The Bloggess

I wasn’t going to write anything today because I’m in a depression and that makes my head into mush, but then I looked at a comment on my last post that was utterly infuriating and I started to highlight it and scream about how terrible people can be and then I stopped and took a breath and realized that 1) anyone who would leave a comment complaining about the fact that I (*checks comment again*) have cancer is definitely hurting in a way that will not be remedied by me screaming at them and 2) that it can be really easy to lose your cool at strangers (and loved ones) right now because so many of us are furious about the world today. We are not meant to be able to handle this level of constant stress that comes from seeing people being brutalized and hurt. The fury boils over into so many places because it often has nowhere else to go.

I put my time and money into helping the world be better than we are. I call and write to politicians. I amplify others voices who are being quieted. But it can often feel like this is not enough…and that frustration can turn into fury that turns into cruelty to others…and sometimes even inward causing us to hurt ourselves.

If my depression wasn’t lingering I might have better words than this, so please forgive me for not making more sense…but I just want to say that your work DOES make a difference. Your kindness and understanding and grace and compassion breeds more of those things.

This doesn’t mean that you should just take the hurtful bullshit or allow people to hurt you. Use that hurt and anger to spur you on in positive ways. And perhaps my way of dealing with things is more quiet than yours. That’s okay. It’s takes all kinds of people and techniques to become the best versions of ourselves. But be gentle to yourself. Take care of you. Protect your heart. Take breaks. Find actions that will make positive changes in the world and to yourself.

Do not let the world turn you brittle and mean. Your kindness is not weak. Your softness is not quiet.

I hope this makes sense.

And on another (slightly-related) subject, I’ll be at the Bryan + College Station Library System this Saturday for a little read/talk/signing and it’s free to attend! Libraries are being attacked right now in so many ways so if you’re in College Station Tx come support your library and see me. And if you’re not near College Station, go to your local library and get a library card if you don’t already have one. It makes a difference. (Also, it’s free to attend, but the first 50 people to register will also get a free copy of one of my books at the session. Whoop!)

Y’ALL.

I just heard from my doctor and the stomach biopsies they did last week came back showing no additional cancer! WHOOP!

He’s so optimistic about my prognosis that instead of doing to biopsies every 4 months I don’t have to do another one until the end of the year, which means that I don’t have to worry about doing biopsies and procedures during book tour and OMG I AM MELTING WITH RELIEF.

I still have the gastric metaplasia and most likely there is still some neuroendocrine cancer wandering around in me but this confirms that it’s probably small and slow-growing and might be the kind of cancer that you just have forever but doesn’t do much of anything except make you tired, which is not great but I WILL TAKE IT IF IT STAYS LAZY.

YAY FOR LAZY CANCER!

Sorry. That was nuts but I’m just so relieved because I was having a lot of stomach pains and was worried it was bad news but turns out it was just my stomach being complicated and difficult, which I can totally live with.

I’m still going to live life knowing that life is fragile and I will still keep saying yes to things like I have been this last year, but maybe now I can say yes to things without the immediate fear that it will be the last time I say yes.

Thank you for all the thoughts and love, friends.

Going to go cry now a little, but in a good way.

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UPDATED: OMG, y’all. This whole post is supposed to be numbered as a list but the numbers didn’t work properly so I made sure to note that in the numbered sections but then when I published it I actually don’t see any of the numbers at all and it just looks like regular paragraphs and now even the jokes I was making about my computer fucking things up don’t make sense because my computer fucked this up. Why do I see the numbers in the draft and not on the published post? Jesus. I give up.

Just a couple of lovely little things:

1. I gave away my personal arc of HOW TO BE OKAY WHEN NOTHING IS OKAY to a librarian here because librarians are my favorite kinds of magicians and they are going through hell right now. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL LIBRARY. DROWN OUT THE BOOK BANNERS. STOP BEING AFRAID OF MARGINALIZED VOICES, YOU ABSOLUTE DOORKNOBS. (Sorry…got a little mad there.) But if you want an early copy of my next book my publisher just let me know that they’re giving away 20 over on Goodreads. Yay!
2. HOW TO BE OKAY made Oprah’s list of 10 Books to Help You Make Changes That Stick in 2026. This is especially lovely considering so many of the books in this category are serious books written by doctors and licensed professionals and my book has a picture of a crocheted bears head blowing off and I can’t figure out how to number things correctly. (See number 3.)

