Book buddies: Hi! I hope you had a great weekend and are ready for tonight’s Book Club! I’ve emailed the zoom link already! Natalie Lemle is joining us. We’ll discuss her book, Artifacts, which I just finished this morning and had a great time reading. I’m very excited to talk with her tonight. If you have questions for her you want to be super sure we ask, email them to me before 7 and I’ll add them to my list.
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 28 and Rich and Aimee have the floor then. Pages are due asap!
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The next meeting is November 5. Karen and Allie will have the floor for that meeting with pages due on Saturday October 31.
Weirdlings Wednesdays 12pm - 1:30: Erika will have the floor for our October 28 meeting. Pages are in. Sumana will join us! We’ll update the submission schedule when we’re together!
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is November 5. Susan has the floor with pages due Saturday October 31. Morgan is going to push her submission back, so just one set of pages this time!
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is October 29. Danae and Garth have the floor with pages due asap. Garth has pages in already. Danae’s are coming for us super soon! Also, Ali will be officially joining us! Introductory email is forthcoming!
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is November 7. Georgia has the floor with pages due by November 4, and Helen might snag a slot too! TBD!
Gen Writing Prompt
October 27 and 31, 2026
Spooky Season
Buds, I couldn’t resist a spooky prompt when Gen Writing falls exactly on Halloween this year. Let’s write some ghost-y stuff!
Imagine a haunting in any form - of the imagination, of a physical space, or a straight up possession. Perhaps ghosts have taken over a town, learned to procreate using alive humans as incubators, or perhaps they have re-entered the world of the living to save humanity from itself, to save the animal kingdom from humans, to rescue anything you can dream of. Maybe a ghost has arrived to settle a score, to enact an agenda.
Write a poem about a haunting of this sort
Begin a fictional piece from the perspective of someone encountering any of the variety of ghosts or from the ghost’s perspective.
Write a CNF piece about being haunted, a ghost story that shook you as a child, a grief you cannot escape, a memory that has latched on and taken on a life of its own.
You all are the bee’s knees.
Your bestie forever ever ever -
Kate
