Maybe I'll Be Less Busy When The Kids' School Year Comes To A Close
Plus a Tarot Telling For Two AP!
Hello, friends! The lovely folks at Hope’s Hearth have launched an Actual Play of my game Tarot Telling For Two! Episode 1 is linked above, and episode 2 can be found here. I hope you enjoy listening to their take on my rules-lite storytelling Tarot game. I certainly had a lot of fun hearing them build their cool story together using random draws from The Alleyman’s Tarot!
My kids’ school year is drawing to a close and not even an activities-avoidant parent like myself has been able to dodge every single school event, despite my best efforts. Granted, this is my own fault, as I have strongly encouraged the kids to take advantage of school’s free music lessons, so have attended several more occasions than I might had I truly been aiming for the minimum:
Everyone had fun and learned stuff tho, and perhaps most importantly, my kids have driven all their own participation, relying on their parents for support but not motivation. I’m truly hoping to raise independent kids who can pursue their own interests under their own initiative, especially as they graduate from elementary school to middle school (the twins), and from middle to high school (my eldest.) I know, I can’t believe I’m old enough to have kids this old either!
Honestly, I’m not sure where I’m going with this: partially as an explanation for why I’ve been so busy this week, and partially because I’ve been relating hard to a lot of books recently, but especially to Sarah Harman’s All The Other Mothers Hate Me, with its chaos muppet heroine and her determination to protect her kid from suspicion in the disappearance of his obnoxious little classmate. I’m also still trying to properly write a review for another read I lauded here two (two!) newsletters ago, Emily Critchley’s The Undoing Of Violet Claybourne, about teenage girls pre-World War II who do terrible things to protect themselves and how the repercussions impact them through the years. I guess my emotional hangover of last week hasn’t properly faded yet, sigh. Perhaps once my writing schedule better aligns with my reading. My editor has assured me that I’m not the only one currently in the creative doldrums. I just feel like I keep veering between writing pablum and spilling out too much of my heart’s blood on the page.
Nowhere has this latter, in particular, felt more explicit than when I was reviewing Ben Okri’s latest fable Madame Sosostris And The Festival For The Brokenhearted. It’s not a perfect book — I loled at the ridiculous assertion that poor people are happier than rich people — but it’s a super smart look at how and why the heartbroken look to fortune telling for comfort and guidance.
That all said, let me talk to you about the two books I enjoyed reading most this week! The first was Travis Mulhauser’s The Trouble Up North, which is my idea of good MFA writing. IME, the best examples of those are either unabashedly genre (e.g. Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds, Allison Goodman’s The Benevolent Society Of Ill-Mannered Ladies) or unashamedly representative of life in the less-sparsely populated areas of the USA. While TTuN revolves around the historically criminal Sawbrook family, it’s also a frank portrayal of family and social dynamics in northern Michigan, with a hell of a gallant ending.
My other favorite book this week is also set in the remote-ish north, though across the border in Canada. I did not expect to be as moved by Jeff Lemire’s Fishflies as I was, but this deeply humane graphic novel was without a doubt one of the best books I’ve read this year. Franny Fox is a lonely little girl whose mom left her and her asshole dad. When she finds an injured man in her barn, she’s determined to help him, whether he wants the assistance or not. This, btw, is the setup for a horror novel about a town curse, cycle-breaking and, ultimately, redemption. It’s an incredible work of art that, like life, isn’t pretty but is surprising, moving and real.
If you read through my review of Fishflies, you’ll read a bit about how I’ve been obsessed with Stela Cole’s phenomenal I Die Where You Begin album since discovering it several days ago. It’s speaking to a lot of emotions that I’m hoping to be able to drain out with it, so that by the time I’m ready to move on from the album, I’ll be ready to move on from these emotions as well. Wish me luck with that and with catching up with work finally! See you in seven, friends!
Currently Playing (Music): Beethoven’s Symphony #2 in D Major; Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite; my Declan Rice and 2025 Energy playlists; Chappel Roan’s Rise And Fall Of A Midwest Princess; Stela Cole’s I Die Where You Begin.
Currently Playing (Games): The Light In The Mist puzzletale, The Wild Beyond The Witchlight, Metazooa by Trainwreck Labs, Learned League trivia, NYT Connections, Your Friend In Witchcraft by Kay Marlow Allen; The Wolves Of Langston by Obvious Mimic.
Currently Reading/Writing (Games): Ghosts Of Saltmarsh.
Currently Reading or Just Read (Books): Cousins In The Time Of Magic by Emma Otheguy; The Diva Poaches A Bad Egg by Krista Davis; The Trouble Up North by Travis Mulhauser; A Dumb Birds Field Guide To The Worst Birds Ever by Matt Kracht; Madame Sosotris And The Festival For The Brokenhearted by Ben Okri; All The Other Mothers Hate Me by Sarah Harman; Fishflies by Jeff Lemire.