Apologies for a longer gap than usual between newsletters. I had to spend a bit of time in my home town helping my now 92-year-old mother move into a care home. (Thanks to the folks who read to the last sentence of my last newsletter and sent their best to my mom. She really likes her new place, and--believe me--it is SO MUCH better for her not to be living alone. Frankly, it's also much less anxiety-producing for me.)

A quick digression about my home "town": Until quite recently Mosley Common was a village, albeit a village that had once contained the most productive coal mine in the Lancashire Coalfield. The National Coal Board closed the pit in 1968, though as a memorial on the common proudly proclaims, the seam was never exhausted. Needless to say, closing the biggest employer--at its peak 3,000 miners worked there--didn't exactly do wonders for the place, and it was a pretty grim spot for decades. Nowadays, Britain has a terrible housing shortage--a problem that proves surprisingly hard to fix because for some reason no one wants a load of houses built in their back yard. Needless to say, this means that the locations that fail to resist massive new construction projects tend to be ones where most of the residents are poor. Like Mosley Common! In recent years, more than 1,100 new houses have been built in the village, well, I guess it's now a town--most on green belt. (It's probably not a coincidence that it's nearly 60 years since the pit closed. I think most people who were alive when it was still in operation are a bit concerned that there are big holes under those former green fields!) Very little, if any, of the new construction is social housing. It's classic gentrification, but I have to say, I don't mind that there's a Starbucks in the new-look Mosley Common. (A drive-through Starbucks, even!) Also, at least two gyms and about 5,000 French bulldogs.

Anyhoo, that's probably not why you subscribed to this newsletter!

Despite a few unplanned absences from my desk, I have reached the halfway point in the biography. (The first draft, of course!) I just wrote about the original publication of Rubyfruit Jungle, which is quite possibly the best-selling lesbian novel in publishing history. (Its only rival is The Price of Salt/Carol. Rita Mae, who always used her real name even in the days when most activists had noms de guerre, would surely note that Patricia Highsmith originally published that book under a pseudonym.) In a way, the publication of Rubyfruit Jungle was like the Stonewall uprising--not the first event of its kind, but the one that broke through to the mainstream. It was the book that you read in the break room when you wanted to know if you had any lesbian co-workers. Bars from Manhattan to Los Angeles have taken their names from it, and it was on Patty Hearst's reading list when she was on the lam with the SLA.

I've learned a lot from the first half (I hope!) of this project.

First, that my original plan to do all the research and then do all the writing was impractical. To say the least.

Second, that the Internet Archive is one of the most valuable sites on the internet. Being on this side of the Atlantic means that it can be prohibitively expensive to ship used books from the States--sometimes a book is $5 and shipping more than $25--and that probably doesn't cover the seller's true costs.) Being able to consult books (and radio interviews and even old videos) via the Internet Archive allows me to access resources I otherwise couldn't.

Third, I'm very glad that past me discovered Obsidian and DEVONThink. Obsidian is a note-taking app and DEVONThink a document/information manager. This isn't the place to get nerdy about those tools, nor is it wise to get too hubristic about how awesome my system is (yes, I am afraid of jinxes), but so far at least I've been able to track down ideas I had, quotes from books and magazine articles I read, and transcripts of interviews thanks to those tools. On the wonderful podcast Drafting the Past, host Kate Carpenter asks history book authors how they keep track of their research, and I'm always fascinated by the tools people use--or don't use--to manage their sources.

Lastly, for now: Working on my second book has really hit home how much work my friends who have written multiple books have put in. Every time they completed one marathon, they turned around and started another one. Awe-inducing! Here's probably a good spot to note that Rita Mae's most recent book was, I believe, her SEVENTY-FOURTH!

WATCH ME: Slate just celebrated its 30th anniversary. As part of that package, I talked to the great Dahlia Lithwick about her most popular piece, which was not, it turns out, about the law, the rule of law, or the Supreme Court, but instead about how we're all either Chaos Muppets or Order Muppets.

RECOMMENDATION: I don't watch much TV these days (REALLY!), though I do still tune in to The Great British Bake-Off, partly because some American friends watch it, and it's wild to have a TV show to chat about. HOWEVER, I recently started watching Masterchef Australia, and I am hooked. I do like that the contestants obviously make fantastic dishes--the standard of cooking on this show is better than anything I've seen on other cooking competitions, though I swear they'd all dissolve in a puff of smoke if the hibachi grill were banned for even one episode--but I mostly watch it to hear lovely Aussie English. (Do I really? Bloody oath, mate!) I won't insult my Australian readers by transcribing any more Strine, but I promise, it's delicious!