For those of you who have read Hotshot (or this newsletter for any length of time), you know that my mother died by suicide. I write about her death, which occurred during my last year of fighting fire, in Hotshot, but quite a bit of that narrative was cut during editorial process. My editor left me a note: You can always write a book about this. So, I am.

Her death, like any suicide, is complicated. For the past year I’ve been trying to find my way into a telling that feels authentic to me. Anyone who writes personal nonfiction understands the difficulty of translating a complicated, non-linear narrative into something readable– how easy it is to disorient the reader, or yourself.

Today I’m sharing a short excerpt from the draft of my memoir, which I am calling EXIT. I parted with my agent a while ago, so this will be the book I query with. It is, of course, still in process, so I respectfully ask that you not give me critical feedback. You are more than welcome to comment and share your thoughts about my experiences (and your own), or how the writing makes you feel, how it lands, but I am not looking for feedback about the work itself. My process of drafting is delicate– I rarely seek the opinions of others while I’m in process, nor do I share my work publicly. But I wanted to share this because the sixteen year anniversary of my mother’s suicide was yesterday. And because I value the community I have here, and I know many of you are interested in what’s coming next.

(I am removing the paywall from May 10th-May 12th. After May 12th the paywall will go up again). I am also paywalling this excerpt– not because I want to hide it, but for privacy reasons. I’m sure you can understand. Your paid subscriptions not only support this newsletter, but they also support (and have supported) the work I do outside the newsletter itself. I rarely paywall new posts, as you know. Please consider becoming a paying subscriber. If you can’t afford it, message me and I’ll comp you a subscription (which gives you full access to over five years of archives). Buying HOTSHOT also supports my work (the more copies the book sells, the easier it will be to find another agent). The paperback comes out this Tuesday, May 12th.

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An short excerpt from my work in progress, EXIT.

(this excerpt includes material that may be triggering, including mentions of suicide)

When you pulled the trigger on your pearl-handled pistol the bullet tore you from your body and pierced the lining of my universe, leaving behind a frayed opening like a moth-eaten hole in a sheer curtain.

I had never before touched the fabric surrounding the world you had built for us, never understood how quickly a single puncture could eat away at its own edges until the puncture became a hole, revealing emptiness, nothingness.

As the fabric deteriorated my skin sloughed away, trailing behind me, revealing flesh raw and pink until my footsteps printed the ground with blood.

Peonies are blooming along the concrete bordering your front door, their petals teeming with ants seeking sweetness. Three people stand around me, a man and two women. We form a small circle. No detectives or police are present. Your childhood friend, Patricia, hands me a white card embossed with black lettering. Why didn’t I call the detective, save the card? I can’t remember the detective’s name.

Your mom shot herself. We didn’t want to tell you until you got here. The man tells me this. His wife, the other woman, was the one who found your body. A new friend of yours. She keeps apologizing for screaming into her phone. With each apology I soothe her, but she is inconsolable, her face traced with the pain I cannot express. Three peonies rest their heads on the sidewalk. Their beauty is too heavy to bear.

He says understands why, with the cancer, but his words confirm what I’d suspected– there is no cancer, had never been cancer. Cancer was a story you held up. A shield, a mirror, a fairy tale. A red herring. If only you had died from cancer. If only it were that simple.

This is not, as Didion wrote, an ordinary instant. This is an extraordinary instant, unbelievable. My response, there was no cancer, is perplexing only until the coroner hands over my mother’s suicide notes. I’m sorry I lied about the cancer. It’s too late to start over. Your childhood friend grasps my hand. Are her fingers trembling, or mine? I can’t believe it, she says. Our belief systems are in opposition. If I had let myself believe what I knew to be true, I may have been more prepared for this.

This is not real life, it’s too on the nose. Today is Mother’s Day. Your house vibrates with radioactivity, the site of a nuclear meltdown, mutating my genetic makeup. Not an ordinary instant, but an instant nonetheless.

You wrote: You’ll be better off without me. Sixteen years later your words still stun me, your assumption that your actions would have no impact. An assumption or a rationalization. We always misunderstood each other. I could never love you enough to make you whole. You could never allow me wholeness. Maybe I was never whole; maybe I am a vessel overflowing with your fear, holding what you could not. Now I am here, gathering everything you left behind, absorbing the fallout into my body. Nothing can protect me from reality.

