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three small bites: 🎧🍫🧢

Hi! Hope you’re having a nice week so far. Lately, I’ve been feeling like a duck. 🦆 I may look calm on the surface (or maybe I don’t—who’s to say!), but my feet are paddling very fast under the water. There’s a lot going on so I’m trying to stay afloat. One thing I’ve been working on are edits, which has actually been a comforting place to retreat to at the end of the day when I want to get out of my own head or take a break from the other Stuff. I can’t wait to share more soon about what these edits are for. ☺️

Something that has really helped: walks. It’s not a huge revelation, but walking (and exercise) is the first thing that goes when my life gets busy, so the fact that I’m getting back outside maybe means that I’m starting to rebalance, just a little. Reading has also been grounding me. I’ve been toggling back and forth between reads that are for research purposes and reads that are just for fun. Got any good recs?

In return, I’ve got some recs for you. But first, a couple of things to share:

Authorstackers beach reads 2025: Check out this curated catalog of books written by Substackers (or, authorstackers)! There are so many great books in here I can’t wait to check out. I was excited to be included and shout out Yin Yang Love Song. 💚

Upcoming event in St. Louis: So excited for this event with Nisha J. Tuli, Gabriella Gamez, and Ana Holguin on May 22 at 7:00 PM. This event is ticketed (which includes a paperback copy of one of our books).