Heavy Weather

Burn the candles, hope the lights stay on

Dear readers,

Hello from snowpocalypse snowmagedden snownarok 2026. May your devices stay charged, your books be good, your power on, your border collies entertained*. (*Okay, that one is mostly for me.) I’m burning a Palo Santo candle I got this morning during a stock up at World Market (don’t worry, I also have roughly a hundred tea lights in the house, not to mention my royal blue childhood Eveready flashlight).

While there is the possibility of everyone turning full cannibal, Josh promises he won’t let me be eaten. And anyway, I have cleaned the entire house so that when the cannibals do come, they’ll know that I ran a tidy ship.

I’m hoping even if the worst happens here then the Writer’s Room will maintain power and can be a warming haven. In the meantime, as long as the power is on, I’m just going to treat the storm like a retreat, since deadline is deadlining and this week was nutty busy (I only made it to yoga once, today, sob).

This is so not going to be a great newsletter, as you can tell by this point. I’m preoccupied by the impending weather doom. The air feels heavy. Like extremely cold soup. The first flakes are falling and the sidewalk is already white. If this post is missing letter i’s it’s because I got a non-mechanical keyboard and I seem to have already mostly destroyed the letter i on the keyboard. Writer Problems.

Some pics, then. The screening of The Librarians documentary at the Kentucky Theatre was a huge success. You’ll be able to watch it on PBS soon, and I highly recommend doing so. More than 400 people turned out (I LOVE YOU, LEXINGTON).

There were lots of librarians in the house, of course — including one of my favorite people and authors, Court Stevens, who runs the Bowling Green library system. There were tears in the crowd throughout. Walking out, I thought about all the stages of authoritarianism we’re experiencing and I can’t know where it ends, but I do know that community is about the only balm right now. It has to matter that we gather and recognize and organize and fight alongside each other. Even on days when I feel helpless, I know it matters..

It was a hard watch, but I am grateful for all these good people.

May you be surrounded by warmth, in these cold times.

Next week, I’ll do something better here. In the meantime, tell me how you’re weathering the storm, if you are — books, movies, et cetera? Recommend at will. It’s back to Charlie Chaplin vs. America here, some research reading. The more things change…

p.s. The first story will go up at Brown Hound Press in a couple of weeks! Sign up now so you don’t miss it! (Free awesome stories!)

More soon, yours,

Gwenda