I am not better off without my mother, but I have no frame of reference for who I would be had she left the gun in its hiding place. I am not better off without my mother– this sentence has no grounding in truth or untruth. Am I better off without my mother? The question haunts me.

Five months after my mother’s death I move to the city in which she died. The city becomes the underworld; I’ve no mother to rescue me. I drive my mother’s car to Queen Anne, walk up three flights of ancient stairs for therapy. I do not know I am poisoned; I do not see the bloody footprints imprinted on the stairs. When the therapist tells me I am in danger, I believe her. Your mother has not passed over. She still wants something from you. Each word a gong, deep and resonant. I have moved my mother’s possessions into my dark basement apartment. Her possessions, what she possessed, glow as if warmed by her breath. I tell my therapist of my trouble sleeping. In bed I close my eyes and something presses into my chest, suffocating me. I turn on the lights. My mother is gone. My mother is not gone.

Your mother still wants something from you.

My therapist is woo woo. I chose her for this reason, not understanding the risk. When she tells me how to protect myself, I listen without reservation. Imagine you’re surrounded by a protective bubble. Wherever you go, the bubble goes with you. When you exit through a door, the bubble becomes a tunnel.

The therapist says my mother’s car is haunted. I had described my mother’s anger. How, when she was blacked out, it was as if another being stared through her vacant eyes. The being is what sits on my chest when I close my eyes; the being tightens its hands around my throat. I do not say that I think my mother may have killed me, had I been in the house with her that night, but when my therapist says my mother’s spirit wants to harm me, I believe her.

As I leave the office I envision a protective tunnel. My mother’s spirit follows me down the stairs. I want to run but I do not run. I can’t escape. My mother always been able to permeate my protective barriers. Protective is too strong a word. Barrier is too strong a word. My mother taught me how to live inside illusions. From the outside one sees something painted over, something bright and durable. I have spent a lifetime inside a mirror world, each reflection distorted. The paint dissolves; the mirrors become windows through which I peer. My world is gone. I cannot see myself. I have become a foreigner, obliterated.

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Hotshot is a particular book, written in a particular mode, honed over years of revision. In the beginning stages of my next project, I found myself stuck in this past mode, trying to apply previous practices, but the book kept telling me NO. It didn’t want to be written like any other book I’ve attempted, and I found myself in a rut. Not quite writer’s block, but…writer’s block. I would write into the book and inevitably stop at one point or another, unhappy with the direction it was going.

I’m writing this in past tense, but that’s where I am right now. In this liminal space, with pages and pages of draft material and still not feeling like I’ve found the groove of the book.

Part of this has to do with the pressure I felt to produce another book. My editor suggested starting another project before Hotshot’s debut. I tried, but was so overwhelmed with marketing and publicity (as well as PhD work and health issues) that I never really got into it. Then there’s my dissertation, which needs to be nonfiction. So I have to write another book, and I felt a lot of resistance to this after working so hard on Hotshot and hearing from various sources that it wasn’t doing as well as expected (one person said I would have trouble finding a new agent because Hotshot hasn’t sold enough copies. That sent me into a minor spiral).

I teach writing. A significant aspect of my teaching is helping writers gain confidence and work through internal barriers, to create what feels true to them. Before my first book debuted, I had no trouble writing and had never faced writer’s block. I told myself: as long as I’m true to my voice, my writing will find an audience. When Hotshot wasn’t the runaway success I had hoped it would be, despite the years of work I’d poured into it, this poisoned my experience of writing. Critical voices crowded my brain– as I write this, in this moment, they’re here, telling me that my sentences are terrible. I don’t know if they’ll ever go away (I mean, they were there before, but in different forms).

I know how to get past these voices. It’s a process of trust, like a trust fall into my subconscious. I read, I listen to music, I watch films. I turn to my personal cultural touchstones and look for new touchstones. This is what Gathering is all about. The world is full of inspiration, and through inspiration I’m able to find my voice again and release it, unadulterated.

This Saturday, I’m leading a generative writing session which uses these techniques to help others generate new writing or work through blocks they may be facing with current projects. Helping writers create, helping writers embrace their particular voice(s); that’s my gift as a teacher.

