Happy Monday!

In case you missed it, I got to talk to the CBC about Summerween! Check out the article and my recs here: https://www.cbc.ca/books/summerween-explained-why-readers-are-picking-up-horror-in-the-summer-9.7315529

I am back with another YouTube video! A new series where I talk about by favorite Women in Horror and their books! I have doubled my video time from my first video. I might be getting the hang of this… and I hit 1,000 subscribers (in fact, I’m at 1200 now!)

https://youtu.be/y4Z2koBSQrg?is=6oL_6RyyW1QvyT7p

What Feeds Below hit 1000 preorders! I am so grateful to all of you for your support of this book!

Cracks is one of the MOST REQUESTED HORROR books on Netgalley and it needs reviews, please request! (And preorder! Let’s make sure every book from our imprint is a force to be reckoned with!

https://www.netgalley.com/catalog/book/880103

Snail mail is going out next week !

Let me know what you’re reading this week below!

I finally put a bow on three books I've been working on for the bulk of the month and I got some new ones to crack open, so I'll update y'all on those and as always I wanna know what you're reading in the comments. Let's pitter patter get at 'er!

READING

REVIEW

FIRE & BLOOD by GEORGE RR MARTIN (fantasy)

Progress: Finished

Finished House of the Dragon S3 just as I was getting through that section of the book, and now I know how it all plays out even though I'm sure the show will take some liberties as it has done with so many storylines and characters (looking at you, Alicent).

This is likely one that either really works for you front-to-back or is eminently skimmable depending on your ability to vibe with the fake-history format. Recency bias may be in play but in all of the ASOIAF books I'd rank it above A Dance with Dragons and A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, which would put it right around A Feast for Crows.

THE ODYSSEY by HOMER [Emily Wilson translation] (epic poetry)

Progress: Finished

I continue to think Emily Wilson's translation is a godsend for anyone who wants to read this without it feeling like homework and I even had a few teachers reach out to express this sentiment. There are portions of the journey that I enjoy considerably more than others, but once Odysseus gets back to Ithaca and the revenge story gets momentum it really does the thing. Impossible to rate this so I'm not even gonna try but I really did love this translation.

BLACK FLAGS, BLUE WATERS by ERIC JAY DOLIN (narrative history)

Progress: Finished

The History Sickos Book Club pick for August landed a little more mixed than I expected. The opening chapter info-dump (I know, odd phrase for a history book) did a lot to establish what piracy was during this time, which I figured was doing the groundwork so the individual pirate stories could cook later at a brisk pace. Instead, it felt increasingly repetitive. There's still plenty to like here, especially when it comes to myth-busting (it's a shame we don't have more concrete evidence re: Blackbeard), but the marketing/promise of the book fell short with its contents. Roughly 3*.

THIS IS CHINA: THE FIRST 5,000 YEARS [edited by Haiwang Yuan] (academic history)

Progress: 40/134

This condenses the much more exhaustive Berkshire Encyclopedia of China into a primer/study guide meant for classroom use, which I appreciate because I was never going to read all 5 volumes (2,800 pages!) of that tome. I dig overviews like these and also like the "Thought Experiment" inserts and mini-biographies on important figures like Confucius.

PREVIEW

Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett came in right after I posted last week's update so I'm gonna give 'er a go. I'll probably get an early start on the History Sickos Book Club pick for September (vote ongoing for that in the Discord).

A SICKO DEADLINE APPROACHES (a C+P reminder)

The next Sicko Society quarterly book box is set to be shipped in December, but the deadline to make sure you qualify for it is fast approaching. Upgrade your tier to be a Sicko Society member by 9/1 and update your mailing address to make sure you get in on the action! The next book box to ship is A Darker Shade of Magic by V.E. Schwab!

That there is over 40 of you who have upgraded since we started this mere months ago is mind-blowing to me and I can't tell you how much I appreciate the support and how much it benefits our publishing imprint, thank you!

EVERYTHING ELSE

• Publishing News: Ofelia and I had our first meeting for Grave of Petals last week, which is exciting as hell. Work on the edits start soon and I think we're both super hyped to get to work on the cover because we see so much potential to do something that pops.

• Game of the Week: The only missions I have left in Assassin's Creed Odyssey are a few episodes from the DLC, so maybe I'll swap the late night gaming for something more productive (lol). I still can't help myself from opening Civilization VI whenever the chance comes. Lately I've been trying to get wins with civilizations that I haven't won with before and have about a half dozen left. I just hit over 700 hours on it (imagine all the reading I could've done!).

• Show of the Week: I finished Euphoria S3S6 last night and it's crazy how much of a goofy fall off this season has been. Anything remotely thoughtful has been booted for shock-value. It sucks, but I'm pot committed and thankfully only have two episodes left.

• Movie of the Week: We only had time to finish Face/Off last week in a our watch-along so maybe we need to fit in Con-Air this week?!

every creator was doing 2 trends recently: the butter yellow text on a candid-ish image + "kinda chic" (martha stewart has a career of being highly original behind her. she doesn't have anything to prove--and her team made this)

Most creators should just be called copiers

if you call yourself a "creator" but the things you create with your powers of creativity are facsimiles of things you have consumed--that's not creating. that is copying. In school this was called plagiarism.

