A few things:

• #BlackLivesMatter protests are still happening and still necessary. Let us not be distracted.
• Arizona now has, per capita, more COVID cases than New York, so can we please all wear our masks and practice social distancing? Thank you. Yes, I know it’s hot. Thank you.
• I sold my third novel to Simon & Schuster!!!!!!!!!!! Here is the deal memo about it that was posted to Publisher’s Marketplace:
  • “PEN Award-winning author of INVITATION TO A BONFIRE, Adrienne Celt’s END OF THE WORLD HOUSE, pitched as Russian Doll meets SEVERANCE, about two best friends who take a “last hurrah” vacation to Paris amidst a series of global catastrophes, only to find themselves on a private tour of the Louvre, where nothing is as it seems and they’re forced to relive a day that keeps repeating itself, to Carina Guiterman at Simon & Schuster by Emma Patterson at Brandt & Hochman (World).”
• I had a dream last night that my friend Renée and I were at Pike Place Market in Seattle with Celine Dion, and I accidentally knocked over Celine Dion’s giant novelty martini glass. She was very gracious about it.

Obviously I am very excited about my book. Given the tumult of the world lately, it has been an especially bracing experience to have a book on submission—a process which, at the best of times, makes my body vibrate at a high enough frequency to shatter glass.

I have been through a period, thus, of magical thinking, everything around me alive with meaning, but all of that meaning obscure, and obscured. My mind has been awash in referential mania. I didn’t want to talk or write about the book until I had some solid news, but that has meant that sometimes, here, I have simply described the angle of sunflowers in my garden when I might have preferred to say that “every hour I feel like throwing up, and then disintegrating into a vapor.”

I am so proud of this book, and so excited to work on it with my new editor, and for it to eventually make its way into the hands of readers.  My usual advice to writers is to make a point of celebrating the good things that happen—to, indeed, force yourself to celebrate the good things, because the bad ones will linger in your mind so much more naturally. It’s been hard advice for me to follow, given the fraught state of the world, but I have been reminded again and again by good friends to do it, and my god, I am trying.

Today, my friend Renée (yes, the same one from the dream, yes, I was of course telling her about it) told me that our mutual friend Jessica (who works with Renée in the Tucson Public Library system) read out the deal announcement for End of the World House at work, and that people clapped and cheered. The library is my solace, my favorite place in the world, and knowing that librarians have cheered for my book’s very existence brought tears of happiness to my eyes.

Let us keep holding one another accountable for equity in the world, and let us keep holding one another accountable for sharing joy, because we need both, and we need them badly, and Celine Dion was not angry that I spilled her dream martini, so we know there is love in the universe, somewhere.