The Saint of Bright Doors comes out July 11, and if you haven’t pre-ordered it yet, today’s the last day of a 25% off Barnes and Noble pre-order sale (use the code PREORDER25).

I’ve mentioned this already on Patreon and social media, but for those of you who mostly just follow the blog, I’m in New York City, and will be here for a few months to see my debut novel into the world. I’ve taken to documenting my modest NYC adventures on Instagram, so follow me there if you’d like more frequent updates.

Recent readings: I wrote briefly about books I read in Jan and Feb 2023. In March and April I’ve mostly been re/reading Moorcock’s Elric novels as light relief from travel stress (they are so good and also so bad lol) but I also read and greatly enjoyed Aimee Pokwatka’s Self-Portrait With Nothing; The Justice of Kings and The Tyranny of Faith by Richard Swan, nice solid epic fantasy, I’ve missed it; the magnificent Ice by Anna Kavan, my first time reading this absolute masterwork and I see what all the fuss was about; Steve Erickson’s The Sea Came In At Midnight, which was not only wonderful but also utterly baffling because I have no idea how I had not heard about Steve Erickson before, though it is entirely possible that I have been mentally filing all mentions of him under Steven Erikson; and The Chain of Chance by Stanislaw Lem, which is enjoyably, if a little eye-rollily, nerdy but I was distracted by the title, which I kept hearing in M.I.A.’s voice from “Bad Girls,” as the chain hits my chance when I’m banging on the dash—lyrics sites always have this as “dashboard,” which I suppose is more of a rhyme with “radio” in the next line, but I never hear the “-board” part—and most recently, I read Sometime, Never, a fascinating 1956 anthology with three novellas from William Golding, John Wyndham, and Mervyn Peake, and the last one is wonderful. I wrote briefly about this book here and here.

I have, of course, been exploring bookstores. One always finds bookstores and libraries soothing in a strange place: wherever you go in the world, a shelf of books is a sign of home. I’ve visited Westsider and the Book Cellar, plus the Barnes & Noble at 82nd & Broadway; later today, and hopefully tomorrow as well, I’m planning to visit some Brooklyn bookstores for this year’s #bkbookstorecrawl.