It's completely insane that following exact post formats, copy/pasting exact phrasings is normal and not maligned. That trend where women posted 'i didn't marry a loser' -- yeah because you, lady, are the loser for using a pre-fab IG format (this captures what I thought of 99% of those posts). "Kinda chic" is the content equivalent of a michael kors bag. a mcmansion. let's call them trendy-trends (a la shoppy shops).

Selling out has become socially acceptable (even encouraged) -- and we've also lost the plot on having a single original thought.

Is it hard to come up with ideas for social media?

No- it's the easiest medium. For every one thing I manage to post, I have 100 ideas that don't get made because I have to sleep and eat.

If you can't think of an original idea, you shouldn't be allowed to post. Just like if you have nothing to say, you should not write a book. Trendy-trends are the lowest form of content.

As a satirist, I do love a parody of a trendy-trend. Some of the more outlandish SPEND THE DAY WITH ME ideas that I never got around to:

• STDWM on Nantucket as a disappointment to my parents

• STDWM as a constipated bitch on ACK

• STDWM as a 3rd gen immigrant on ACK

• STDWM as a childless woman on ACK

These are hilarious to me because they are so idiotic but the problem I run into is satire illiteracy. The entire conceit of this "escaping nantucket to go to martha's vineyard" post is that they are essentially the same. The joke is immensely clear--I belabor the point so much that it's no longer funny, but someone was the following level of stupid:

I want this to be a troll but I know in my heart that this woman is truly this dumb. It's eye-watering and drives home the discouraging truth that there is only a tiny percentage of potential readers i'm making myself "discoverable" to on social media--the vast majority of audience is capital i idiots.

Trendy-trends are ruining language

AI writing ruined em dashes. The word chic is ruined. I will never use "quietly" ever again. Demure is ruined. Immaculate and performative are ruined. And sure, you could not care how others perceive you and just keep using the ruined things that you like. Sure, you could think of the trendy-trend cycles as a challenge to keep refreshing your vocab and finding new ways to make sure no one thinks you used AI. But everything is being ruined so quickly. Fast fashion made clothes disposable-- social media is making words disposable. As a writer, this is horrific. (I'm editing my next book, DOES THIS MAKE ME LOOK RICH?, which I wrote over the past 3 years and I'm removing every instance of "chic" from it.)

Mini rant: The way people have mangled 'resonate' is sickening and I blame social media for spreading + normalizing. "I resonate with that" is wrong and bad. Unless you are supremely conceited or doing a bit, this phrasing should never be used.

"I resonate with the readers whose lives were transformed by my bestselling book."

am I tempted by the latest trendy-trend?

maybe it'll get me so many views because it's a legible, proven format that audiences enjoy (like those replicated couple pranks eg "eating at the same pace as my spouse")

i'm not tempted. I don't consider posting "kinda chic" for even a second because of what it would signal, which is low creative status (and a propensity to bandwagon hop). For an artist to traffic in trendy-trends is like a vegan eating dominos-- you lose your credibility, which everyone seems to have forgotten is your most important asset

I'm a hypocrite

I've made posts of large text over a photo. Also, small blocks of text over a collage of photos. These are general formats I picked up from scrolling--I did not invent image overlaid with words.

There are visuals I've absorbed on social media and replicated. I've made memes. But there's a difference between speaking a visual language and mimicking, word-for-word, a format that someone else thought up.

is it unfair for me to hate you just because you used pastel text?

if you didn't do kinda chic-- and you didn't ever use butter yellow, you just used light pink or lavender--do you deserve my contempt?

yes bc contributing to trendy-trends is like shopping at zara. you're perpetuating a bad thing that hurts artists and erodes the sanctity of IP.

shortform content is already so gross-- are trendy trends really the hill to die on?

another yes because they embody enshittification. everyone complains that every shop is the same, every account is the same, every book is the same, every person is becoming the same -- trendy-trends are why.

the logic behind trendy-trends is that it's easier to reproduce a trend that's working for other people than to come up with something yourself. this is a disgusting movie executive outlook.

we used to hate movie executives--now everyone is a movie exec

we hated how movie execs wouldn't take a chance on something new and original. how they prefer to drag out the same hackneyed franchises over and over, remaking toy story for a fifth time (they're doing xmen again). but movie execs have millions of dollars on the line--there's a lot at stake ...

why is creator with 600 followers hewing to the "tried and true formulas" when there is absolutely nothing at stake? It'll cost creator with 600 followers the same amount (nothing) to copy a tiktok vs to come up with something new-- but they choose to rip someone else off. you should be fined for this behavior. If you make 10 tiktoks and none of them perform, you should owe $500 to a literacy foundation. and you have to read a book.

"but cheap tricks work"

sort of. cheap tricks and trendy-trends work for creators that already have millions of followers (like martha stewart) but for most people, their trendy-trend post will not only flop BUT ALSO classify them as a hack. why would anyone seeking an artistic career announce they are a hack? (Xavier's substack "internet social status is not real" is a great read, which is why I pay for his newsletter.)

cheap tricks get cheap engagement -- and if cheap engagement has value for a creator, then they must be in a cheap industry that will not last: say, pivoting your channel to labubu content only (sorry I don't have a more recent example but my content consumption is limited and ... I don't actually want to know a more recent example!)