Greetings, I’m writing this from Los Angeles, where the penultimate Escape the Internet event will happen. It’s also our only West Coast stop. I originally imagined I’d blog throughout the tour, but I’m a slow writer and haven’t had the time. Also Shabby Doll House’s official Substack has been doing a better job of that than I ever could. I recommend you check out their posts about Philadelphia, Baltimore, New York, Easthampton/Syracuse/Rochester, and Buffalo/Toronto that include excellent photos and highlights. I’m here to first talk about something else, Shabby Doll House’s latest offering, August Editing Club.
August Editing Club
One of the reasons I chose to publish Log Off with Shabby Doll House was to work with Lucy K Shaw, the press’ editor. She was someone whose work I already respected, she really understood my book, and I knew would bring ideas and dedication to its release that went beyond editorial. And I was right. It’s been such a great experience, in fact, it’s an experience that I wish more people could have, but by nature Lucy can only publish so many books, so that’s why I’m glad she’s taking her guidance to a group setting where more people can benefit:
August Editing Club is for people who have a book of any kind in development and are seeking direction around it in some way, whether that is its shape and structure, where to go next, or simply encouragement or accountability. When Lucy shared the outline for this class with me, I was like hell yeah, this is perfect, the type of class only she could lead.
Different weeks revolve around activities like making a map of your manuscript, discussing publishing goals, receiving personalized reading recommendations, sharing roadblocks you may be facing and hearing others’ perspectives, and making a game plan for finishing. There will be some of the traditional workshop-style sharing of excerpts and giving feedback, but it’s these other added elements that really make the class unique and will generate feelings of fun and excitement around your project. And that’s the feelings you need to continue. Not to mention you’ll potentially walk away from the class with a group of people you can keep talking about each other’s projects with. Having some type of community is crucial for every step of releasing a book, whether that be manuscript feedback to booking a tour. And if anyone is good at building community it is Lucy. Great price too, go sign up!
Log Off
Log Off has been out for over three weeks now, which means that people have actually started reading the book. It’s been so exciting to hear people’s reactions via IRL conversations, texts, Instagram, Goodreads, and Amazon.
Here’s a review from Goodreads:
(I also think Brian is underrated, lol)
I have no idea who this reviewer is, but I’m really glad a retired, self-described “digital immigrant” to the online world liked the book. Thank you LS!
, author of You Are The Snake, wrote about the book on her Substack and it made me tear up. Here’s an excerpt:It did something really cool, which is slowly build and build into this thing that is so tender and sad and oh god, we are all just lonely, and adolescence is just so lonely, and communicating is so impossible, and loving other people is so rewarding but so hard, and life is so rewarding and so hard, and her book has so much heart in it.
I’ve read and loved all of Juliet’s books, so it meant a lot that she loved mine, and she described what it’s about more perfectly than I ever could.
She also has a great interview up at Write or Die. Really liked the part where she talks about how even though everyone says the publishing industry is in bad shape, maybe it wouldn’t feel that way if we, as a culture, stopped putting so much value on the weeks around a book’s release date and instead focused on the long game—the long game being that many people still love to read, writing careers take time to develop, and great books can have a long life. I feel the same way. Might be something I write more about later.
Finally,
interviewed me for The Creative Independent. This was special for me because I’ve interviewed writers and artists for The Creative Independent for years and its one of my favorite sites. Thanks to Hurley for asking such great questions that allowed me to speak passionately about Log Off, writing about harder topics without moralizing or having an agenda, and supporting other writers.Escape The Internet Tour
Returning to the tour a bit, as Emily mentioned on Goodreads, Log Off takes place in a fictional suburb of Rochester, so I gotta shoutout some Rochester tour moments, both from the event and beyond.
This particular event was also on my birthday and my friend Joy brought this cake. If you’ve read the book already, you’ll understand.
Ever since my tourmate Oscar d’Artois read Log Off and wrote about the character Christopher, I’ve had this idea that at some point during the tour we’d do a ‘play-style’ reading of a dialogue-heavy scene and he would play the character. This happened at the Rochester event and all the evening’s readers and host were involved. Oscar, Lucy (with an American accent!), Kristina Ten (who read her early computer game story “The Dizzy Room”), Liz Bowen (who read new poems and also hosted our amazing Syracuse event), and I played various characters from the infamous “Have you come out to your parents? (or not)” scene.
I also gotta recognize Oscar’s second brilliant performance during his time in Rochester, and that was the recording of his audiobook in a single evening. We had a few days downtime and planned to record this over two evenings, but a heatwave caused a blackout in the neighborhood, so we ended up with only one night of electricity to record and he crushed it. Can’t wait for y’all to hear this. And shoutout to the audio producer of this upcoming The Island audiobook, my favorite fella Beef Gordon.
And don’t worry, it wasn’t all book stuff, all the time. Lucy, Oscar, Beef, and I also took this really excellent BeReal at 7/11.
Okay, that’s it, if any of you live in Los Angeles, please come to Heavy Manners Library tonight at 7pm. Or, if you live in Provincetown, Massachusetts, which tbh seems less likely, catch us at our final stop at East End Books on Sunday July 7th. Yeah, that’s right, we’re closing things out on the most eastern tip of Cape Cod and then running into the sea or something. Dramatic, but would you expect anything less?
<3 Kristen