Scary “best books of the year” lists are here. Dare to look away.

It’s been an eventful time lately.

In early summer I signed on with the wonderful Sarah Yake from the Frances Collin Agency. Just like that, my novel, which looked like this in early 2016, is now “making the rounds,” as they say, going out to great editors far and wide. It feels crazily amazing. So, good luck, novels, mine and all the others out there.

In August, I got to read for the first time in New York City, at Brooklyn’s Unnameable Books, to be exact, where I bought a copy of a Janet Frame novel for $7. The occasion was the launch of Vestiges_02 from Black Sun Lit. We heard from a fantastic group of writers and poets, and there was even a surprise appearance by Russell Bennetts, who just happened to be in town and was kind enough to stop by and celebrate. (In case anyone’s curious, I read this short piece from Minor Literature[s].)

I found out that I’ll have two short-short stories in The Brooklyn Rail. They’ll be published sometime in the next few months or so. One’s about love, the other’s about escaping death.

For The Kenyon Review Online, I wrote a review of Caren Beilin’s experimental novel, “The University of Pennsylvania,” from Noemi Press, 2014.

That’s it for now. Now on we go into fall reading and submission season, complete with those “best books of 2016” lists, which are popping up all over. I sort of love to hate them. I’ve said I won’t read them because they’re cruel to writers, just reductive clickbait designed to maximize holiday book-buying, but I do end up looking at a few. It’s hard not to feed the monster a little.