Lousy Smarch weather

Well, folks, this winter sure is wintering. Here in New York City, we had our first blizzard in a decade. As I write this newsletter, there’s more snow predicted for Sunday, when this email will be hitting your inbox. Spring feels like a myth, like it will always be dark and cold and wet and miserable outside and nothing will ever grow again. It’s Seasonal Affective Disorder Season, baby!

For the past few Januarys, I’ve sat down with my notebook and listed out my writing goals for the year, month by month. I try not to be rigid about this, because life happens, and I don’t always know how long something will take to do until I do it. In fact, at the beginning of July, just past the halfway point of the year, I reassess and write a new plan for the remaining six months.

This year, I planned to spend February through April fighting my way through a YA revision, the one I was complaining about so much in last month’s newsletter. I figured it was going to be a beast to get through and wanted to give myself a lot of time to wrestle with it.

I finished it on February 17th.

It definitely needs at least one more pass before it goes off to my agent (which I was aiming to do in July), but it turns out that something I had built up in my head as difficult and miserable was actually…not that bad, and pretty fun. Almost like sometimes the things you are dreading—like getting through March and the rest of Seasonal Affective Disorder Season—is usually faster and easier than you think it will be.

Was that cheesy? Forgive me. I think we could all use a little cheese right now.

What’s New?

I guested on Superhero Ethics again to talk about how superheroes would react to ICE’s actions in Minneapolis and across the country, and the politics leanings and subtext of various superheroes in general.

What I’m Reading

I can’t believe I’m going to recommend a Batman comic for the second month in a row, but if you haven’t been reading Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez’s Batman, do yourself a favor and pick it up. This week’s issue is nothing but a Silence of the Lambs-style confrontation between Batman and an incarcerated Joker, something I have literally negative interest in, and Fraction and Jiménez not only kept my interest the whole time, they actually made me laugh. Tremendous work.

What I’m Listening To

If you know me, you know I’m a pop girlie, and I loved Jade’s (formerly of Little Mix) debut album That’s Showbiz Baby! so much that I went to another borough to go to her concert by myself. On a weeknight! It was completely worth it: she’s amazing live, the album is a loud, unashamedly messy tour-de-force of pop maximalism, and you should do yourself a favor and get the deluxe version of the album with its eight bonus tracks. You’re welcome.

Stay strong, friends! Someday it will be April again. I’m like 70% positive.

<3

Jessica