Folks, it’s that time of year again: the part of late summer we’re gonna pretend is fall because screw summer, anyway. That means Nightscript, a yearly anthology of dark literary stories, is available for preorder! I’m in it with my short story “The Parchment Theif”! I was previously in Nightscript III, and it’s great to be back.

Per C. M. Muller:

If you are interested in preordering a trade paperback direct from the publisher (via PayPal), please visit:

Chthonic Matter

Alternatively, the ebook is available from:

Amazon, Amazon UK, and most other Amazon platforms. (Note: the trade paperback will be available to purchase from Amazon on Oct. 1st.)

If you want a preview of the first couple paragraphs, I’ll be including them in my next newsletter. You can sign up for that here!

I thought I’d share a little bit about how I got the idea for the story.

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I recently came across the idea of organizing around our vulnerabilities rather than our strengths. (I won’t cite it at the moment because this is a personal blog and I’m just talking to a small audience; nevertheless, it’s not my original idea.) That is, we all need healthcare. Most of us will need eldercare. We all need education. But that’s not how society (or even most left movements) are organized. We organize hierarchically according to what we can contribute, with capital being among the valid “contributions.”

I think the left community at the moment is made up of people who are here because they have needs capitalism isn’t meeting. We’re here because of our “weakness” not our strengths. But I think, especially online, we’re still organized hierarchically by what we can contribute. We still, unthinkingly, use that framework when we talk about power, and who has it, and who deserves it.

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An addendum to my prior post on speaking to the manager: Writer Ijeoma Oluo was the target of an attempted SWATing. Of course this is wh*te supr*macist terrorism. It is also an extension of the techniques developed during g*mergate (systemically, as part of a community) and employed now outside of it.

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Speaking to the Manager seems to be having a moment.  Yesterday, Bret Stephens, NYT opinion writer and Freeze Peach advocate, wrote an email to an assistant professor who made a (completely overlooked) joke Tweet comparing Bret Stephens to a bedbug. In the email, in which Bret maintained emotional control, he invited this assistant professor to come call Bret a bedbug to his face over a nice family dinner. He also copied the university’s provost.

This man is not slick, but he’s not meant to be. Continue reading →

I am going to include the entire text of this Twitter thread, because it is just terrible. I want to tackle the underpinnings behind it rather than argue the particulars, because I think the obvious ways this take is bad and wrong are pretty self-evident. Mostly, I want to talk about dualism and how much I hate it.

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Many years ago, I heard about a famously difficult logical puzzle sometimes called the blue eyes problem.

The problem goes: there is an isolated island with 201 people—100 with blue eyes, 100 with brown eyes, and one green-eyed guru. They’re each perfect logicians and can each see everyone else at all times, but they may not communicate in any way. Once per day, at midnight, a ferry visits the island, and every person who knows they have blue eyes must leave immediately. The only person who may speak is the guru, and one day, the guru says, “I see someone with blue eyes.”

The question: how many people leave, and when?

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My husband Jacob loves birds. I make a token donation to the American Bird Conservatory each year so he will get a full-color magazine monthly. When we lived in our 200-square-foot studio apartment two years prior, he’d cut his favorite photos out and tape them on the ceiling above the loft bed. This is where he spent 18 hours a day when he first got ill.

I have a new short memoir piece out from Alternating Current Press’s The Coil: ‘Little White.’ It’s about disability, keeping birds, and life. Check it out!

Additional news: I’m now represented by Erik Hane of Red Sofa Literary! I’m very fortunate, both to be agented and to have him as my agent. We’re working on edits for my novel, tentatively titled Real Person Fiction. Watch this space.

There are people who spent 16 years in school, an additional two years in an MFA, and three thousand hours reading slush for a literary journal who will tell you with a straight face nobody taught them to write.

I was taught. I write better than I did in second grade, and a teacher or thirty probably has something to do with that. In tenth grade, Mr. Wheeler singled me out as the one student in the class who he wouldn’t abide shitty writing from. He returned my creative writing assignments so covered in red marks the page looked bloody. I learned. Two years ago I didn’t have a firm grasp of the comma.

So: why are writers so full of shit on this?

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It is October 1st, and Nightscript Volume III is out! Nightscript is a yearly literary anthology of strange and darksome tales edited by C. M. Muller. You can find my short story, “Grizzly,” inside.

You can get it in print or Kindle edition on Amazon.

Nightscript is really special to me. It is the first place to pay me for a piece of writing. It is the first time I’ll be able to hold in my own hands a book I helped write. I am humbled. I hope you’ll share this experience with me. Here’s a little taste:

If you do pick it up, let me know. Write a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Leave a comment below. I’d love to hear your thoughts.