3 Dec // momentary blissness
3 Dec 2024
weather: frickin’ freezing
mood: balanced
music: Fontaines DC, “Starburster”
A quick one (while he’s away)!
December! It’s here! The end of the year approacheth and so I’m working hard on the end of the year list, which is to say that I’m frantically building a stack of 2024 books I didn’t get to yet (can you believe I haven’t read Intermezzo yet? neither can I but here we are) and also scrambling to write up all of the bits and bobs for Lit Hub’s year-end content.
But I’m dropping in to share a new story from yours truly, “What Came Out of the Thaw”
It just came out in Club Chicxulub’s latest issue and I’m quite proud of it. I really love the work that Club Chicxulub is doing—as I said to a college friend this weekend, CC is very Stardust-House-coded: run by a couple, they put on live events with music and readings, they’re both doing it out of the love of the thing while doing a thousand other things besides. We love to see it.
The story is an old one, inspired by coming out of lockdown and trying to figure out what the hell life was supposed to look like upstate. I was reading a bunch of weird shit at the time (surprise surprise) and I wanted to play with POV and tense and this story is what happened. It’s also the first story I ever shared aloud to strangers, at the first Golden Notebook reading series event almost three years ago, because a reader had dropped out at the last minute and I used host’s-prerogative to not bother filling that gap the day-of but to instead read something of my own. Good trial by fire. But it turned out that it’s a story that’s meant to be heard aloud—and what a joy, then, that I got to do just that! Yes, that’s right: you can not only read the story but you can hear me read it to you. I told you Club Chicxulub is doing cool stuff!
The rest of this issue is really something, too. I’m kind of floored to be in such good company and I think, maybe, I’m onto something here. (Many of you have also been very kind about some of the birthday stories, one of which has already found its way into the world and hopefully a few more will follow suit in the coming months—I got real close with two of them at two different dream publications, but fell at the final hurdle on both… but we soldier on.)
See you again at the turning of the year and, as ever but especially this time, thanks for reading.
xo
D