a sense of place.

on my new novel, what I've been reading, and one's 'real estate'.

Some writing updates:

• My short story, “The Damp,” which is about taking matters into your own hands, even if that necessitates seeking guidance from a swamp witch, was re-published in Tales From the Alien Buddha 5. “The Damp” is also one of the stories previously collected in my short story collection, Assemblage.

• My new novel, Select Screen, officially has a pre-order page! Books will ship out in May.

  Streamers, TikTokkers, eSports stars, and their legions of parasocially obsessed fans star in Select Screen, the new literary composite novel from Abigail Stewart, where the unspoken secrets of today’s internet culture are spilled and god is found in a live-streamed hot tub.

  And I am finally able to share the beautiful cover Whiskey Tit commissioned.

I recently read, and enjoyed, Delphine de Vigan’s Nothing Holds Back the Night, a memoir, originally written in French, that exposes the dark secrets hidden beneath a superficially functional family. The book opens with de Vigan’s mother, Lucile, committing suicide at sixty-one and this tragic act invites de Vigan, in the midst of her grief, to examine their relationship through writing.

And then, like dozens of authors before me, I attempted to write my mother.

De Vigan interviews her mother’s friends and family members. She watches old recordings, sifts through her mother’s archives, and writes her way through tumultuous waves of emotion. She holds a mirror up to Lucile’s myriad imperfections and does not excuse her own. She narrates the struggle of living in a tumultuous, unpredictable household and how that can affect a child, an adult. The book is, in a word, brutal.

In Nothing Holds Back the Night, Lucile’s life is categorized in many ways by her periods of mental instability. However, I was continually intrigued by the way de Vigan established a sense of place in her own childhood memories. De Vigan’s vignettes are often defined by a sense of place, Lucile’s or her own, beginning with the ecstatic trips to Pierremont where they gathered as a family and where de Vigan finally felt some sense of normalcy among her many cousins. Lucile and her daughters exist in a constant state of flux, so Pierremont feels stable, a place they can return to – home.

When Lucile leaves the hospital after another stay, she obtains a job and pours herself into her space and taking long walks in her neighborhood. Although she has spent most of her adulthood rejecting Pierremont, she is trying to create that same sort of space for both herself and her daughters. Eventually, she manages to do so in time for her grandchildren.

“She transformed the soulless space into a haven of colour and light, where murals, textures, and trompe l’oeil vied for attention. Lucile settled into her lair with its magnificent walls, whose pale green background, which she had chosen, brought to mind the color of Nebo’s eyes. … But Lucile had found her refuge. Lucile was no stranger to sorrow. She watched the garden that hung from her windows flourish: geraniums, white ivy, petunias, busy Lizzies, trailing verbena, gerbera, dwarf conifers…”

It's such an instinctual desire to want to create a refuge for oneself. The idea brings to mind the cozy bear on Celestial’s Sleepytime tea boxes, dozing in a chair by the fire, all his creature comforts nearby.

It takes a certain personality to believe that beautifying the space is as essential as having the space in the first place, but it’s an ethos I also identify with. When I write my own characters, I focus on how they design and decorate their spaces, in The Drowned Woman, and even moreso in Foundations because it is the story of a house – I think my characters are often defined by how they shape their space and I am drawn to characters who do the same.

I have been turning these two quotes over in my head lately:

“If I were asked to name the chief benefit of the house, I should say: the house shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace.” – Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space

“I own the books that I have written... in this sense, my books are my real estate.” – Deborah Levy, Real Estate

Using Deborah Levy’s definition, I am establishing my own real estate this year both in the very literal sense and the more opaque. I am leaning into creating art amidst the chaos, I have added Select Screen to my writer’s real estate, and we are closing on a house this month.

I know the rest of this year will be focused on making that house a place that allows me to dream in peace and protects my daydreams. I want to hang art on the walls and cook the first meal in my new kitchen and see what the sun looks like out my new windows at every time of the day. It gives me hope in a time when I feel hope is much needed. And that’s not to say I want to stick my head in the sand, but I do want to have a place to retreat to, where I can find inspiration, and continue my artistic work in spite of it all.