For the past week I’ve been outlining Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow, deconstructing the book in my own notebook. Each page has two columns: one for the book analysis, and another filled with notes for my own book. The notes aren’t prescriptive. I’m not trying to replicate Li’s memoir, nor am I telling myself how to write my next book. They’re more like little vignettes of scenes and memories and ideas.

When I was an MFA student, I got into the habit of rewriting the books, essays, and stories I loved. Take this literally. I didn’t change anything. I type or wrote by hand, writing verbatim. This practice helped me learn how the writer structured their work, their sentences. I did with with Denis Johnson’s Jesus’ Son, retyping each story into a document. As I typed, I noticed everything, including how I would have written each sentence. In the space between my instincts and what was on the page, I considered what I could learn.

On Saturday, May 9th, I’ll be leading a generative workshop implementing practices that help me climb my way out of creative blocks. This workshop, like all of my teaching, is composed from what’s helped me and informed by feedback from all of my past courses. I’m excited about it, and I hope you can come.

It’s a consciously layered workshop. One arrives with an open mind and leaves inspired, with a deeper understanding of their obsessions, of what they’re trying to examine or convey in their writing.

The workshop is called SURFACING. Please join me on Saturday, May 9th, from 3-430pm EST, for an hour and a half. You can participate with your camera on or off. Bring paper and a writing implement.

The workshop is sliding scale, with a suggested price of $25-$60. No one will be turned away for lack of funds.

To register, fill out this (easy!) Google Form.

Whether you’re an experienced writer or just starting out. Whether you write poetry, nonfiction, film, or fiction, this workshop will benefit you.

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Register For Surfacing

This session is free for all yearly paying subscribers. If that’s you, and you’d like to join, please register through this Google Form and leave a note saying you’re a yearly paying subscriber.

If you’ve been paying monthly for an extended period of time, I encourage you to switch your subscription to yearly, as I’ll be offering more of these over the summer months.

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SURFACING: A GENERATIVE WRITING SESSION

This is a space for writers of all genres and levels. There's zero pressure to perform or refine, although there will be opportunities to share.

Sometimes generating new writing and ideas feels impossible, especially when the world demands our attention and time. Since I began teaching over a decade ago, I've been developing my own method for releasing the critical voice and letting new ideas bloom. It's a multimedia approach, involving sounds, images, text, and prompts.

Bring a piece of writing you've been stuck on for a while or show up with a blank page. Bring paper and pen, because this workshop asks you not to type unless it’s absolutely necessary. Most importantly, bring an open mind, put your phone away, and join me for what is sacred: art and community.

REGISTER HERE

(photo by Suzanne Saroff)

I recently read this piece on Marcel Duchamp’s MOMA exhibition by Hilton Als in The New Yorker. The essay is well worth a read, but what struck me most were the last few paragraphs, where Als juxtaposes the poet Louise Glück with Duchamp’s words.

From Glück’s poem, “Bats”:

“There are two kinds of vision:

the seeing of things, which belongs

to the science of optics, versus

the seeing beyond things, which

results from deprivation.”

And Duchamp’s words:

“The poor Mona Lisa is gone because no matter how wonderful her smile may be, it’s been looked at so much that the smile has disappeared.” He continued, “I believe that when a million people look at a painting, they change the thing by looking alone. Physically. . . . There is an action, transcendental, of course, that absolutely destroys whatever you could see when it was alive.”

I leave you with these two rich passages, a sliver of Plato’s Cave (you can dig in the archives and find my piece on Sontag if you’d like), and a promise to see you soon with another reflection.

Tell me what you see/feel/think?

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Here's Glück's entire “Bats” poem:

Buy HOTSHOT from your local indie in celebration of Indie Bookstore Day (tomorrow!!) or from Bookshop, which is offering free standard shipping today and tomorrow! Just click (or tap) the button below.

PREORDER THE PAPERBACK!

The publisher of HOTSHOT, Grove Atlantic, recently asked me to write an Earth Day essay.

It’s been a long time since I’ve been commissioned to write something, and I was surprised that the essay features one of my least favorite insect, the cockroach. You can read it HERE.

Lately I’ve been kind of a mess. A disorganized mess, with my thoughts and goals veering off into a million directions.

This might be because I am, on June 1st, moving to Honolulu.

Honolulu??

