It’s hard to promote your book when the basic dimensions of your personal liberty are under attack. I don’t want to talk about the Supreme Court’s shady leaked opinion about Roe v. Wade, except to say the constitutional originalism is a ludicrous concept on which to base an argument about contemporary issues, but hey, every argument is ludicrous when your core position is that certain people should not be considered people, with the freedom to choose their own lives and destinies.

With that, I leave you with the National Abortion Federation, which is one of many worthy organizations supporting women and doctors who are actually dealing with the reality of prenatal healthcare and abortion care for women.

Anyway.

It was my birthday last Friday. I got home on Thursday from my final book tour stop in Seattle—LA, Portland, and Seattle were all wonderful and I’m incredibly grateful to the bookstores & venues who hosted me, and to everyone who came to the events. I have one more virtual event for END OF THE WORLD HOUSE on May 12, in conversation with Kristen Arnett for the Harvard Bookstore. Come on by! It will be fun. The weird thing is, at devastating times, there is still joy to be had, and we don’t have to let the world bleed it out of us.

Dave cooked steaks for us, and baked me a phenomenal cake, which was basically one giant strawberry shortcake, with sweet cornmeal cake and a huge amount of whipped cream. We ate the whole thing in three days. I am proud that we did not die of this.

I got a couple more wonderful reviews—this one by Claire Polders for The Sunlight Press, and this one by Megan Otto for the Chicago Review of Books. Both of these writers really took the time to look at what the book is up to, and I appreciate their thoughts and their words so very, very much.

If you haven’t picked up a copy, there are a lot of bookstores you can go to, to get it! I just saw that the book is a May Staff Pick at Parnassus Books, which warms my heart very much. (If you need…one million more bookstore recommendations, let me know! Here’s one: Thank You Books in Birmingham, AL.)

And, if you have read & loved the book, I would DEEPLY appreciate it if you left a review on…any website on the internet that accepts such reviews! Places that sell the book, places that just collect reviews. It really helps more people find the book & see that readers are connecting with it.

Ok. So it’s May now. The garden is winding down, though I still have lots of beets and carrots to harvest, poppies still blooming, larkspur going mad. The streets of Tucson are awash in mesquite pollen, and all of us are dozy and drunk on the scent and (more so) the allergies that come along with this.

We will fight for the world, and the future.