Issue 94: Newsletter recs, part 3

Nicole Zhu -

I’m officially a month out from my wedding, so things have been getting hectic!! Welcome to some new subscribers and thank you Ethan Marcotte, a wonderful human, designer, and writer, for including this newsletter in your own roundup. It reminded me it’s been awhile since I’ve shared some newsletter recommendations (see part 1 and part 2), so here are a few more that I always read when they land in my inbox:

1. Counter Craft by Lincoln Michel

Author Lincoln Michel publishes weekly essays and analyses about “counterintuitive craft concepts,” the publishing industry past and present, author interviews, and more. Here’s Michel on the “show don’t tell” rule and why your narrator should be a weird little freak. As someone who has interests in both genre and literary fiction, I appreciate how much he writes about their overlap. His responses to publishing discourse, like whether Americans buy books (spoiler: yes) and the character vs. plot-driven binary, are always thoughtful and well-researched. Amidst a lot of Substacks that reference each other, I can always rely on Counter Craft to be the synthesis of them all.

2. Episodes by Emily St. James

I’ve followed Emily St. James since her AV Club days, and her essays and media/pop culture criticism continue to be top tier. Some of these movie reviews* are paywalled but I highly recommend them: Weapons*, Materialists*, Furiosa, and The Substance*. Over the last few years, she’s moved into other creative endeavors, like television writing for Yellowjackets and publishing her debut novel, Woodworking. I love her recent essays on artistic choices and writing effective dialogue.

3. Literary Convictions by Nina Michiko Tam

I’m a recent subscriber, having stumbled upon this through the rabbit hole of Substack, but I’ve enjoyed reading about Tam’s publishing journey and her “search for balance when writing and working” (an eternal question I’m interested in!) The nitty gritty posts about comp titles and cold querying agents are really helpful, and her post on writing 300 words a day inspired me to start a similar writing log to capture not only word counts, but what I worked on each session.

🍂👰‍♀️ I’ll be back in your inboxes in the fall. In the meantime, check out our recently launched game, Pips! It’s a new logic-based puzzle where you place dominoes on a game board to satisfy different conditions. As our internal motto goes: pip pip hooray!

via @sexyandiknowknit

Creative resources

Recent reads & other media

Wedding planning has kicked into high gear, so I haven’t been reading as much. Cold-Hearted Rake by Lisa Kleypas is getting me out of my reading slump. I finished Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang, and I liked reading about how she explored the cost of intimacy and performance.

I went to The Morgan’s exhibit, A Lively Mind: Jane Austen at 250, and loved seeing some early editions of her novels and letters between her and her sister. Inspired, I started rereading Pride and Prejudice afterwards.

I’ve been on a big Lindsay Lohan kick with Freaky Friday, Freakier Friday (one of the better legacy sequels I’ve seen and the right balance of nostalgia), and The Parent Trap. The Naked Gun was delightfully zany, and Weapons was one of the most fun—and terrifying—moviegoing experiences I’ve ever had. The Fantastic Four: First Steps had great production design, but otherwise was bland to the point that my Oura ring thought I had taken a nap while watching it.

Recently read short stories: Nothing this month :(

Note: Book links are connected to my Bookshop affiliate page. If you purchase a book from there, you'll be supporting my work and local independent bookstores!

~ meme myself and i ~

Airpods when you drop them. Trying to be nonchalant about dumplings. “Please don’t stress yourself out.” When the temperature goes over 83 degrees. I live in America and I live in anguish! Eating stuff that hurts your tummy.

via @Lovandfear