I'm used to writing 2018, now.

It takes a long time, sometimes. I still occasionally catch myself writing the date with a 19 in the year spot and I have to stop. That was twenty years ago. 

So much has happened already that this year seems longer than it really has been. I signed on to be an artist in residence for Hestia, so the next time you hear from me I'll be in Savannah, Georgia. I got nominated for the Philip K. Dick award for my second novel, The Book of Etta. (That's me and PKD up top.)

I've booked travel to Florida for AWP, to Virginia for RavenCon, to Seattle for Norwescon, and to Madison for Wiscon. I'm going to spend this whole year writing and being a writer, and I'm so excited I can barely wait to take off next week. 

For a long time, I've used this newsletter as a means to recommend things I think are worth reading. Shifting gears a little, I'm now offering a monthly review of that material on my blog. Here, I'd like to focus on one thing and really dig into it for your benefit. 

January's dig has got to be Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel. Mantel hardly needs any publicity from me, but I want to tell you all anyway: this book is incredible. It won the Man Booker prize amid a slew of other accolades, and was a wild bestseller. It deserved all of that. 

You might not know this about me, but I have a major Tudor jag. I've been obsessed with the period (and Elizabeth I, in particular) since high school. I used to cut class to go to the library and read about the Tudors, in both fiction and nonfiction. I cleaned out the entire shelf of these books, tried to make my signature look like Elizabeth's, stole snippets from Henry VIII to send letters to folks I loved (or whose heads I wanted to cut off. In the end, isn't it all the same?) I could never get enough. 

There are two things I learned in my study of the Tudors that are relevant to Wolf Hall: there are too many books written about these people, and many of them have nothing new to say. Even the fiction writers got squirrelly about inventing what happened when the histories fail to specify. Mantel is not a squirrel: she's a lion. She gets into the spaces between the shocking events of this history and turns them into gardens of prose and beautiful, lifelike characters. She makes all of it seem less like Game of Thrones and more like something your friends have lived through. I cannot say enough good things about this book. If you have even a passing interest in English history, you should pick this up. (Also, the Audible version is a work of ART.)

I love reading people like Mantel, who are talented and utterly unlike me. I get to enjoy it without feeling jealous (mostly). 

I finished a project this week: a novella set in Oakland about a mad scientist who solves the homeless problem by shrinking people. I hope to have more to share about that soon. 

I have a forthcoming story in LIGHTSPEED magazine, plus a handful of essays in other places. It's gotten to the point where I feel good submitting, and rejections don't carry much sting. I just shovel the story or the essay right back out into the world, because I still love it and believe in it. Turn, turn, turn, like the song says. 

I know that good things are coming. I believe that better days lie ahead. I am willing to work my ass off to prove myself right, on both counts. I hope you are, too. 

On the brown, glossy wings of a double mocha, 

Meg