It is week thirty-three of 2026. How’s the writing going these days? Here in the US, it’s the scattered, messy part of summer where some folks (like me!) are bracing for the return of fall schedules while others are still hanging out at the beach—or just trying to survive the heat. Most of us won’t be settled into a regular schedule until mid-September, so what do you need to do to nourish your creativity in the meantime? I’ve got a new book review for you below that might provide some answers.
Here at the garret, I’ve kept a light editing schedule since my return from Australia, but I’ve been working on the last rounds of a complex second-chance romance that is the latest installment in a series that is starting to get some traction with readers. That’s exciting for an author, of course, but also comes with some extra pressure! Each new achievement unlocked brings pride and excitement, but also new challenges. No one in this business (that I’ve met, anyway) is free of doubts and fears—they just change as the shape and scope of your author career changes. When you face a new problem, remember how you conquered the last and then knock it down.
I’ve also been busy with my own writing. You can see one result in the new design of the newsletter you are reading right now. You’ll start to see some new sections pop up (thanks to everyone who responded to my poll, which is still open if you want to weigh in), like the writing craft book review today.
But the big exciting news is that I finally get to unveil the gorgeous new cover of Novel Study Book 2, Bestsellers: Excavating the Tools and Techniques of Successful Novels and announce the Kickstarter campaign, which will launch on September 22! Would you help give the project a boost by clicking the button to be notified on launch and consider sharing it with another writer or editor you think might be interested?
I’m so proud of the book and I’m also mired in unpleasant tasks like figuring out how to ship books from the UK without tariffs, struggling to take photos of the beautiful hardback that truly show it off, and fine-tuning little details of the charts and graphs. Somehow I have endless patience for cleaning up words on pages, but very limited patience for tasks like these. Every once in a while I need to pick up the proof copy and flip through the pages just to reassure myself that all those words I wrote and revised and polished are still right where they should be. All of the most important work is already done.
◉ Book Review
Sit. Write. Here.: 6 Mindfulness Practices to Help You Write More and Suffer Less by April Dávila
Writing is hard. It requires some mixture of concentration, skill, knowledge, inspiration, time, and taste—all of which may be in short supply during any given writing session. When the mixture is just right, you feel like you are plugged into a creativity socket, getting back even more energy than you are expending. When the mixture is off, you feel like you are slogging through a cold, muddy field while carrying a giant pack of rocks on your back.
April Dávila’s Sit. Write. Here.: 6 Mindfulness Practices to Help You Write More and Suffer Less is the newest in a long line of books that promise to show writers how to achieve blissful flow and avoid the bogs of despair. This is a popular subgenre of writing craft books—probably because the pain is so real and the solutions so elusive—and I’ve reviewed many of them, like Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, and Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. What sets Dávila’s book apart is her narrow focus on mindfulness and her well-crafted collection of exercises intended to help you put her teachings into practice.
◉ Book Birthdays
The Ultimate Traitor by Kathryn Gauci
Three women—a seamstress fleeing the Gestapo, a Jewish woman in hiding, and an English agent—converge in occupied Paris on the trail of Dr. Marcel Petiot, one of France’s worst serial killers.
A few favorite things about the book
⭐️ It’s based on a true – and very dramatic – story about WW2 that I was surprised to have never heard
⭐️ Female spies! With hidden transmitters and daggers in their handbags! Being parachuted into France!
⭐️ The Paris setting, always alluring – even in wartime there are plenty of jewels and clothes and glamour
Congrats, Kathryn! Learn more and buy the book here.
◉ Upcoming Appearances
Sonoma County Writers Conference, October 17, Santa Rosa, CA: What’s In a Scene? A Sentence-by-Sentence Look at How Bestselling Authors Build Scenes. Registration is now open!
Author Nation, November 10–13, Las Vegas, NV: Stop Dumping, Start Layering: Adding Backstory and Setting Without Killing Momentum
I love speaking to writers and editors—check out my Speaking page and get in touch if you are interested in having me speak to your group.
◉ Thing of Joy
Our Thing of Joy this week is a deep dive into the Circe scenes in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey | YouTube video. Samantha Morton’s performance has stuck with me more than anything else from the film, and I loved these details about the practical effects, her goals for her performance, and Nolan’s storytelling choices.
And, yes, I enjoyed translator Emily Wilson’s clever critiques of Nolan’s version, which show off her own writing chops, and I also think that inevitably films tell different stories than their source material. That is fine—good, even. Books are, in some ways, always a richer text and can carry more meanings, but film and TV have their own beguiling powers.
The other standout performance for me (aside from Matt Damon’s abs) was Elliot Page’s as Sinon. I didn’t realize until I read an article by Flint Del Sol that Sinon isn’t in Homer’s Odyssey at all, and that including him may have been a powerful commentary on Nolan’s part about trans people | Substack article. This is a perfect example of what an adaptation can do—it expands and retells the story for a new audience, for us here today, watching in IMAX theaters or on our couches rather than listening around a fire.
Stay well, y’all, and keep fighting the good fights.
Kristen