PLS Read: BB Happenings and requests 9/14-21
Hiya Book Buddies!
The first exciting announcement…
…for this week is that the next installment of the Kill Your Darlings Reading Series that I host with Rachel Lyon and Emily Lackey is upon us, this upcoming Saturday at Darlings Bar and Cafe in Easthampton. Doors open at 4, the reading is at 4:30, AND one of the readers is a Book Buddy! Maia Baker will read alongside Heather Abel and Diana Whitney. It’s going to be the most insane fun that ever existed in the world of fun. If you’re local or close to local and want to take a nice drive, I hope you’ll consider coming!
Secondly,
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 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 soon!
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.
Feedback Group Submission Schedules!
IRL Group Wednesdays @ beautyland 6:30-8:30: The next meeting is September 16 and Audrey and Paul have floor time. Audrey’s pages are in. Paul’s are forthcoming tonight. The following meeting September 30 and Margo and Chris have the floor, I believe.
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The next meeting is September 24 is our next meeting, and Ezra will have the floor then, pages due September 17. The meeting after that is October 8, and Bill will have the floor with pages due on October 1.
Weirdlings Wednesdays 12pm - 1:30: Dana has got the floor for our next meeting on September 16. No materials, just chitty-chats. Erika will have the floor for the September 30th meeting.
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is September 24 and Hilary has the floor with pages due on September 20!
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is September 17th and Maia has the floor. Pages due ASAP. The following meeting is October 1, and we’ll set the schedule this upcoming meeting.
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is September 26! Nora and Georgia have floor time, pages due by the 23rd?
Gen Writing Prompt
September 15 and 19, 2026
Oppositional Forces
I’ve been watching this interview between David Perell and RF Kuang for a few days. Meet The Writer Who Sold Millions of Books Before 30 (R.F. Kuang Interview)
She says a lot of great things about how sometimes the task of writing is just difficult, that we assume that good writing comes easily when that just isn’t the case. It’s worth a listen. She also talks about using writing prompts as a way to get comfortable writing badly, and explains how she does this by offering only 15 minutes to write and then making it mandatory they share afterwards so that the point of the task becomes about just getting it done, seeing what comes out under pressure, rather than hyperfocusing on producing something polished. I’m not going to make you do that, but I am going to riff off of the prompt she said she often uses, so here goes:
Begin a new piece by describing a very beautiful place using the voice of someone who is absolutely miserable about being there.
A beautiful beach
A joyful crowded celebration
A resplendent garden
Wine country on a perfect day
A famous tourist destination like the Sistine Chapel, the pyramids, or the Louvre
OR describe a wretched place from the POV of someone who is absolutely bonkers excited/happy to be there:
An alligator and snake infested swamp
A hike well attended by mosquitos
A funeral
A hospital
Watching a looming tornado or other wild weather event
As ever, you all are the best!
Your bestie,
Kate