Yes, I’m as surprised as you are.

You may know that I spent the last six months on the academic job market, which is notoriously difficult. Many people spend years looking for academic jobs, which, especially in humanities, are quite scarce.

My PhD advisor was sure I’d find a wonderful job in the academy. I was less confident. Tenure-track creative writing jobs with realistic teaching and research requirements are like unicorns. Throughout fall and early spring, I interviewed (via Zoom) at several universities (and received many rejections without an interview). That I had the opportunity to interview at all was in itself a win. With each interview I learned more about myself and academia. I had two campus visits and was offered one job, in a red state, a job I was sure I’d accept were it offered. Then the governor of that state nixed tenure, and the job became a one year contract position. Deciding whether or not to accept this position was agonizing (the whole job search was agonizing).

My disability limits my decisions. Because of my rheumatoid arthritis, I’ve been on an immunosuppressant biologic for several years. Without this medication, I am in constant pain. Without insurance, this medication costs thousands of dollars a month, which means I need to have secure job.

So I turned down the job. Not because of the teaching load, the school, the department, the lack of tenure possibilities, or even the prospect of living in another red state, but because I couldn’t risk moving to a red state with no job security beyond one year.

No tenure-track job for me. I was very lucky to have had the opportunity for many interviews and to have been offered a job at all.

I have elected to stay in my PhD program for a fifth year, particularly because they provide subsidized health insurance, but this extra time will also let me finish my dissertation with a little more space and consideration.

So, why move to Honolulu?

Well, I’ve been teaching summer school at a local independent high-school for many years, off and on since 2015. I actually applied for a full-time teaching job there in 2018, but decided to travel instead, though I continued teaching summers.

When an opportunity arose, I took it.

I am leaving Florida on June 1st. This is a huge move. I’m selling my car and most of my possessions. If you’ve been here for a while (like, before I moved to Florida), you know that my move to Florida was a bit traumatic. I ended up leaving most of my things in Seattle– I should have just gotten a storage unit, but this was right after my spinal surgery and my mind wasn’t right, so I just gave a bunch of things away.

In retrospect, that’s fine, because I wouldn’t be able to take my things to Hawai’i now. So it makes sense. Is it kismet? Was this the universal plan? Now I don’t own many things of consequence. What I’ve accumulated here in Florida is primarily utilitarian– some Ikea furniture; a lot of books. Kitchen goods. The local Goodwill is where most of that will end up, and hopefully my things will be a good find for someone.

Most of my moving anxiety has centered around my cat, Edna, who’s a terrible traveler. I didn’t decide to move until earlier this month, which means I am triple-crossing my fingers that Edna’s Rabies titer is processed by the end of next week (Hawai’i has very strict processes for staying rabies-free). If it’s not, I’ll need to leave her with a friend in Washington State and come back to get her after she’s been approved. Otherwise Edna, a very fluffy and shy babycat, would have to stay in the outdoor quarantine area for five days, or several weeks, and I can’t risk that happening.

Once I know which route I need to take, things will feel better, I think.

So– this last week of April and all of May will be spent preparing to move. I knew I’d be leaving Florida, but now it feels (and is) very real, and it’s a lot to be juggling life’s demand while preparing for such a big move.

Learning (Again) to Trust the Process

In the midst of these changes I’m also writing my next book, a memoir about my mother’s suicide and its aftermath, and searching for a new literary agent.

I’m reassessing my entire life, because there will be more tangible (less flexible) demands on my time. What do I want to focus on? Which ambitions do I need to let go of?

Since completing my PhD coursework and prelims, and releasing HOTSHOT, a lot of my energy has been scattered, and I’ve been responsible for shaping my days. As a neurodivergent person this has been difficult. I have so many ideas. I had thought that my book would change my life– that I’d have more opportunities for teaching and freelancing and traveling– and it has made that happen, but on a small scale. My book wasn’t a bestseller and I am not suddenly a well-known author. Hotshot was received well. I’ve been invited to book fairs and festivals, and I’m actually traveling to Colorado twice in May, first for Books in Bloom and then for the Mountain Words festival.

I wanted to do another small book tour for the paperback, but without a publicist or the willingness of my publisher to help contact bookstores, arranging something like this is almost impossible.

