Book Buddies! Hi! So sorry to be sending this on a Tuesday instead of Monday. Confession - I plum forgot about it yesterday! I hope those of you that had a three day weekend this week had a good one. Here’s the updates:
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 irresistible comes up. If you go in the document to add titles, please ignore any sidebar tabs that might pop up and add your text below to the exsiting text in the document! Thanks to all of you have added stuff so far! SO exciting! This list is getting AWESOME.
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!
Casey Liston's story "Lilith" is forthcoming in All This Beauty: An Anthology of Contemporary Florida Writers, out March 2027. Preorder your copy here! PLUS her flash fiction story Pride and Provenance was nominated for the Best Small Fictions contest by South 85 Journal.
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!
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 October 14 and Johanna and Rich are up next. Pages are in. We’ll meet again on October 28 and Rich and Aimee have the floor then. Pages due the 24th.
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The next meeting is October 22, and Sara will have the floor with pages are due on October 15.
Weirdlings Wednesdays 12pm - 1:30: Elizabeth will have the floor on our October 14th meeting. Pages are in. Sumana is joining us for the first time so we will integrate her into the rotation when we’re together
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is October 22 and Hilary is up next. Pages due the 18th!
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is October 15, and Kristina has the floor. Pages are in. Malavika will return to us for that meeting! Hurray! We’ll recalibrate the schedule when we’re together.
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is October 24. Morgan has floor time, pages due by the 20th if possible! Helen, you can have a slot if you want it, just let me know!
Gen Writing Prompt
October 13 and 17, 2026
Making a scene
I’ve been thinking a lot about the essay I’ve attached to this week’s email: “Making a Scene” by Anna Keesey. I return to it often because rendering action in real time can make my writing feel sticky which brings up the most insecurity, so I’m always looking for guidance around scene construction. I’ve also sent it to a few other writers this week, so I thought I’d bring it to our attention. This week I thought it would be fun to get super focused on scene building.
Generate something new:
Let’s write a story that is made up of a single scene - and that “single” is a firm parameter. No full scene flashbacks (I’ll allow a few scenic sentences that point to the past but the story should be firmly on one timeline), just one scene that has a beginning, middle and end. The scene should:
Involve at least two people
Point to a power struggle or at least a dynamic in which there is a distribution of emotional, social, political, economic, or circumstantial power between characters
Be driven by change - the circumstances at the start should shift rather dramatically before the end
Be told via one single narrative voice, but the tense, tone, and level of internal access to characters is up to you. So you can head hop, but the voice shouldn’t change
Contain at least one surprise, two moments in which what’s at stake for the characters increases (so they should have more to lose), and at least one change in rooms or other physical location
Involve an important object
You can use some of these NYC Midnight inspired prompts if you want to get even more specific.
In this case, your single scene story must also:
Be historical fiction, reference an elephant and a glass of water
Be a ghost story, reference a book and mysterious piece of electronic equipment
Be epistolary, reference a toilet paper roll and a snow globe
You all are the best. See you later this week!
Your bestie -
kate
