BB Happenings: 9.28-10.4
Book Buddies! Hi my favorites. Hope you had a great weekend. Some reminders to start us off this week:
A reminder:
I’m looking for Book Buddy volunteers —
to run a special 90 minute sessions for the community. I’m cooking up something special for us starting this December and I need your help. Email me if this is you:
You have recently acquired an agent, sold a book, and/or gotten a hardwon publication and would be willing to host a Q&A session about your experience
You have an idea for a 90 minute writing oriented craft seminar you’d like to host — a close read of a short story, a creative exercise you could lead others through, a guided activity using someone else’s plans like something from George Saunders’ Story Club or a pre-existing youtube video
You would be interested in hosting a zoom “submission party” where BBs gather on zoom to send out their stories, essays, and poems or queries.
You have a creative hobby that is not necessarily writing that you’d be willing to do a zoom sesh about - are you a good knitter and wanna teach some folks something basic? What about collage? Anything is fair game!
You have an outside of the box idea for a 90 min session that you think the Book Buddies would like. Wanna do a 90 minute session about all of David Bowie’s coolest work? Or any musicians? Where my Swifties at?
Thank you! And more about this in the next week or two! Thanks to Maia and Nora who’ve already reached out!
Next, I’m getting ready to think about:
Book club books for 2027!
(I know, that’s insane.) It’s crowdsourcing time! Please enter your book club picks into this document over the coming weeks! I plan to schedule three book clubs at a time so you all will have notice and can plan but also there will still be time to add in a new book at the last minute if something irresistable comes up.
As I said last week, I added one more book club for 2026.
Monday December 7 we’ll discuss George Saunders’ latest, Vigil. Here’s the synopsis:
Not for the first time, Jill “Doll” Blaine finds herself hurtling toward earth, reconstituting as she falls, right down to her favorite black pumps. She plummets towards her newest charge, yet another soul she must usher into the afterlife, and lands headfirst in the circular drive of his ornate mansion.
She has performed this sacred duty 343 times since her own death. Her charges, as a rule, have been greatly comforted in their final moments. But this charge, she soon discovers, isn’t like the others. The powerful K. J. Boone will not be consoled, because he has nothing to regret. He lived a big, bold, epic life, and the world is better for it. Isn’t it?
Vigil transports us, careening, through the wild final evening of a complicated man. Visitors begin to arrive (worldly and otherworldly, alive and dead), clamoring for a reckoning. Birds swarm the dying man’s room; a black calf grazes on the love seat; a man from a distant, drought-ravaged village materializes; two oil-business cronies from decades past show up with chilling plans for Boone’s postdeath future.
With the wisdom, playfulness, and explosive imagination we’ve come to expect, George Saunders takes on the gravest issues of our time—the menace of corporate greed, the toll of capitalism, the environmental perils of progress—and, in the process, spins a tale that encompasses life and death, good and evil, and the thorny question of absolution.
Calendar invites will show up in your inbox right after I send this out.
The next book club is October 26 7pm - 8:30pm EST with Natalie Lemle as a guest!
We’ll discuss her book, Artifacts! Here’s the publishers’s blurb:
One of The New York Times's Sizzling New Summer Thrillers: “Even now, Lena might be in danger from some of the unscrupulous characters she met all those years ago. Can she put her history behind her?”
For fans of The Cloisters and Counterfeit, Natalie Lemle’s debut novel offers an insider’s view into the world of stolen artifacts and the hidden networks that link museums to organized crime, when a woman is forced to remember the summer she spent on an archaeological dig in Italy, as everyone she knew then may now be in danger.
Successful trusts and estates attorney Lena Connolly is asked by a colleague to assist on a case: the Italian government claims an artifact was looted and sold to a museum illegally and is seeking repatriation. The object in question is a cup made of dichroic glass, which would have been rare even in Ancient Rome, let alone thousands of years later.
Lena has done everything she can to put the study abroad summer she spent on an archaeological dig in the Italian Alps behind her. Her dreams of being an archaeologist shattered when her mentor Cyrille disappeared and her enigmatic boyfriend Giamma went dark, but with this new case, the past comes roaring back.
Told in alternating timelines, Artifacts follows young Lena as she falls in love with both archaeology and Giamma on the streets of Torino while her adult self pieces together what truly happened on the dig, now a fully restored Roman villa with World Heritage status. The dichroic cup, Lena discovers, may have been taken from the very site she helped unearth.
Powerful and exuberant, Natalie Lemle’s Artifacts brings readers behind the museum glass and asks questions about cultural heritage and the historical preservation of our shared sense of humanity.
Book Buddy Accolades!
No surprises, but you all are killing it out there with your projects. Here’s a list of some recent accomplishments!
Rebecca Tiger’s story Anosmia (https://hotflashliterary.com/anosmia/) was nominated Best Small Fictions 2027. Her collection “Blood and Guts” is forthcoming with Cowboy Jamboree Press is March 2027. AND her story Smalltown Girl was recently published with Ghost Parachute. https://ghostparachute.com/issue/september-2026-issue/smalltown-girl/. Way to slay Rebecca!
Audrey Alstadt finished a nonfiction manuscript and is now in conversation with an editor!
And last week’s accolades still deserve some stage time so here we go:
Casey Liston's flash fiction story Pride and Provenance was nominated for the Best Small Fictions contest by South 85 Journal.
Mackenzie Pratt finished the first draft of her novel last weekend!
Rich Buckley turned in his final manuscript to Storyworth last week!
Tell me what you’re up to so I can celebrate you here!
Feedback Group Submission Schedules!
IRL Group Wednesdays @ beautyland 6:30-8:30: The next meeting is September 30 and Margo and Paul have the floor. Pages due are expected later today! The following meeting is October 14 and I believe Chris and Rich are up next. We’ll discuss Wednesday!
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The next meeting is October 8, and Bill will have the floor with pages due on October 1. Sara will have pages up for the October 22 meeting.
Weirdlings Wednesdays 12pm - 1:30: Erika will have the floor for the September 30th meeting. Pages are in. Elizabeth has the floor for the October 14 meeting, pages due rougly on the 7th.
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is October 8 and Kristin has the floor! Pages due by October 4.
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is October 1, and Garth and Danae have the floor. Pages due asap. Malavika will return to us for that meeting! Hurray! Garth’s pages are already in.
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is October 10 Georgia have floor time, pages due by the 7th if possible!
Gen Writing Prompt
September 29 and October 3, 2026
New Mediums
This past Saturday’s Gen writing has inspired this week’s prompt, thanks to an exercise Susan tried and shared with the rest of us! Here it is:
Re-write an already existing piece of writing, yours or someone else’s, in a completely different form/genre. Convert something fictional to poetry. A poem to a more straightforward narrative. A nonfiction essay to an epistolary piece (a letter, a journal entry, a social media post). Fiction to nonfiction or the reverse. You can also work with genre by adding a layer of a new genre to a piece — a romance becomes historical romance or now takes place in a fantasy world. A Drama becomes a mystery. Sci-fi meets noir. Have a good time with this, and see how a new categorical convention can guide the writing!
That’s all for now! See you soon!
Your bestie -
Kate
