End of summer break inbound; whereas everyday felt, for the last eight weeks, like Saturday, now they feel like Sunday. And so it goes, through the next few weeks. Things in process:

Final Shed transition from writing space with tools to full-on industrial art workshop. Metal and pictures and words oh my.
Moving rocks around nuPond. New footpath in the works for optimal gill-baby viewing.
Drawing little things for a zine, maybe. Words eventually, again.
Reading: WE ARE WATCHING, by Alison Gaylin; LOWER THAN THE ANGELS: A HISTORY OF SEX AND CHRISTIANITY, by Diarmaid MacCullough
Watching: PARADISE, season one.
LISTENING: On a BRMC binge.
PLAYING: ROBOCOP: ROGUE CITY replay on PS5 because my brain can handle only wanton awesomeness and occasional quirk; BALATRO and MARIO KART WORLD on the Switch 2.
Toying around with new metal ideas, though I might wait for the blazing heat to fuck off to work on something bigger.

If anyone could make a story about Instagram influencers not only readable but compulsively so, I should have known that it'd be Alison: I've been a fan since we first connected back in the MySpace days, TRASHED being my first foray into her narrative mind and, with BAD INFLUENCE, the first of her (hopefully many) continuations of Robert B. Parker's Sunny Randall stories, she not only renders an accurate depiction of Boston (I lived there for 10 years and her evocation of it made me feel back “home” (read: the home that’s more home than the home of my first 18 years) – though I was perplexed by how easy it was for her characters to find parking; the true fictional license of the story, I suppose) but manages – thanks to her unmatched ability to craft an emotional honesty for each character, no matter how small their role – something that only the best writers can pull off: she makes Parker’s creations wholly her own. Highly recommended.

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ROBERT B. PARKER'S BAD INFLUENCE (Alison Gaylin, 2023)

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