winter catch up + GARDEN read-along

a read-along announcement, tv thoughts, and a sneaky lil excerpt!

keep reading for...

• a GARDEN read-along (well. an announcement of one) so we can all refresh our memories in time for ORCHARD

• tv standouts both good and "that sure is something i saw with my eyeballs"

• a tiny little excerpt of something i've been working on that will hopefully be my next YA and look like it's not SECRET but we're being quiet about it okay we're waiting to say Concrete Details until we know more but also i like the sentences i wrote and i want to share them with you so! they're down there

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IN A GARDEN BURNING GOLD read-along

since the sequel comes out on may 2, every week in april i’ll post a recap/discussion thread for a chunk of GARDEN chapters — read along with me and let’s chat!

Schedule:

• April 7th - Chapters 1 through 10

• April 14th - Chapters 11 through 20

• April 21st - Chapters 21 through 30

• April 28th - Chapters 31 through Epilogue

posts will arrive in your inbox just like always but you can also visit them on substack to so we can leave comments/ask questions/share theories (? maybe?) about what’s to come in the sequel!

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what i watched this winter

tv standouts (both good and ????? whAT)

• delightfully i have convinced a friend of mine to watch breaking bad for the first time which prompted me to continue the rewatch i had halfheartedly started after better call saul.... and then start another one.... and finish that one and start another... and YOOOOOOOOO this show is just. you gotta watch and if you've seen it you gotta watch again like there is a REASON it's on all those lists. it's so fun and bonkers and just foot on the gas breakneck but you don't realize it until you've been going 150 for an hour and you have to brake bc the road you were following has suddenly ended in a cliff

• started the terror season 1. didn't finish it but it was all right! wanted a bit more psychological horror out of it (possibly i would've found it if i had finished the season but shhhhh)

• i watched 150 episodes of the mentalist bc i saw on tumblr (what a sentence! what year is it!) that the two leads eventually fall in love and yes! they do! exquisite slow burn everything i could ask for from a cbs procedural that tries to blend intense psychological trauma with that like marimba music cue thomas newman popularized in american beauty that is meant to convey "wow! what a strange interesting man! don't you think he is so funny and odd and quirky?" and it’s like i sure do hahaha wait why is he crying over the brutal murder of his wife and child i thought we were having a good time

• okay i watched most of veronica mars (3 seasons and the movie but not the extra season) and i'm going to sue every single person who has spoken fondly about this show bc y'all what the FUCKKKKKKK this show is built on a foundation wrought from HELL!!!!!!!! if you look at it for longer than two seconds it tries to kill you!!!!! no amount of quips and scrappy girl detective bullshit can make up for the psychic damage i took watching this like why does it hate every single one of its characters? it even hates veronica! it hates me! it hates you!

• i've been keeping up to date with love island (the winter season that just finished airing) and i don't have much to say aside from this: you cannot convince me those people don't all hate each other's guts

• some odds and ends

  • niles-focused episodes of frasier

  • all of that show lie to me, again

  • all of jenny nicholson's backlogged patreon content

  • the bachelor, unfortunately (i remain in its clutches)

  • i haven't watched the last of us yet bc i want to play the game first and the pc port is out in a week or two but once i do that i'll watch it

NB: this isn't something i watched i just think i wouldn't be doing my duty if i didn't warn you that succession season 4 stars airing later this month and it will have a starring role in my next newsletter and i'm not saying "if you don't care about succession just don't read that one" no i'm saying you are now obligated to have watched all three currently existing seasons by the time i send that email

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if you have made it this far here is a very small secret little excerpt of what i’m working on right now that i have tried to choose carefully to not give away The Whole Deal

They draw it wrong on the maps, the northward slot. A single line branching from the main canyon, no record of the hundreds of smaller paths that split and spiral, the doors that open only on the very hottest days. No, we have a map of our own that lives in our heads. Photographs bled through with light, framed by a stranger’s eye.

Follow that map now, through the arch. The water is deep here, lake turned to river. Boats drift under with their motors off. We count the marks people have left in the rock. Dates, names. Initials nobody has seen for forty years, left bare now the water levels have dropped.

We have left no marks of our own. Why would we ever need to? Who could forget us?