And other truths about publishing
After I completed my first novel, I had dreams of a beautiful black book, its ivory pages sewn into the binding, the title embossed in gold leaf, a single red ribbon denoting the place where a reader might pause in their reading, adrift in another world.
Perhaps, if I was lucky enough, more than a few readers would love it. Perhaps, in my wildest dreams, Reese Witherspoon would even recommend it to her book club. Perhaps it would go on to become a New York Times bestseller and Hello Sunshine would adapt it into a series for HBO. …
On March 18th, after a week of quarantine, an earthquake shook my home, hard.
I was in the bathtub when it happened, the water sloshing onto the floor as my crystal chandelier swung like a pendulum. I jumped out of the tub to get my husband, prepared to run out into the streets naked if need be.
The aftershocks were just as unsettling. Dozens of quakes rattled us for weeks as we worked from our dining room table, standing each time the ground slipped beneath our feet, wondering if this would be the time to leave.
During this time the trumpet fell from the mouth of Moroni, the angel perched atop the Mormon temple, and we wondered if we’d reached the end of the world. …
What we are witnessing could be evidence that we live in a multi-dimensional universe. That we are not alone. That we may be interacting with other entities, other intelligence,” says Brandon Fugal, real estate mogul and investor in the now infamous Skinwalker Ranch.
Once owned by hotel financier and billionaire Robert Bigelow, the ranch is a 512-acre parcel of land in Utah’s Uinta Basin long reputed to be rife with paranormal activity. …
This will be my sixth year living in a place with winter, and I now know what I didn’t at first: that something about my biology doesn’t enjoy the cold. That the happiness that comes with ease during the warm summer months is harder won during the colder winter ones. That the anxiety and depression I so thoroughly removed from myself long ago tries to seep back in once the snow settles in.
Every year I get stronger. I have gathered the tools I need to survive—the almond oil that drenches my bath every morning, the stair-stepper that keeps me active when it's too cold to go out on a weeknight, the handheld steam room that keeps my lungs warm and moisturized, the down coat that goes down to my toes and the cashmere socks that go up to my thighs — and I have learned to find refuge in our coldest season. …
Rebecca Zimmermann recently decided to move to Hawaii. She’d been working as an account coordinator for Double Forte, a creative agency out of San Francisco, when stay-at-home orders forced the company’s six office spaces to close. One month into closures Double Forte decided to allow it’s employees to work remotely indefinitely.
Zimmermann jumped at the opportunity. “I began thinking of places I could relocate to that would support my lifestyle,” she says. “That’s when I started considering Hawaii. …
When we started working from home we stopped using our cars and for a brief moment, the clouds parted. We saw a world in which the air we breathe became cleaner and we clung, for a moment, to the hope of a smog-free future. Maybe that could be our future, we thought, if we changed all our gas-powered cars out for electric ones.
Indeed, as carbon emissions plummeted by up to 30 percent worldwide, stock in electric vehicle manufacturers soared by up to 616 percent ―the inverse correlation implying a sort of aspirational environmentalism: The idea that electrification could save us from our gas-powered woes. …
Sahil Lavingia raised $8 million between Seed and Series A rounds, opened offices in San Francisco, and managed 23 full-time employees. He planned to build a billion-dollar company and he was well on his way to doing so, all he needed was a $15 million Series B.
For Lavingia, during the six years he spent in San Francisco, his business Gumroad was his whole identity. He did nothing but eat and work, and he can’t recall going out on a single date during that time. He read business books on the weekends and had an office in SOMA. …
In 2008 we didn’t have jobs and we didn’t have money, but we had extra space in our homes and backseats in our car. So we started Airbnb, and we founded Uber, and we created with what remnant we had left something that would change the way we travel forever.
That’s about to happen again.
The future
As I write this, I am quarantined in my home. Our schools have moved online and our offices have sent us home. The stock markets have fallen and the layoffs have begun. And yet, if we’re being honest with ourselves, haven’t we always known this moment was coming? We’ve forecasted the next bear market with conviction, we’ve said “the next crash is just around the corner” more times than we can count. We just never knew it would come about like this or play out in this way. We never have. …
Like much of the world, I am now working from home. That means that after I’ve closed my laptop and practiced some home yoga, I have seemingly endless amounts of time to fold myself into the pages of a good book.
Reading, to me, is more than just a respite, it’s a chance to deepen my experience of life. Books have helped me heal from depression, develop my craft as a writer, think more creatively, challenge myself professionally, and meditate on the curiosities of our existence.
And so, when our libraries closed, I purchased a few books for every emotional state that might drift my way. Whether I want to change the world, or simply escape to a different one, here are a few books that I think are perfect for the moment. …
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