Part of my move to Honolulu is accepting that my book is out there, and it’s time for me to move on with my life. I need stability– a stable home, a stable job, a stable and supportive community. I want stability. I’m not going to be a wildfire influencer or a freelancer, because I simply don’t have the support for that. So many of the freelancers I know, and the folks who are able to dedicate themselves to their newsletters, are folks who are partnered and have some level of outside support. This isn’t always true, but it’s often true.

I do not have outside support, and I’ve been subsisting on a PhD stipend for the past four years. This has created a high level of financial instability in my life. I think, if someone handed me ten or twenty thousand dollars, I could get things in order and really pour myself into something, like building up my newsletter, creating a container for online classes, etc. But that’s just not realistic right now.

So, I’m dedicating myself to two things: creating a stable life for myself and writing my next book.

I do have ambitions to move this newsletter to Beehiv and combine it with my mother newsletter, WILDERNESS. Over the next few days I’ll be mapping out my move and my summer schedule (which is packed with summer school and college teaching, plus a gig scoring high-school AP English tests).

This summer, I’ll be turning forty-six. With each birthday I get closer to the age my mother was when she died by suicide. This weighs on me, but it also motivates me to take chances and try new things.

So, that’s what’s up. I’m doing the best I can, always wanting to do better. Looking forward to being somewhere where I feel more connected to nature and the land.

I’m sending you love.

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Above, you can see what I wrote for the hardcover. My fatal flaw? Writing that I don’t engage directly with my nonbinary identity. This language lacked precision.

Although Hotshot is nonfiction, I was trained as a fiction writer, which means I learned to tools of fiction. My favorite literature– Toni Morrison, Tolstoy, Anton Chekhov, Leslie Marmon Silko, Steinbeck, Jesmyn Ward, James Baldwin– functions without explicit signaling. The work is subtle. It works on the reader rather than tell the reader what to see and believe.

I did this in Hotshot, specifically with my gender identity and the ways in which I struggled with trying to inhabit woman. There are moments of gender dysphoria, but I never wrote: Here I am, experiencing gender dysphoria. Back then I had no idea what it was. I didn’t want to misrepresent my experiences.

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First up: Join me and today for the Weirdo Book Club! Today at 11am PST/2pm EST. We’ll be discussing my book, HOTSHOT, and lots of other stuff, like misery, company, joy, letting our ambitions run free and wild, publishing, writing, scarcity, etc. I recently joined Jen for a Live (watch it here). The conversation was vulnerable and revealing. Jen is a genuinely remarkable person– one of the most open-hearted people I’ve met. The Zoom info is below.

If you haven’t bought Hotshot yet, please consider doing so. It’s a good book. The paperback debuts on May 12th, and includes some revised material, plus a book club guide. Pre-ordering it will signal to my publisher that people want to buy it!

Pre-Order the Paperback

Now: Let’s Get F*cking Honest

The past year has been full of accomplishments. I passed my PhD preliminary exams and started my dissertation. My first…

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I have so much to share with you all, and you’ll be hearing from me later this week!

If you want to catch up, here are some essays about the publication journey:

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FIRST: I’ll be at March 14th & 15th. I am so excited for this! You can find all the info HERE. I’ll be on panels with some incredible writers, and I’m truly thrilled. I also can’t wait to see some new friends and meet some online friends IRL for the first time.

I have several events coming up over the next few months, so make sure to take a look at my website. Also, if you have a book club or local bookstore you’d like me to collaborate with, feel free to reach out! I’ll also be reading/speaking at Syracuse University directly after Tucson, for their Raymond Carver Reading Series (a full …

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BUT HOTSHOT FOR 50% OFF

New here? Read about my experiences as a debut author

• The day my book debuted

• Touring with Bell’s Palsy and more touring with Bell’s Palsy

• The long, difficult journey to publication

• What I dreamed vs. what actually happened

• The first week post-publication

Please take a moment to click the heart on this post! It helps!

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Hello friends. I’ve been overcome by so many emotions over the past week. First I was hopeless, then I was in this state of complete disarray, feeling lost and scared.

Now I feel empowered. We should all feel empowered by the people of Minneapolis, and those who have bravely held their ground against this fascist state and the henchmen called ICE.

There’s a lot I’d like to say, but I must be brief because my time is limited this week.

