Letters from Meg— June

It's the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love over here in the Bay area, and my friends are celebrating by getting married. All of them. I'm on my sixth wedding this summer. This picture is from my good friends' bachelorette party, where we all dressed up as brides and went bowling. My husband John absolutely killed it with the beard flowers, as you can see. 

We threw our first home-version Mortified party and it was an unqualified success. Our friends dug out their LiveJournal humiliations, their Craigslist personals, their twenty-something travelogues and their teenage poetry. I've never laughed so hard or felt so safe reading from my worst work. I found a slightly corrupted but mostly whole version of the romance (?) novel I wrote when I was 20. Reading it out loud was like lancing a boil and seeing purple prose spill out. My friends are the best and laughed with me rather than at me. If you're the sort of person who does readings or literary-themed parties (we can't be the only ones, right?) I recommend this one. 


It's been a quiet summer for me, because I've been about my grind. I wrote a novel this spring and got it revised and shipped off so that I could focus on The Book of Flora. Flora is rolling now and I can't wait for you to meet her. 

I've sold a handful of short stories this summer, but it'll be a while before I can tell you where and show you links. In the mean time, I've been reading some amazing stuff. There's this Uncanny story about a gay trans vampire from my friend K.M. Szpara that just knocked my socks off. There's Victor LaValle's new novel, The Changeling, which reads like Stephen King wrote Le Club Dumas right after a death in his family. There's this short essay by my dear friend Jennifer Wong, who is seeking her roots in Toisan and finding a way to grieve for her father by connecting to family she didn't even know she had. 

I've done a little writing for the SYFY Fangrrls vertical, including this essay on why all those critics who say The Handmaid's Tale is timely are wrong. I'll be writing more for them in the future, so watch that space and this one for pop culture crankiness from me. 

I'm not really cranky about pop culture. Not like I used to be, anyway. I've gotten to the point where I can critique the things I truly love, and I can find something in the stuff I hate to explain why people like it. Really, the older I get, the more I lose the ability to take anything seriously. I remember being a kid and finding everything wholly real and terrifying; believing that every structure had the power to crush me and that every person could back up their bravado. Turns out, everyone and everything is faking like they know what they're doing like 90% of the time. I know to take that 10% for what it's worth, but the rest has slid me comfortably into giving fewer fucks than ever. 

I hope your summer is as chill as mine. I hope you're giving fewer fucks every day. Hold on to your fucks. There may be fuckless times ahead. 

Profanely yours, 

Meg