Too Much Is Going On

Like I knew 2025 would be a cursed year but omg

Jun 26, 2025

I am exhausted!

Dear Readers,

This year has just been TOO MUCH? I don’t even know what to say. I still remember where I was during the GWB administration, sitting at my computer in my parents’ basement and reading about bombs dropping and feeling helpless and terrified. For a long time I believed nothing could be worse than the GWB administration! Not that I want to rewrite history that it wasn’t that bad or give that man any credit because now he paints animals and stuff, but, man, still. Look, I know you probably didn’t sign up for this newsletter to hear my thoughts about past presidents* but it’s very hard not thinking about the past that led us here right now.

Publishing keeps chugging along, which I am grateful for. I’ve been working on my first pass pages for Out in Hollywood #4. If you are not familiar with this stage of the publishing process, this means reviewing the formatted-for-print pages to check for typos and formatting errors. This is also the last chance to make any edits, though your team will tell you NOT TO GO WILD because THE BOOK IS ALREADY FORMATTED so only tiny things can be changed.

Over the years my method has become reading the manuscript aloud. This takes a very long time and is sometimes very strange (reading a sex scene you wrote aloud is quite a test of one’s… mettle?) but it does really help me focus and hear the words in a way that reading to myself does not. ADHD still makes it a struggle. I absolutely thought a short passage had been left out because I had no memory of reading it, and I paged back to find that it was there. So I somehow read it aloud without paying attention? This, I assume, sounds regular to other ADHD folks but, still, zoinks. I feel like I’m always having to corral my own thoughts. This is something that stretches back to childhood, however, there’s no way that phones/screens/social media haven’t made this so much worse.

Anyway, this process always panics me (even when my brain behaves) because I don’t want to mess anything up. I want the best version of the book to go to print!** I also have to accept that this is a caveat under the principle that the book is close to the version it’s gonna be and there’s not much to do about it now. And probably getting hung up over a few words (out of the nearly 100k sorry) won’t make or break anything but also it feels so do or die. Copy edits never feel that way to me, as I know they do to some other authors. These pass pages, though, they’ve got me in a psychological grip.

(These days, it’s one of the nicest psychological grips to be in, I think.)

xoxoAmy

Consumption

Reading

I can’t say enough good things about Marisa Crane’s A Sharp Endless Need which is about high school basketball but also being young and queer and losing your dad and and and. I wanted to underline about a million sentences in this novel.

Also Reading

I still think about Marie-Helene Bertino’s Beautyland like… every week? At least? A stunning beauty of a novel. Anyway, Bertino’s short story collection Exit Zone is wonderful.

Cooking

My mom had Covid last week (she’s fine and testing negative now) and I wanted to make her something with a lot of leftovers that would also be hearty and delicious. My friend Allegra had recently recommended Ina Garten’s Chicken Stew with Biscuits, and I loved it! FYI — I made it super easy by using rotisserie chicken and Trader Joe’s canned biscuits, and would do so again!!

Watching

I absolutely loved Pee-Wee as Himself and I’ve been urging everyone who cares about art, celebrity, pop culture, closeted celebrities, the stories we tell about ourselves — basically like 80 percent of my interests — to watch it too. I love art school kids.

Links Roundup

Things I’ve read lately!

Are Young People Having Enough Sex? — I am glad I grew up when I did. I think I would be bad at being Gen Z or Alpha. That said, how do you know if that isn’t when you grew up and the influences that you had? I DON’T KNOW!!
How Can Anyone Keep up in the Hamptons? — One of the things that scares me is RICH EAST COAST PEOPLE so naturally I suck down this content through my figurative hands over my eyes.