Although the violence of ICE is on full display, this is not new. This is what our country was founded on: Violence.

But the majority of Americans want peace. I know that to be true. We have reached a saturation point. People who have never before spoken out are finally using their voices. It doesn't matter how long it took. Not to me. That they are speaking now is meaningful.

We must all do what we can. Some of us are more vulnerable than others- those of us with more resources or lar…

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If you’ve been a Gathering subscriber for longer than a year, you’ll know that I have an ambivalent (to put it lightly) relationship with social media. I used to think “ambivalent” meant “I don’t care,” until a more educated friend corrected me. To be ambivalent is to “have or show simultaneous and contradictory attitudes or feelings toward something or someone.”1 That is how I used to feel about social media. I am no longer ambivalent. If I was once on the fence, I have climbed over the fence, but my fingertips are still clutching the other side.

This essay goes far beyond “social media is bad.” I delve into Technofeudalism and the Attentional Landscape. In other words, I worked hard on this essay. I did NOT use artificial intelligence in any capacity. Nor do I ever. Because I want to do my own thinking.

My argument is for a social m…

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In her essay “Welcoming Ghosts,” Edwidge Danticat writes about Hector Hyppolite, a Haitian artist discovered by the painter Dewitt Peters, while he was on a visit to Haiti.

Hyppolite, Danticant writes, was told by a night-visiting spirit that he’d one day be a famous artist.

When he was a teenager, Jean-Michel Basquiat announced to his father that he would be “very, very famous one day.” Basquiat’s father was from Haiti, but Jean-Michel was raised in New York City and had never been to the island.

Danticat threads these two artists together, illuminating their cultural and possibly spiritual connections. Basquiat had never been to Haiti, but the island influenced his art and its iconography and historical figures appeared in his paintings. Danticat writes:

“Basquiat did not belong to any fixed collective. He freely borrowed from and floated among many cultural and geographic traditions…He was symbiotic and syncretic in the same way that Hector Hyppolite’s Voudou paintings were, mixing European Catholicism and African religious rites and adapting them to a world made new by an artist’s vision or, in both Hyppolite’s and Basquiat’s case, visions.”

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Hyppolite “saw his art as a gift from the lwas [spirits] and carefully tried to balance its demands and rewards. The canvas, for Hyppolite, was just one more space in which to serve the lwas, and when he served them properly he rewarded them with ideas for paintings.”1

When I am in my most centered and quiet spaces, which often occurs when my body is failing and I must remember my values in order to move towards what feeds me as an artist, I rest in the understanding that art is sacred and collective. What creates original art exists outside of capitalism, but also, there is nothing truly original. We are all connected, and our origins are mysterious. No one truly knows where inspiration comes from.

In the same essay, Danticat recalls filmmaker Maya Deren’s concept of “an anonymous inventor, a member of the collective run by the gods.”

Since reading this essay a few weeks ago, the phrase anonymous inventor has surfaced and resurfaced in my consciousness. It’s become an obsession, creating a new compass inside me, or rewiring a compass that had, over time, lost its magnetic north.

I have long admired Maya Deren, a Ukrainian experimental filmmaker whose short films have had a profound and lasting impact. One could say that many modern filmmakers would not exist as they do without Deren’s influence. Her short film Meshes of the Afternoon has enthralled me for over a decade. Yet Deren died without having been widely recognized for her genius. She’s remembered as an experimental filmmaker, but her books are theoretically unique and inventive— she studied voudou and wrote a book called Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti (and made a film of the same name).

These four artists, including Danticat, worked with one another, though they’ve never met. This is the magic of art. We exist alongside them, and as long as we don’t forget that we are artists, we are never alone. We work in seen and invisible realms. Our art is, I believe, most potent when we allow ourselves to wander the liminal, the borderlands between conscious and unconscious, alive and dead, and known and unknown.

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For over two weeks my body has been covered in hives.

I have some sort of infections and I’m on my second round of steroids— a medical effort to calm my immune system.

The hives tingle, itch, and burn.

My skin is the softest it’s ever been; the result of slathering myself in lotion several times a day, hoping for relief. I bathe in oatmeal, turning the water teeth-chatteringly cold. At 2am the itching wakes me, and I dip my fingers into the tub of numbing cream, take two Benadryl and practice the meditation techniques I learned at the Vipassana center. Scanning my body, I immerse myself in sensations. There is no escape, so why not dive in? Itching turns to buzzing turns to throbbing turns to warmth. I encourage myself to remain neutral. What is pain if not sensation?

