Nothing happened, then something happened!

I know this is meant to be a monthly newsletter, and yet a whole season passed since my last one. Which, I’m happy to report wasn’t because my life descended into total chaos, but because not much new was going on. Being someone who already has an aversion to writing about myself, I really didn’t want to update about not having updates. If you’ve watched season one of Nathan Fielder’s The Rehearsal, then the Cheap Chick in the City blog posts that regularly apologizes for not having any new posts comes to mind. Even writing this update about not having updates gives me a deep level of cringe, but I’m going to lean into it. And plus, I now have some updates.

EASY DIGGING does San Antonio

After a wave of rejections from film festivals, we got the very exciting news that EASY DIGGING will be having its film festival premiere at the 31st Annual San Antonio Film Festival! I’m very proud of the film and all who worked on it, and am thrilled to share it with new audiences.

It screens July 26th at 10am at The Radius Center, and individual tickets will be available online and at the door (the screening has been posted but not the tickets yet). I’ll post more about it on Instagram in the coming weeks, so if you have friends & family in San Antonio, I’d appreciate a share!

Also, to prove my dedication to the film, Phillip (the film’s star) and I got matching shovel tattoos.

Writing Stuff

I just turned in the (hopefully) final draft of my middle-grade book for Scholastic (Spells to Mend Broken Hearts), and though we’re still a few months away from things like covers, marketing, etc. etc., it’s starting to hit me that this will be a real life book and not just a series of documents on my computer. I feel really, really lucky to have made it to this point in the process. I’m so used to automatically jumping to the next project, watching the previous book fade in the rearview mirror, as a way to protect myself. Because of that, it’s been strange to accept all the good that is going on with Spells to Mend. But I’m determined to enjoy every step in the process and not let my the scar tissue from over a decade of rejection get in the way!

Though, also feeling restless, I have been working on a graphic novel with an amazing illustrator, and we’re going to pitch that to editors in the coming months. I’m also about halfway through an adult novel. Both of those projects are a lot more personal than my middle-grade novel, and they deal with themes that have been swirling around me for years. I don’t want to share too much while things are still very much in-progress, but I’ll have more to say soon.

Some book recommendations

Speaking of my writing projects, my adult fiction novel deals pretty heavily with questions of parenthood, identity, and caretaking, so I’ve been reading a lot of memoirs by parents, novels with similar themes, etc. A real stand-out has been Second Life: Having a Child in the Digital Age by Amanda Hess. As a New York Times internet culture critic, Hess has a unique lens from which to view the surreal and often dystopian ways that parents and parents-to-be navigate pregnancy, birth, and raising children with all the technology and information we have at our disposal. I love the style of her writing and was taken with her vulnerability as she shares of her personal experience entering parenthood. Even out of the context of pregnancy and parenting, this book really captures the feeling of being on an online overthinking spiral. I highly recommend if you’re planning to ever become a parent, are a parent, or even just find yourself watching in shock, as I often do, at the strange ways the internet has leeched into those parts of life.

In the fiction realm, I’ve actually read some real bangers lately. But one stand out is Big Swiss by Jen Beagin. It’s queer, hilarious, bizarre, and a complete page turner. A therapist’s transcriber becomes obsessed with a woman she hears during sessions. It came out in 2023 and has been amassing a cult following, so I’m late to the game, but damn, it was so so fun.

More soon, unless I have nothing to say! Thanks, y’all.

easydiggingfilm.com

marissamacy.com