I'll be the boy with the pink carnation
We’ve had a cold spring here in Portland, and a wet one. The wet is to be expected, but the cold dragged on longer than usual. Lots of dreary 40- to 50-degree days. Lots of cold rain, lots of hail. …
Breaking Up with Jack Kerouac
My agent is shopping my new novel, The Narrow Place, around to editors right now. I’m a slightly nauseated mix of hopeful and terrified about the whole thing, which is, I think, a fairly reasonable response to putting years of …
Fiction is fiction.
Consider this your permission to make shit up. Recently, a student asked me, “If you could go back in time to give yourself advice as you were writing The Revolution of Every Day, what would you say?” Good question, yeah? …
That cool, modern, laid-off-via-Twitter feeling
Like many novelists, teaching is my primary income source. Luckily, it’s work that I love to do. It feels like right livelihood, like I’m truly helping people. My goal in my fiction workshops is to create a warm, welcoming community …
Sunrise, Sunset… (Dispatch from Utopia)
I’ve been quiet the past few weeks because our family was up to our necks in the mucky ending of the first semester and I had to go into Family Project Manager overdrive mode. We all got through it, to …
Refilling the well with a nice, lighthearted murder
Happy New Year! I hope the final stretch of 2022 was good to you. I’m emerging from a mostly delicious holiday cocoon, somewhat irritated that it’s time to get back to waking up to alarms and doing work and being …
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The Books I Loved Most in 2022
We’re well into the cold and gray and dark here in Portland, and with 2022 coming to a close with alarming swiftness (seriously, what the hell is happening with this passage of time shit? SLOW DOWN!), it feels like a …
A Secret (okay, not so secret) Well in Toledo
In my last letter to you, I talked about catching covid on the way to Spain this summer, and I briefly mentioned dragging my covid-negative-but-still-sickly ass around Toledo in the name of novel research. The book is mostly set in …
Okay, so a pandemic and an anxiety disorder walk into a bar…
I’m among friends here, right? So can I just say that… Holy hell, the threat of covid does not play well with my anxiety disorder. Pandemic plus a natural tendency toward panic is a terrible combination. Are you feeling it, …
Okay, so a pandemic and an anxiety disorder walk into a bar… Read more »
Same Cari, New Box
So…I did it. I tucked you all into a box and carried it over from Tiny Letter to Substack. I’d been going back and forth on the decision for months now. I liked the coziness of Tiny Letter, and I …