Hello, everyone! Yeah, I know it’s been a while, but I’ve been busy and the one thing I told myself when I decided to start a newsletter is that I was gonna make sure it never felt like work. Also, I receive a lot of newsletters, and I’d rather not get one from a few days than get one from someone who’s obviously struggling to put together because they’ve been too busy and don’t have much to wrote about. Anyway, thanks for reading! Let’s talk about some stuff…
PORTUGAL
I spent a week in Portugal. It was the first “vacation” I’ve had in a long time, and yes, I was working and grading while there. Portugal is a country I visited a lifetime ago and have good memories of, so going back without much planning was great. I stayed in Lisbon and drove out to magical places like Nazaré, Setúbal, and Sintra. I ate a lot of good food, walked for miles and miles every day, and drank a lot of good coffee. Nazaré is one of my favorite places, so going back there after so long was strangely emotional. Before driving back to Lisbon, I wrote this on Twitter: “Spent a lot of time standing in front of the ocean, listening to its ancestral roar. The ghosts in my blood told me old stories, brought me memories in baskets made of bone. I let my heart cry. I felt like an old man and like a newborn. The ocean is magic. The ocean is home.” The ocean, which is at the center of my next novel, is indeed home, and I can’t wait to go back home and get more of it. My soul needs it. In any case, I took a lot of photos. As you know, I spend a lot of time on the road nowadays, so I’ve learned to pack my backpack with only the essentials and travel very light. This time, I took a second bag and brought my camera along. Once I get those photos out, I’ll share some favorites with you. For now, here are some photos of cool places and empty streets.
The trip there was…well, I hate sitting inside airplanes, but it was manageable. The trip back was awful. I got up at 3:00am and drove to the airport, then sat in a plane for a bit over three hours to get from Lisbon to London, ran through Heathrow, and then sat on a plane for ten hours to get from Heathrow to Austin…and when I got here, they didn’t have a place for us, so I sat on the plane another half hour. You know what? I’d do it all over again. Hah. Anyway, I spent October on the road doing book stuff in New York City, Telluride, Westport, and Orlando. I was looking forward to some time at home, but Portugal happened. Now I’m trying catch up because on Friday I’m flying to California for ten days for the UC Riverside - Palm Desert MFA residency, where I started teaching last month. Should be fun. More on that later.
A BIG ANNOUNCEMENT…
is coming. I can’t talk about it yet, but a few newsletters ago, I talked about trying out for two really cool things. The first one was the teaching gig I just talked about, which has been fun despite my constant panic that I’m not doing enough and that I haven’t figured out everything yet. The second one was something totally different, and I got an email that I got it while I was walking around Lisbon looking for a place to eat diner. I’m stoked, and I think some of you will also be stoked when I finally share it.
TWO MOVIES I ENJOYED
On my way to Portugal, I watched Talk to Me. I dug it. My two favorite horror movies of the year are Where the Devil Roams and When Evil Lurks. That said, Talk to Me was solid. On my way back to Austin, I watched Inside, which I didn’t even know about. It’s a one-note movie and it’s longer than it needed to be, but Willem Dafoe is awesome in it and carries the whole thing masterfully. It also gets the right kind of weird in the last third and has some art in it that helped the story.
A COOL TEXT
I was getting off the plane in Portugal when I got a text from my editor at Mulholland saying that the paperback of The Devil Takes You Home was going into a second printing. That made my day. If you contributed to that, or to the book’s life in any way, THANK YOU.
That’s it for now. Thanks again for reading. You might get another one of these soon with more updates, an essay, and more photos (only being able to share nine photos at a time is not my favorite thing about this platform…). Stay well and be good to each other. Cheers.
Congratulations!
Congratulations, Gabino!