Spooky season tidbits - and a 30% preorder discount on Humans: A Monstrous History!
Which monsters would you like to read about this fall?
Hallo readers,
It’s a gorgeous sunny day at the start of spooky season. My brain has been fried since completing final edits to my book index a couple of weeks ago. The thought of writing any more words good enough for other people to read is making me feel SMOL this week!
Fresh newsletter service with monster-ridden stories will begin soon. But I have SO MANY MONSTERY THINGS lying around in my notes, in books I’ve annotated, in photos of manuscripts that couldn’t fit into the book (the horror) that it’s hard to know where to begin. Do let me know in the comments if you have any themes, favourite monsters, or monstery questions! That would focus my mind - and I’ll try to come up with unexpected sources and answers.
In the meantime, I have a story that’s spooky and sunny at once.
Deep in Year 1 of the plague, social media posts began featuring a dish with the world’s most terrifying name: the Dutch baby. Who would want to eat something with a name like that?!
Just hearing about it was like being in a horror movie. It turned out that these things were baked - so baked babies?!
Yet their ingredients were harmless - pancake batter. But rather than becoming pancakes cooked on the stove, the mix goes all at once into a pan and into the oven to turn into a single cake.
A while ago I found myself out of bicarbonate of soda, seemingly unable to compile the baking powder for muffins. What to do? The oven was going on for something else anyway. Must Use Both Shelves whenever possible. Reluctantly, I googled for that terrifying thing that shall not be named again, and found Claire Ptak’s recipe on the Guardian website. The result was this pillowy, billowy, magnificence:
Watching this Thing come into being I realized that I hadn’t made a thing with a scary name, after all. I’d made a baked ghost: much cosier! That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
There’s a larger moral here about fear of the strange: it may just be that the uncanny, peculiar thing is wondrous, not nasty. Like the Austrian artist and poet Oskar Kokoschka’s exuberant rendering of the mandrill he saw in captivity in London Zoo, at the top of this newsletter. Names and framings are stories with power.
Takes and recs
I’ve almost finished Deborah Harkness’s Time’s Convert - the first follow-up book to her blockbuster All Souls Trilogy. What a joy it’s been to drop into a vampire’s-eye view of late colonial and Early Republic North America alongside a contemporary story of vampire-becoming that takes up where the trilogy left off. I think Harkness’s best fiction writing is her colonial North America writing - so moving. The best part for me? The fact that the fifth book, The Black Bird Oracle, came out a few weeks ago, so I can JUST KEEP READING!
Since becoming a full-time author-hustler, I’ve learned how much having reviews on online platforms helps authors. I’ve finally joined Goodreads, and have started reviewing books there, and adding things I want to read to my Goodreads shelf. I’m trying to remember that “done” is much, much better than “perfect,” and that I should quickly review bunches of books that I love on a regular basis. Find me there if you fancy some book-reading accountability/ recommendation-sharing as an antidote to doom-scrolling!
Words I’m trying to live by this week.
For every reaction there should be an equal and opposite action. If the cubicular world of soul-crushing 9-5 office-work is out of the question, then stay the hell off the internet for most hours of the day and write the damn words. Tired? Then run from the internet like you’re running from Hades. Do not look back, do not “just check to see if there’s anything nice in my inbox.” You bought those paper books and magazines for a reason.
HUMANS 30% preorder discount
A few weeks ago I announced that Humans was available for preorder.
Folks with a US or Canadian mailing address can now preorder HUMANS in hardback, direct from the University of California Press, at a 30% discount, using the code UCPSAVE30!
On the UC Press website, please click on ” Buy,” select “UC Press” from the drop-down menu, and follow instructions on the Indie Pubs website. A discount code box appears on the checkout page.
The code - which works for all UC Press books currently preorderable direct from UC Press via Indie Pubs - is UCPSAVE30. For US-based readers, two copies would get you over the minimum purchase for free delivery! (Or you could buy another terrific UC Press book alongside Humans.)
Not based in the US or Canada? You can still preorder via your preferred bricks-and-mortar store or online retailer.
If you’re planning on buying the book anyway (for yourself; as a gift), ordering now would be fantastic. Strong preorder numbers will encourage the press to keep promoting the book after the pub date (during my March/April US book tour and beyond!), encourage retailers to stock the book, and increase the chances of online retailers’ algorithms suggesting the book to more readers.
But there are also FREE ways to support all your favourite authors, fun little things that make a big difference. For suggestions, see my late August newsletter here.
Upcoming talks
Virtual: Wednesday October 30 (Harvard University).
New York City: January Jan 3-6, 2025 (American Historical Association conference).
Boston: March 20-22, 2025 (Renaissance Society of America and Shakespeare Association of America joint conference).
Future March/April events tbc include dates in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York City, Pennsylvania, northern and southern California, and Washington, DC! To ensure you get all the tour news, please subscribe!
You can also find me on www.surekhadavies.org,
BlueSky (@drsurekhadavies.bsky.social),
and Instagram/Threads (@surekhadavies).