1 Photo, 1 Song: #1

I recently returned home from our annual visit to the coast. My little family has started a little tradition of renting the same cabin in the same little coastal town for a few days every July, in the footsteps of my wife’s childhood; one of her favorite core memories is the beach house her family rented every summer in Myrtle Beach. The Oregon Coast is a bit different from Myrtle Beach, but these trips have similarly become one of our new favorite memories all the same.

We’ve done the trip enough times now that this year we were able to slip into routine so easily: we knew the restaurants we wanted to visit, the grocery store we could stop at for provisions, the day trip to the bigger town up the coast so Kiddo could visit the arcade, the exact strategy for when and how to visit the beach. (We learned our new dog is an absolute pain in the ass on the beach—truly, no dog has ever hated the ocean so much—so next year he will stay at the cabin with extra treats while we visit the Pacific, but otherwise, things went off without a hitch.)

And as I snapped photos this time, I laughed a little to myself with each shot, because I knew. I knew I had taken this exact shot, of these exact waves and tide pools, of that exact mountain, even of these same flowers in the window box of a store downtown, before. Last year, or the year before, or the year before that. I knew they would all blend together, look the exact same when I glanced through them on Google Photos later.

But, well, the waves were just as calming, the mountain just as overwhelming, the flowers just as pretty, this time. How could I not document them? What’s the point of living, if you don’t want to still take pictures of the things that make you happy?

The next writing project I’m working on, that I hope I’ll get to publish, takes place on the Oregon Coast. If things go as I hope, I’ll in fact be spending the next three years of my life absorbed in a little made up town by the Pacific similar to the one I just spent time in. I brought my laptop along, as I always do, hoping to maybe soak in some specific inspiration this time, whittle away more details about the coastal world I’m hoping to create.

In the end, I didn’t take my laptop out of its case even once. This might be because the trip literally started with me receiving some rather upsetting news about a different writing project, and I think the only way my brain could function was by deciding to shut out publishing entirely. I spent a few days not really thinking about writing at all, not even feeling guilty about not opening the laptop. I still wrote a bit, in my paper journal, about my family and my annoying dog and the little cabin that’s not ours but feels like home. My made up town still lingered in the back of my brain, but mostly, it just felt really nice to not actually worry about inspiration, about hitting word counts. To only focus on taking the same pictures I’d already taken, laughing at myself a little about it, and letting that be enough.

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The project I got upsetting news about last week is about an overachieving, over-anxious girl, consumed often with climate change anxiety specifically, along with all the other ways our world is going to hell. Still, she’s an exuberant, hopeful kind of person, in my mind, someone who literally made me smile to write about, and so the song I’ve come to most associate with her book is “We’re All Gonna Die” by Joy Oladokun featuring Noah Kahan.

We’re all gonna die trying to figure it out

We’re all getting high any way we know how

We’re over our heads so I’ll say it out loud

We’re all gonna die trying to figure it out

While a perhaps fatalistic sort of message, the song is an indisputable bop, with this easy, beautiful kind of feel to it, and it makes me think of Penny so hard. She’s sort of obsessed with everything dying, but like the rest of us, she’s just doing her best to figure it all out—finding her own ways to still get high—anyway.

So whenever I wasn’t actively pretending publishing didn’t exist, I processed the bad news this week by listening to this song a lot and, even if I truly have no idea what will end up happening with Penny’s book, feeling kind of happy to have written it anyway.

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& 1 book—

Cat Sebastian was one of the very first romance writers I ever read when I fell headfirst into the genre several years ago; her books were the first queer historical romances I ever read. (The Lawrence Browne Affair was my first, and it still holds a special place in my heart. Even if it wasn’t my inaugural Sebastian, like, big reclusive gay man scientist hiding in a crumbling estate until an annoying, flamboyant conman steals his heart? Come on!!) I proceeded to read all of her mass market historicals—the Turners, the Sedgwicks, the Regency Impostors—and, while I am behind on the London Highwaymen, I read her first foray into midcentury melancholy American men with the first Cabot novella, when it was originally published in the He’s Come Undone anthology (a most excellent anthology overall). Which is all to say, I knew this book was going to be good (so good, if you will), but as with all her books, it still bowled me over anyway.

It sometimes takes me a couple chapters to really get into the swing of a Sebastian book, simply because her writing is so sharp and smart and good that I need to force my brain to slow down and absorb it. We Could Be So Good is really Sebastian in her element, as deeply driven by character work as by the subtle, propulsive fight for justice. Sebastian’s work has always been very eat the rich (literally, I think she used to bring pins to conferences that said something like ‘read romance, eat the rich’ or something similarly pleasing), but I was delighted to have this one also veer into ACAB territory, which, as a book about queer men in the 1950s, it sort of has to be for any sort of historical accuracy. (And yes, some of the scarier issues facing these men are wrapped up a little neatly, but that’s also the beauty, and the hope, of the romance novel, and the queer historical romance novel specifically.) Anyway, the historical work in this one, especially around the visceral depictions of New York City and newspapers, was simply outstanding, in addition to all the incredibly soft feelings about soup and sandwiches, and the romance was nothing short of devastatingly wonderful. More than anything, it’s just stunningly written; there were so many lines that made me want to throw the book over the hedge/clutch it to my heart forever. It’s the kind of book that I would have liked to have written, if I was much smarter and more talented.

I started and finished this one while we were at the coast, which made it feel extra special; I remember the books I get to read at our little beach cabin in a very specific way, perhaps because my brain feels freer there to really absorb them; reading on vacation feels less Part of My Job Now, and more Something I’ve Always Loved. I almost always pick out books to bring with me that I already know I’ll love, to really sink into the self-satisfaction of it; the ones I’ve read there now live in a little hall of fame in my head. I’m very glad and very unsurprised to add this one into the ranks.

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I hope you all get to read a good book or listen to a good song today.

xo

anita