I had thought my hives would be gone by now, or that I’d know their cause, but the Internet tells me that uticaria can happen out of nowhere and stay for years. So, I am making peace with this. If it subsides? Wonderful. If it doesn’t? I’m prepared for that. Immunosuppressants and steroids are familiar to me. Although I’ve never had hives like this before, it wasn’t surprising when they happened. I knew something was coming. My PhD program, my book revisions, and this newsletter have all worn me down to a shell of myself. I am rearranging my life like a pyramid. My health is at the bottom— the foundation. Then my book revisions. Then this newsletter, which provides much needed income. Then teaching. Then coursework. This is how it has to be. I think about my future, when this book will be published. Years and years of work, birthed into the world. I must be here for that; and as healthy as possible, so I can enjoy the results of my own work.

I had not realized that, over the past couple months, I have been having PTSD flashbacks. These were the hammer that did me in. The flashbacks are sneaky because when we think of flashbacks we imagine a past moment flashing before us, like a scene from a film. Recognizable.

But it’s not like that.

A neutral event in the present moment summons my child-self without my awareness.

I am thirteen. My mother and stepfather have locked me in my bedroom again after a screaming match. The next day at school I disobey a teacher, trying to assert the humanity I am not allowed at home, and it’s the last straw. I am expelled from school in the seventh grade. My thirteen year-old self, my twelve year-old self, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. I could write a list of the ways in which I was dehumanized— of the refusal of my parents, of men and boys, of educational institutions; their refusal of my very right to be my own person, have my own opinions, and assert my right to exist as an individual, and their deep misunderstanding of my past and current situations; but there is no need for a list.

I only need to remember that all of those denied selves live inside me. An event that appears neutral happens. They are summoned into the present moment. I become that thirteen year-old locked in their bedroom, pulling on the immobile doorknob. Banging on the door. Begging to be seen and heard.

I arrive to the present moment filled with rage. Breathless. I react in outsized ways, or I don’t react and am instead sitting there, filled with this rage and not knowing why. Shame arrives.

Knowing that this has been happening is a gift. I understand myself better. I know that my rage and terror are valid. Not now, for whatever is happening in the present, but then, for what happened in the past.

In this way, everything is always happening again and again. PTSD and CPTSD dissolve the borders between past and present.

I remind myself that the present is a neutral space. If it does not feel neutral, the past is here distorting it, like a hallucination.

I have slept more in the past two weeks than I have in the past two years, it feels like.

My body is remembering rest. I am remembering myself. I am remembering myself as an artist. I have stopped checking my subscriber count and unsubscribed from the grow your Substack newsletter. I remember: this is not what I am here for. I know who I am.

I slip into the liminal space. I handwrite the beginnings of chapters and tell my editor I need more time. I assert my right to be an artist and I remember the work I am here to do.

I listen to the spirits.

Last night I rewatched Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of a feminist film. Someone said Poor Things is not a feminist film, and that bothered me because what exactly does that mean?

In Fire Walk With Me David Lynch asks us: what is the subconscious and the conscious, and what happens when the psyche can no longer protect us from what is true? Bob is Laura’s father. Laura is an innocent whose father has stolen the most precious part of her away. She sees her innocence. She feels it near her and inside her and yet she knows it is gone. Her father has taken that from her. The conscious and the subconscious merge.

Donna is who Laura would have been without her father’s betrayal. There are two Lauras. There are two of everyone. Two, or millions of fragmented pieces, depending.

I remember the anonymous inventor and I surrender to the process of finishing my book, of making it what it needs to be, of listening to the voices and the past and the future and knowing that I am not the only one finishing my book revisions or the only one who has written this book. I am guided. I trust. I allow inspiration to come. I know there are guides, and mysteries, and realms upon realms.

And I must rest when I need to rest.

Thank you so much for reading, and being here. You mean so much to me.

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This is not a “how to be better in 2026” newsletter.

I’ve lived enough years to know that none will be improved by a commitment to be better. I’ve had enough therapy to understand that self-improvement can, for many of us, transform into self-criticism and self-loathing.

