What’s getting me through this month
Snow, Lindsay Lohan, queer joy, real-time true crime
Between post-election “high functioning depression” and some less-than-encouraging publishing news, let’s just say my creative well has not been at its high water mark lately. (It’s fine, I’m saving the angst for therapy lol.) I have a few things coming up, but these are the distractions currently shaking me out of my holiday anhedonia:
Seeing snow
Recently I traveled to Michigan to celebrate my sister’s birthday. (My brother-in-law threw her a surprise party! It went perfectly!) I grew up in Flint, but I haven’t lived in the state for many years, and most of my visits back have happened to be snowless. However, this time I got to experience the kind of gentle winter-wonderland snowfall I haven’t seen in a long while, even prettier with a few brightly colored leaves still clinging to the trees. I’m extremely into Michigan winter vibes—the sullen gray skies, the crunch of snow under a boot, a fattened squirrel venturing onto a tree branch. (Nostalgia is so easy when I can simply return to Florida where I don’t have to drive on ice or put snow pants on a toddler!!) It was lovely to be a winter tourist for a couple of days, and I’m fully impressed with the Michiganders who commit to spending time outside in that weather. Everyone tells me it’s all about having the right clothes and wearing layers. I’ll take their word for it.
Our Little Secret
Lindsay Lohan’s latest holiday-themed rom-com (and Netflix’s latest bite of Hallmark’s lunch) is a fucking delight tbh. It’s got just a smidge more edge than some Hallmark-esque fare: Ian Harding’s character wears a Coldplay T-shirt and has a lil emo haircut in the backstory scene, and there is some, um, partner-swapping (though not quite in the way you might think). I could call out so many highlights, but one of my favorites has to be Avery putting scare quotes around “the father” when referring to Saint Joseph. Because she’s (accidentally) high.
I’ll Have What He’s Having by Adib Khorram
Come for the spicy MM romance, stay for the mouthwatering food descriptions and depictions of the main characters’ sometimes-annoying yet always supportive family and friends. IHWHH starts out with a mistaken-identity meet-cute that develops into something much more between a sommelier determined to follow his dreams—even if they take him away from his best chance at love—and a substitute teacher turned restaurant owner who thinks he’s way more of a fuck-up than he is. We love a book where the MCs acknowledge and overcome their insecurities.
The ongoing story of the United Healthcare CEO assassination
I’ll start by saying a human being was murdered, which is unequivocally terrible, and I can’t even imagine how his family’s pain must be compounded by the lack of public sympathy for their loss. Vigilante justice is never a good solution (particularly to an evil as entrenched and well resourced as the US health insurance industry). But as a crime-adjacent writer, I’ve been riveted by the saga of the shooter who is, as of this writing on Sunday, unidentified and at large. Judging by my social media feeds, I’m not alone in my interest. People love a weird story, and every detail that’s come out of this one is more whimsical—in the sense that it makes no sense—than the last.
It’s rare that we watch a manhunt unfold in real time, and the victim’s relatively unsympathetic status gives us some amount of moral permission to be interested. There’s a lot of ground between “I approve of what the shooter did” and “You’re a bad person for even scanning headlines, what do you mean all those true crime podcasts I listen to are the same thing.” Nothing fascinates as much as someone who brazenly flouts laws and gets away with it. (Oh hey, I think I just explained Donald Trump’s appeal for his supporters.)
There are just so many angles. The crime has triggered a much needed conversation/rant fest about the abysmal state of health care in the United States, which is only likely to get worse in the next four years. Soldier of Fortune podcast bros are obsessed with the technical aspects: the gun used, how the shooter made his escape unapprehended. Among internet users who are attracted to men, there’s a level of thirst that won’t surprise anyone aware of the current popularity of novels featuring morally gray male1 love interests.
But what has occupied my mind the most is this: we have a received narrative that there’s no way someone could get away with a murder like this—the shooting of an extremely wealthy white man on the street outside of a New York hotel—in the modern world where there are cameras everywhere and no one can truly disappear. This was not a suicide attack; this person clearly made a plan to get away clean. And so far, he has.
I have a feeling that whenever we do find out who the guy is, he won’t be the Robin Hood(ie) figure we’ve been imagining. (My conspiracy-theory-brain Monopoly money is on it being a professional job with the health insurance industry itself behind it somehow—possibly because the CEO of a company known for denying one third of claims wasn’t ruthless enough for them—but that is KLAXON KLAXON PURE SPECULATION NOT BASED ON EVIDENCE.) One thing’s for sure, though: a lot of people out there have already decided on next year’s Halloween costume.
Reading/watching/listening
Velvet Was the Night by Silvia Moreno-Garcia: speaking of appealing criminals! This book came out in 2022 (I have a specific memory of seeing it on an endcap next to mine at the Schuler Books in Okemos, Michigan) but I’m finally getting around to reading it, and it’s a banger.
Arcane Season 2, which goes very well aesthetically with Wicked Part I
Chuck Tingle’s interview on the Publishing Rodeo podcast, which doesn’t disprove the “Chuck Tingle is Chris Pine and Chris Pine is Chuck Tingle” conspiracy theory
If you enjoy my ramblings, you might like my books!
The Other Me, which PopSugar called a “Black Mirror-esque rabbit hole,” is an inventive page-turner about the choices we make and the ones made for us.
When I’m Her asks the question: How far would you go to get even with the woman who ruined your life?
Almost always.
snow does seem pretty magical when you don't have to deal with it every day lol