This summer, I’ve been collecting river glass. It’s like sea glass, but less glamorous (a thought which turned into the first line of a poem for me a few weeks ago).

There’s something really compelling about the fragments, colors and textures tumbling across the landscape from an undefined point in the past. Hints of stories. The blue-hued fragments I imagine are old canning jars, swept away in floodwaters. The greens and browns of buzzing summer afternoons. A piece of a jug handle. An angled chunk that carries the letters TL and makes me reflect on the word subtle.

I think about the violence of shattering. The cutting moments that must have precipitated these soft, almost luminous shapes. The transformation from wounding trash to wondering beauty.

There’s something so bittersweet about each little bit, something devastating and reassuring. A scale wobbling back and forth indefinitely.

I’m not writing us toward any particular conclusion, though there are ripples spreading out in several directions that could be followed, rills and eddies leading to the world beyond the riverbank. Summer is a strange, melancholy limbo. It invites meandering reveries.

But, on to the news part of this newsletter:

Giveaway Winner!

This month I ran a giveaway to celebrate Disability Pride Month. The winner gets an eARC of Higher Magic and Bartleby’s syllabus, which contains some resources that will shed light on some fun easter eggs in the novel.

Congrats, Salem! And thank you so much to everyone who entered.

Higher Magic Preorder Swag

Would you like a signed copy of Higher Magic? Perhaps some stickers I designed? Preorder with The Yankee Bookshop!

If you’ve already preordered elsewhere (or are outside of the US) I’ve also created an audio dramatization of a cut scene and a digital syllabus for the class Bartleby (the protagonist) teaches in the novel that you can claim using the form on my website.

Launch Events (and WorldCon panels)

My official book launch will be hosted by The Yankee Bookshop at the Norman Williams Public Library in Woodstock, VT on October 7th! If you are in the area, I hope to see some of you there.

I’ll also be having an early launch event at WorldCon Seattle in a couple of weeks! (The part is on the night of Friday, 8/15 and I will have more details about that soon.)

You can also catch me on panels, doing a reading from Higher Magic and tabling with Authors Against Book Bans.

Thanks for wallowing with me,

Courtney