I am writing this from my too-small couch, in my living-room. My coffee table (the cheapest IKEA model) is covered in books, a half-consumed Chai, one 3lb dumbbell, a yellow physical therapy band, a half-eaten bowl of bean soup, three bottles of nail polish, a (now empty) jar of moisturizer, several colored pens, eye drops, a crystal I bought during my book tour, post-its, an empty Ziploc bag, and a body …

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If you can't make it, that's okay. Just drop any questions you may have in the comments here and I’ll answer them. The LIVE will be recorded and posted on Wednesday.

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Some questions I’ll be answering:

• Ways to revise a large project

• Querying agents: how and when to do it

• Maintaining your voice during the editorial process

• Tips for sustaining focus during a large, book-length project

• How to know when you’re done with a draft or revision

• Turning failures into motivation

Drop a question or two below! No question is too simple or complicated, just ask!

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Don’t forget to subscribe to Memoiring and buy Hotshot so you can join us on December 4th at 6:30pm EST for an author Zoom.

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It took me months to understand why my debut experience was so triggering.

My last post focused a lot on the negative experiences during my first week post-debut. Not so much experiences, but my negative mind-space, and how hard it was for me to remain grounded in what was going right with my book, my experience, my life. This is partially because of how my mind works.

As someone who has CPTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), who grew up in an unstable, abusive environment, I developed a lot of coping mechanisms that no longer serve me well. Protective coping mechanisms. My …

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• Hotshot was named a best book of the year by Kirkus Reviews! I am still riding the magic carpet of this accomplishment, in the company of many incredible writers. A reminder that Memoiring Book Club chose Hotshot for its November read, and we’ll have a meeting on the evening of December 4th, so if you need some motivation to read the book (we all do!) this is a good opportunity.

• I just finished up five days in Miami (for the Miami Book Fair). Last Thursday I gave a speech and presentation to students at the Miami Dade Honors College. This was my first real speech/presentation about my book, and I was more nervous than I’ve been for anything regarding my book stuff! But it went so well, and the students were incredible. I’ll share some of my speech in an upcoming newsletter (and if you’d like to book me for a class/school presentation or speaking engagement, please contact me HERE, reply to this newsletter, or DM me via Substack.)

• I also was on a panel with Jaime Hood, author of How to Be a Good Girl and Trauma Plot, and Bridget Crocker, author of The River’s Daughter. I’ve read Trauma Plot and The River’s Daughter– and I love and recommend them both. The panel was beautiful. Our books have so many connective threads, particularly when it comes to trauma, experiencing objectification and sexual assault, and navigating our respective gender identities in work and life. One of the best things about participating in these festivals is meeting authors I admire, and I came away with even more admiration for both of these incredibly strong women.

• I also got to reconnect with Sasha Bonét, a writer I first met through an online Kirkus panel, then met in person at the Texas Book Festival. Her debut memoir, The Waterbearers, a hybrid memoir exploring the history of and relationships between Black mothers and daughters. I’m currently a third of the way through, inhaling the beautiful prose. It’s a stunning book.

And! Pinnacle of my career thus far: C-Span interviewed me! Watch it HERE. Forgive my excessive blinking in the beginning; my eyes were adjusting to the very bright lights. I’m still not used to seeing myself on video.

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That’s all of my news! Now…back to our regular programming.

Need to catch up before you read this essay? Read the first two essays in this series first (in sequential order):

THE FIRST WEEK: In which I realized I still need my therapist, and I was overcome with jealousy.

So, there are a couple things to know before I tell you about this incredibly intense and wonderful/stressful week.

First: Hotshot was the last of three wildfire memoirs released in the spring/summer of 2025. I wrote about this in the first post linked above. My publisher had notified me of these books months before mine was released, and asked for clarification re: my book’s unique angles. When Hotshot debuted, I had already been in this comparative mode for months leading up to August 12th, hoping I would also get reviewed in big outlets and eager to talk about my book on TV or the radio, like the other two authors.

(The other two books are great– Kelly Ramsey’s Wildfire Days (published in early June) and Jordan Thomas’s When It All Burns (published in May). Both were reviewed well, and Thomas’s book was shortlisted for the National Book Award. I encourage you to read all three of our books.)

All said: there were definitely downsides to this when it came to my book.

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