1. This should be number 3 but my computer insists it’s number 1. *sigh* Aaaaaanyway, HOW TO BE OKAY WHEN NOTHING IS OKAY is starting to show up on lists that readers make of upcoming books they’re excited about or have read advanced copies of and I know there are a lot of opinions on whether authors should comment on that stuff, but generally if I see something nice I’ll “like” it because it really makes my day (for real, it helps authors so much) and if I see something that’s not as nice I just ignore it because I’m not for everyone and everyone should be able to share their thoughts without fear. Author etiquette is weird.
2. If you ordered a personalized book from Nowhere Bookshop I just signed it and it’s on its way to you now! As always, if you wrote “go nuts” in the order comments I just entertained myself and here are a few examples to let you know exactly what unhinged madness you’re getting should you choose that route:

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1. Why are we at “1” again??? Jesus. This isn’t even a number it’s just a note to say that I apologize if you can’t read my handwriting because I do that half-print and half-cursive thing that serial killers do and I don’t know how to stop it. It’s actually even weirder in real life because I don’t write my letters in order because my brain jumps ahead and so I write the end of a word and then go backward and add the other letters and no one understands what I’m doing, including me.
2. Sorry, y’all. It’s Sunday and I didn’t take my ADD meds.
3. Bye.

Look, this isn’t a real post. It’s just me sharing a story that might help you if you’ve been in my same predicament.

When I was little my great grandmother (on my mom’s side) used to make the most incredible peach cobbler but she absolutely refused to share the recipe with anyone because the women in my family all fought over who got to make the food to family gatherings and she didn’t want anyone else to be able to bring it. (One time there was a family feud that broke out over three kinds of stuffing being brought to Thanksgiving and the stuffing you chose to put on your plate was like picking your biker gang. I took a small scoop of all three and my aunt was like, “You tiny coward.” Which was totally fair.)

Great Mamaw wouldn’t write down the recipe or let anyone in the kitchen when she baked it but when she was in her 90s she finally started to share some of her recipes with her daughter (my granny) but by that time the dementia was heavy and she couldn’t remember how to make it anymore. One time we went to her house so granny could watch her make it and we were like, “Why is the cobbler green? Is it supposed to fizz like that?” And granny whispered “NO ONE EAT THE COBBLER” because turns out mamaw insisted in baking lime jello into it and we all had to take a big spoonful and throw it out the back door when she wasn’t looking. My point here is that when she died, the beloved family peach cobbler of my childhood died with her, and for the last 40 years my sister and I have eaten every peach cobbler we could find in the hopes of finding hers. Every time I try one my kiddo (Hailey) and my husband are like “Is that it?” and it never is.

BUT! Last week I got a text from my sister that she thought she may have solved the great cobbler mystery! Turns out, our great aunt Albina (on my father’s side) had shared her recipe for peach cobbler in her old church cookbook before she died and Lisa thought that maybe since both women grew up in the same era and town perhaps they’d both gotten the recipe from the same place, so she went to work trying it out and experimenting and finally sent me the recipe with her notes.

Baking is a science I never mastered but Hailey loves it so they (and their sweetheart, Laurel) got busy on New Years Eve making us the famous peach cobbler from scratch.

Honestly, watching them make it was worth it alone because they crack me up.

