Goodbye to all that.

The temptation to send these out right before getting on an airplane is always quite strong. 

I'm too dramatic for my own good, and I'm always looking for ways to say goodbye. But I've done this enough times that I know I'm probably not gonna die. So I'll just say goodbye to June. I see she's still lingering in the doorway there, so let's send her off right. 

I did some fun shows in June. I got to be in a live version of the Drunk Safari podcast, and tell a room full of people in a Betabrand store that I wanted to call the extinct moa bird the "forbidden daddy chicken." It was a hoot. Or whatever noise a dinosaur bird made before humans hunted it out of existence. 

Kepler's books and Tachyon publishing set me up to have a long, lovely chat with Peter S. Beagle, as you see up top there. I wrote about it on my blog, trying to separate what we want from literary giants from what there is when we meet them as people. I only kind of succeeded. 

Nobody gives me free tiny pizzas for it anymore, but I still read a lot in the summer (I read a lot all the time--who am I kidding? Certainly not you, friends). I'm in the middle of "Wanderers" by Chuck Wendig, because I want someone to scratch that Stephen King 800-page doorstop itch. But I also read a lot of great stuff this month, and it's on my blog if you need recommendations. I'm moving on to "The Toll" by Cherie Priest, because I always crave southern gothic in the summer. 

I saw Midsommar, because I thought it would be extremely my shit. I also crave pagan folk horror, but that's all year long. It didn't quite satisfy, and I had a long thought process about why. As always, these days, someone else said it before I could, and probably better. Pagans and witches are always the objects of horror, and only rarely the subject. I'm on a hunt now, for stories about witches written by witches. Write me back if you think you know one that I don't. 

Is June still there? I think I hear her lingering at the screen door. 

The best way to banish these old months is to look ahead, so let's do that. I'm flying to Boston tonight for my first Readercon. I'm going to a wedding in August and a secret runaway trip in September, and then to conventions in the South and the Midwest before winter makes flying even less fun than it is now. 

I think I worry like this because I'm all too aware that life is short. But I saw something last time I was traveling that makes me laugh whenever I think of my own mortality, and I can't think of a better thing to leave you with. 

I was on one of those moving sidewalk deals in a huge, sprawling airport (BWI, maybe? Charlotte Douglas? All the same.) An old woman was ahead of me with her bags, and she was standing on the left hand side. As all seasoned travelers know, it's standers on the right and walkers on the left. Just like the freeway. 

A young man cam bustling up behind her, all long strides and focus and rolling suitcase. He huffed and gestured at the old woman for holding him up, saying, "Come on, move it. Life is short."

I was in the perfect place to watch their interaction. She turned her head very slowly, not removing her sunglasses. She looked him up and down and said in an unhurried tone, "Son, life... is long. And most of it... is just... like... this."

I don't know if he got to where he was going, but I did not. I was slain where I stood. 

There she goes. I heard June let herself out just now. Come on, July. You can come out of where you've been hiding. The coast is clear. It'll be your turn to get banished soon enough. 

Rising with the heat, 

Meg