more of them, and also the meeting cut me off mid-sentence, leaving an unintentional cliffhanger for fans who now are dying to know more about the sequel. So, blessing in disguise? Maybe. It’s one of those things you can’t make up, that’s for sure. Be on the lookout for another, shorter meetup in the next month or so!
What’s Exciting Me?
🤝 Creātell Collective launches next week! I’m so excited to join forces with some really talented writers and thinkers to tackle important topics in today’s world from all different angles. Our goal is to provide a place for meaningful thought and discourse to take place, regardless of political or social affiliation. Sign up now to get our first post next Tuesday.
✍️ My Self-Pub Life Issue #3 is out. This week, we talk about why you should write your sales copy before you ever write your book, and I explain how you can prepare to do just that.
✒️ I’ll be taking up residence at an Author’s Table at Lowell Book Company next Saturday, March 11, from 1:00-3:00. Whether you want to chat books, feminism, and reproductive futurism (thanks to Meg Elison for giving me this term!), or just get your signed copy of When We Were Mothers, that’s where I’ll be.
What’s Entertaining Me?
📺 The Wire: Season 5 is the craziest season of all, at least from the point of view of McNulty, the first main character who was introduced in Season 1. And I simply cannot believe that Lester is going along with his ridiculousness. Also, I am very afraid for Omar. He’s really the only one of my favorite characters from the street side left.
The Last of Us: I watched a lot of The Walking Dead, and Episode 6 was very reminiscent of TWD and Alexandria in particular. I don’t dislike it, and the cliffhanger at the end has me dying to know what happens next, but it does make me wonder if there is just a certain way things eventually evolve in zombie apocalypses, no matter what. (Of course, Meg Elison’s imagination in The Book of Etta proves this is unlikely to be the case.)
📖 I haven’t exactly abandoned my favorite witty gentleman, Don Quijote, but he is resting with his cover closed on my bedside table. Honestly it’s a pain to read a hard copy of a book when the person next to you is trying to sleep in the dark, so I shifted to an ebook of City of Day, a fantasy novel by my friend October Santarelli. From October’s website:
By day, Astera is a bustling port city with shops, markets, shipyards, and people going about their day to day lives. But every night when the sun sets, the people of Astera board ships and abandon their home to dark, murderous ghosts -- The Vaim.
Not my typical read, but it’s entertaining so far!
🎶 My friend and fellow Substacker,
, shared this lovely video yesterday, whose vibe I want to follow me around for life. Enjoy.What’s Enlightening Me?
Samuél again, after he published this rumination on how the meaning of life has shifted from being to doing and producing. It actually gave me some really icky existential panic before I realized that there are gray areas, and everything is a balance, and I can just do what I can to shift my balance away from churning out garbage and towards putting out work that people connect with and learn from while still feeling appreciated when people choose to pay for the work I do.
Of course, that’s not the only reason for existential panic, but at least I can stop that one down a bit.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s Notes. A few things as we go:
Your paid membership will support the audiobook version of When We Were Mothers. Upgrade now if you’re so moved.
Sequel Chronicles #2 was just released to paid members and #3 is coming soon!
Take the poll below and let me know what you think about the two-edition-per-week move now that we’ve been in it for several weeks.
Thank you and I’ll see you soon!
