Hi friends, I am in the middle of a big revision on my new novel, and as such I am experiencing a split consciousness between the real world (where I write short pieces to accompany my comic most weeks) and book world (where I stare out the window and attempt to mentally schism space-time), which is all to say I am a little spent this week, and am going to just give you some links to stuff. Cool? Cool. I may take next week off of comics, for this same reason, but I will be back. I need a mini-residency in the middle of my deeply unchanging day-to-day life.

Anyway! One great thing is that you can now pre-order Mairead Case’s new novel TINY from Featherproof Books, which obviously I think you should do. One part Antigone, one part Pacific Northwest, one hundred beautiful shining particles of Mairead’s radically kind and deeply inspired brain. It comes out October 20, so if you buy it now it will be a present to yourself later.

In a very different book-world sphere, I was very excited to see Emma Copley-Eisenberg’s piece about fact checking (or more specifically, the lack thereof) in publishing come out today with Esquire. Did you know that nonfiction books, even reported ones, are rarely fact checked, except at the author’s expense? It’s weird! Learn more! 

For those keeping track, it’s still about 107 degrees here, though the weather report now keeps teasing 95-100 days in the near future. Luckily, I am too smart and too battered to believe the lies the weather report is telling me. I cannot let it hurt me again. Every day, cooler temperatures are about 3 days away. Do the math. It is summer forever, the sky is a whitewash of heatstroke and pain, but at least I got to hang out with a hawk the other night, while it sat in my tree and I lay on my back on the hot bricks of our patio, waiting for the sun to go down. There are a lot of very active hummingbirds in the neighborhood. Make of all this what you will.