And after an hour of “How do you dry peaches?” “Can I use forks instead of a pastry blender?” How do you ‘cut in’ shortening?” “How do you ‘braid’ dough? “WHY DON’T YOU HAVE TOOTHPICKS? FUCK IT, I’LL USE CHOPSTICKS” Hailey pulled it out of the oven and everyone stared at me in a suspenseful silence and I was like, “It smells exactly right but I remember hers having a sugary top?” and Hailey yelled, “OH NO. I FORGOT TO BRUSH IT WITH SUGAR AND BUTTER” and I was like, “It’s fine, I’ll just melt some butter and sugar and we’ll put it back in the oven” but I accidentally used salted margarine and the microwave didn’t melt it properly and everyone kind of stared in horror as I dumped globs of goo on the top while making a mess, but honestly it totally worked and felt like a nod to Great Mama’s forgetfulness. And when it came out of the oven the second time it was perfect and when I bit into it I literally cried. Like, have you ever been craving something for 40 years and finally get it again and it’s just as good as you imagined and it kind of heals you a little? Because, yeah.

So this whole thing is just to say that if you have a secret family recipe…let this be your sign to share it now. Don’t gatekeep that shit, friend.

And speaking of sharing…here is the recipe for our peach cobbler:

We used canned peaches and it was fine, but if you really want to do it like my great mamaw you need to can the peaches yourself from your peach trees and store them in your storm cellar for so many years that they get extra sweet and a little mushy in a way that might indicate that you’re going to die from botulism. Why did those peaches always taste better?

Special thanks to my great mamaw (below in b&w with her husband) and to my great aunt Albina (below, surrounded by two of her sisters, including my grandmother. They were always giggling together and I don’t know about what because they seldom did it in English but this picture always makes me smile) and to the 1999 Wall Brethren Church Christian Sisters Cookbook.

Happy cobblering.

Recently at Nowhere Bookshop we realized that we’re more than 5 years in and whenever someone asks us for professional photographs we just shrug and send them what we took on our phones that day because we aren’t great at marketing. But this year we decided to be grown-ups and hire an amazing local photography team and we bribed some of our regulars (WE HAVE REGULARS. STAY CALM EVERYONE. ACT COOL) with free drinks to come in after hours and the photographs were so lovely! I can’t find any of them right now because I am too disorganized but I do have this one they took of me trying to install Beartram’s head while Elizabeth tries to dissuade me and honestly, it’s maybe not incredibly professional but it’s incredibly accurate.

In related news, this was a good year for the bookstore and cafe in spite of the world being on fire (THANK YOU!) and because of your support we’ve been able to offer medical benefits and 401Ks to our team, which is a really big deal for an indie bookshop. WHOOP! This could only happen because of the support of you and the community and our amazing team and I’m so lucky to be part of this.

This year we’re relaunching the Fantastic Strangelings Books Club for its 6th year. All our book clubs are special but Fantastic Strangelings was our first and it has kept us out of the red every year, so as a thank you we’re going to start sending out several little gift surprises to you through the year, including custom club bookmarks with special code words that will get Fantastic Strangelings 20% off anything online or in store. It’s less than $30 a month and you get a new hardback book each month that I pick out myself. (We ship everywhere.) I tend to pick strange but lovely books from debut authors or marginalized writers, heavy on strong female characters, magical realism, weirdness, queer-friendly, progressive, hopeful…books that might not get the attention they deserve. If you want to join just click over here for details. And if you were a former member who paused their subscription you can rejoin for free. 🙂 Also, it makes a great gift so feel free to send this to your significant other with the title “hint-hint” if they complain you are too hard to shop for.

Speaking of books…if you’re a Fantastic Strangeling this month we’re sending you Cape Fever from award-winning South African author Nadia Davids. It’s a gothic psychological thriller set in the 1920s, where a young Muslim maid finds herself entangled with the spirits of a decaying manor and the secrets of its enigmatic owner. Haunting.

And if you’re a member of our horror club (Nightmares from Nowhere) we’re sending you Dark Sisters by Kristi DeMeester, a historical horror novel that connects three women across three centuries through a shared legacy of female rage and power against patriarchal oppression. YES PLEASE.

(We also have a romance club and a picture book club if my tastes are too dark for you. No judgement.)

And (sorry this is so long!) we also just launched our newly-redesigned website so pretty-please go check it out because we’re quite proud of it. OH, and I just realized that some of our new photos are on the new website! So it totally worked out that I couldn’t find them before.

Seeing a very curious lack of bear head pictures over there though.