I am someone who is very motivated by new beginnings. I could pretend that it's for some inspirational reason (something, something personal growth), but, hey, listen, I can be honest with you all: I thrive on a clean slate.

As someone whose anxiety often manifests as task anxiety, as a chronic procrastinator, as someone who is probably (definitely) in to-do-list debt at any given moment, a new project is like a breath of fresh air.

Perhaps that is an overly poetic opening to overly explain why I'm starting a little weekly update segment... in the middle of the week in the middle of December.

Sometimes, I just have an idea (even if it isn't a very original one), and I just want to do it... now.

Anyway, hi, hello, friends. I have a few updates, and I like starting things, so welcome to Tidings.

ARC Copies of The Unmapping are now available.

I am unwell. _I mean, I am so excited that people are starting to read this story that captured my imagination 8 months ago, but it is a little nerve-wracking. More than anything, I want people to _get this book and to _get _why I picked it. I want readers to find something in the pages that makes them think. And sure, fine, I want you to like it, but that's the quiet wish I'm trying to be cool about.

If you want to shoot your shot, you can request an e-ARC via Netgalley or request a physical ARC via this form. I've previewed the limited availability ARC box and it is AMAZING. The Bindery team is handling approvals, but I encourage you all to shoot your shot, especially on Netgalle! Anything that displays interest in the title is such a help.

She works hard for no money.

I'm visiting my friend Nicole in Kansas City, just being unemployed on her couch instead of my own. (The job search is not going great, and I don't want to talk about it.) When planning this trip, I told myself that on weekdays, while Nicole was working, I would just be trying to read 30 books this month while also trying to post a video every day for vlogmas.

Yesterday, while I was whining about all the work I had to do and how it feels like I've been editing non-stop, Nicole looked at me and was like, "For the homework you gave yourself?"

So true, bestie. So true.

I've managed 9 out of 12 videos this month (including two liveshows), and I've read six books so far. Not an unmitigated success, but not too shabby, either.

My most recent video is one I've been talking about making for a few months, but I was inspired to finally commit to making it (unsurprisingly) because of Sarah J. Maas discourse on TikTok. Somehow, Drew Afualo announcing that she was taking a TikTok break for her mental health emboldened white women to "defend her" because she dressed up as Nesta for Halloween. If you are having a hard time connecting any of the words in that sentence, yeah. Exactly.

It felt like a good time to talk about recently(ish) rereading Throne of Glass in a (new!)(shocking, I know!) project deep-diving into the works of Sarah J. Maas. Wish my comments luck.

How humans survive.

Nicole and I often joke that we are always in the middle of a conversation that started in 2010 and has never ended. It's difficult, then, to pinpoint when we first started talking about _surviving, _though it feels like this particular iteration can be traced to quarantine, as the ways humans are capable of adapting to the worst situations is both comforting and terrifying. That is a conversation we kept having when Nicole's father unexpectedly passed, and again, when Trump won reelection.

We are perpetually in the midst of the constant horror and consolation of adaption.

Maybe it's like that thing where you suddenly start seeing the same kind of car everywhere you go, but so many of the books I've picked up recently have dealt with surviving.

Yume Kitasei's The Deep Sky: Survivors of a spaceship disaster must deal with their physical and emotional isolation in space, pushing them to question what survival means when hope seems lost and betrayal can come from the closest people around you.

Jaqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men: The protagonist’s desperate attempt to navigate a world of confinement and strange power dynamics illuminates a bleak yet profound exploration of survival—what it costs to remain human in such extreme conditions.

Tiya Miles’s All That She Carried: Survival through generations, where the emotional, physical, and cultural legacies of slavery manifest in the memories of objects passed down from mother to daughter, to daughter, to daughter.

The Unmapping is also about survival, and immediately so. It's a look at what happens when the world very literally shifts around you, and with a kind of clear-eyed and brutal honesty, it paints a picture of humans in chaos.

It's all churning in my head, in big and small ways, as I think about the spaces I want to create and support and the communities I want to build and nurture. These books have been part of that churn, each one offering a different lens on survival.

And survive we must.

So, I'll continue working on the homework I gave myself, searching for gainful employment, spending precious time with the best of friends, and helping put out works into the world that resonate with people.

Also coming soon: Orange Wine cover reveal, more collaboration videos with Nicole, and a bonus Throne of Glass video for Bindery subscribers.

💙

Marines