Book Buddy Updates: Aug 17 - 23
Book Buddies! Hi! I hope your week is off to a great start.
First: Book club is TONIGHT August 17 (Monday) at 7pm. We’re reading Stone Yard Devotional by Charlotte Wood. Here’s the publisher’s blurb about it:
“Shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize, a novel about forgiveness, grief, and what it means to be good, from the award-winning author of The Weekend and The Natural Way of Things. Burnt out and in need of retreat, a middle-aged woman leaves Sydney to return to the place she grew up, taking refuge in a small religious community hidden away on the stark plains of rural Australia. She doesn’t believe in God, or know what prayer is, and finds herself living this strange, reclusive existence almost by accident. But disquiet interrupts this secluded life with three visitations. First comes a terrible mouse plague, each day signaling a new battle against the rising infestation. Second is the return of the skeletal remains of a sister who disappeared decades before, presumed murdered. And finally, a troubling visitor plunges the narrator further back into her past. Meditative, moving, and finely observed, Stone Yard Devotional is a seminal novel from a writer of rare power, exploring what it means to retreat from the world, the true nature of forgiveness, and the sustained effect of grief on the human soul.”
I really hope to see you there! We’ll have a long discussion about interiority, withholding information and plot.
The next book club is October 26 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 August 19. Audrey will be coming aboard then! Aimee and Johanna have floor time. Johanna’s pages are in. Aimee’s are coming ASAP. We’ll set the schedule for the September 2 meeting when we’re together, but for now I have Rich and Audrey tentatively scheduled for that time. Audrey, if that’s too soon for you to submit, no worries! We’ll check in about it.
Noon Crew Thursdays 12pm - 1:30: The next meeting is August 20 and Sara has the floor then! Pages due in. September 3 is our next meeting, and Jill will have the floor then, but if VSC messes with that we can make a new plan.
Weirdlings Wednesdays 12pm - 1:30: Erika is next up for August 19, pages are in. Dana is next on deck for September 2.
Kool Kids Thursdays at 7pm - 8:30: Our next meeting is August 27 and Susan and Rebecca have the floor with pages due August 22.
OG Crew Thursdays at 7:30pm - 9: The next meeting is August 20 and Danae and Maia are up. Pages are in! The following meeting is September 3 and Garth and Kristina will be up
Saturday besties 12:30pm - 2: The next meeting is August 29! Morgan and Nora have floor time, pages due roughly August 26.
Gen Writing Prompt for this Week
August 18 and 22, 2026
Cold Feet
This week let’s work with the kind of tension you can generate on the page when writing about circumstances where someone dramatically changes their mind, experiences doubt in the face of previously strong confidence, or the rug is otherwise pulled out from under what seemed like a sure bet situation. Some scenarios we can work with are:
Cold feet on wedding day (a classic!)
Someone getting “everything they ever wanted” and realizing they don’t actually want it
Someone moving with confidence through a long term project — say, writing a book, training for an Olympic sport, learning an instrument etc. — when suddenly self doubt enters the chat and burns down progress
Someone gets the “twisties” midperformance (in gymnastics this refers to getting lost in the space in the middle of a flip bc you’re too in your head) - could be any performance: a sport, a play, dancing, giving a lecture or speech, playing an instrument on stage
Someone realizing a new job on day one is a bad fit
Someone investing all of their money and energy into a political candidate or other kind of leader — a cult leader would work here too — to then start doubting their capacity to do as promised/whether they are the real deal
Cold feet about a big purchase
You all are the greatest writers alive IMO.
Your bestie -
Kate
