Hello there! This update is a couple of days late, partly thanks to a review deadline (more on which next time), and partly due to the heat that's been baking the UK on and off since the start of July.
(I'll pause here for those of you across the pond to get the "That's not a heatwave! THIS is a heatwave!" out of your systems. Done? Great.)
I don't talk about this on the newsletter much (though it sometimes feels as though I moan about it non-stop elsewhere), but I've suffered from migraines since I was about seven years old. In the past five years or so, they've been frequent enough that I have some level of headache pain almost every day and spend at least a couple of days every month feeling like I've been hit by a steamroller. Earlier this year, I discovered a preventative that, for two and half glorious months, reduced them almost to nothing. I felt amazing! I could have taken on the world! I was going to do ALL THE THINGS!!!Then the heat arrived. Since the start of July, I've been dealing with daily pain, all the other fun symptoms that come along with it, plus some visual issues which necessitated an emergency trip to the optometrist. It's been frustrating. It doesn't just make looking at a screen and typing harder, but the work of thinking and planning that's so essential to writing. I'm trying hard to cut myself some slack -- after all, nobody's going to die if I don't finish a story -- but it's still pretty dispiriting to want to do something so badly and have it feel like wading through treacle.All of which, I'm aware, sounds a bit whiny. But the older I get, the more I come to feel it's important to be up-front about migraine. It's a very common condition that's often misunderstood and brushed off as 'just a headache', so people feel that we have to power through or else look like wusses. Sometimes, though, you just can't do it, and it's not for want of trying. It's the barometric pressure, baby.So, not much news from me this month, and no mini-essay either. Here's hoping that August is a bit cooler, and more conducive to thinking.
Writing news
Mostly, I've been picking away at novel edits in between headaches, and the manuscript is gradually starting to look like something I might actually be quite proud of. More on that soon, I hope. I've also been working on another review for
ARB
, this one of Hailey Piper's
, which should be out later this month.
Also this month, I'll have a story in the upcoming fourth issue of
, edited by Hannah Greer
.
It's called "Little Shade", and it's about grief, sisterhood, and cats in the post-apocalypse.
What I've been reading
I picked up Miranda July's
All Fours
after reading a review that praised its writing about sex, and the book does have plenty to recommend it -- decent prose and sharp observations about relationships. And the feminist in me thinks, "Well, men have been writing about their mid-life crises since time immemorial! Why shouldn't a woman do it?" But ultimately it's still a book about relatively privileged people having affairs, and there's only so much interest in that I can muster.
What I've been watching
Like everyone else and their dog, I saw the new
Superman
film a couple of weeks ago. It was fun. That's about all I have to say.
What I've been listening to
The new Emily Breeze album,
, came out this month. While I'm not sure if I love it quite as much as her last two, it's still great, sleazy-romantic fun.
That's all from me for this month. 'Til next time!
JL